Lawyers Find Cheaper Way To Identify BitTorrent Users

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Just great, anti-piracy lawyers have found a cheaper way to track down BiTorrent users. You know, because if anyone needs to make more money off suing file sharers, it would be the lawyers. :rolleyes:

Since 2010 close to 200,000 people in the U.S. have been sued for sharing movies via BitTorrent. For the copyright holders and lawyers these cases are already highly profitable. However, some are testing a new and potentially more effective tactic to pursue alleged copyright infringers which could signal the beginning of a new avalanche of settlements.
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Bastards.

All I can say is that I hope Darwin was right.
These bastards are trying to convince us that allowing an illegal method of screwing us is going to make it easier for us in the long run? I had better take this guys advice and start giving MGM or Sony or whoever hundreds of thousands of dollars right now so I don't have to give them millions later. Since I downloaded that POS with Sylvester Stallone and Dolph where they make a mockery out of Jet Li. I forget what that trash is called. Yeah I pirated it. And I'm sorry I wasted my bandwidth.

Make a movie worth watching and people won't be pissed about paying for it. Although no person of sound mind and body will pay $14 to go to the theater to see anything unless you get FULL service by a French maid.

The movie industry is busted and all the pirates are doing is demonstrating this fact.
 
S-F said:
The movie industry is busted and all the pirates are doing is demonstrating this fact.
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Yeah, I remember back when movie tickets were like $3.50, and movies were just as good (if not better) than movies today. But, you know, I guess they justify the cost because they used 50 million dollars worth of special effects in a shitty movie, right? :rolleyes:
 
I'm amazed people still use bit torrent for this type of thing.
 
wtiger said:
I'm amazed people still use bit torrent for this type of thing.
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Apart from those who uses VPN, I think bit torrent is still the easiest method that is free. File hosting sites usually requires paid subscription to be able to download the files unrestricted. I've also heard that they are now actively removing copyrighted materials after complains from the RIAA/MPAA
 
colinstu said:
Why can't lawyers and big agencies litigate with newsgroups?
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Too hard to prove the user directly downloaded source material. Newsgroup links are like little email addresses pointing to different servers with difference pieces of the files required to extract the desired final file. Since the user only downloads these links there isn't an easy way to prove that they are directly downloading and therefore violating the DMCA.

They've been around since 1979. Torrents on the other hand forces users to share parts of the seed file in a swarm (so when one of the leeches is finished they may then become a seed and increase the overall bandwidth that is open to other users) so its very easy to figure out who in the swarm is downloading what piece and thus easier to prove it in a court of law.

Newgroups require no sharing between users while downloading. No private server sharing quota required in order to download either so its less taxing on your overall bandwidth. Instead users pay for the bandwidth they use through a 3rd party provider. The benefit of this is you download at your max connection speed the entire time (unless you get throttled by your ISP but that's a different issue) so unlike Torrents which suffer until lots of leeches finish downloading and increase the seed population.
 
silat said:
It isnt the lawyers. It is the corporations.
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Its likely both. Entertainment industry is making more than ever but greed is king. Its been proven time and time again that most people will download content (say in the form of piracy) and pay for it later. If zero pirates were paying for any content they downloaded the entire entertainment industry would be in seriously deep shit , yet they aren't. Blockbuster movies still get made , massive budget video games still get made , expensive production TV shows still get made. All of which continue to make money and lots of it.

Its a complex issue no doubt and stealing is stealing at the core. But the lawsuits being thrown out and more often than not in error against an innocent party is just a pathetic practice.
 
Hornet said:
Apart from those who uses VPN, I think bit torrent is still the easiest method that is free. File hosting sites usually requires paid subscription to be able to download the files unrestricted. I've also heard that they are now actively removing copyrighted materials after complains from the RIAA/MPAA
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60 Euro per year is not that much if you download movies and games that would cost you thoushands otherwise :)
 
almalino said:
60 Euro per year is not that much if you download movies and games that would cost you thoushands otherwise :)
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Yeah think about it, some people waste that much a month on cable tv. And what does that get them? Commercials & other random garbage :D
 
Godmachine said:
Too hard to prove the user directly downloaded source material. Newsgroup links are like little email addresses pointing to different servers with difference pieces of the files required to extract the desired final file. Since the user only downloads these links there isn't an easy way to prove that they are directly downloading and therefore violating the DMCA.

They've been around since 1979. Torrents on the other hand forces users to share parts of the seed file in a swarm (so when one of the leeches is finished they may then become a seed and increase the overall bandwidth that is open to other users) so its very easy to figure out who in the swarm is downloading what piece and thus easier to prove it in a court of law.

Newgroups require no sharing between users while downloading. No private server sharing quota required in order to download either so its less taxing on your overall bandwidth. Instead users pay for the bandwidth they use through a 3rd party provider. The benefit of this is you download at your max connection speed the entire time (unless you get throttled by your ISP but that's a different issue) so unlike Torrents which suffer until lots of leeches finish downloading and increase the seed population.
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It is the uploading part that earns the big settlements in torrent cases, not the downloading. It simply would not pay to go after those that download only, since the up loader is where the money is at in a civil case. Using a leech only torrent program like bitthief has the same effect as using a news group. Problem with that is that if too many go leech only...... well the out come is obvious.

