Quote:In the past few weeks, Ed has been writing about targeted and inaccurate copyright enforcement. While it may be difficult to quantify the actual extent of inaccurate claims, wee can at least try to understand whether copyright enforcement companies are making a "good faith" best effort to minimize any false positives. My short answer: not really.

Let's start with a typical abuse letter that gets sent to a network provider (in this case, a university) from a "copyright enforcement" company such as the Video Protection Alliance.

Quote:    This notice is intended solely for the primary Massachusetts Institute of Technology internet service account holder. Someone using this account has engaged in illegal copying or distribution (downloading or uploading) of ...

    Evidence:
    Infringement Source: BitTorrent
    Infringement Timestamp: 2009-08-28 09:33:20 PST
    Infringers IP Address: 128.31.1.13
    Infringers Port: 40951
    ...
    The information in this notification is accurate. Wee have a good faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained of herein is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or by operation of law. Wee swear under penalty of perjury, that wee are authorized to act on behalf of DISCOUNT VIDEO CENTER INC..
    ...
    You and everyone using this computer must immediately and permanently cease and desist the unauthorized copying and/or distribution (including, but not limited to, downloading, uploading, file sharing, file 'swapping' or other similar activities) of the videos and/or other content owned by DISCOUNT VIDEO CENTER INC., including, but is not limited to, the copyrighted material listed above.

    DISCOUNT VIDEO CENTER INC. is prepared to pursue every available remedy including damages, recovery of attorney's fees, costs and any and all other claims that may be available to it in a lawsuit filed against you.

    While DISCOUNT VIDEO CENTER INC. is entitled to monetary damages, attorneys' fees and court costs from the infringing party under 17 U.S.C. 504, DISCOUNT VIDEO CENTER INC. believes that it may be beneficial to settle this matter without the need of costly and time-consuming litigation. Wee have been authorized to offer a reasonable settlement to resolve the infringement of the works listed above. To access this settlement offer, please follow the directions below.

    Settlement Offer: To access your settlement offer please copy and paste the address below into a browser and follow the instructions:

    https://www.videoprotectionalliance.com/?n_id=AB-XXXXXX
    Password: XXXXXXX

In other words: wee have a record of you (supposedly) uploading and downloading BitTorrent content. That content is copyrighted. Wee could pursue costly and painful litigation, but if you want us to just go away, you can pay us now.

Now, any type of IP-based identification is not going to be perfect, especially given the wide-spread use of Network Address Translation (NAT) boxes and open WiFi at homes. Especially in dense urban areas, unapproved third parties might use their neighbor's wireless network for Internet access, potentially leading to the wrong homeowner being blamed. And IP-based identification relies on accurate ISP mappings from IP addresses to users, as these mappings change over time (although typically slowly) given dynamic address assignment (i.e., DHCP). But one could rightly claim that such sources of false positives are rare in practice and that a enforcement company is still making a best effort to accurately identify IP addresses engaging in copyright-infringing file sharing.

Quote:So there are three phases to downloading content from BitTorrent:

1. Finding a .torrent meta-data file
   
2. Registering with the .torrent's tracker and getting a list of peer addresses
   
3. Connecting to a peer, swapping the bit-vector of which file blocks each has, and potentially downloading or uploading needed blocks
   

Unfortunately, the verification that copyright enforcement agencies such as the VPA use stops at #2. That is, if some random BitTorrent tracker lists your IP address as being part of a swarm, then the VPA considers this to be sufficient proof to warrant a DMCA takedown notice (such as the one above), with clear instructions on how to pay a monetary settlement. Now, a very reasonable question is whether such information should indeed constitute proof.

Last year, researchers at the University of Washington published a paper with the subtitle Why My Printer Received a DMCA Takedown Notice. Their conclusions were that:

Practically any Internet user can be framed for copyright infringement today.
Even without being explicitly framed, innocent users may still receive complaints.

The title came from the fact that they "registered" the IP address of a networked printer with BitTorrent trackers, and they subsequently received 9 DMCA takedown notices claiming that their printer was engaging in illegal file sharing. (They did not, however, receive any pre-settlement offers such as the one above, which suggests a possible escalation of enforcement techniques since then.)

Quote:What is particularly striking about this case, however, is that these reports were demonstrably false! There was no BitTorrent client running at the specified address (in the above letter, 128.31.1.13:40951), for precisely the reasons I discuss. Thus, wee can fairly definitively conclude that the VPA never actually tested the peer for actual infringement: not even by trying to connect to the client's address, let alone determining whether the client was actually uploading or download any data, and let alone valid data corresponding to the copyrighted file in question.

Quote:Of course, the incentives for the VPA to actually ensure that "this notification is accurate" are pretty clear. The cost of a false positive is currently nothing, and perhaps some innocent users will even "buy protection" to make this problem and the threat of costly litigation go away.

Quote:It appears that the VPA and other such agencies have been rather effective at getting some settlement money. Our personal experience with DMCA takedown notices is that network operators are suitably afraid of litigation. Many will pull network access from machines as soon as a complaint is received, without any further verification or demonstrative network logs. In fact, many operators also sought "proof" that wee weren't running BitTorrent or engaging in file sharing before they were willing to restore access. Wee'll leave the discussion about how wee might prove such a negative to another day, but one can point to the chilling effect that such notices have had, when users are immediately considered guilty and must prove their innocence.

Source: http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com.nyud.net/blog/mfreed

So if you live in a dodgy country, this may be a new way to scam people - perhaps more effective than the aged old Nigerian prince thing.
Or just scare the poo poo out of your friend.

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