torrenting

I Know What You Downloaded Last Summer

Posted on March 11, 2012March 11, 2012 by Matt Taylor 2 Comments

YouHaveDownloaded.com

An interesting site popped up near the end of last year called YouHaveDownloaded.com. You might not have visited it, or even heard of it, but if you’ve been using torrents, it might have heard of you.

The site is quite simple, it tracks torrents and the people (IP addresses) downloading them, much like copyright holders do (or hire companies to do for them). They claim to be tracking roughly 4%-6% of all torrent downloads and 20% of torrents from public trackers, like The Pirate Bay.

The difference to the copyright holders is that this site makes the information is collects public. You can see what it thinks the IP address you’re using has been used to torrent, or any other IP address you can think of. It might not be right, or it might be spot on.

This site just highlights what is going on all the time. Torrenting is a very public activity unless you’re making an effort to protect your privacy (like using a proxy or VPN from a reputable provider). Privacy is not the default on the interwebs.

IP addresses are more like PO Boxes than physical addresses — most people have dynamic IP addresses that regularly change, and add in the fact that some people have insecure Wi-Fi, the results on the site aren’t that accurate.

The site brings up an interesting statistic, especially if it’s true: “About 10% of all online shoppers, in the US, are torrent users as well.” In the future will advertisers link an IPs torrenting history to an advertising profile. Is this already happening?

The removal form

The site provides a form that supposedly enables people to request removal from the site. Don’t use it.

Previously it asked people to sign in using their Facebook accounts, and the CAPTCHA to get to the non-Facebook removal form didn’t work (ie. they wanted to link your data with a real name, cue warning bells). Now it seems like Facebook has revoked their access to use Facebook logins (they say Facebook logins are “Temporarily disabled due problems with Facebook”), so it brings up the removal form, which asks for a name and an email address.

I’m not saying this is what the people behind the site are doing, but this would be all the information they would need, in addition to the information they have on torrents associated with your IP address, to send an extortionate email your way. Or sell your data (probably not to copyright holders, because they hire people to do this for them already).

Here’s what their removal terms are (and yeah, the rest of the site is worded like this too):

“Removal Terms
The Details: By submitting a request to have your download activity removed from our database, you are acknowledging that the activity was, in fact, carried out by yourself. This means that you are only submitting a request to have the details of your own personal activity deleted. Any unrecognized activity, such as files you did not download or do not remember downloading, are not — I repeat, are not to be included in your removal request. Why is this imperative? Well, we actually don’t have to explain ourselves…sorry.
The important part is that you understand these terms and conditions before hitting that beautiful button that will erase your criminal back ground, at least for now. Wait, you did remember to read these terms before making the decision to submit a removal request, right? Of course you did, everyone reads the fine print.
Other Important Things to Consider: We make no guarantees that your information will not appear on any other databases. We may have erased your bad behavior but, keep in mind that your data on this site is aggregated public domain. So, if by chance, another sadistic group of people decides to open a similar web site, we have no control over what they do with your information. Furthermore, if you continue to involve yourself in activity like this, your future download history will, without a doubt, appear in our database again and we may not be as nice about it next time.
If any part of these terms is still unclear, please visit your local elementary school and ask to repeat grades 3 through 5.”

Giving the people or company behind the site any more information about yourself is not a good idea, even if they claim that the site is a joke and you shouldn’t take it seriously.

And anyway, if your IP address is listed on the site, it must be because of the person that used it previously. Right?

The only redeeming feature of the site? You can look up the content companies that take people to court for illegal file sharing.

Posted in Law, Technology, Worldwide

Three Strikes Law Shifted File Sharing From Torrents To Tunnels

Posted on March 11, 2012April 11, 2014 by Matt Taylor Leave a comment

Shifting file sharing

A survey commissioned by the MPAA and friends last year stated that seven out of 10 people surveyed said that they would stop illegally sharing files after they received one notice from a copyright holder under the three strikes scheme.

Perhaps they should have also asked how many people would just change how they download files illegally?

The WAND Network Research Group at The University of Waikato has been measuring how traffic flows through a New Zealand ISP. They can split traffic into types with a pretty high degree of accuracy without having to “look inside” too much. Donald Clark compares it to looking at the postmark of a package and giving it a squeeze and being able to tell, in general terms, what’s inside, without having to open it.

