Poisoned Torrents Plague Mybittorrent 542
jambarama writes "One of the biggest problems with the Fasttrack network has been poisoning. This is the practice of sharing a file on a P2P network that looks like the real thing, but isn't. Bittorrent until recently has been largely immune to this. Now a new type of torrent is tricking bittorrent sites to rising to the top of the download lists." From the article: "According to Rex, about 50 new torrents have been released from what he calls "fake" trackers (~31 in total.) These trackers are seemingly part of an elaborate plot to infiltrate the BitTorrent community with intentionally corrupt files. These movie and film titles are specifically designed to report false information to trackers, thereby gaining artificially inflated popularity."
DMCA (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:So what? (Score:5, Interesting)
In fact most of what I download are things that I simple cannot buy or or so expensive that I wouldn't ever consider paying that much money for it (would you pay £180 / $321 USD (£150 now) for My So Called Life [amazon.co.uk] which is only 19 episodes long and a one of my faviourate shows from when i was a kid, or would you download load it for free?).
If they would be reasonable about the whole thing I would be happy to pay for old shows and films, but this simply isn't the case.
Answer me this. (Score:4, Interesting)
What if I were to download "The Simpsons" from last nights free broadcast? I'm not uploading anything, just downloading and watching it, then deleting it after I watch it. Can I be arrested for this or is it copyright violations? I'm not selling anything. I'm not causing the lost revinue from watching this. No, even though the commercials are not on the download, it still doesn't matter as I never watch commercials anyway. If I were to watch it on TV and don't watch the commercials, can I be arrested for that then? Is that copyright violation also? What if I were to tape the show with a VCR, but not the commercials...wouldn't this also be exactly like just downloading the show? I still have the end product. The Simpsons from last night. What if I were to record the show from last night and put it on my HD. Again, the exact same result. I would have the exact same show on my HD without commercials wither I downloaded it or taped it. And how could they prove it otherwise? Unless of course I were to take the show I recorded and then distributed it.
This is all a grey area here. Is this illegal like stealing a car and downloaders should go to jail, or is it copyright violation and downloaders should just be made to feel guilty (or go to jail) or is it really nothing? Again, I'm not trying to justify anything here...just want to know where the law stands on people that record a free show vs downloading the exact same free show...both WITHOUT commercials. If some say that the it's the commercials that make it a free show then I suppose I should be hauled off for jail for YEARS of not watching the commericals.
Re:Enforcement (Score:5, Interesting)
isn't it illegal? (Score:5, Interesting)
Probably not going to be very effective (Score:3, Interesting)
Not withstanding the fact that bandwidth is cheap. If someone finds their latest Torrent download has frozen at 98%, they are probably just going to shrug it off and find another Torrent, only by this point there will have been enough time for forums to get some feedback about which Torrents are actually good. All this is going to buy the Studios is a short delay in the time it takes someone to get their files, probably less than a day for even the highest quality feature film. Plus, they'll almost certainly be cursing the studios even more for the delay instead of thinking "Gee, maybe I should go and spend some money".
Somehow, I suspect that this is yet another instance of a media company being taken to the cleaners with a "magic bullet" solution by a group of snake oil salesmen. Heck, it might even be some of the same bunch that told them DRM would prevent people taking unauthorised copies of audios CDs, and we all know how well that's working out for them. I can't help but wonder what the situation would be like if instead of assuming all of their customers were crooks they had spent that money on providing tangible extras people might actually want and/or reducing prices...
Only if you never have a problem with software (Score:5, Interesting)
At the end of a trip to Europe, I was working at editing and printing a bunch of pictures I'd taken of an event. I needed to use a photo printer someone else provided. The printer driver install went awry and I had to do a system restore to fix it. Sure enough Photoshop deactivated itself. I was at a hostel in the mountains, about 12 hours before my departing flight, without any Internet access, at 4 am, with no idea what phone number I was supposed to call to reach Adobe tech support if they were even open at that time on a Sunday. So I uninstalled Photoshop, dug up the pirated copy, and installed that. Worked like a charm. I got the pictures edited and printed, the people at the event were happy, and I made my flight home.
