aarmenaa's Journal: I'm Curious About the RIAA's Methods

News swirling around about the RIAA adding yet more colleges to their shitlist has me wondering exactly how they determine who's who by IP addresses. I mean, I suppose some schools assign an IP per student, and keep the names on file so they know who got what, but not every school owns large blocks of IP addresses. Take for example Southern Polytechnic State University, where I attend.

The first time you plug a computer into the residential side of the network (it's separated from the campus network), you get an IP address form the DHCP server. This IP is in the rage of 172.16.x.x, with the third section corresponding to your living complex and the last section being totally random. From this point on, as long as the computer stays within that housing complex, you're always assigned the same IP. The system does this my remembering the MAC address and associating it with a private IP. Change your MAC address, and you get a new IP address.

This makes me question how the RIAA would go about suing students at a school like this, since all the IPs handed out are private. First of all there's only one public IP for everyone - you can't tell who's who from outside the network. In order to specifically finger people, they'd have to be able to monitor traffic from behind the school's routers. I wouldn't put it past the school to allow it; I very much doubt the university's role as a beacon of liberty and enlightenment these days.

But even if the network is monitored, it will only tell you that some individual is pirating music, not who. Remember - the network will allow anyone with physical access to a port to get an IP address. You don't have to sign up or give a name. Even if they keep logs all they get is an IP address and it's associated MAC address. Naturally, my MAC address is always spoofed so I can get a new IP. The best they could get from here is what housing complex you live in, which would narrow it down to somewhere around 250 - 400 people.

But what do I know? Maybe the RIAA has some magic NAT-busting technology that allows them to tell exactly who's doing what from behind that single IP address. If they do, I do wish they'd share it with the rest of us. It's a pain in the ass to share files when you can't accept incoming connections.