Reddit must share IP addresses of piracy-discussing users, film studios say

shish_mish@lemmy.world to Technology@lemmy.world – 239 points –
arstechnica.com
57

"film studios say" lol

Yeah I hate the phrasing of the headline. Makes you sounds like they did turn it over. And then you get that last part of the sentence.

a) discussions aren’t a crime.

b) what are studios going to do to the hundreds of millions of daily pirates? Write stern letters?

c) they tried identifying us and sending us stern letters in 2001 and we all laughed, then kept pirating anyway.

b and c) Go after the ISPs who don't disconnect the pirating users and sue them instead. Go after the deep pockets.

They did that too. Most ISP'S outside of Comcast shrugged as well. The studios lost this fight almost 2 decades ago.

Yes they will write stern, spooky letters to the tone of "give us money or get sued". Then they take the money they get, and sue no one because they have no evidence.

It's basically a 419 scam, but with lawyers

There's like 2 decent movies released per year. I think people can do without.

No no you don't get it. The point is to hoard the movies. Not to watch them!

They're like Steam games: You collect more than you play.

I'm in this comment and I don't like it. (/s)

Or, perhaps it would be more cost effective to spend your money developing a way to access content that isn’t user-hostile. Then, suddenly, piracy wouldn’t be on the rise.

But how does that pay the shareholders?

I know that you mean that sarcastically, and I agree. In the end, they could be happy with some passive income on old IPs but decide to be greedy instead.

Film studios must suck my cock, I say.

I'm very surprised that Reddit didn't immediately bend the knee. If they succeed in going public this policy will not continue

if they gave in for one, they would be in for all

so they have to fight to be forced so they don't have to answer every request

Probably because the brown envelope wasn't think enough.

I'm sure for the right "incentive" they'll happily cooperate.

Strange, my reddit account seems to have had all its posts and comments deleted and my IP leads back to Proton. Oopsy daisy. Get fucked clowns.

So glad I did that when they fucked with their api

This must be the reason every piracy community I know has strict rules about not requesting specific titles. Even if they had the IPs, I'm not sure what they could prosecute, especially considering the number of users who use a VPN.

5 more...

I said this on the last repost as well.

Obviously there are reasons the film studios want that but actually getting information because you suspect someone crimes a bit too hard online is really tough. Your evidence must be waterproof to get a subpoena and until then you can run into a plathera of different issues thanks to airtight GDPR rules that still apply to US companies as well (they updated them to be even more strict with their newer compliance laws last year).

Actually there's a good chance that sharing data or IPs without a subpoena could be not only devastating to any potential legal case, but also to Reddit. They will never do this because they stand to gain nothing from it as is and if they wanna go IPO they can't pull such shakes moves rn.

Obligatory IANAL, if you need legal advice, ask a lawyer because they need all your context and they will know the ins and outs of their field.

You’re a complete fool, if you’re doing this without a vpn

Or from a country where an IP address does not equal a person in the eyes of the law, and therefore you cannot be charged for copyright infringement based on IP address alone.

Technically true, but I don’t need them to know what i’m doing on the internet, especially in the age where content is sometimes throttled, thanks to poor laws

With CGI-NAT wouldn't the actual list be as much useful as just all 4 billion ipv4 adresses?

"In compliance with your request, we've looked through our posts and IP logs and have determined that all commenters discussing piracy were coming from the same subnet: 0.0.0.0/0"

Poor man’s TOR :).

It’s not completely inconceivable that ISPs using CG-NAT could keep logs that would allow these users to be deanonymized, but it’s an extra step and they might not have enough information between the Reddit and ISP logs to do it. But… they’d have to be talking to the ISPs anyway, and the ISPs will probably cooperate?

They may just be looking to connect a Reddit user to an ISP, then they can try to compel the ISP to give up the real identity of where the customer purchases internet service. Then it’s easy to threaten the customer to give up the user because who can afford otherwise

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 copyright 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 587 words, the summary contains 228 words. Saved 61%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

First tachiyomi now this, is 2024 the year the copyright trolls go on the offensive?