Film studios demand IP addresses of people who discussed piracy on Reddit
Reddit says First Amendment rights protect it from having to disclose users' info.
Literally illegal. Discussing crimes doesn't equal crime, so there's no reason for them to requeust IPs. And at least in the EU you aren't even allowed to disclose information related to your person.
They don't care. It's the film industry equivalent to the Microsoft support scammers. Get a bunch of targets, spam out hundreds of thousands of threatening emails, profit off the small percent of people who fall for it.
I had a Microsoft support scammer once... I let him in to my system too..well not really.
I quickly spin up a quick fresh install of slack ware Linux in a virtual machine that didn't even have x11 never mind wine installed. When it was up I told him a friend uses something called tellynet (aka telnet but I was playing dumb) to help me on the computer.
He telnetted in and could not understand why any of his malware wasn't working...
they don't care
Yes they do. They are boxed in neatly in the current laws and unless you are discussing specifics about doing a crime in the past or future, they will not get that subpoena and thus they are in a catch 22.
Now if you are actively torrenting, chances are you could run into one of those fake peers that will grab your IP and they can start suing you. But other than that they would need real good evidence to subpoena.
It's not illegal if they ask for it and reddit gives it to them.
I could give you a full breakdown of how it works in EU, but basically there needs to be indisputable evidence that a crime occured for any party to subpoena any ISP or service provider company. Otherwise those companies will be in huge trouble. The one doing the subpoena because they wouldn't have an order for that and if they fuck around right before suing, courts will not take kindly to that. And the other receiving the subpoena for disclosing personal information (although they'd maybe win a defense to that, because if they did their due diligence they are not supposed to tank the damages).
What I'm saying is, considering currently laws in the EU, I think we're good. Of course IANAL so ask one if you need specific advice.
If discussing crimes equals crime then police, CEOs, and politicians should all be in jail.
You should read the article. I don’t agree with them, but it’s more nuanced than that/isn’t about discussing piracy.
They are basically trying to get the IP‘s so that they can claim frontier is at fault and not being proactive. It is not actually targeting the users in a way that is designed to go after them individually. It’s trying to prove users are using frontier to pirate with impunity.
Great explanation, it's what I was hoping to write until my lemmy client crashed with the unfinished comment.
I'm curious what would happen if some copyright holder tried to get information about a user on lemmy. Iirc only the users instance could log their IP, but almost all instances are run by volunteers, so risking a lawsuit might no be viable. Just look at what Tachiyomi devs have to go through, even though all they're doing was and is legal.
even if they have our ip addresses, they can't take any legal actions for discussing about piracy right?
Not unless you talk about how you will commit or have committed a specific instance of piracy. E.g. "I downloaded back to the future last night from (insert website)". Then they have reasonable suspicion and can start to subpoena.
Obligatory IANAL. Always do research and ask in lawyer if you wanna talk specifics.
Even further what's the point? It's been ruled (usa) that an IP address doesn't equal a person. https://www.techspot.com/news/76190-us-court-appeals-ip-address-isnt-enough-identify.html
I've always read it that action must be taken, above and beyond speech.
Legally, a Conspiracy exists when 2 or more persons join together and form an agreement to violate the law, and then act on that agreement.
I could argue that these users collaborated to break the law and did so, but I don't see that being argued. Fuck I know, INAL.
Well in theory you are right. And if you have evidence like in the case of the 2pac murder (he literally wrote about handing the gun over so they could kill him with it), then sure. But to get a subpoena, and let's use me as an example, you would need to prove that I talked about specifics on how I would or will pirate a stream, and then you would need to find writing of me saying something to the effect of "I did this yesterday" or "I will do this next week" or something very specific like that.
And this is only to get the information. Then they still need to tie you to it and get enough evidence to start suing, otherwise they might not be able to prove their prima facia case.
I know it's scary, but the truth is we have laws to protect us from government overreach and at the same time those keep companies in check as well. Let's not make it more dramatic than it is.
Let's also acknowledge that conspiracy is easy to say in theory and hard to prove in practice, specifically because you need to make sure you can inextricably link 2 defendant together and they are linked in the context of the same instance of a crime. And at that point no one would waste the resources for such a charge. They would rather chase the piracy websites to shut down a whole network for a bit, that's more efficient. It's easier to just serve the server providers a cease and desist and have be over with.
Obligatory IANAL.
More corporations with zero responsibility and way too much fucking power. We need regulators with teeth and we need to remove the legal hand of business from the pockets of our legislatures. I can't believe someone actually burned down Studio Ghibli HQ before Citizen's United was. Wtf.
The people who are smart enough to understand that corporations need restraint are also smart enough to know that burning a single building down will do nothing but give that company an insurance check. It needs to be the people who are in the c-suite, on the board, the consulting firms, etc. it has to happen overnight and with all of them.
This guy knows the first and second rules of fight club. JFC.
