Literally illegal. Discussing crimes doesn't equal crime, so there's no reason for them to requeust IPs. And at least in the EU you aren't even allowed to disclose information related to your person.
They don't care. It's the film industry equivalent to the Microsoft support scammers. Get a bunch of targets, spam out hundreds of thousands of threatening emails, profit off the small percent of people who fall for it.
I had a Microsoft support scammer once... I let him in to my system too..well not really.
I quickly spin up a quick fresh install of slack ware Linux in a virtual machine that didn't even have x11 never mind wine installed. When it was up I told him a friend uses something called tellynet (aka telnet but I was playing dumb) to help me on the computer.
He telnetted in and could not understand why any of his malware wasn't working...
uses something called tellynet (aka telnet but I was playing dumb)
I wonder if he got the joke, or was a scriptkiddie who just relies on existing tools without understanding them, and thought you meant television or similar.
They’re basically telemarketing workers with hacking tools provided by an employer. They follow scripts and click the buttons they’ve been trained to use.
I’m surprised they got in with telnet and not their usual RDP. However I’m not sure they would have gotten anywhere on a Linux box with commands that are so different, unless they were a little familiar with at least MacOS (bash or zsh based now a days).
I don't know, this was back around 2007 so I don't remember his specific reaction
they don't care
Yes they do. They are boxed in neatly in the current laws and unless you are discussing specifics about doing a crime in the past or future, they will not get that subpoena and thus they are in a catch 22.
Now if you are actively torrenting, chances are you could run into one of those fake peers that will grab your IP and they can start suing you. But other than that they would need real good evidence to subpoena.
Subpoenas are tools the government uses to compel a private entity to provide information. This isn’t that though, this is one private entity asking another private entity to just give them data. It’s not a legal case, and because of our non-existant privacy regulations in the US, Reddit is free to just hand over this information, or not if they want. No crime has to even be alleged, Reddit can just hand that information out.
Ok yes sorry I should have specified, what you're saying might apply to the US.
What I said applies to the EU.
Thing is, companies need to know beforehand if they are dealing with a user from US or EU because they don't wanna break laws when they have to deal with the court system anyway on stuff like this. So technically they could transmit information about US citizens, but in practice this is super tricky and risky.
Let's say you got an IP. Alright you can pinpoint The location. Problem: you don't know whether you just grabbed the target IP or an IP from a VPN or a proxy. There's ways to obscure this so you might not even be able to find out. Now if you turn this over, there's a small risk you just did a crime because they are spoofing their location. And if you just captured a VPN or proxy, you are now pursuing the wrong person and in EU law this won't go over well.
So in practice there's basically no way to do this and be sure you didn't make a mistake, and mistakes in law are risky and costly. No company would ever take such a risk.
Now I could go into detail about all the technical details on why things work like that but it would make this twice as long.
TL;DR in theory you are right for US users, in practice there's no way to tell and it gets risky pretty fast.
Also obligatory IANAL and always check in with a lawyer if you need specific legal advice.
That’s a really interesting point, has it been tested in court? The article is about US companies and US websites so I figured EU law was irrelevant, but I am curious to see if the EU can claim jurisdiction for actions foreign companies take outside the EU, regardless of if they have any official EU presence.
Well I can not give you a specific case for that, but it widely accepted that online actions against users from the EU that violate laws in the EU can get persued.
Do you remember seeing some US websites saying "we don't service EU users at the moment"? That's because they didn't want to get a lawyer so they can comply with the EU GDPR back then. I assume this is because they knew there was some precedent.
If you are keen on it I can go digging for case law though.
Note that one of the headings literally says "Why US companies must comply with the GDPR" and the answer is "because it is extra-territorial in scope".
On that page you linked, they say “So far, the EU’s reach has not been tested, but no doubt data protection authorities are exploring their options on a case-by-case basis.” So it hasn’t really been tested yet it seems. It’s true that there are extradition treaties and interpol that aid in cross-border prosecution, but that tends to be used primarily when the alleged crime happened in the prosecuting country’s jurisdiction, or the alleged crime is handled similarly in both countries. A GDPR violation by a US company wouldn’t be considered a crime at all in the US, so it’s entirely possible that they might decline to assist in prosecution.
Ok you wound me up now so I had a little scouring of the internet.
Yes, I can not find case law of extradition of US based companies through US entities.
What I can find is a couple of cases against bigger companies that also act in the realm of the EU. Google has been fined in the Netherlands for global violations if I understand correctly. Meta has been fined even a few times for global violations, enforced in Ireland.
So yes, technically enforcement in the US is not guaranteed, but they basically can't build up their company in the EU anymore unless they deal with it. It's not perfect, but violations can still suck for business expansion, and that is good. and then I do have to look into the new EU data privacy laws if they changed enforcement or anything else important.
That makes sense. Companies with no presence in the EU can likely skirt the rules, but any large company with an EU presence will be compelled to follow them.
Yeah
Also genuinely thank you for making me look into this. It's nice to know how it works:D
Glad we both leaned something :)
It's not illegal if they ask for it and reddit gives it to them.
I could give you a full breakdown of how it works in EU, but basically there needs to be indisputable evidence that a crime occured for any party to subpoena any ISP or service provider company. Otherwise those companies will be in huge trouble. The one doing the subpoena because they wouldn't have an order for that and if they fuck around right before suing, courts will not take kindly to that. And the other receiving the subpoena for disclosing personal information (although they'd maybe win a defense to that, because if they did their due diligence they are not supposed to tank the damages).
What I'm saying is, considering currently laws in the EU, I think we're good. Of course IANAL so ask one if you need specific advice.
Did they actually issue a subpoena though, or did they just send some emails saying "give pls".
A subpoena is a legal document and thus there are rules that go along with it. But an email asking to be given something is not a subpoena.
If discussing crimes equals crime then police, CEOs, and politicians should all be in jail.
Sounds like the film studios are discussing crime 🔎.
Because they're discussing crimes, or...?
"Man, you know how easy it would be to get away with insider trading/misreporting earnings/reselling seized fentanyl/asking for a key piece of evidence to go missing? I have a friend/family member/employee/business contact/perp I let go that owes me a favor."
I stand by the conclusion no matter the reason at this point. Bunch of scum the lot of them
If they were held accountable for their crimes then police, CEOs, and politicians would already all be in jail.
You should read the article. I don’t agree with them, but it’s more nuanced than that/isn’t about discussing piracy.
They are basically trying to get the IP‘s so that they can claim frontier is at fault and not being proactive. It is not actually targeting the users in a way that is designed to go after them individually. It’s trying to prove users are using frontier to pirate with impunity.
That's not really extra nuance, and is about discussing piracy.
The premise that an ISP has an obligation to proactively monitor traffic when they shouldn't even legally be permitted to do so is disgusting.
I literally said I don’t agree with them lol but the point is they aren’t trying to figure out who is discussing piracy on Reddit. They are trying to implicate frontier. Again, I don’t agree. I am against this.
That's not a meaningful distinction.
They're still trying to take action against discussion of piracy. The target does not matter and is not meaningful to the discussion.
What? That is incredibly meaningful. The legal implications are are very distinct, and also open some pretty frightening doors.
If we can’t even distinguish the legal channels they are trying to screw us with, how can we possibly protect Internet privacy?
I get you want to win an Internet argument or whatever but let’s keep our eye on the ball here, dude
The important legal concept is that it's literally impossible for discussion of piracy to entitle them to any information in any possible context.
The target of their harassment does not matter. Giving them a single bit of data is every bit as unconditionally unacceptable in either case, and you don't get to any ruling on anything else unless you bypass that.
Again, this isn’t about the discussions. They are taking IP’s discussing it and tracing them to frontier. They’re “moving upstream” instead of targeting users, which means they need less info,the discussion themselves are immaterial because they aren’t targeting individuals - which means it’s more likely. This is a different tactic.
It is exclusively about the discussion. If discussion doesn't entitle them to any information, that's the end of everything. They have no path to proceed in a case or get a ruling on anything else without that barrier being destroyed.
They have many ways to harass both users and companies if it is. It's the only line that means anything. There can't be any precedent set on anything else without that being trampled.
the film studios claim that six Redditors' IP address logs are “clearly relevant and proportional to the needs of the case" because the Reddit users all made comments that either establish “that Frontier has not reasonably implemented a policy for terminating repeat infringers sufficient for a safe harbor affirmative” or that “the ability to freely pirate without consequence was a draw to becoming a subscriber of Frontier."
Last year, a Reddit user wrote that they received 44 emails from Frontier threatening to cut off their service due to torrent downloads, but “if they didn’t do it after 44 emails ... they won’t."
In 2022, another Reddit user said that they had used Frontier DSL for years and “despite the shitty internet, they didn’t give a shit what I downloaded.”
A different Reddit user reported that Frontier confirmed to them that it had failed to send DMCA notices to the customers' email. That Reddit user said Frontier was terminating their account. Another Redditor cited claimed that they had used two different places to find torrents and received DMCA notices from Frontier despite the user claiming that they had “been torrenting unprotected for like a decade” on Frontier “and never [got] one" before.
Another user admitted on the FrontierFios subreddit in 2021 that they “torrent every once in a while."
The users are immaterial. They are going upstream. They are establishing a pattern of behavior by frontier as evidenced by the comments.
