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Reddit beats film industry again, won't have to reveal pirates' IP addresses

arstechnica.com

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Re: Reddit beats film industry again, won't have to reveal pirates' IP addresses

#31

Post by hightrix »

Sunspark wrote: post #11
pleasantpeasant wrote: post #2

I wonder if they'll still do this once Reddit IPOs

Once they're public, everything is going to change. At that point it becomes "building value for the shareholder" and "minimizing risk for the shareholder". Except in this case, users are the product, and if you ruin the experience for the user then you've ruined your own product, thus defeating the shareholder. The only thing Reddit offers is a user community on a mega-forum.

> At that point it becomes "building value for the shareholder" and "minimizing risk for the shareholder".

Reddit has been on this path for years. Almost every recent change, when viewed through this lens, makes much more sense.

Re: Reddit beats film industry again, won't have to reveal pirates' IP addresses

#32

Post by lcnPylGDnU4H9OF »

naasking wrote: post #29
imoverclocked wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be interesting to know if an admission to pirating content on Reddit is actually admissible. I would think it falls under free speech. Eg: someone makes a parody of an old Monty Python song and states, “I’m a pirate and that’s ok.” Should this count in an age where the vast majority of legal notices in this genre are robo-lawyers? Should my internet connection be severed because a guest was bored and posted…

> It would be interesting to know if an admission to pirating content on Reddit is actually admissible. The problem here is tying the account to a real person. Technically anyone could be using that account, his daughter, brother, wife, etc., just like anyone could be behind the wheel of your car if it's used to commit a crime.

> Technically anyone could be using that account

Not just the account but the internet service as well. Even if they get the IP addresses for the reddit posts, and they're Frontier IPs, it's still possible that the person who wrote the post submitted it/logged in/created their account over a loved one's home network.

Re: Reddit beats film industry again, won't have to reveal pirates' IP addresses

#33

Post by PrimeMcFly »

sam0x17 wrote: post #18
ipaddr wrote: post #9

This lawsuit is a big ad for Frontier. I'm going to see what services they offer.

It makes me miss the pre-acquisition-by-akamai days at Linode, particularly in the 2010s it was quite easy to simply respond with "thanks for letting me know, the user in question has been banned" and go right back to torrenting

lol, that's the kind of behavior that does deserve legal consequences IMO, and I'm very pro piracy.

Re: Reddit beats film industry again, won't have to reveal pirates' IP addresses

#34

Post by vdfs »

Arrath wrote: post #14
bawolff wrote: post #8

> Firms wanted seven years' worth of IP address logs on users who discussed piracy. Does that mean reddit stores ip addresses for 7 years? That seems excessive.

What the lawyers wanted may be very different from what reddit actually keeps.

Right,I bet reddit hold data for more than 7 years

Re: Reddit beats film industry again, won't have to reveal pirates' IP addresses

#35

Post by saghm »

lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote: post #4

> Voltage Holdings and Screen Media Ventures cited Reddit posts in which users say that Frontier didn't terminate their Internet service despite sending many copyright infringement notices about torrent downloads. One of the users wrote, "I got a total of 44 emails from frontier about downloading torrents and that it could terminate service. They haven't yet. And I kinda feel like if they didn't do it after 44 emails…

I suspect the conversations went something like this:

Film industry lawyer: Tell us everyone who pirated our movies.

Frontier lawyer: We've told you everyone we know of.

Film industry lawyer: What about those people on reddit bragging about getting away with it?

Frontier lawyer: We don't have any way of knowing if those are actual customers, let alone if they're telling the truth. If you have a specific IP you want us to look into, we'd be happy to help.

(later)

Film industry lawyer: Give us the IPs of these users who made comments bragging about getting away with pirating.

Reddit lawyer: No.

Film industry lawyer: Okay, see you in court.

Re: Reddit beats film industry again, won't have to reveal pirates' IP addresses

#37

Post by notpushkin »

declaredapple wrote: post #16
favourable wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> IP addr is not a person And most IPV4 addresses are vague and only give a coarse location of where you are, and they're typically shared among many others so an IP is not a guaranteed signal that it was 'you' who pirated stuff.

> And most IPV4 addresses are vague and only give a coarse location of where you are That's not true, you can request/compel Frontier to tell you what specific customer that IP was assigned to at a given time. > and they're typically shared among many others so an IP is not a guaranteed signal that it was 'you' who pirated stuff. Most residential ISPs in the states have 1 ipv4 (and possibly ipv6) assigned per custome…

> to tell you what specific customer that IP was assigned to at a given time

Provided they keep such logs (which they probably shouldn't, unless required by law).

Re: Reddit beats film industry again, won't have to reveal pirates' IP addresses

#38

Post by declaredapple »

notpushkin wrote: post #37
declaredapple wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And most IPV4 addresses are vague and only give a coarse location of where you are That's not true, you can request/compel Frontier to tell you what specific customer that IP was assigned to at a given time. > and they're typically shared among many others so an IP is not a guaranteed signal that it was 'you' who pirated stuff. Most residential ISPs in the states have 1 ipv4 (and possibly ipv6) assigned per custome…

> to tell you what specific customer that IP was assigned to at a given time Provided they keep such logs (which they probably shouldn't, unless required by law).

For security purposes you should of course assume they do indefinitely. In practice I'm pretty sure every US ISP does, at least on the timescale of 30d+. I don't think the US officially has a retention requirement but I think Canada does.

Comcast is 180 days - https://www.xfinity.com/-/media/4231839e374c4f618b2d34004d50...

I could not find a specific number for Frontier - https://content.frontier.com/-/jssmedia/documents/corporate/...

Re: Reddit beats film industry again, won't have to reveal pirates' IP addresses

#40

Post by zahma »

pharmakom wrote: post #39

I assume the pirates are using Tor or a proxy anyway though?

It doesn’t seem like the pirates who were described in the article were behind any kind of proxy, which is why the ISP Frontier repeatedly wrote them to desist. They were pirating on the clearnet without any obfuscation. Pretty dumb and easily the lowest hanging fruit for copyright enforcement.

Using Tor for streaming or large downloads probably won’t result in great quality or quick speeds. Using Tor for browsing and seeding on private torrent trackers is also typically banned for security reasons.

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