These people deal solely in the material. As soon as you start diminishing any material they own they will begin to lose their minds. They're deathly afraid of anyone knowing their names. Its why they hide behind multiple layers of shell companies and redacted identities when they do shitty stuff like buying a lot poor families live on and gentrifying it under a surname. If direct actions against their possessions did not work they would not wear so many masks. Its only the most brazen who do not hide like Musk.
I for one want to be in compliance. Here is my IP, I checked it in Microsoft windows so it is correct. 192.168.0.1
Text me at that IP if I need to pay a fine or if I need to go to my local jail. Thanks guys, I'm sorry I pirated and I will re upload all the movie films that I downloaded to try to make this right.
upload all the movie films that I downloaded to try to make this right.
😂
Fuck spez
Fuck reddit
You wouldn’t download Spez’s balls just to step on them
I appreciate the sentiment, but I personally don't want to have any contact with Spez's balls.
Spez will happily give it if it'll increase his future IPO
I believe that the following IP ranges
are engaged in highly suspicious activities
furthermore I can definitely say that I found some dirty pirates hiding at the following ip ranges:
my research clearly shows proof that those people are not just pirates but also engaged in highly illegal activities such as stealing BILLIONS of dollars and hacking who knows how many servers, and that's only the crimes one can talk about online.
Thanks for that tip, had no idea about bogon routes
I've noticed reddit has recently started shadowbanning my posts when I have a vpn active so I'd say at this point it's probably completely unsafe to discuss anything on.
Absolutely. That and the recent vpn blocking changes has made using reddit absolutely unbearable.
just remember to be honest with the police and give your real name, Robert'); DROP TABLE Prisoners;--
Naughty Bobby!
Please tell me this never worked for the sake of humanity
little bobby tables destroyed his schools records. :(
Oh you overestimate the government. Many systems still running on XP. Our government contracts for our company software are still on versions from 13 years ago.
It's reddit, so I'd be surprised if they don't cave.
Man that place. I know it's cliche to talk about it like talking about your ex on a date, but I posted there for good reason.
I found the solution to a rare bug that was bothering a group of people. I posted the solution, and my account was immediately banned sitewide for violating the terms of service, whatever that means.
I thought to myself: yeah... it was a mistake coming here. Leave it to the bots to have conversations with themselves.
"Why should I care about their privacy policy?" If Reddit doesn't store this info then they can't give it to the film studios.
It would be great if piracy instances were hosted on I2P and TOR. Then these chucklefucks would have nothing.
Apology for hijacking your comment, but I wanted to ask you a question about the Creative Commons link you put at the end of your comment.
Are you doing that because of people who may use your comments to train AI reasons?
If so, do you think legally that covers it, since it's a link, and not just the text itself?
In other words, would an AI trainer have to drill into the link before your comment is covered by that clause?
That's a good question that I don't have an answer to as I have no legal training. I'm assuming if you can sign a contract online where the legal text is behind a link and the main offer is what you see... maybe? Technically, it wouldn't be too difficult to simply erase any mention of a license in a pre-cleaning phase of the data, but I don't know if the act itself would be an even bigger indication of guilt. There would be no excuse like "oops, I just copied this data into my training set, teehee". But as I said, not a legal expert.
If there are copyright experts that want to weigh in, I'd be interested to hear their opinion. Given that there are running, unanswered cases (most notably again Microsoft's Copilot), and Japan on the verge of drafting into law that AI training data can ignore copyright, it's possible even legal experts would have a hard time answer the question.
I'm putting them here just in case. Only costs me a line carriage and a Ctrl+V.
What the person using those links does not realize is that a Creative Commons license relaxes restrictions rather than imposing additional ones.
Everything you create is already protected by copyright by default. If you publish an essay and don't append any license to it, nobody may republish or remix that essay without your permission, unless an exception like fair use applies. The exact restrictions will depend on local laws.
By using a Creative Commons license, you choose to forgo some of those copyright protections. Thus the comments of the person you replied to are actually less protected than yours or mine.
I should start adding that to my comments too! Buuuut...
Whatever suits your fancy.
Or maybe even a mirror so if you wanted to keep your ip hidden you could.
Then provide better streaming options including price and service. Piracy will always win whether they like it or not.
I'm surprised Netflix is still around at their price rate and the way they keep canceling shows. I jumped on the BF deal for Peacock, because I wasn't gonna pay the full price.
I only have Peacock for WWE, so everything is a bonus. But not everybody is gonna pay for 7 services monthly or yearly. Either put it all under one service or understand some of us are gonna pirate.
Amazon prime is gonna start having ads this month, so people are gonna have to pay more for ad free on top of prime membership or pirate to avoid ads. Before we know, they'll start putting ads in games while they load.
WWE? Bubba, it may be cheaper to simply attend some local monster truck rallies or rodeos.
Well I'm talking about the WWE monthly PPVs. But I got the $20/yr black Friday deal and then $6/mo no ads.