They will eventually go after newsgroups. They just don't know how to do it and make it pay yet..
 
Godmachine said:
Its likely both. Entertainment industry is making more than ever but greed is king. Its been proven time and time again that most people will download content (say in the form of piracy) and pay for it later. If zero pirates were paying for any content they downloaded the entire entertainment industry would be in seriously deep shit , yet they aren't. Blockbuster movies still get made , massive budget video games still get made , expensive production TV shows still get made. All of which continue to make money and lots of it.

Its a complex issue no doubt and stealing is stealing at the core. But the lawsuits being thrown out and more often than not in error against an innocent party is just a pathetic practice.
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How can something that isn't physical be stolen?

I don't think it's the lawyers or the corporations fault, it's the federal governments fault for protecting them and for giving them something to make more money off of.

Patents should be outright abolished, but at the very least they could repeal the DMCA, reduce the term of patents and copyrights to 7 years no extensions, put a heavy quota on them (no more than 5k patents/copyrights granted per year and four percent of 2010 patents for each specific industry) and cap civil suits payments at a reasonable level.
 
yeah it's not the downloading that gets bit torrent users in trouble. It's the uploading; which is then considered distribution of copy-written works and carries a penalty that's an order of magnitude more severe than simply downloading.
 
Godmachine said:
Too hard to prove the user directly downloaded source material. Newsgroup links are like little email addresses pointing to different servers with difference pieces of the files required to extract the desired final file. Since the user only downloads these links there isn't an easy way to prove that they are directly downloading and therefore violating the DMCA.

They've been around since 1979. Torrents on the other hand forces users to share parts of the seed file in a swarm (so when one of the leeches is finished they may then become a seed and increase the overall bandwidth that is open to other users) so its very easy to figure out who in the swarm is downloading what piece and thus easier to prove it in a court of law.

Newgroups require no sharing between users while downloading. No private server sharing quota required in order to download either so its less taxing on your overall bandwidth. Instead users pay for the bandwidth they use through a 3rd party provider. The benefit of this is you download at your max connection speed the entire time (unless you get throttled by your ISP but that's a different issue) so unlike Torrents which suffer until lots of leeches finish downloading and increase the seed population.
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Thanks for the response, cleared me up on some things.
 
Im so, SO scared. :rolleyes:

The only thing thats going to stop/slow BT is when something better replaces it for more people to get more content faster and easier.
 
GORANKAR said:
They will eventually go after newsgroups. They just don't know how to do it and make it pay yet..
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I'm surprised they don't go after Newsgroup providers since they actually host copyrighted material on their own servers and make profit from it from membership fees. Seems like a slam dunk to me. Perhaps because it's not mainstream idiot proof and used by old schoolers mostly, its small potatoes.
 
Spiko said:
That's fine. Please don't.
pay gate keeps out the riffraff. ;)
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A pirate calling someone riffraff made me lawl.
I agree prices are insane though. Going to see a 3D movie cost more than getting a steak at a restraunt.

I'm not worried about pirating just yet though, instead I'm just waiting for man to do something about these prices and drop us back to the stone age :)
 
SlimeyLimey said:
I'm surprised they don't go after Newsgroup providers since they actually host copyrighted material on their own servers and make profit from it from membership fees. Seems like a slam dunk to me. Perhaps because it's not mainstream idiot proof and used by old schoolers mostly, its small potatoes.
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Yup. Easier to click "download torrent" than skimming through hundreds of files where some may be missing.
 
I always thought that torrents have a built in hash checker and that made them more reliable. Nothing worse than downloading a corrupt file and not finding out till after you've downloaded it. Then again, Ih havent used newsgroups in a while. There are more and more legal uses for using torrents, so it is actually a good development. I do wonder if even there are anonymous was to torrent though, to make it closer to newgroups. Theres some interesting tech to develop.
 
SlimeyLimey said:
I'm surprised they don't go after Newsgroup providers since they actually host copyrighted material on their own servers and make profit from it from membership fees. Seems like a slam dunk to me. Perhaps because it's not mainstream idiot proof and used by old schoolers mostly, its small potatoes.
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+1 totally agree.
 
Megalomaniac said:
I always thought that torrents have a built in hash checker and that made them more reliable. Nothing worse than downloading a corrupt file and not finding out till after you've downloaded it. Then again, Ih havent used newsgroups in a while. There are more and more legal uses for using torrents, so it is actually a good development. I do wonder if even there are anonymous was to torrent though, to make it closer to newgroups. Theres some interesting tech to develop.
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having block verification doesn't necessarily make them more reliable. if the seed was bad it will still be bad regardless.

in newsgroups they typically distribute reed-solmon ecc files to validate and repair in the off case that you end up missing a file or having a bad file.
i'd say 98% of the time you don't end up needing the ecc files, though.
 
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