The only relevant part is the fact that it's impossible for the discussion to entitle them to information. That's the ruling that's the core point of the article and it prevents any other meaningful potential precedents from being set, because the case can't get to ruling on them.
Yes I agree it does not entitle them to it.
"I saw a guy get shot last night. He was close enough I was able to record the whole thing in my phone. The police say that the victim was wearing a blue shirt, but didn't mention they were also wearing a yellow hat. I've saved the footage, but I won't be posting it anywhere, so don't even ask."
I make that statement on Reddit. Investigators see that my statement matches their crime scene.
They can subpoena Reddit for my reddit account information, including the IP address from which I posted that comment. They can subpoena the ISP who controlled that IP address and get subscriber information. They can then go to that subscriber and request and require their assistance in identifying the specific person who made that comment. They can then question that commenter as a witness, and subpoena their video.
That's basically what the rightsholders are trying to do here: subpoena "witnesses" to Frontier violating its duties under Safe Harbor provisions.
I agree that they should be told to go fuck themselves with rusty Buicks, but they do have a (tenuous) legal claim for the information they seek.
Nobody is claiming that Frontier should be monitoring traffic.
Safe harbor provisions require them to forward DMCA letters to subscribers when rightsholders send them, and suspend service to repeat violators.
A subscriber who has received 44 DMCA letters without Frontier suspending their service is evidence that Frontier is not abiding by their safe harbor obligations.
The rightsholders want the identity of a person willing to make such a claim, so that person can be compelled to testify that they weren't lying their ass off when they made that claim.
Great explanation, it's what I was hoping to write until my lemmy client crashed with the unfinished comment.
I'm curious what would happen if some copyright holder tried to get information about a user on lemmy. Iirc only the users instance could log their IP, but almost all instances are run by volunteers, so risking a lawsuit might no be viable. Just look at what Tachiyomi devs have to go through, even though all they're doing was and is legal.
I am very much against this and totally agree. I think this could open some really dangerous doors re: internet privacy.
Wear a VPN, folks.
My server is in Brazil. So fuck those companies.
even if they have our ip addresses, they can't take any legal actions for discussing about piracy right?
Not unless you talk about how you will commit or have committed a specific instance of piracy. E.g. "I downloaded back to the future last night from (insert website)". Then they have reasonable suspicion and can start to subpoena.
Obligatory IANAL. Always do research and ask in lawyer if you wanna talk specifics.
I've always read it that action must be taken, above and beyond speech.
Legally, a Conspiracy exists when 2 or more persons join together and form an agreement to violate the law, and then act on that agreement.
I could argue that these users collaborated to break the law and did so, but I don't see that being argued. Fuck I know, INAL.
Well in theory you are right. And if you have evidence like in the case of the 2pac murder (he literally wrote about handing the gun over so they could kill him with it), then sure. But to get a subpoena, and let's use me as an example, you would need to prove that I talked about specifics on how I would or will pirate a stream, and then you would need to find writing of me saying something to the effect of "I did this yesterday" or "I will do this next week" or something very specific like that.
And this is only to get the information. Then they still need to tie you to it and get enough evidence to start suing, otherwise they might not be able to prove their prima facia case.
I know it's scary, but the truth is we have laws to protect us from government overreach and at the same time those keep companies in check as well. Let's not make it more dramatic than it is.
Let's also acknowledge that conspiracy is easy to say in theory and hard to prove in practice, specifically because you need to make sure you can inextricably link 2 defendant together and they are linked in the context of the same instance of a crime. And at that point no one would waste the resources for such a charge. They would rather chase the piracy websites to shut down a whole network for a bit, that's more efficient. It's easier to just serve the server providers a cease and desist and have be over with.
More corporations with zero responsibility and way too much fucking power. We need regulators with teeth and we need to remove the legal hand of business from the pockets of our legislatures. I can't believe someone actually burned down Studio Ghibli HQ before Citizen's United was. Wtf.
The people who are smart enough to understand that corporations need restraint are also smart enough to know that burning a single building down will do nothing but give that company an insurance check. It needs to be the people who are in the c-suite, on the board, the consulting firms, etc. it has to happen overnight and with all of them.
Are we talking about revolution?
I love that Tracy chapman song too
This guy knows the first and second rules of fight club. JFC.
The building helps a teensy bit because their premiums will go up, and so will the premiums of anyone expecting similar risks. It's averaging out the financial risk, not eliminating it.
Making them concerned about their premiums is not an effective result.
These people deal solely in the material. As soon as you start diminishing any material they own they will begin to lose their minds. They're deathly afraid of anyone knowing their names. Its why they hide behind multiple layers of shell companies and redacted identities when they do shitty stuff like buying a lot poor families live on and gentrifying it under a surname. If direct actions against their possessions did not work they would not wear so many masks. Its only the most brazen who do not hide like Musk.
I can't believe someone actually burned down Studio Ghibli HQ before Citizen's United was.
Do you mean Kyoto Animation?
It was a few years ago I only saw one headline and it said Studio Ghibli was a victim of arson but I guess it was their animation studio.
It was Kyoto Animation that was attacked. They have quite a few similarities in artstyle and themes to Ghibli, and you could maybe call them a spiritual successor. But neither is owned by, or a part of, the other.
Ghibli recently released How Do You Live, probably their last film. With the last surviving founders retiring, Nippon TV will manage the studio and the museum.
Here’s mine, come and get me
127.0.0.1
why are you in my house on my network?
I’m planting cat pictures throughout your file system
i think there's some room for more of those over in that corner over there.
I for one want to be in compliance. Here is my IP, I checked it in Microsoft windows so it is correct. 192.168.0.1
Text me at that IP if I need to pay a fine or if I need to go to my local jail. Thanks guys, I'm sorry I pirated and I will re upload all the movie films that I downloaded to try to make this right.
Holy shit! My IP is 192.168.1.1!
What are the odds!?
Y'all be trippin. I put a mask on my ip to hide it's true identity. The mask is just 255.255.255.0
No one will ever know the real ip.
Omg, you are probably my neighbor!
Neighbours awwww
They were neighbors!
hunter2
All I see is 192.168.0.2
upload all the movie films that I downloaded to try to make this right.
😂
127.0.0.1 is where it's at .... Do you even IP bro?
::: spoiler spoiler
Get it? It's cause Class A networks are bigger and therefore more "pro" than Class C ones.
:::
localhost gang
::1 for the IPv6 enjoyers
There are literally dozens of you!
Fuck spez
Fuck reddit
You wouldn’t download Spez’s balls just to step on them
I appreciate the sentiment, but I personally don't want to have any contact with Spez's balls.
Spez will happily give it if it'll increase his future IPO
I believe that the following IP ranges
103.231.144.0/24
192.31.196.0/24
216.176.216.0/21
199.248.239.0/24
192.198.30.0/24
69.12.98.42
are engaged in highly suspicious activities
furthermore I can definitely say that I found some dirty pirates hiding at the following ip ranges:
175.45.176.0/24
175.45.177.0/24
175.45.178.0/24
175.45.179.0/24
my research clearly shows proof that those people are not just pirates but also engaged in highly illegal activities such as stealing BILLIONS of dollars and hacking who knows how many servers, and that's only the crimes one can talk about online.
::: spoiler if you don't get the joke
no, I didn't share IPs that anyone here would ever have, I guarantee it, if you don't get the joke look up "bogon routes" and then look up which ASN owns the other set.
It looks more legit than people who use 192.168.0.0/16, 8.8.8.8, 127.0.0.1, or any other things like that because most people don't know about those.
Also bonus info:
here's a tip for you, if you're a sysadmin just go ahead and ban those IP ranges on your machines, if you ever get packets from them it's an attack 99.999999% of the time (I guess unless you have customers in north korea? in which case only block the first ones and all other bogon routes)
:::
Thanks for that tip, had no idea about bogon routes
just remember to be honest with the police and give your real name, Robert'); DROP TABLE Prisoners;--
Naughty Bobby!
Please tell me this never worked for the sake of humanity
little bobby tables destroyed his schools records. :(
192.168.1.420
8.00.8.5
yes sir, my ip is 8.8.8.8
Mine is 9.9.9.9
Wait... Mine is 9.9.9.9, too!
IngloriousBasterds.gif
It's reddit, so I'd be surprised if they don't cave.
Man that place. I know it's cliche to talk about it like talking about your ex on a date, but I posted there for good reason.
I found the solution to a rare bug that was bothering a group of people. I posted the solution, and my account was immediately banned sitewide for violating the terms of service, whatever that means.
I thought to myself: yeah... it was a mistake coming here. Leave it to the bots to have conversations with themselves.
What was the bug out of curiosity
It was a solution to a Lutris bug. Basically, flatpak containers can use these things called portals to gain access to specific files and directories via a file chooser rather than broad access or manually assigned access.
In this case, my wine installation was crashing because some part of it was trying to obtain a lock on a directory object, which is an unsupported feature when accessing a directory through a portal. The error message is something completely unrelated like can't draw window with a string of hex values. It took me a few hours to track down the real root cause.
Oh well. Works on my machine. Also, there's a fix on the development branch now. I made a write-up, posted it, and it's all gone. I should have known better honestly. It works great for some people but anybody can arbitrarily receive unfair treatment with no recourse at any time. I'm satisfied knowing that eventually the fix will get out to everybody eventually. It's just a shame I couldn't leave a signpost behind.
