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Court blocks $1B copyright ruling that punished ISP for its users' piracy

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Re: Court blocks $1B copyright ruling that punished ISP for its users' piracy

#71

Post by hypercube33 »

speff wrote: post #60
charles_f wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ironically I would probably pay more for a dumber, but more reliable pipe. My operator changed my modem, and its configuration is "easier than ever!" (says the manual). That is, you have to use your account page on their website to change the wifi settings, and the more advanced part of it you must install an app on your phone. But you can't specify a custom DNS (which I'm sure the default router firmware would let y…

You can get that. It’s a business account. It costs more because that’s the actual price of a dedicated line with an uptime SLA.

Almost every single ISP I've worked with will let you put modem routers into "bridge" mode where it bridges the modem side to Ethernet and there's your mostly dumb modem pushing a public IP to whatever you plug in to it. Cable companies get sneaky sneaky and keep some wifi crap on for their cell phone plans though.

Re: Court blocks $1B copyright ruling that punished ISP for its users' piracy

#72

Post by shiroiushi »

tarxvf wrote: post #56
shiroiushi wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has there been any widely publicized occurrence of jury nullification on any case? I feel like it's something that certain people on the internet bring up a lot, but in reality pretty much never happens.

Generally speaking you can't just admit to jury nullification without potentially undoing the nullifcation. All you can really do is say "not guilty". If you want to find jury nullification you have to find cases where the evidence is overwhelmingly in favor of conviction but the jury didn't convict anyway. And that can be hard to say, since outside of the court you often don't know exactly what the jury saw and the…

So if jurors admit that they changed their verdict because they disagreed with the law, does that cause a mistrial?

Re: Court blocks $1B copyright ruling that punished ISP for its users' piracy

#73

Post by Broken_Hippo »

LoganDark wrote: post #24
boplicity wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I lived in a building that had the cost of electricity included in the rent for long-term tenants, but newer tenants had to pay for their own electricity use. One person I knew in the building was using their "free" electricity to mine cryptocurrency. This was, in my opinion, not far from stealing. Was it legal? Probably? Was it ethical? Not by a long shot.

I wonder if they are the reason newer tenants had to pay, but the landlord couldn't change their lease until the last one expires

the older units might not have meters, while the newer ones could be upgraded while empty.

All on one meter is common in old houses that have been divided into apartments.

Re: Court blocks $1B copyright ruling that punished ISP for its users' piracy

#74

Post by pmontra »

pyuser583 wrote: post #59
ryandrake wrote: post #2

Wow, a case between an ISP cartel member and a copyright cartel member. Hard to pick one to root for. Somehow neither side managed to make the other side look like the good guy. You'd think ISPs would do their darnedest to make it so they don't have a way of knowing what content is flowing over their pipes, to help avoid accusations of contributory infringement. ALSO: The photo of an Internet Pirate is amazing.

I used to work for an ISP. We were indoctrinated not to even think about what was going over our lines. The big concern was we’d be sued, and the emails of the opposing law firm would be going over our pipes. But that was just an example given to us as to why we should back away. Realistically, the firm was spending its time and energy laying more cables to offer services in a wider area.

> The big concern was we’d be sued, and the emails of the opposing law firm would be going over our pipes.

You mean, the mails between the opposing law firm and their customer suing you? That would be bad.

But also the mails between any other parties not in any litigation with you. Or web requests by any random person to any random server.

Re: Court blocks $1B copyright ruling that punished ISP for its users' piracy

#75

Post by RugnirViking »

kmeisthax wrote: post #61
autoexec wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

VPN providers, especially non-logging ones, keep their abuse handling practices secret. They all claim to have "ways" to catch abuse on their network - I suspect it just comes down to a combination of flagging accounts/logging events following certain types of behavior along with data collected from abuse complaints. Seems possible enough to keep logs of possible abuse for an account without keeping IP logs around. I…

VPN companies already do sketchy shit to get around Netflix's georestrictions[0]. I've heard rumors like they route traffic through residential IP blocks somehow. If they're able to do this, then IP reputation doesn't matter as much. They're already burning IP addresses to connect to Netflix with anyway ... [0] BTW, how is this not a massive industry-wide DMCA 1201 lawsuit? Advertising a service as being capable of g…

how would it be a lawsuit? its farcical that there even are georestrictions in the first place. Netflix doesnt care about them either. The only reason they exist is to please rights holders with weird demands. It's not either netflix or the customer's responsibility to care about upholding them (other than netflix's own contractual requirements)

In other news; netflix themselves allow the usage of VPNs[0] provided you dont use the free (ad-supported) plan. Presumably to prevent the sort of thing I used to do with spotify years ago (be from a region where no advertisers paid them, so the space where adverts would usually be was just blank)

[0]: https://help.netflix.com/en/node/277

Re: Court blocks $1B copyright ruling that punished ISP for its users' piracy

#76

Post by pyuser583 »

pmontra wrote: post #74
pyuser583 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to work for an ISP. We were indoctrinated not to even think about what was going over our lines. The big concern was we’d be sued, and the emails of the opposing law firm would be going over our pipes. But that was just an example given to us as to why we should back away. Realistically, the firm was spending its time and energy laying more cables to offer services in a wider area.

