Re: [DMCForum] [OT] Battlestar Galactica...

[Andrew <yahoo@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, 15 Mar 2006, Marc Levy wrote:

> FUD?  no..  But why not minnimize risk?

I agree.  I minimise risk by not running closed-source software from 
unknown sources on my computer.  You're suggesting that we should be 
running questionable closed-source software to block a nonexistent threat.

I don't believe in avoiding nonexistent threats by making my computer's 
contents even less known than before.

> http://securitypronews.com/news/securitynews/spn-45-20051107FirstSuccessfulCopyrightViolationCase.html

There is nothing about law enforcement monitoring Bittorrent in this 
article.  The article provides no details whatsoever on how the guy's 
activities were tracked.  However, given the "Nai-Ming was convicted of 
posting movies to his website" sentence, I suspect he was posting 
.torrents to his site, and then seeding them.  That's quite a bit 
different from casual downloading using .torrents pulled from someone 
else's site.

> http://www.kanai.net/weblog/archive/2005/08/29/15h13m51s

HBO != Law enforcement.

HBO, Universal, MPAA, RIAA, and likely others are definitely monitoring 
Bittorrent.  But they're doing so from throwaway dialup accounts, so 
blocking "known law enforcement IPs" is not going to help one bit.  Is 
this a valid argument against using Bittorrent?  Maybe so, but don't 
exaggerate by claiming that law enforcement is involved, because there's 
just no evidence they are.  LEAs are generally uninterested in copyright 
violation and only bother caring when copyright holders bitch.

I, too, have received a letter from a copyright holder.  In my case, it 
was Universal, whining that I was sharing X-Men 2 on my eDonkey server. 
It was an automated mail with tragically flawed regular expression 
matching.  Check out what they thought was X-Men 2:

------------------------------
Infringement Detail:
Infringing Work: x-men 2
Filename: Doctor Who - 126 Mawdryn Undead 1 of 4 HQDivX.avi
------------------------------

Why yes, the filename DOES contain the characters X, M, e, n, -, and 2, 
but not even in the right order.  Needless to say, I told them to smeg off 
and haven't heard a thing since.

These guys are NOT on the ball and they are NOT prosecuting except in a 
very few isolated cases.

I agree with your original statment, that NNTP is safer if you've got it. 
I'm lucky.  My job is running news servers, so I've got it available.  But 
for those who don't, Bittorrent is an excellent resource, and the risk 
involved is tiny.

Now, whether or not it's moral or ethical to use it for these purposes is 
an entirely different conversation.

-andrew



 
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