Post to lutris lemmy instead
Oof that sucks, well good to know it's fixed and life moves on
"Why should I care about their privacy policy?"
If Reddit doesn't store this info then they can't give it to the film studios.
I've noticed reddit has recently started shadowbanning my posts when I have a vpn active so I'd say at this point it's probably completely unsafe to discuss anything on.
Absolutely. That and the recent vpn blocking changes has made using reddit absolutely unbearable.
You ain't gonna get mine, you fuckers.
Proton VPN with port forwarding turned off...Or Mullvad with quantum secure encryption...whichever you want.
Why port forwarding off specifically?
when you use port forwarding, you're opening yourself up to a lot of malicious activity. Someone could maliciously plant some CP on your hard drive if you have port forwarding enabled.
Yeah, doesn't everyone use a VPN in some form by now?
A lot of people still don't and they use public wifi too. And some people with VPNs are using shitty ones like nord, express or Private internet access or surfshark
Surfshark and nord are owned by the same company and express and PIA are owned by the same company. So PIA isn't trustworthy anymore, their court proven no-logs policy isn't valid anymore because they got bought out since then.
Reddit is already blocking some Proton VPN IPs...
I haven't had that problem when I use proton. Try using secure core with the browser extension.
I thought this was already decided by a court in autumn 2023. Is this an appeal?
As far as I understand it, the studios are trying a different angle: They are not suing Reddit this time, but an ISP and want Reddit to provide the data of costumers of that ISP.
Stupid question: What's the point behind this? Is this actually financially viable for a company in the long run? Was this an attempt to get Reddit to crack down on those subs?
Isn't this always a fight against windmills? i.e., you can't fight a symptom without addressing the market as a whole?
I think this was related to their plan before, in the case that got decided (specifically that Reddit didn't have to reveal the IP addies of its clients), but that's always been a problem especially if an ip address leads to a router or is dynamic at the ISP, then there's no certainty it can be identified with a single person.
This is how the whole twelve-strikes program was formed where big name ISPs would (hypothetically) give demerits and eventually throttle or disconnect ISP addies that were identified as engaging in infringing activity. The problem is, clients stopped wanting to pay their bills when quality deteriorated, so it's not consistently enforced. In fact, companies that are not Comcast or Xfinity are motivated not to do anything beyond threats.
ETA: Similarly, it's actually to the benefit of social media websites to preserve the privacy of their clients, since incidents in which they cooperate with law enforcement reduces engagement. Google used to have a robust legal resistance to giving away personal data. It was deteriorated through enshittification, but now Google has lost enough reputation that it's looking for ways to preserve privacy, like the new effort to constrain personal map data to devices, so Google is unable to respond to location dragnet warrants. They're still in trouble for search-term warrants.
(Note the map thing is not yet rolled out, so don't use Google maps when burying your bodies.)
Man I know some cosplayers can be annoying but I think that’s overkill
It would be great if piracy instances were hosted on I2P and TOR. Then these chucklefucks would have nothing.
Apology for hijacking your comment, but I wanted to ask you a question about the Creative Commons link you put at the end of your comment.
Are you doing that because of people who may use your comments to train AI reasons?
If so, do you think legally that covers it, since it's a link, and not just the text itself?
In other words, would an AI trainer have to drill into the link before your comment is covered by that clause?
That's a good question that I don't have an answer to as I have no legal training. I'm assuming if you can sign a contract online where the legal text is behind a link and the main offer is what you see... maybe?
Technically, it wouldn't be too difficult to simply erase any mention of a license in a pre-cleaning phase of the data, but I don't know if the act itself would be an even bigger indication of guilt. There would be no excuse like "oops, I just copied this data into my training set, teehee". But as I said, not a legal expert.
If there are copyright experts that want to weigh in, I'd be interested to hear their opinion. Given that there are running, unanswered cases (most notably again Microsoft's Copilot), and Japan on the verge of drafting into law that AI training data can ignore copyright, it's possible even legal experts would have a hard time answer the question.
I'm putting them here just in case. Only costs me a line carriage and a Ctrl+V.
If there are copyright experts that want to weigh in, I’d be interested to hear their opinion.
Myself as well. It's a new frontier, legally.
I’m putting them here just in case. Only costs me a line carriage and a Ctrl+V.
Seeing that you have done that made me start to think about doing it myself, as I definitely feel there are days when I'm being shadowed by AI training mechanisms.
But if it doesn't make any difference legally as a deterrent, then I wouldn't bother.
Even if it's ruled illegal in the US, there's nothing stopping AI companies from moving their operations to Japan where copyright doesn't apply to training data.
It will definitely be interesting to see how all of the shakes out, legally wise.
But if it doesn’t make any difference legally as a deterrent, then I wouldn’t bother.
Once that's determined, then yeah, I won't bother either. Until then though... CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
What the person using those links does not realize is that a Creative Commons license relaxes restrictions rather than imposing additional ones.
Everything you create is already protected by copyright by default. If you publish an essay and don't append any license to it, nobody may republish or remix that essay without your permission, unless an exception like fair use applies. The exact restrictions will depend on local laws.
By using a Creative Commons license, you choose to forgo some of those copyright protections. Thus the comments of the person you replied to are actually less protected than yours or mine.
Or maybe even a mirror so if you wanted to keep your ip hidden you could.
I should start adding that to my comments too! Buuuut...
Is it possible a film studio, or legal agency, could set up a Lemmy Instance and then capture all our IPs?
AP protocol doesn't propagate your IP
Absolutely. One of the biggest child porn groups is an FBI front for this purpose. I’d google the subject for a link but umm…no
So basically the only thing protecting our anonymity is the relative unpopularity of Lemmy?
To expand on this. If you are talking about anything online it is not private. That doesn't matter if it's in a WhatsApp chat, a telegram chat, a Lemmy post, a Facebook feed, etc. as soon as it hits a computer if someone wants to see it they will. There's just hurdles to get it.
If you want anonymity stop using computers.
Ain’t this the truth.
Here’s story about a serial killer being caught by a floppy drive’s meta data.
Detectives were able to run relatively simple tests to determine that the file had last been saved by a user named "Dennis," and it had been printed using one of the printers at the nearby Christ Lutheran Church.
Maybe the article is badly worded, but it seems like they got metadata from the file, not the floppy disk itself.
It was either the FAT file or the file itself. The case is famous.
Few things more fun than telling people who harp about vaccines being tracking chips that if they're worried about tracking they should ditch their smartphone, and watching them rage.
You mean the always-on GPS-enabled internet-connected microphone and camera which is also likely Bluetooth and NFC beaconing and contains all of my most personal data including my name, contacts, unencrypted chats facilitated by major cell phone carriers, photos, emails, and other personal files which are also likely synced with a cloud service operated by major multi-national corporations, and also stores biometric data such as facial recognition, fingerprints, time spent sleeping, and even heart rate and number of steps taken assuming you have "fitness" features enabled?
With those last couple items, these massive companies that regularly share data with law enforcement are literally tracking your every step and nearly every beat of your heart.
Well don't worry about that, I've got Express VPN.
Privacy and anonymity are not the same thing.
You're not anonymous online either FYI.
Depends what and how you do it. VPN gives some level of anonymity. TOR even more so. These give you probably greater anonymity than anything else you have in offline live.
Tell me you know nothing about computers without telling me you know nothing about computers.
Yup. About 7 years ago I used to darkweb pretty hard in the drug scene (I haven’t in years so have at it, Mr. FBI).
Anyway I used Reddit subs a lot for info on new markets and onions, reliable sellers, and news on exit scams etc, but I only lurked - never commented. Anyone with a brain in their head knew they were honeypots.
Hope I didn’t fall for
Any honeypots. I sometimes wonder about posts in Piracy communities.
I'm not sure that this is how it works in practice, but ideally:
Unless you are registered in their stance / are browsing directly in their website, your client shouldn't be making any direct requisitions to their instance, so there is nothing they can infer your IP from.
(Everything you interact with is comes directly your instance - the only thing that interacts with other instances is the server)
That said, it's possible for some links to direct to the original stance, in which case your client will have to make requests directly to the original instance hosting the content... looking around in this page a bit, it looks like the Community images (banner, icon etc.) are linking directly to the original instance, so I guess that's a little bit of a problem - but just that shouldn't be enough information for them to connect the dots between the IP address fetching the image and the account you're using to browse
Don't images also link back to the original instance?
I think not as the only instance that has your ip is the one you are registered on.
One would hope…
They would just have to start DMing us meme images hosted on a server they control, and they'd get a list of IPs. All we'd have to do is look.
Fwiw, this would work on Reddit too.
Unless anyone shared the in image link anywhere else on the internet. "Judge, they looked at this publicly accessible image" is hardly evidence
“Judge, they looked at this publicly accessible image” is hardly evidence
Sometimes you don't have to win a court case legally, to win a court case. Just the harassment of the lawsuit is enough.
“Judge, they looked at this publicly accessible image” is hardly evidence
Sometimes you don’t have to win a court case legally, to win a court case. Just the harassment of the lawsuit is enough.
That's not a lawsuit they would even attempt, as it would get immediately thrown out.
That’s not a lawsuit they would even attempt, as it would get immediately thrown out.
People use the threat of lawsuit as an intimidation tactic all the time.