When Photoshop CS2 came out, I bought that as well. And I downloaded a pirated copy of it off bittorrent. Of course the real irony is that if Adobe handn't put in product activation as an anti-piracy measure, I never would've needed to get the pirated version.
Re:Answer me this. (Score:3, Interesting)
I believe it is the TV stations that are missing out here and not the content creators. The TV stations have paid to air the shows and get advertisment revenue partly based on viewer figures. Surely it could be better for everyone if instead of poisoning torrents, that TV stations released their shows over the web with their ads. Those that don't want to watch the ads will of course find a way, but the same stands with regular TV.
Advertisers pay to have their adverts shown and expect that there is no guarantee that they will be watched. They expect a certain percent of viewers (majority) will watch their ads and pay accordingly. Assuming there is no painfully easy way for the average Joe downloader to strip ads from downloaded content then it is safe to assume that a certain percent of Internet viewers (majority?) will watch these ads - and again, the advertisers can pay accordingly.
Undoubtedly the percentage of Internet viewers that watch the ads will be much lower than with regular TV. As ad-stripping tools will come in the form of free software download versus buying a PVR. However, the advertisers can pay according to this (IE: less). What's more, I believe both QuickTime and WMV have the capability to show live content. So the ads could have clickable hyperlinks - an attractive prospect for advertisers, I'm sure. (No popups please!!)
I can't say how this will end up but I'm willing to bet that downloading shows/movies over p2p networks is here to stay and will be legal in one form or another. The question is who's willing to make the first move and offer a legal system, like has been finally done with music.
-TheCrunch
Re:IP addresses for copyright infringement lawsuit (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:IP addresses for copyright infringement lawsuit (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:So what? (Score:2, Interesting)
The BBC already paid the actors' royalties out of my licence fee when they first broadcast the show, irrespective of whether or not I watched it. Therefore, as I see it, I might as well watch it just to get my full money's worth.
Re:IP addresses for copyright infringement lawsuit (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:So what? (Score:2, Interesting)
With that said, in general I've found downloading movies to be silly and a waste of time. But, that's more because DVD's don't really cost that much and in the cases where the extras are worth it I'll buy them.
For TV shows, that I missed, there is nothing better than BT.
Adam Smith would be proud. (Score:1, Interesting)
Technical solutions (Score:3, Interesting)
But that aside, technical solutions present themselves to me. Maybe they have not be investigated by others, so I give them here in the hope its helpful to those fighting the corruption of _legal_ shares.
As a file downloads, it typically contains sufficient information in parts to be understood without the entirity of the file.
For example, as a movie is downloaded in segments, segments themselves contain keyframes. By fast-forward playing the the movie as it arrives, skipping incomplete segments, in a small thumbnail, bad quality or fake torrents would be easily identifable.
Further statistical tools could measure such things as the rate the scene moves, so fake movies that contain promising keyframes but then garbage to obliterate the content might be tagged as suspicious long before the complete movie is downloaded and ready for viewing fullscreen etc.
If you have downloaded 99% of a movie, you ought to be able to play that 99%.
Re:IP addresses for copyright infringement lawsuit (Score:3, Interesting)
Why not? because it's not copyright infringement if you have permission from the copyright holder, right?
I know that here you can be charged with smuggling flour if they can prove that you thought you were smuggling drugs. If you thought you were illegally downloading a copy of "The O.C.", then you were breaking the law regardless of what the bits actually are. In a criminal case this works, since there's no government entrapment. In a civil case it doesn't work, because the MPAA would have "unclean hands", where they actively work to increase the liability. So no, you won't see the MPAA sue people over this. This is a means to waste people's time and bandwidth and raise the S/N ratio.
Kjella
Re:So what? (Score:3, Interesting)
With this line, I read your whole comment as "Online pirates are using an inefficient way of pirating, here's a better one." The rest is just arguments for and against. In that case, I'll raise you one. Burn DVDs and trade with your friends. No rental fees, no bandwidth costs.