> The big concern was we’d be sued, and the emails of the opposing law firm would be going over our pipes. You mean, the mails between the opposing law firm and their customer suing you? That would be bad. But also the mails between any other parties not in any litigation with you. Or web requests by any random person to any random server.

> You mean, the mails between the opposing law firm and their customer suing you? That would be bad.

Exactly.

It would only be bad if we were snooping. Which we weren't. The moral is: don’t snoop.

Re: Court blocks $1B copyright ruling that punished ISP for its users' piracy

#77

Post by kelnos »

thefatboy wrote: post #64
autoexec wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Piracy isn't stealing anyway. It's just copyright infringement. DRM and other consumer hostile practices are just more reasons to add to the growing pile of reasons why copyright infringement might not be unethical no matter what the legality is.

Is piracy uploading or downloading?

Neither. Piracy is an act of robbery on the high seas.

Re: Court blocks $1B copyright ruling that punished ISP for its users' piracy

#78

Post by kelnos »

Disappointing that the ISP is liable for anything. They shouldn't be required to disconnect customers based on unproven allegations made by a random company, without any due process involved.

Internet service should just be a human right. If you still really want to punish someone for copyright infringement, fine them. Taking away their internet access is cruel and unusual punishment given how much the internet is needed to function in society these days.

Re: Court blocks $1B copyright ruling that punished ISP for its users' piracy

#79

Post by autoexec »

kmeisthax wrote: post #61
autoexec wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

VPN providers, especially non-logging ones, keep their abuse handling practices secret. They all claim to have "ways" to catch abuse on their network - I suspect it just comes down to a combination of flagging accounts/logging events following certain types of behavior along with data collected from abuse complaints. Seems possible enough to keep logs of possible abuse for an account without keeping IP logs around. I…

VPN companies already do sketchy shit to get around Netflix's georestrictions[0]. I've heard rumors like they route traffic through residential IP blocks somehow. If they're able to do this, then IP reputation doesn't matter as much. They're already burning IP addresses to connect to Netflix with anyway ... [0] BTW, how is this not a massive industry-wide DMCA 1201 lawsuit? Advertising a service as being capable of g…

IP reputation matters, but users only care when it stops them from doing what they want. Residential connections often have certain ports blocked and some uses restricted by the ISP which makes resi connections less ideal for some types of abuse, but great for things like using streaming services. An IP that doesn't work for some services may still work great for others. It seems like a lot of people using VPNs know to try a few different servers/connections until they get the kind of access they want.

> how is this not a massive industry-wide DMCA 1201 lawsuit?

Is it illegal to bypass geoblocking in the US? I'd think that in the US using a VPN to get around geoblocking could count as 'circumventing a technological measure that controls access to a work' or whatever and could be considered illegal under the DMCA, but perhaps there's also a difference between using a VPN to access content offered outside of your own country you were never authorized to view vs using it to access the same content you'd normally have access to if you weren't just on vacation? I don't think I've heard about any lawsuits against VPNs for that.

Either way, I'd agree that advertising a service as a means to bypass geoblocking is probably a bad idea. As long as they don't outright tell people they should use the service to do that though I think an argument could be made that a VPN just provides internet access, and the VPN's ToS/AUP requires users to not to do anything illegal with the connection, and so the user is responsible for what they do with it.

Re: Court blocks $1B copyright ruling that punished ISP for its users' piracy

#80

Post by corint »

robertlagrant wrote: post #8
gustavus wrote: post #6

If purchasing isn't owning piracy isn't stealing.

Exactly. It's like if I take a rental car for a joyride. That shouldn't be illegal.

In the UK there's a law covering this specific case. Theft is deigned "taking with the intent to permanently deprive", so joyriders were defending their actions by returning the vehicle after just this.

Therefore, there's now an offence for this: Taking Without Consent: https://www.cps.gov.uk/legal-guidance/theft-act-offences

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