So they would send random DMs with pictures, to threaten lawsuits they couldn't enforce, to achieve what exactly?
So they would send random DMs with pictures, to threaten lawsuits they couldn’t enforce, to achieve what exactly?
They wouldn't have to send random DM's if they got the IP addresses more directly, as the article describes.
The comment I originally replied to:
They would just have to start DMing us meme images hosted on a server they control, and they’d get a list of IPs. All we’d have to do is look.
Associating IPs with social media accounts is a step towards identifying people so they can threaten them and force them into settlements.
It's a numbers game for the lawyers. They want as much data as they can get to identify the largest number of people so they can demand an out-of-court settlement.
The "DMing pictures" part is just an example of how they could gather that kind of data from a social network like Lemmy that can't be so easily subpoenaed, and allows image hotlinking. I don't have any evidence that they are doing this (yet), I just know that it would work.
Yeah, but do you publicly share every spam DM image that is shared with you? Would you even know if this happened, so you could react?
unless you visit the instance yourself or activitypub starts including user ips
tl;dr: The users' comments say that a certain ISP is pirate-friendly. Studios want to use the comments against the ISP (not the users).
"pirate friendly" meaning not snitching on their own paying customers? Wow
Basically, yes. They want ISPs to police us.
I just thought "pirate-friendly" was concise.
Sure... here's mine...
🖕.💩.🍆.🍑
I'm getting deja Vu. Didn't thjs happen last year, too?
Articles says it's the third tome
What happens when they get the fourth tome?
Summon Cthulhu.
Straight to jail.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
For the third time in less than a year, film studios with copyright infringement complaints against a cable Internet provider are trying to force Reddit to share information about users who have discussed piracy on the site.
In the first instance, US Magistrate Judge Laurel Beeler ruled in the US District Court for the Northern District of California that the First Amendment right to anonymous speech meant Reddit didn’t have to disclose the names, email addresses, and other account registration information for nine Reddit users.
Film companies, including Bodyguard Productions and Millennium Media, had subpoenaed Reddit in relation to a patent infringement lawsuit against Astound Broadband-owned RCN about subscribers allegedly pirating 34 movie titles, including Hellboy (2019), Rambo V: Last Blood, and Tesla.
In her ruling, Beeler noted that while the First Amendment right to anonymous speech is not absolute, the film producers had already received the names of 118 Grande subscribers.
She also said the film producers had failed to prove that “the identifying information is directly or materially relevant or unavailable from another source.”
This week, as reported by TorrentFreak, film companies Voltage Holdings, which are part of the previous two subpoenas, and Screen Media Ventures, another film studio with litigation against RCN, filed a motion to compel [PDF] Reddit to respond to the subpoena in the US District Court for the Northern District of California.
The original article contains 588 words, the summary contains 228 words. Saved 61%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Then provide better streaming options including price and service. Piracy will always win whether they like it or not.
I'm surprised Netflix is still around at their price rate and the way they keep canceling shows. I jumped on the BF deal for Peacock, because I wasn't gonna pay the full price.
I only have Peacock for WWE, so everything is a bonus. But not everybody is gonna pay for 7 services monthly or yearly. Either put it all under one service or understand some of us are gonna pirate.
Amazon prime is gonna start having ads this month, so people are gonna have to pay more for ad free on top of prime membership or pirate to avoid ads. Before we know, they'll start putting ads in games while they load.
Pirates: “I’m 4 dimensions ahead of you.”
Fortunately for me, I'm too old to know how to pirate even if I wanted to do so.
However, I'm sure the fine people at Broderbund would like to have a long conversation with me from way, way back in the day.
Choplifter and Karateka took up hours and hours and hours of my elementary/middle school years.
If you were playing Choplifter in elementary school, you're really not THAT old. Or you are and that makes me old too, but I'm -hypothetically- completely capable of figuring out piracy. Don't short yourself, there's always room on the high seas.
I think I was in fifth grade when Choplifter came out. I got that sweet sweet apple ii joystick so I could play it better than with the keyboard
If you were playing Choplifter in elementary school, you’re really not THAT old.
If you had to load Choplifter into your Apple II to play it with a cassette tape recorder, then yes, you are old, you are a first gen computer game player.
Let's say these film studios DO get 'permission' or 'access' of these IPs. Haven't we already proven in the court of law that IP Address does not equal a person? How come that is? Well, it's because people can hide under VPNs, they could use proxies, they could use open wi-fi, they can change their address by ISP request .etc
They aren't assigned permanent IPs and they aren't tied to their IPs through identity.
This whole effort is just a waste of their time, proving once again, that they're desperate for anything.
On the other hand, the r/piracy subreddit is full of entitled jackasses who pick you apart for stupid arbitrary reasons. I've posted news posts on there before as a means to inform the pirating community as to what to look for in case things could go wrong in the future, as a lead. And any time, people kept commenting like "WHUT DUS DIS HAVE TU DU WITH PIWACY?!" every fucking time.
I'd spell it out for them, I get downvoted, I get my post reported and it's removed. Seriously, fuck all of those e-begging pieces of shit.
Maybe I am wrong but it seems like some of y’all aren’t reading the article. They aren’t going after IP’s in order to identify the individuals. They are trying to prove that frontier is not being proactive in their efforts to prevent piracy. The IP’s are to prove that it is going through frontier. Reddit->Frontier->Pirated content.
I am not saying I am ok with that, because I’m not, but what many of y’all are describing is happening is not exactly what is happening here.
Buddy, go bitch at the author who wrote the article that plastered all over what we're responding about.
And my point still stands - they CAN'T prove that those IP addresses would be from frontier. It's a huge whack a mole game they're getting themselves into.
What? I’m saying y’all are either misunderstanding the contents of the article or you aren’t reading it. It explains this quite clearly.
And my point still stands - they CAN'T prove that those IP addresses would be from frontier.
Umm. Yes they can. Quite easily. As Frontier would have been assigned those IPs as a static set.
IPs alone aren't enough. IPs tied with usernames can be a lot more compelling.
Legally, not really. A username is also not a person.
This is a fishing expedition by the producers, nothing more.
From the article:
Another reason Reddit refuses to comply with the film producers' request is that “none of the posts depicted in Exhibit A to the subpoena appear to relate to movies that we understand are the subject of" the copyright infringement claims.
The users made no reference to pirating IP owned by the producers.
Legally, not really. A username is also not a person.
True, but when tied to an IP address known to be used by a suspected person, it can be used as evidence.
Also if the Reddit account is old, there's a good chance they provided at least one piece of identifying info that further ties that account to a target.
It's not definitive but it is a lot harder to toss out
True, but when tied to an IP address known to be used by a suspected person, it can be used as evidence.
Evidence of what?
That someone was making shit up on reddit? That is all that it proves.
It proves nothing else.
It does not prove that what was written is true.
It does not prove who wrote the comment.
They want to do like they did with The Hurt Locker all those years ago: movie didn't pull in what they wanted it to, so they got a list of IPs from setting up a seeder, took those to the ISPs (who turned over customer names and addresses asap) and sent scare letters to all the customer addresses they received threatening to sue each person in each household for millions per number of copies they estimated (made up the difference in cost vs actuals plus a bonus on earnings for mgmt) were shared across torrents. Unless you paid them a couple thousand dollars instead.
They knew most would throw the letter away like the garbage it was, but a lot of people paid. Especially elderly folks whose grandkids came over and used the computer to do it. It works!
After reading the article, it looks like the studios want the IPs to show that Frontier is allowing piracy on their ISP and they claim they don't want it for financial compensation.
This is true.
What I also gathered from the article (for further context) is that these are the same lawyers who tried to the other 2 cases of piracy on reddit. This time the argument is that it is not a violation of the first amendment right because they want the data to go after the ISP
I believe under the first amendment in the US Constitution and section 2 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in Canada you cannot silence someone’s freedom of speech/expression just because they discussed something you don’t like. This legal claim is bullshit right from the start due to constitutional protections
Also, online discussion is not evidence. To wit:
I murdered seven people before breakfast today. I love murdering so much!
Even confessions are not necessarily airtight. For example:
I shot JFK.
Police, when you get here, please knock; the doorbell's broken.
That's not really how that works.
The Constitution only protects you from the government.
Explain to me then how two US Federal District Judges upheld the first amendment during this entire fiasco with film studios
Are you talking about Burstyn v. Wilson (1952)?
Because that was about the state of New York attempting to censor a film. Not sure what case you're referencing.
Freedom of speech also means that individuals and companies cannot sue you for protected speech, cannot get your private data unless they have a very good reason
End state capitalism, the coportocracy / oligarchy using the legal system they control to wield the fascist police forces against the people who don't behave like they're told. Meanwhile, taxing what little those people have to pay the salaries of those forces abusing them.
I mean, the studios are doing it right and following SOP.
They wrote the DCMA, used the congress they bought to pass it, the president the bought to sign it into law, and now will use the FBI and local militarized police to impose their will by force.
Constituon was an obstacle they did away with when they bought the Supreme Court.
oh, boy, am I ever glad I overwrote all of my comments before deleting my account...
They are going about it the wrong way with reddit. All they gotta do is show the $$$$ and spez will bend right over with that information. After all that's all he seems to see.
most reasonable corporation
Why people insists using reddit is beyond me
They do realize IP can be changed by just resetring your router, right?