Here’s a graph (ht Tech Liberty/1through8) showing the change in traffic volume in September 2011 and January 2012 by type relative to January 2011. In January 2011 the Copyright (Infringing File Sharing) Amendment Act (the three strikes Skynet law) wasn’t in force. On September 1 2011 copyright holders could start sending notices to IPAPs, and around that time there was a strong media interest in the law. January 2012 is a few months later.

The resulting data is a valuable insight into how residential DSL customers at this particular ISP reacted to the new law.

WAND Three Strikes ISP data

More graphical goodness can be found in the slides from a NZNOG presentation here.

There was about a 75% decrease in BitTorrent traffic straight after the law was introduced, largely sustained into 2012, with huge increases in remote and tunneling traffic. The law isn’t stopping file sharing, just moving it underground, using VPNs, seedboxes and sites like now closed Megaupload.

There was also a big decrease in newgroup traffic, even though it doesn’t appear to be targeted by the new law.

Here’s what the project leader, Shane Alcock said:

“P2P, P2P structure, Unknown, Newsgroups and Encrypted [not all shown in the graph above] have all decreased massively from their January 2011 levels. Interestingly, each of these categories can be tied to the illegal downloading activities targeted by the CAA [Copyright Amendment Act]. P2P and P2P structure are obviously related, Newsgroups are a common source of torrent files and the Unknown and Encrypted categories were strongly suspected of containing a significant quantity of encrypted P2P traffic.
Even more interestingly, Remote, Tunneling and Files experienced similarly large growths in the amount of traffic downloaded by DSL users. This is probably indicative of people changing their approach to downloading copyrighted material. Instead of participating in file sharing on their home machines, it has become more common for people to use machines based in other countries and ship the file back home via another protocol. This might be via SSH, VPN or FTP, for example, which are all covered by the growing categories.
Similar trends are observed when looking at traffic transmitted by the DSL users. Categories associated with P2P file sharing have seen much less traffic compared with January 2011, whereas Tunneling, Remote and Files have soared.
It should be noted that although Tunneling has grown significantly, the overall amount of Tunneling traffic is still much less than the total amount of P2P traffic. But the sudden changes in application protocol usage are still very noteworthy and suggest that the CAA has had a major impact on people’s Internet usage.”

^{Image credit: technoloic}

Posted in Law, New Zealand, Technology

Invalid Three Strikes Skynet Copyright Infringement Notices

Posted on March 11, 2012January 2, 2013 by Matt Taylor 4 Comments

We’re six months into the Copyright (Infringing File Sharing) Amendment Act, the law that pleased no one (the copyright lobby thought copyright holders should only pay the price of sending a letter, everyone that uses the internet thought the law was stupid), but was passed anyway.

Invalid notices

Tech Liberty asks if some infringement notices being sent to customers are invalid because they don’t contain the required information under the law.

An Orcon customer posted on the 3StrikesNZ forum about two notices (s)he received and posted the screenshots of the emails (click for larger versions). Note that both notices are for the same song. Anonnz says that the offending file, torrent, and software was removed after the first notice and so a second warning notice should never have been sent.

Tech Liberty brings up a number of reasons why the notices are invalid according to the Copyright (Infringing File Sharing) Regulations:

4(2)c(iii) states notices must describe the type of work in terms of section 14(1) of the Copyright Act.
4(2)c(iv) states notices must describe the restricted act or acts in terms of section 16(1) of the Copyright Act by which copyright in the work is alleged to have been infringed.
4(2)c(v) states notices must give the New Zealand date and time when the alleged infringement occurred or commenced, which must specify the hour, minute, and second. The first notice doesn’t specify the time to the second.
4(2)c(vi) states notices must identify the file sharing application or network used in the alleged infringement.
5(2)b states notice numbers must identify whether the notice is a detection notice, a warning notice, or an enforcement notice; and (c) that they must identify the IPAP that sent the notice.

Account suspension

Additionally, the second to last paragraph of the notice misinforms customers about internet account suspension, stating: “the Copyright Tribunal has the authority to … apply to the District Court to suspend your account for any period up to six months”. Account suspension is not currently an available punishment.

