
Thousands of Germans get “porn troll” letters over streaming video - route66
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/12/thousands-of-germans-get-porn-troll-letters-over-streaming-video/
======
WA
I had a hard time understanding this article, so I looked up some German
resources and also the original letter linked in the article. Still, the sum
is still confusing. Here's what happened:

1\. This swiss company got the home addresses of the people by deceiving the
court in the first place. They suggested that the people in question were
using a file sharing platform, not a streaming website (former is illegal,
latter is not).

2\. Then, they sent thousands of cease-and-desist orders to these people,
claiming that "streaming a video" means that you store a video temporarily (or
permanently) on your own device, which is infringement of copyright (and utter
bullshit, because it isn't according to German law).

3\. All in all, they probably got a few bucks out of this trolling, but they
are unlikely to be successful in court, because it is not illegal in Germany
to consume copyright protected material. You may not provide it (upload it).
This would be illegal. But this didn't happen in the first place. The people
who should get a cease-and-desist order is RedTube for uploading and streaming
copyright protected material.

All articles also talk about this weird software "gladii 1.1.3" without
talking about how this software can collect IP addresses in the first place,
if you connect to a server (RedTube) and not to a bunch of random peers.

Edit: Clarification in 1.

~~~
fauigerzigerk
_> This swiss company got the IP addresses of the people by deceiving the
court in the first place._

No, I think the Swiss lawyers provided the IP addresses asking the court to
make Deutsche Telekom reveal the users' true identities.

 _> Then, they sent thousands of cease-and-desist orders to these people_

They didn't send cease and desist letters. As I understand it they asked for
money right away.

 _> All articles also talk about this weird software "gladii 1.1.3" without
talking about how this software can collect IP addresses in the first place_

That is indeed the interesting question. Apparently the court asked an expert
to evaluate the software and the expert confirmed that gladii 1.1.3 could do
what it claimed:
[http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=n&pre...](http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fabmahnung-
medienrecht.de%2F2013%2F12%2Fstreaming-abmahnungen-der-kanzlei-uc-in-sachen-
redtube-landgericht-koln-gibt-erste-auskunfte-zur-funktionsweise-der-software-
gladii-1-1-3%2F)

I wonder how. The spoofed domain explanation doesn't make any sense. If you
you are able to redirect users to download from your own servers you don't
need any additional software to find out their IP address. Maybe what gladii
does is to embed code into the movie file itself so it can be used as a
honeypot. I'm not familiar with the swf format or whatever they host on
redtube to know whether that is possible.

~~~
arrrg
_> They didn't send cease and desist letters. As I understand it they asked
for money right away._

That’s sort of combined in Germany. You can ask for (reasonable) damages and
lawyer fees plus for people to sign a ceae and desist. (Of course, in
actuality those letters can ask for anything they want. It just might not hold
up in court. That’s why receiving one of those letters as a private person
sucks. Those don’t have a lawyer on staff to quickly look those letters over.)

In this case the damages they asked for were €15.50 and the lawyer fees were
€234.50 (together €250).

This process exists in Germany to efficiently resolve disputes without having
to use the courts (mostly between companies, actually) but when it comes to
copyright infringement of private persons one could arguably say that it is
abused.

------
fabian2k
One very interesting aspect is how they got the IP addresses in the first
place. There is some evidence that they bought traffic from a traffic broker,
redirected that through their on domains and then to the final target.

If it happened that way, it does seem very unlikely that they would have any
chance to succeed before a court. They can't prove that the user actually
intended to see the video in question, they can't prove that they actually
arrived at the target site and saw the video.

Some more recent information in german about this is at
[http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Porno-Abmahnungen-
Ind...](http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Porno-Abmahnungen-
Indizienkette-zur-IP-Adressen-Ermittlung-verdichtet-sich-2065879.html)

~~~
route66
Summarizing the heise.de article: apparently someone put links to porn-broker
trafficholder.com somewhere, there the requests got redirected to the freshly
registered movfile.net, forwarding to redtube.net. On movfile.net the IP
addresses got harvested. trafficholder.com was primarily used to generate
traffic from Germany to the videos in question.

If this is what happened it seems a bit more far-reaching than just an exploit
of IP law challenged courts.

------
ikonos_de
This is an info-graphic provided by some committed German guy. It shows the
daily views of the video before and after the video-rights were sold to the
swiss company. Maybe you guys notice something :)

[https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/2512901/abmahnwelle-
redt...](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/2512901/abmahnwelle-redtube-uc-
sebastian.png)

~~~
atmosx
I wonder, on the basis of this, why can't _victim_ get united and counter-sue?
I think there are grounds for fraud and possible privacy breaches.

~~~
Xylakant
There's no equivalent in class action suits in germany. And then, the company
claiming the copyright violation is a swiss company, so to counter-sue and
receive a compensation for your costs and fees, you'd have to sue them in
switzerland under swiss law. The claimed amount is low enough that it's way
less costly to just pay up and leave it at that.

For the general good it would be better if everybody countersued. However,
what I can see coming in this case that the matter may proceed to become a
criminal case against "The Archive" which then would be a different story.
There's still hope.

------
bowlofpetunias
This is just another example that shows it is not so much the law that is
broken in the face of new technology (although it could use some updating),
but the utterly clueless interpretation of the law by the courts that is the
main problem.

Just like for instance the Pirate Bay blockades we keep seeing instances where
courts can easily be tricked into implementing measures or allowing evidence
that the legislature would never approve of.

------
bayesianhorse
The way I would get the IP addresses is to threaten the redtube.com website
with a copyright infringement lawsuit and offer them to sell the IP addresses
instead. Win-Win.

Another way is to set up other websites that redtube users would likely visit
(maybe even advertise from redtube), then find out if they have visited
certain links on redtube. There may be certain exploits to do that, be it
flash or even the css "old links" trick. Then you could at least claim that
the IP addresses actually visited the videos in question even though the site
did not cooperate and no wiretapping was necessary.

~~~
perlgeek
> The way I would get the IP addresses is to threaten the redtube.com website
> with a copyright infringement lawsuit and offer them to sell the IP
> addresses instead. Win-Win.

Not by German privacy laws. IP addresses are considered "personal" data, and
selling it to a third party would be quite costly if discovered.

~~~
bayesianhorse
The IP owner and the redtube website both aren't residing in Germany.

------
mseepgood
> from a company called Matratzensport

Suitable name for a porn company: Matratzensport = "mattress sport".

~~~
judk
Also a mafia reference "go to the mattresses", appropriate for a extortion
scheme.

------
maaaats
I don't get it. Why is visiting said website something illegal that should be
paid for?

~~~
WA
See my comment above. It isn't. They deceived the court to get addresses of
people and then sent letters to people to scare them and make a few bucks. It
doesn't hold up in court.

~~~
maaaats
Thanks. I should have hit refresh on the comments after reading the article.

------
dubbel
Flash also supports P2P:
[http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en/flashplay...](http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en/flashplayer/help/settings_manager09.html)

Maybe redtube uses this functionality to get the stream faster to everyone.

------
Sami_Lehtinen
Old stuff, here's same story by TorrentFreak.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6885356](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6885356)

------
PythonicAlpha
This whole case just shows, how incompetent many people in Jurisdiction are.
Also no positive promotion for the German government.

------
Houshalter
It's also kind of dickish to send letters to people's homes saying "you
watched porn".

~~~
judk
Not also, that's the core of the extortion scam, to threaten to violate
people's privacy.