Not everyone. Also, they should just give them their private range IPs for the lols (192.168.0.0/16, 10.0.0.0/16 etc.).
Your ISP will still have a log of which IP was assigned to you at any date and time
Those are notoriously shitty and unreliable.
Technically even with that list the studios have no power to do anything about it. It's illegal to redistribute other people's property, but most of those distributors are already running a virtual machine behind a strict NAT behind a VPN behind another VPN so good fucking luck, Hollywood.
The people merely discussing piracy have done no wrongdoings in the eyes of the law. Get fucked.
In fact, the Copyright Act of 1976 bans redistribution but not obtainment itself, so as long as you're not sending what you stole to other people you haven't broken a single law.
I'm so glad I don't use that shit platform anymore.
Literally illegal. Discussing crimes doesn't equal crime, so there's no reason for them to requeust IPs. And at least in the EU you aren't even allowed to disclose information related to your person.
They don't care. It's the film industry equivalent to the Microsoft support scammers. Get a bunch of targets, spam out hundreds of thousands of threatening emails, profit off the small percent of people who fall for it.
I had a Microsoft support scammer once... I let him in to my system too..well not really.
I quickly spin up a quick fresh install of slack ware Linux in a virtual machine that didn't even have x11 never mind wine installed. When it was up I told him a friend uses something called tellynet (aka telnet but I was playing dumb) to help me on the computer.
He telnetted in and could not understand why any of his malware wasn't working...
I wonder if he got the joke, or was a scriptkiddie who just relies on existing tools without understanding them, and thought you meant television or similar.
They’re basically telemarketing workers with hacking tools provided by an employer. They follow scripts and click the buttons they’ve been trained to use.
I’m surprised they got in with telnet and not their usual RDP. However I’m not sure they would have gotten anywhere on a Linux box with commands that are so different, unless they were a little familiar with at least MacOS (bash or zsh based now a days).
I don't know, this was back around 2007 so I don't remember his specific reaction
Yes they do. They are boxed in neatly in the current laws and unless you are discussing specifics about doing a crime in the past or future, they will not get that subpoena and thus they are in a catch 22.
Now if you are actively torrenting, chances are you could run into one of those fake peers that will grab your IP and they can start suing you. But other than that they would need real good evidence to subpoena.
Subpoenas are tools the government uses to compel a private entity to provide information. This isn’t that though, this is one private entity asking another private entity to just give them data. It’s not a legal case, and because of our non-existant privacy regulations in the US, Reddit is free to just hand over this information, or not if they want. No crime has to even be alleged, Reddit can just hand that information out.
Ok yes sorry I should have specified, what you're saying might apply to the US.
What I said applies to the EU.
Thing is, companies need to know beforehand if they are dealing with a user from US or EU because they don't wanna break laws when they have to deal with the court system anyway on stuff like this. So technically they could transmit information about US citizens, but in practice this is super tricky and risky.
Let's say you got an IP. Alright you can pinpoint The location. Problem: you don't know whether you just grabbed the target IP or an IP from a VPN or a proxy. There's ways to obscure this so you might not even be able to find out. Now if you turn this over, there's a small risk you just did a crime because they are spoofing their location. And if you just captured a VPN or proxy, you are now pursuing the wrong person and in EU law this won't go over well.
So in practice there's basically no way to do this and be sure you didn't make a mistake, and mistakes in law are risky and costly. No company would ever take such a risk.
Now I could go into detail about all the technical details on why things work like that but it would make this twice as long.
TL;DR in theory you are right for US users, in practice there's no way to tell and it gets risky pretty fast.
Also obligatory IANAL and always check in with a lawyer if you need specific legal advice.
That’s a really interesting point, has it been tested in court? The article is about US companies and US websites so I figured EU law was irrelevant, but I am curious to see if the EU can claim jurisdiction for actions foreign companies take outside the EU, regardless of if they have any official EU presence.
Well I can not give you a specific case for that, but it widely accepted that online actions against users from the EU that violate laws in the EU can get persued.
Do you remember seeing some US websites saying "we don't service EU users at the moment"? That's because they didn't want to get a lawyer so they can comply with the EU GDPR back then. I assume this is because they knew there was some precedent.
If you are keen on it I can go digging for case law though.
EDIT: Nevermind I literally only had to do one Google search and here's an official link: https://gdpr.eu/compliance-checklist-us-companies/
Note that one of the headings literally says "Why US companies must comply with the GDPR" and the answer is "because it is extra-territorial in scope".
On that page you linked, they say “So far, the EU’s reach has not been tested, but no doubt data protection authorities are exploring their options on a case-by-case basis.” So it hasn’t really been tested yet it seems. It’s true that there are extradition treaties and interpol that aid in cross-border prosecution, but that tends to be used primarily when the alleged crime happened in the prosecuting country’s jurisdiction, or the alleged crime is handled similarly in both countries. A GDPR violation by a US company wouldn’t be considered a crime at all in the US, so it’s entirely possible that they might decline to assist in prosecution.
Ok you wound me up now so I had a little scouring of the internet.
Yes, I can not find case law of extradition of US based companies through US entities.
What I can find is a couple of cases against bigger companies that also act in the realm of the EU. Google has been fined in the Netherlands for global violations if I understand correctly. Meta has been fined even a few times for global violations, enforced in Ireland.
So yes, technically enforcement in the US is not guaranteed, but they basically can't build up their company in the EU anymore unless they deal with it. It's not perfect, but violations can still suck for business expansion, and that is good. and then I do have to look into the new EU data privacy laws if they changed enforcement or anything else important.
That makes sense. Companies with no presence in the EU can likely skirt the rules, but any large company with an EU presence will be compelled to follow them.
Yeah
Also genuinely thank you for making me look into this. It's nice to know how it works:D
Glad we both leaned something :)
It's not illegal if they ask for it and reddit gives it to them.
I could give you a full breakdown of how it works in EU, but basically there needs to be indisputable evidence that a crime occured for any party to subpoena any ISP or service provider company. Otherwise those companies will be in huge trouble. The one doing the subpoena because they wouldn't have an order for that and if they fuck around right before suing, courts will not take kindly to that. And the other receiving the subpoena for disclosing personal information (although they'd maybe win a defense to that, because if they did their due diligence they are not supposed to tank the damages).
What I'm saying is, considering currently laws in the EU, I think we're good. Of course IANAL so ask one if you need specific advice.
Did they actually issue a subpoena though, or did they just send some emails saying "give pls".
A subpoena is a legal document and thus there are rules that go along with it. But an email asking to be given something is not a subpoena.
If discussing crimes equals crime then police, CEOs, and politicians should all be in jail.
Sounds like the film studios are discussing crime 🔎.
Because they're discussing crimes, or...?
"Man, you know how easy it would be to get away with insider trading/misreporting earnings/reselling seized fentanyl/asking for a key piece of evidence to go missing? I have a friend/family member/employee/business contact/perp I let go that owes me a favor."
I stand by the conclusion no matter the reason at this point. Bunch of scum the lot of them
If they were held accountable for their crimes then police, CEOs, and politicians would already all be in jail.
You should read the article. I don’t agree with them, but it’s more nuanced than that/isn’t about discussing piracy.
They are basically trying to get the IP‘s so that they can claim frontier is at fault and not being proactive. It is not actually targeting the users in a way that is designed to go after them individually. It’s trying to prove users are using frontier to pirate with impunity.
That's not really extra nuance, and is about discussing piracy.
The premise that an ISP has an obligation to proactively monitor traffic when they shouldn't even legally be permitted to do so is disgusting.
I literally said I don’t agree with them lol but the point is they aren’t trying to figure out who is discussing piracy on Reddit. They are trying to implicate frontier. Again, I don’t agree. I am against this.
That's not a meaningful distinction.
They're still trying to take action against discussion of piracy. The target does not matter and is not meaningful to the discussion.
What? That is incredibly meaningful. The legal implications are are very distinct, and also open some pretty frightening doors.
If we can’t even distinguish the legal channels they are trying to screw us with, how can we possibly protect Internet privacy?
I get you want to win an Internet argument or whatever but let’s keep our eye on the ball here, dude
The important legal concept is that it's literally impossible for discussion of piracy to entitle them to any information in any possible context.
The target of their harassment does not matter. Giving them a single bit of data is every bit as unconditionally unacceptable in either case, and you don't get to any ruling on anything else unless you bypass that.
Again, this isn’t about the discussions. They are taking IP’s discussing it and tracing them to frontier. They’re “moving upstream” instead of targeting users, which means they need less info,the discussion themselves are immaterial because they aren’t targeting individuals - which means it’s more likely. This is a different tactic.
It is exclusively about the discussion. If discussion doesn't entitle them to any information, that's the end of everything. They have no path to proceed in a case or get a ruling on anything else without that barrier being destroyed.
They have many ways to harass both users and companies if it is. It's the only line that means anything. There can't be any precedent set on anything else without that being trampled.
The users are immaterial. They are going upstream. They are establishing a pattern of behavior by frontier as evidenced by the comments.
The only relevant part is the fact that it's impossible for the discussion to entitle them to information. That's the ruling that's the core point of the article and it prevents any other meaningful potential precedents from being set, because the case can't get to ruling on them.
Yes I agree it does not entitle them to it.
