The glorious idea to kick file sharers off the Internet, effectively banning them from accessing the Internet, seems to be in consideration in Australia in an effort to fight Internet piracy. It does not happen very often that I’m left totally speechless but this proposal succeeded. I really don’t know how to reply to such an idiotic proposal.

Ban someone from the Internet because he is a file sharer ? Would not that be the equivalent of banning someone from using knifes ever again because he stabbed someone with one ? No sorry sir, you have to use the spoon to put butter on your bread, you are banned from using knifes ever again.

Well you used a car in the bank robbery, that means that we will ban you from driving around with cars ever again, sorry, no buses either, use a bike or walk. That’s silly I know but that’s how I feel about this proposal.

continue reading "Stop Piracy by Kicking P2P Users off the Internet"

If you perform a search for the major torrent website The Pirate Bay you expect it to be the number one search result for its main keyword due to its popularity. If you search for The Pirate Bay (the Piratebay, Piratebay) on Google you will witness that it is indeed number 1 but if you perform the same search at Yahoo you will not find the domain in the results list at all.

The question is if this is only a glitch or if the website has been removed from the results page manually. A search with the site parameter reveals more than 500000 indexed pages of The Pirate Bay which means that it most likely was not kicked out of the index.

Has the result deliberately been removed by Yahoo ? We do not know for sure at this moment but it surely looks this way. If you search for the full domain name only thepiratebay.org Yahoo finds about 30 results. It leads to an interesting question if Yahoo did indeed remove the result manually.

continue reading "Yahoo bans The Pirate Bay"

Have you ever asked yourself how it is possible that users are tracked over months in P2P networks although their IP address is changing regularly ? We only hear reports about session based user identifications. Session based means that shared files of this session are analyzed and recorded opposed to tracking a user over months.

Common sense tells us that the IP address is the major information needed to identify a user, but there are other information available to other users of P2P networks that can be used to track users even if the IP address changes. Those are, among other data the software and version used as well as the MAC address of the computer.

These two values are used to generate a hash that identifies the user even if his IP changes because the IP is not relevant for tracking users over a period of time. It is still recorded though with additional information like shared files, date and time, servers and all other information available.

continue reading "How users are being tracked on P2P networks"

The news that European Internet Service Providers did not have to give up names of customers to members of the Music Industry and other organizations in civil cases hit the Internet by storm. Everyone seemed to think that this was a major victory for consumer rights. It probably is in some countries but let me explain how this is easily circumvented, at least in Germany.

German Internet Service Providers did not give out their customer names in civil cases even before the ruling of the EU court. Copyright infringement is however a criminal offense in Germany which means that the companies file a criminal lawsuit, the State is investigation, getting information about the IP in question and the companies simply take a look into the documents to find out the real name and contact information about that person.

After they get the name they file a civil case and the criminal lawsuit is normally closed because of minor offenses. With the name however they can - and do - sue the user whose IP they detected.

continue reading "ISPs don’t have to give up names in civil cases"

I was under the impression that courts are ruled by fact and reason but it becomes apparent that some judges are not able to cope with technology and the fast changing online world. A court order issued on January 23th by the District court of Dusseldorf, Germany ordered Rapidshare to take preemptive measures against copyright infringement (article on Gema website) This does look nicely on paper but once you take a look at the practical implementation it is a (nearly) impossible task.

The court basically told Rapidshare to make a distinction between copyrighted and free files on their servers. This would mean that Rapidhshare has to have a master list of all copyrighted files, be it music, film, documents and even dlls to be able to make a decision. Documents, films and music have to be played to be sure that it is indeed copyrighted material because a name could imply that it is but nothings for sure until you checked the file manually.

A simple name comparison is not enough to determine if a file is infringing copyright. Not all files are named properly as well, some are zipped and contain many files, some are secured with a password. How is Rapidshare going to check on all of these files ? They can’t. It is simply impossible to follow the courts order and the judges seem to have taken this into account by saying that Rapidshare would have to follow this order even if it would mean that they had to cease offering it at all.

continue reading "Court orders Rapidshare to take preemptive measures against copyright infringement"