Also, look at the development. Locally, over the last two years CD and DVD prices have been reasonably constant. In the same period I could either keep my bandwidth (1Mbit), and cut costs by 2/3rds, or keep my costs and increase bandwidth by 20x/6x (down/up).
I did some quick math using current prices and found that you'd need from 15% (1Mbit) to 2% (20Mbit) utilization to do better than rentals. And that means paying for the whole connection, with the rest free for surfing, music, software and whatever else you'd like to download.
In fact, that entire logic is flawed. If you want to do a simple cost-analysis (not counting legal or ehtical issues), you can easily cost-justify having slow broadband for music alone. Even if you take uncompressed WAV it is 1/10th the size and costs the same as a DVD. And given that you will have slow broadband for other things anyway, the upgrade to fast broadband is next to nothing. Let us presume that you already have a 1Mbit DSL line. Now I'm looking at 4% (4Mbit) to 1% (20Mbit) utilization.
In short, there's no competing against the cost of bandwidth. It is a losing battle, and the MPAA is very much aware of it. They are the last bastion (text, pictures, music, applications and games has already fallen) where bandwidth matters, and not for long. After that it is a matter of convienience, integrity and quality. The biggest "cost" of getting the latest Metallica CD is my facetime, not bandwidth or computer time. It will be the same for movies.
Kjella
Re:IP addresses for copyright infringement lawsuit (Score:5, Interesting)
If someone harm you, and you fail to do anything about it for long enough, despite you being in communications with them, you can't sue them for damages. You must make some effort to migrate the damages beforehand.
Civil law is based on the idea of 'tort', that other people caused harm to you, and you can't let other people keep 'hurting' you and then sue them when you think they've racked up enough damages. You have to try to stop them at some point. Otherwise the court rightly supposes that you weren't really being harmed, or didn't mind the harm.
I.e., I can't let my next-door neighbor can't drive over a corner of my grass for ten years as he pulls into his driveway, keep track of how much grass he's killed, and then sue him for that amount. I have to actually have tried for stop him for the last ten years, via talking to him and even putting up a pole so he can't do that anymore. (And then I can sue him for the cost of the pole. ;) )
And you can't cause people to keep 'hurting' you and then sue them for it. That'll get you laughed out of court so fast it's not funny.
If the MPAA hands out a torrent into a network that is designed for end users to share the files, they can't complain when exactly that happens.
Re:IP addresses for copyright infringement lawsuit (Score:3, Interesting)
One might argue that the copyright holders themselves caused this upload to occur; after all, they did know how BitTorrent operates, and it was obvious that this would be a direct result of their actions. On the other hand, none of this really matters, since the RIAA has money on its side, and can therefore win any legal dispute simply by dragging it out until their opponent goes banckrup, whether or not that opponent is guilty of anything, or simply buy the neccessary changes to law by bribing (sorry, "contributing to") the right politicians.
We really, really, really need some kind of point-2-point instant wireless untraceable magical quantum communication device...
Re:IP addresses for copyright infringement lawsuit (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Well... (Score:3, Interesting)
However, if people don't find a way to get rid of the crappy torrents, things could get bad for anyone who wants to distribute something that someone else doesn't want them distributing.
Okay, here's a doomsday scenario for you: Hacker releases virus. Virus causes infected boxen to publish craptorrents, masquerading as material hacker wants people not to download, and to register said craptorrents on major torrent sites. Suddenly, it becomes very difficult to figure out which files are legitimate, and people give up on Bittorrent.
If this means that people can't get their bootlegged copy of "The Wedding Crashers," or other material that people really oughtn't be downloading, that's one thing. But what if the person trying to crapflood the torrent sites wants to take out legitimate downloads?
Now, this technique doesn't have an effect on legitimate trackers, except making them hard to find on certain sites. So this technique should be seen more as an attack on sites that aggregate trackers, rather than on the Bittorrent protocol itself. They'll have to fight back, most likely with some sort of reputation system.
Re:So what? (Score:1, Interesting)