"I saw a guy get shot last night. He was close enough I was able to record the whole thing in my phone. The police say that the victim was wearing a blue shirt, but didn't mention they were also wearing a yellow hat. I've saved the footage, but I won't be posting it anywhere, so don't even ask."
I make that statement on Reddit. Investigators see that my statement matches their crime scene.
They can subpoena Reddit for my reddit account information, including the IP address from which I posted that comment. They can subpoena the ISP who controlled that IP address and get subscriber information. They can then go to that subscriber and request and require their assistance in identifying the specific person who made that comment. They can then question that commenter as a witness, and subpoena their video.
That's basically what the rightsholders are trying to do here: subpoena "witnesses" to Frontier violating its duties under Safe Harbor provisions.
I agree that they should be told to go fuck themselves with rusty Buicks, but they do have a (tenuous) legal claim for the information they seek.
Nobody is claiming that Frontier should be monitoring traffic.
Safe harbor provisions require them to forward DMCA letters to subscribers when rightsholders send them, and suspend service to repeat violators.
A subscriber who has received 44 DMCA letters without Frontier suspending their service is evidence that Frontier is not abiding by their safe harbor obligations.
The rightsholders want the identity of a person willing to make such a claim, so that person can be compelled to testify that they weren't lying their ass off when they made that claim.
Great explanation, it's what I was hoping to write until my lemmy client crashed with the unfinished comment.
I'm curious what would happen if some copyright holder tried to get information about a user on lemmy. Iirc only the users instance could log their IP, but almost all instances are run by volunteers, so risking a lawsuit might no be viable. Just look at what Tachiyomi devs have to go through, even though all they're doing was and is legal.
I am very much against this and totally agree. I think this could open some really dangerous doors re: internet privacy.
Wear a VPN, folks.
My server is in Brazil. So fuck those companies.
even if they have our ip addresses, they can't take any legal actions for discussing about piracy right?
Not unless you talk about how you will commit or have committed a specific instance of piracy. E.g. "I downloaded back to the future last night from (insert website)". Then they have reasonable suspicion and can start to subpoena.
Obligatory IANAL. Always do research and ask in lawyer if you wanna talk specifics.
Even further what's the point? It's been ruled (usa) that an IP address doesn't equal a person. https://www.techspot.com/news/76190-us-court-appeals-ip-address-isnt-enough-identify.html
I've always read it that action must be taken, above and beyond speech.
I could argue that these users collaborated to break the law and did so, but I don't see that being argued. Fuck I know, INAL.
Well in theory you are right. And if you have evidence like in the case of the 2pac murder (he literally wrote about handing the gun over so they could kill him with it), then sure. But to get a subpoena, and let's use me as an example, you would need to prove that I talked about specifics on how I would or will pirate a stream, and then you would need to find writing of me saying something to the effect of "I did this yesterday" or "I will do this next week" or something very specific like that.
And this is only to get the information. Then they still need to tie you to it and get enough evidence to start suing, otherwise they might not be able to prove their prima facia case.
I know it's scary, but the truth is we have laws to protect us from government overreach and at the same time those keep companies in check as well. Let's not make it more dramatic than it is.
Let's also acknowledge that conspiracy is easy to say in theory and hard to prove in practice, specifically because you need to make sure you can inextricably link 2 defendant together and they are linked in the context of the same instance of a crime. And at that point no one would waste the resources for such a charge. They would rather chase the piracy websites to shut down a whole network for a bit, that's more efficient. It's easier to just serve the server providers a cease and desist and have be over with.
Obligatory IANAL.
More corporations with zero responsibility and way too much fucking power. We need regulators with teeth and we need to remove the legal hand of business from the pockets of our legislatures. I can't believe someone actually burned down Studio Ghibli HQ before Citizen's United was. Wtf.
The people who are smart enough to understand that corporations need restraint are also smart enough to know that burning a single building down will do nothing but give that company an insurance check. It needs to be the people who are in the c-suite, on the board, the consulting firms, etc. it has to happen overnight and with all of them.
Are we talking about revolution?
I love that Tracy chapman song too
This guy knows the first and second rules of fight club. JFC.
The building helps a teensy bit because their premiums will go up, and so will the premiums of anyone expecting similar risks. It's averaging out the financial risk, not eliminating it.
Making them concerned about their premiums is not an effective result.
These people deal solely in the material. As soon as you start diminishing any material they own they will begin to lose their minds. They're deathly afraid of anyone knowing their names. Its why they hide behind multiple layers of shell companies and redacted identities when they do shitty stuff like buying a lot poor families live on and gentrifying it under a surname. If direct actions against their possessions did not work they would not wear so many masks. Its only the most brazen who do not hide like Musk.
Do you mean Kyoto Animation?
It was a few years ago I only saw one headline and it said Studio Ghibli was a victim of arson but I guess it was their animation studio.
It was Kyoto Animation that was attacked. They have quite a few similarities in artstyle and themes to Ghibli, and you could maybe call them a spiritual successor. But neither is owned by, or a part of, the other.
Ghibli recently released How Do You Live, probably their last film. With the last surviving founders retiring, Nippon TV will manage the studio and the museum.
Here’s mine, come and get me
127.0.0.1why are you in my house on my network?
I’m planting cat pictures throughout your file system
i think there's some room for more of those over in that corner over there.
How are you me?
woah mine too
Wait that's my IP!?
I’m you
I for one want to be in compliance. Here is my IP, I checked it in Microsoft windows so it is correct. 192.168.0.1
Text me at that IP if I need to pay a fine or if I need to go to my local jail. Thanks guys, I'm sorry I pirated and I will re upload all the movie films that I downloaded to try to make this right.
Holy shit! My IP is 192.168.1.1!
What are the odds!?
Y'all be trippin. I put a mask on my ip to hide it's true identity. The mask is just 255.255.255.0
No one will ever know the real ip.
Omg, you are probably my neighbor!
Neighbours awwww
They were neighbors!
hunter2
All I see is 192.168.0.2
😂
127.0.0.1 is where it's at .... Do you even IP bro?
::: spoiler spoiler Get it? It's cause Class A networks are bigger and therefore more "pro" than Class C ones. :::
localhost gang
::1 for the IPv6 enjoyers
There are literally dozens of you!
Fuck spez
Fuck reddit
You wouldn’t download Spez’s balls just to step on them
I appreciate the sentiment, but I personally don't want to have any contact with Spez's balls.
Spez will happily give it if it'll increase his future IPO
I believe that the following IP ranges
are engaged in highly suspicious activities
furthermore I can definitely say that I found some dirty pirates hiding at the following ip ranges:
my research clearly shows proof that those people are not just pirates but also engaged in highly illegal activities such as stealing BILLIONS of dollars and hacking who knows how many servers, and that's only the crimes one can talk about online.
::: spoiler if you don't get the joke no, I didn't share IPs that anyone here would ever have, I guarantee it, if you don't get the joke look up "bogon routes" and then look up which ASN owns the other set.
It looks more legit than people who use 192.168.0.0/16, 8.8.8.8, 127.0.0.1, or any other things like that because most people don't know about those.
Also bonus info:
here's a tip for you, if you're a sysadmin just go ahead and ban those IP ranges on your machines, if you ever get packets from them it's an attack 99.999999% of the time (I guess unless you have customers in north korea? in which case only block the first ones and all other bogon routes)
:::
Thanks for that tip, had no idea about bogon routes
just remember to be honest with the police and give your real name, Robert'); DROP TABLE Prisoners;--
Naughty Bobby!
Please tell me this never worked for the sake of humanity
little bobby tables destroyed his schools records. :(
192.168.1.420
8.00.8.5
yes sir, my ip is 8.8.8.8
Mine is 9.9.9.9
Wait... Mine is 9.9.9.9, too!
IngloriousBasterds.gif
It's reddit, so I'd be surprised if they don't cave.
Man that place. I know it's cliche to talk about it like talking about your ex on a date, but I posted there for good reason.
I found the solution to a rare bug that was bothering a group of people. I posted the solution, and my account was immediately banned sitewide for violating the terms of service, whatever that means.
I thought to myself: yeah... it was a mistake coming here. Leave it to the bots to have conversations with themselves.
What was the bug out of curiosity
It was a solution to a Lutris bug. Basically, flatpak containers can use these things called portals to gain access to specific files and directories via a file chooser rather than broad access or manually assigned access.
In this case, my wine installation was crashing because some part of it was trying to obtain a lock on a directory object, which is an unsupported feature when accessing a directory through a portal. The error message is something completely unrelated like can't draw window with a string of hex values. It took me a few hours to track down the real root cause.
Oh well. Works on my machine. Also, there's a fix on the development branch now. I made a write-up, posted it, and it's all gone. I should have known better honestly. It works great for some people but anybody can arbitrarily receive unfair treatment with no recourse at any time. I'm satisfied knowing that eventually the fix will get out to everybody eventually. It's just a shame I couldn't leave a signpost behind.
Post to lutris lemmy instead
Oof that sucks, well good to know it's fixed and life moves on
"Why should I care about their privacy policy?" If Reddit doesn't store this info then they can't give it to the film studios.
I've noticed reddit has recently started shadowbanning my posts when I have a vpn active so I'd say at this point it's probably completely unsafe to discuss anything on.
Absolutely. That and the recent vpn blocking changes has made using reddit absolutely unbearable.
