

Judge: U.S Copyright Group can subpoena ISPs for identities of 23k file sharers  - adeelarshad82
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2385152,00.asp

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fragsworth
Considering how many IP addresses they are getting, how many of those will end
up being attributed to the wrong person?

I don't know __anyone __who has a local network at home that hasn't been
shared with visitors. WEP can be cracked and unknown people can be using the
network.

Children are often unaware of the consequences of their actions; are these
punishments justified for their parents?

The false-positive rate is probably more than 5%. I wonder how many lives will
be unjustly ruined as a result of this.

~~~
Natsu
> Considering how many IP addresses they are getting, how many of those will
> end up being attributed to the wrong person?

If there are any smart lawyers representing those people, they will ask the
subpoenaed ISPs how many requests for identification the ISP was not able to
match to a subscriber. That right there will give you some idea of the data
quality. I mean, suppose the ISP was only able to identify the subscriber for
15 out of 20 IPs. In this hypothetical example, you would have it on record
that this identification method was wrong _at least_ 25% of the time.

That puts you in a much stronger position to argue with their experts who say
that their proprietary technology (that they refuse to show anyone) is
wonderful and perfect and that you're just speculating about what might or
might not have gone wrong. That said, it's a double-edged sword: if their tech
is good, things could go the other way. I've heard stories where there were
tons of misidentifications and others where there were few, so I don't know
any good way to tell.

I'm surprised none of the ISPs are complaining. They generally can't handle
tens of thousands of requests. And this sort of thing will eventually have to
go to a higher court. Different courts have split over whether copyright
holders can do this sort of thing.

~~~
wmf
Time Warner is complaining that they don't have the manpower to handle the
subpoenas: [http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/05/time-
warner-...](http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/05/time-warner-cable-
tries-to-put-brakes-on-massive-piracy-case.ars) I don't know why they don't
just staff up and bill the lawyers, but they don't.

~~~
DrJ
don't forget even if they a subscriber, you can play the IP address is not a
good identifier for a person[1]

[1] [http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/05/after-
botche...](http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/05/after-botched-
child-porn-raid-judge-sees-the-light-on-ip-addresses.ars)

------
Estragon

      > More than 140,000 BitTorrent downloaders face lawsuits  
      > across the U.S., according to *Wired*.
    

It would be nice to have a list of all 140k IP addresses.

~~~
dpres
I think this is the list of IP addresses your talking about:

[http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/threatlevel/2011/05/expend...](http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/threatlevel/2011/05/expendibleipaddresses.pdf)

~~~
Estragon
It appears that that list is only for people who have downloaded _The
Expendables_. The article gave the number of people being sued for that movie,
and it was much smaller than the total. It is the total list of all IP
addresses for which a suit is in the offing which I was referring to.

------
hvs
The non-PC-Mag-regurgitated original:
[http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/05/biggest-
bittorrent-...](http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/05/biggest-bittorrent-
case/)

------
daimyoyo
Doesn't this case contradict the earlier ruling[1] that said companies can't
go after ip addresses?

[1][http://sixestate.com/judge-rules-ip-addresses-are-not-
people...](http://sixestate.com/judge-rules-ip-addresses-are-not-people/)