The requirements for notices and punishments are spelled out quite clearly, so I wonder what else copyright holders and IPAPs are doing incorrectly.

Delivery of infringement notices

There’s some really interesting discussions over on the 3StrikesNZ forum.

The nature of delivery of infringement notices has been brought up. FlyingPete suggests that email is unreliable for the delivery of such important notices (as in missing them could cost the account holder $15k), because of spam filters and because some people don’t check email accounts very often.

The Act states that infringement notices are to be sent the same way bills are sent, unless agreed otherwise, and assumes that the way you receive your bill must be reliable, otherwise you wouldn’t pay it. It overlooks that a lot of people are using automatic payments and don’t need to check the bill for a service that stays the same price every month.

StuFlemingWIC, from an IPAP, points out that even snail mail is unreliable, especially when sent to student flats. He suggests that registered mail would have been a good requirement for sending notices.

^{Image credit: Anonnz}

Posted in Law, New Zealand, Technology

MPAA Propaganda

Posted on November 23, 2011November 22, 2011 by Matt Taylor 2 Comments

Look what I found at the end of the Hoyts ticket counter:

It contains some interesting content.

“Remove unauthorised material from your computers”

“While not required under the new law, illegally obtained copyright protected material may still be file shared and therefore should be removed.”

Read: buy the files you downloaded illegally in the past. Helpful advice would be to remove peer-to-peer software from your computer if you’re not using it, or to stop sharing illegally obtained material if you’re doing so (eg. stop seeding).

“What are the risks of P2P file sharing?”

“P2P file sharing can expose your computer to harmful viruses, worms and trojan horses as well as annoying pop-up advertisements. There is also a real danger that private information on your computer may be accessible to others on P2P networks.”

Finding files through moderated sites (which can remove harmful torrents), reading the comments on torrents and having up-to-date anti-malware software all reduce this small risk of harm.

The “real danger” of private information being inadvertently shared is practically impossible with torrenting. LimeWire, FrostWire and friends were possibly deceptive about what user’s folders were actually being shared in the past, but now LimeWire is dead and FrostWire exclusively uses torrents, so it shouldn’t be a problem anymore.

But points for including the relatively unbiased URL of NetSafe’s The Copyright Law, albeit in tiny print down the very bottom on the back page.

Respect Copyrights.co.nz

This site is interesting, especially when you compare its list of legitimate places to buy movies and TV shows to the US version‘s list.

Our list for TV shows is basically the On Demand sites for the free-to-air TV stations, plus iSky. On the movies side we have iSky, the console networks and iTunes, which is also listed as having TV shows, but that’s not the case in New Zealand.

In comparison, the US site lists 43 legal alternatives, including iTunes (which you can actually get TV shows from in the US, or by using a US iTunes account), Hulu and Netflix.

And the MPAA wonder why people illegally download movies and TV shows in New Zealand?

On a plus, Respect Copyrights has removed that ridiculous clause from their Terms of Use stating that no one was allowed to link to their site without their “express written permission”. Their grasp of the internet is growing!

Spotify

Good news on the music front though. Music streaming subscription service Spotify is coming to Australia and New Zealand, possibly around February next year. The downside is that they’re now in bed with Facebook, so you’ll need a Facebook account to use it.

NZ Movies

Jonathan Hunt and Lance Wiggs illustrate how inadequate the sites MPAA lists are. MPAA, NZFACT and friends love harping on how people pirating movies like Boy are harming our movie industry in New Zealand.

But you still can’t download it legally from iTunes.

And I wouldn’t count on it being added either. Remember Sione’s Wedding? You know, the movie released in 2006 that cost “its investors an estimated $1 million” because it was pirated?

It’s not in the New Zealand iTunes store five years later.

But of course, it’s in the US iTunes store as Samoan Wedding.

Nice one. Perhaps more kiwis would support their creative community, if, you know, you actually made it easy for them?

Posted in Law, New Zealand, Technology, Worldwide

Matthew Taylor

Tag: torrenting

I Know What You Downloaded Last Summer

YouHaveDownloaded.com

The removal form