You ain't gonna get mine, you fuckers.
Proton VPN with port forwarding turned off...Or Mullvad with quantum secure encryption...whichever you want.
Why port forwarding off specifically?
when you use port forwarding, you're opening yourself up to a lot of malicious activity. Someone could maliciously plant some CP on your hard drive if you have port forwarding enabled.
Yeah, doesn't everyone use a VPN in some form by now?
A lot of people still don't and they use public wifi too. And some people with VPNs are using shitty ones like nord, express or Private internet access or surfshark
Surfshark and nord are owned by the same company and express and PIA are owned by the same company. So PIA isn't trustworthy anymore, their court proven no-logs policy isn't valid anymore because they got bought out since then.
Reddit is already blocking some Proton VPN IPs...
I haven't had that problem when I use proton. Try using secure core with the browser extension.
I thought this was already decided by a court in autumn 2023. Is this an appeal?
As far as I understand it, the studios are trying a different angle: They are not suing Reddit this time, but an ISP and want Reddit to provide the data of costumers of that ISP.
Stupid question: What's the point behind this? Is this actually financially viable for a company in the long run? Was this an attempt to get Reddit to crack down on those subs?
Isn't this always a fight against windmills? i.e., you can't fight a symptom without addressing the market as a whole?
I think this was related to their plan before, in the case that got decided (specifically that Reddit didn't have to reveal the IP addies of its clients), but that's always been a problem especially if an ip address leads to a router or is dynamic at the ISP, then there's no certainty it can be identified with a single person.
This is how the whole twelve-strikes program was formed where big name ISPs would (hypothetically) give demerits and eventually throttle or disconnect ISP addies that were identified as engaging in infringing activity. The problem is, clients stopped wanting to pay their bills when quality deteriorated, so it's not consistently enforced. In fact, companies that are not Comcast or Xfinity are motivated not to do anything beyond threats.
ETA: Similarly, it's actually to the benefit of social media websites to preserve the privacy of their clients, since incidents in which they cooperate with law enforcement reduces engagement. Google used to have a robust legal resistance to giving away personal data. It was deteriorated through enshittification, but now Google has lost enough reputation that it's looking for ways to preserve privacy, like the new effort to constrain personal map data to devices, so Google is unable to respond to location dragnet warrants. They're still in trouble for search-term warrants.
(Note the map thing is not yet rolled out, so don't use Google maps when burying your bodies.)
Man I know some cosplayers can be annoying but I think that’s overkill
It would be great if piracy instances were hosted on I2P and TOR. Then these chucklefucks would have nothing.
CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
Apology for hijacking your comment, but I wanted to ask you a question about the Creative Commons link you put at the end of your comment.
Are you doing that because of people who may use your comments to train AI reasons?
If so, do you think legally that covers it, since it's a link, and not just the text itself?
In other words, would an AI trainer have to drill into the link before your comment is covered by that clause?
That's a good question that I don't have an answer to as I have no legal training. I'm assuming if you can sign a contract online where the legal text is behind a link and the main offer is what you see... maybe? Technically, it wouldn't be too difficult to simply erase any mention of a license in a pre-cleaning phase of the data, but I don't know if the act itself would be an even bigger indication of guilt. There would be no excuse like "oops, I just copied this data into my training set, teehee". But as I said, not a legal expert.
If there are copyright experts that want to weigh in, I'd be interested to hear their opinion. Given that there are running, unanswered cases (most notably again Microsoft's Copilot), and Japan on the verge of drafting into law that AI training data can ignore copyright, it's possible even legal experts would have a hard time answer the question.
I'm putting them here just in case. Only costs me a line carriage and a Ctrl+V.
CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
Myself as well. It's a new frontier, legally.
Seeing that you have done that made me start to think about doing it myself, as I definitely feel there are days when I'm being shadowed by AI training mechanisms.
But if it doesn't make any difference legally as a deterrent, then I wouldn't bother.
Even if it's ruled illegal in the US, there's nothing stopping AI companies from moving their operations to Japan where copyright doesn't apply to training data.
It will definitely be interesting to see how all of the shakes out, legally wise.
Once that's determined, then yeah, I won't bother either. Until then though... CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
What the person using those links does not realize is that a Creative Commons license relaxes restrictions rather than imposing additional ones.
Everything you create is already protected by copyright by default. If you publish an essay and don't append any license to it, nobody may republish or remix that essay without your permission, unless an exception like fair use applies. The exact restrictions will depend on local laws.
By using a Creative Commons license, you choose to forgo some of those copyright protections. Thus the comments of the person you replied to are actually less protected than yours or mine.
Or maybe even a mirror so if you wanted to keep your ip hidden you could.
I should start adding that to my comments too! Buuuut...
CC BY-SA 4.0
Whatever suits your fancy.
CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
lol get fucked wanker bros
Is it possible a film studio, or legal agency, could set up a Lemmy Instance and then capture all our IPs?
AP protocol doesn't propagate your IP
Absolutely. One of the biggest child porn groups is an FBI front for this purpose. I’d google the subject for a link but umm…no
So basically the only thing protecting our anonymity is the relative unpopularity of Lemmy?
To expand on this. If you are talking about anything online it is not private. That doesn't matter if it's in a WhatsApp chat, a telegram chat, a Lemmy post, a Facebook feed, etc. as soon as it hits a computer if someone wants to see it they will. There's just hurdles to get it.
If you want anonymity stop using computers.
Ain’t this the truth.
Here’s story about a serial killer being caught by a floppy drive’s meta data.
https://www.grunge.com/332018/heres-how-the-btk-killer-was-finally-caught/
Maybe the article is badly worded, but it seems like they got metadata from the file, not the floppy disk itself.
It was either the FAT file or the file itself. The case is famous.
Few things more fun than telling people who harp about vaccines being tracking chips that if they're worried about tracking they should ditch their smartphone, and watching them rage.
You mean the always-on GPS-enabled internet-connected microphone and camera which is also likely Bluetooth and NFC beaconing and contains all of my most personal data including my name, contacts, unencrypted chats facilitated by major cell phone carriers, photos, emails, and other personal files which are also likely synced with a cloud service operated by major multi-national corporations, and also stores biometric data such as facial recognition, fingerprints, time spent sleeping, and even heart rate and number of steps taken assuming you have "fitness" features enabled?
With those last couple items, these massive companies that regularly share data with law enforcement are literally tracking your every step and nearly every beat of your heart.
Well don't worry about that, I've got Express VPN.
Privacy and anonymity are not the same thing.
You're not anonymous online either FYI.
Depends what and how you do it. VPN gives some level of anonymity. TOR even more so. These give you probably greater anonymity than anything else you have in offline live.
Tell me you know nothing about computers without telling me you know nothing about computers.
CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
The internet is at it’s worst when it’s popular
The Federation of lemmy/mastodon instances is the worst part about it
Yup. About 7 years ago I used to darkweb pretty hard in the drug scene (I haven’t in years so have at it, Mr. FBI).
Anyway I used Reddit subs a lot for info on new markets and onions, reliable sellers, and news on exit scams etc, but I only lurked - never commented. Anyone with a brain in their head knew they were honeypots.
Hope I didn’t fall for Any honeypots. I sometimes wonder about posts in Piracy communities.
I'm not sure that this is how it works in practice, but ideally: Unless you are registered in their stance / are browsing directly in their website, your client shouldn't be making any direct requisitions to their instance, so there is nothing they can infer your IP from. (Everything you interact with is comes directly your instance - the only thing that interacts with other instances is the server) That said, it's possible for some links to direct to the original stance, in which case your client will have to make requests directly to the original instance hosting the content... looking around in this page a bit, it looks like the Community images (banner, icon etc.) are linking directly to the original instance, so I guess that's a little bit of a problem - but just that shouldn't be enough information for them to connect the dots between the IP address fetching the image and the account you're using to browse
Don't images also link back to the original instance?
I think not as the only instance that has your ip is the one you are registered on.
One would hope…
They would just have to start DMing us meme images hosted on a server they control, and they'd get a list of IPs. All we'd have to do is look.
Fwiw, this would work on Reddit too.
Unless anyone shared the in image link anywhere else on the internet. "Judge, they looked at this publicly accessible image" is hardly evidence
Sometimes you don't have to win a court case legally, to win a court case. Just the harassment of the lawsuit is enough.
That's not a lawsuit they would even attempt, as it would get immediately thrown out.
People use the threat of lawsuit as an intimidation tactic all the time.
So they would send random DMs with pictures, to threaten lawsuits they couldn't enforce, to achieve what exactly?
They wouldn't have to send random DM's if they got the IP addresses more directly, as the article describes.
The comment I originally replied to:
I'm aware. My point still stands.
They know what torrents people download by IP.
anyone can figure that out: https://iknowwhatyoudownload.com/
Associating IPs with social media accounts is a step towards identifying people so they can threaten them and force them into settlements.
It's a numbers game for the lawyers. They want as much data as they can get to identify the largest number of people so they can demand an out-of-court settlement.
The "DMing pictures" part is just an example of how they could gather that kind of data from a social network like Lemmy that can't be so easily subpoenaed, and allows image hotlinking. I don't have any evidence that they are doing this (yet), I just know that it would work.
Yeah, but do you publicly share every spam DM image that is shared with you? Would you even know if this happened, so you could react?
unless you visit the instance yourself or activitypub starts including user ips
Only if you directly use their instance.
They asking it again? Fuck man we dont even have the right to openly discussed it.
Like paychecks... in the United Hates of America
Wait we can't? I talk about pay with coworkers all the time.
You absolutely can talk about paychecks, employers just pretend you can't.
PSA that i2p exists and supports anonymous Torrents.
Have a look at !i2p@lemmy.world
tl;dr: The users' comments say that a certain ISP is pirate-friendly. Studios want to use the comments against the ISP (not the users).
"pirate friendly" meaning not snitching on their own paying customers? Wow
Basically, yes. They want ISPs to police us.
I just thought "pirate-friendly" was concise.
Sure... here's mine...
🖕.💩.🍆.🍑
I'm getting deja Vu. Didn't thjs happen last year, too?
Articles says it's the third tome
What happens when they get the fourth tome?
Summon Cthulhu.
Straight to jail.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
For the third time in less than a year, film studios with copyright infringement complaints against a cable Internet provider are trying to force Reddit to share information about users who have discussed piracy on the site.
In the first instance, US Magistrate Judge Laurel Beeler ruled in the US District Court for the Northern District of California that the First Amendment right to anonymous speech meant Reddit didn’t have to disclose the names, email addresses, and other account registration information for nine Reddit users.
Film companies, including Bodyguard Productions and Millennium Media, had subpoenaed Reddit in relation to a patent infringement lawsuit against Astound Broadband-owned RCN about subscribers allegedly pirating 34 movie titles, including Hellboy (2019), Rambo V: Last Blood, and Tesla.
In her ruling, Beeler noted that while the First Amendment right to anonymous speech is not absolute, the film producers had already received the names of 118 Grande subscribers.
She also said the film producers had failed to prove that “the identifying information is directly or materially relevant or unavailable from another source.”
This week, as reported by TorrentFreak, film companies Voltage Holdings, which are part of the previous two subpoenas, and Screen Media Ventures, another film studio with litigation against RCN, filed a motion to compel [PDF] Reddit to respond to the subpoena in the US District Court for the Northern District of California.
The original article contains 588 words, the summary contains 228 words. Saved 61%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Then provide better streaming options including price and service. Piracy will always win whether they like it or not.
I'm surprised Netflix is still around at their price rate and the way they keep canceling shows. I jumped on the BF deal for Peacock, because I wasn't gonna pay the full price.
I only have Peacock for WWE, so everything is a bonus. But not everybody is gonna pay for 7 services monthly or yearly. Either put it all under one service or understand some of us are gonna pirate.
Amazon prime is gonna start having ads this month, so people are gonna have to pay more for ad free on top of prime membership or pirate to avoid ads. Before we know, they'll start putting ads in games while they load.
Pirates: “I’m 4 dimensions ahead of you.”
Fortunately for me, I'm too old to know how to pirate even if I wanted to do so.
However, I'm sure the fine people at Broderbund would like to have a long conversation with me from way, way back in the day.
Choplifter and Karateka took up hours and hours and hours of my elementary/middle school years.
If you were playing Choplifter in elementary school, you're really not THAT old. Or you are and that makes me old too, but I'm -hypothetically- completely capable of figuring out piracy. Don't short yourself, there's always room on the high seas.
I think I was in fifth grade when Choplifter came out. I got that sweet sweet apple ii joystick so I could play it better than with the keyboard
If you had to load Choplifter into your Apple II to play it with a cassette tape recorder, then yes, you are old, you are a first gen computer game player.
Of course, knowing how to do something has nothing to do with age; there are people over the new who could teach you just fine 😅
Well, if you download software like qBittorrent be sure to not accidentally download and torrents to copyrighted content.
were you held back 10-20 years or so? The oldest 5th grader ever?
I'm trying to figure out how a 70+ year old was playing Karateka in school.
So, okay.
Let's say these film studios DO get 'permission' or 'access' of these IPs. Haven't we already proven in the court of law that IP Address does not equal a person? How come that is? Well, it's because people can hide under VPNs, they could use proxies, they could use open wi-fi, they can change their address by ISP request .etc
They aren't assigned permanent IPs and they aren't tied to their IPs through identity.
This whole effort is just a waste of their time, proving once again, that they're desperate for anything.
On the other hand, the r/piracy subreddit is full of entitled jackasses who pick you apart for stupid arbitrary reasons. I've posted news posts on there before as a means to inform the pirating community as to what to look for in case things could go wrong in the future, as a lead. And any time, people kept commenting like "WHUT DUS DIS HAVE TU DU WITH PIWACY?!" every fucking time.
I'd spell it out for them, I get downvoted, I get my post reported and it's removed. Seriously, fuck all of those e-begging pieces of shit.
Maybe I am wrong but it seems like some of y’all aren’t reading the article. They aren’t going after IP’s in order to identify the individuals. They are trying to prove that frontier is not being proactive in their efforts to prevent piracy. The IP’s are to prove that it is going through frontier. Reddit->Frontier->Pirated content.
I am not saying I am ok with that, because I’m not, but what many of y’all are describing is happening is not exactly what is happening here.
Buddy, go bitch at the author who wrote the article that plastered all over what we're responding about.
And my point still stands - they CAN'T prove that those IP addresses would be from frontier. It's a huge whack a mole game they're getting themselves into.
What? I’m saying y’all are either misunderstanding the contents of the article or you aren’t reading it. It explains this quite clearly.
Umm. Yes they can. Quite easily. As Frontier would have been assigned those IPs as a static set.
IPs alone aren't enough. IPs tied with usernames can be a lot more compelling.
Legally, not really. A username is also not a person.
This is a fishing expedition by the producers, nothing more.
From the article:
The users made no reference to pirating IP owned by the producers.
True, but when tied to an IP address known to be used by a suspected person, it can be used as evidence.
Also if the Reddit account is old, there's a good chance they provided at least one piece of identifying info that further ties that account to a target.
It's not definitive but it is a lot harder to toss out
Evidence of what?
That someone was making shit up on reddit? That is all that it proves.
It proves nothing else.
It does not prove that what was written is true.
It does not prove who wrote the comment.
They want to do like they did with The Hurt Locker all those years ago: movie didn't pull in what they wanted it to, so they got a list of IPs from setting up a seeder, took those to the ISPs (who turned over customer names and addresses asap) and sent scare letters to all the customer addresses they received threatening to sue each person in each household for millions per number of copies they estimated (made up the difference in cost vs actuals plus a bonus on earnings for mgmt) were shared across torrents. Unless you paid them a couple thousand dollars instead.
They knew most would throw the letter away like the garbage it was, but a lot of people paid. Especially elderly folks whose grandkids came over and used the computer to do it. It works!
After reading the article, it looks like the studios want the IPs to show that Frontier is allowing piracy on their ISP and they claim they don't want it for financial compensation.
This is true.
What I also gathered from the article (for further context) is that these are the same lawyers who tried to the other 2 cases of piracy on reddit. This time the argument is that it is not a violation of the first amendment right because they want the data to go after the ISP
I believe under the first amendment in the US Constitution and section 2 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in Canada you cannot silence someone’s freedom of speech/expression just because they discussed something you don’t like. This legal claim is bullshit right from the start due to constitutional protections
Also, online discussion is not evidence. To wit:
I murdered seven people before breakfast today. I love murdering so much!
Even confessions are not necessarily airtight. For example:
I shot JFK.
Police, when you get here, please knock; the doorbell's broken.
That's not really how that works.
The Constitution only protects you from the government.
Explain to me then how two US Federal District Judges upheld the first amendment during this entire fiasco with film studios
Are you talking about Burstyn v. Wilson (1952)?
Because that was about the state of New York attempting to censor a film. Not sure what case you're referencing.
Freedom of speech also means that individuals and companies cannot sue you for protected speech, cannot get your private data unless they have a very good reason
End state capitalism, the coportocracy / oligarchy using the legal system they control to wield the fascist police forces against the people who don't behave like they're told. Meanwhile, taxing what little those people have to pay the salaries of those forces abusing them.
I mean, the studios are doing it right and following SOP.
They wrote the DCMA, used the congress they bought to pass it, the president the bought to sign it into law, and now will use the FBI and local militarized police to impose their will by force.
Constituon was an obstacle they did away with when they bought the Supreme Court.
oh, boy, am I ever glad I overwrote all of my comments before deleting my account...
They are going about it the wrong way with reddit. All they gotta do is show the $$$$ and spez will bend right over with that information. After all that's all he seems to see.
most reasonable corporation
Why people insists using reddit is beyond me
They do realize IP can be changed by just resetring your router, right?
Not everyone. Also, they should just give them their private range IPs for the lols (192.168.0.0/16, 10.0.0.0/16 etc.).
Your ISP will still have a log of which IP was assigned to you at any date and time
Those are notoriously shitty and unreliable.
Technically even with that list the studios have no power to do anything about it. It's illegal to redistribute other people's property, but most of those distributors are already running a virtual machine behind a strict NAT behind a VPN behind another VPN so good fucking luck, Hollywood.
The people merely discussing piracy have done no wrongdoings in the eyes of the law. Get fucked.
In fact, the Copyright Act of 1976 bans redistribution but not obtainment itself, so as long as you're not sending what you stole to other people you haven't broken a single law.
I'm so glad I don't use that shit platform anymore.