I thought this was already decided by a court in autumn 2023. Is this an appeal?
As far as I understand it, the studios are trying a different angle: They are not suing Reddit this time, but an ISP and want Reddit to provide the data of costumers of that ISP.
Stupid question: What's the point behind this? Is this actually financially viable for a company in the long run? Was this an attempt to get Reddit to crack down on those subs?
Isn't this always a fight against windmills? i.e., you can't fight a symptom without addressing the market as a whole?
I think this was related to their plan before, in the case that got decided (specifically that Reddit didn't have to reveal the IP addies of its clients), but that's always been a problem especially if an ip address leads to a router or is dynamic at the ISP, then there's no certainty it can be identified with a single person.
This is how the whole twelve-strikes program was formed where big name ISPs would (hypothetically) give demerits and eventually throttle or disconnect ISP addies that were identified as engaging in infringing activity. The problem is, clients stopped wanting to pay their bills when quality deteriorated, so it's not consistently enforced. In fact, companies that are not Comcast or Xfinity are motivated not to do anything beyond threats.
ETA: Similarly, it's actually to the benefit of social media websites to preserve the privacy of their clients, since incidents in which they cooperate with law enforcement reduces engagement. Google used to have a robust legal resistance to giving away personal data. It was deteriorated through enshittification, but now Google has lost enough reputation that it's looking for ways to preserve privacy, like the new effort to constrain personal map data to devices, so Google is unable to respond to location dragnet warrants. They're still in trouble for search-term warrants.
(Note the map thing is not yet rolled out, so don't use Google maps when burying your bodies.)
Man I know some cosplayers can be annoying but I think that’s overkill
lol get fucked wanker bros
tl;dr: The users' comments say that a certain ISP is pirate-friendly. Studios want to use the comments against the ISP (not the users).
"pirate friendly" meaning not snitching on their own paying customers? Wow
Basically, yes. They want ISPs to police us.
I just thought "pirate-friendly" was concise.
Sure... here's mine...
🖕.💩.🍆.🍑
Is it possible a film studio, or legal agency, could set up a Lemmy Instance and then capture all our IPs?
AP protocol doesn't propagate your IP
Yup. About 7 years ago I used to darkweb pretty hard in the drug scene (I haven’t in years so have at it, Mr. FBI).
Anyway I used Reddit subs a lot for info on new markets and onions, reliable sellers, and news on exit scams etc, but I only lurked - never commented. Anyone with a brain in their head knew they were honeypots.
Hope I didn’t fall for Any honeypots. I sometimes wonder about posts in Piracy communities.
I'm not sure that this is how it works in practice, but ideally: Unless you are registered in their stance / are browsing directly in their website, your client shouldn't be making any direct requisitions to their instance, so there is nothing they can infer your IP from. (Everything you interact with is comes directly your instance - the only thing that interacts with other instances is the server) That said, it's possible for some links to direct to the original stance, in which case your client will have to make requests directly to the original instance hosting the content... looking around in this page a bit, it looks like the Community images (banner, icon etc.) are linking directly to the original instance, so I guess that's a little bit of a problem - but just that shouldn't be enough information for them to connect the dots between the IP address fetching the image and the account you're using to browse
Don't images also link back to the original instance?
They would just have to start DMing us meme images hosted on a server they control, and they'd get a list of IPs. All we'd have to do is look.
Fwiw, this would work on Reddit too.
unless you visit the instance yourself or activitypub starts including user ips
I think not as the only instance that has your ip is the one you are registered on.
One would hope…
Only if you directly use their instance.
PSA that i2p exists and supports anonymous Torrents.
Have a look at !i2p@lemmy.world
Pirates: “I’m 4 dimensions ahead of you.”
This is the best summary I could come up with:
For the third time in less than a year, film studios with copyright infringement complaints against a cable Internet provider are trying to force Reddit to share information about users who have discussed piracy on the site.
In the first instance, US Magistrate Judge Laurel Beeler ruled in the US District Court for the Northern District of California that the First Amendment right to anonymous speech meant Reddit didn’t have to disclose the names, email addresses, and other account registration information for nine Reddit users.
Film companies, including Bodyguard Productions and Millennium Media, had subpoenaed Reddit in relation to a patent infringement lawsuit against Astound Broadband-owned RCN about subscribers allegedly pirating 34 movie titles, including Hellboy (2019), Rambo V: Last Blood, and Tesla.
In her ruling, Beeler noted that while the First Amendment right to anonymous speech is not absolute, the film producers had already received the names of 118 Grande subscribers.
She also said the film producers had failed to prove that “the identifying information is directly or materially relevant or unavailable from another source.”
This week, as reported by TorrentFreak, film companies Voltage Holdings, which are part of the previous two subpoenas, and Screen Media Ventures, another film studio with litigation against RCN, filed a motion to compel [PDF] Reddit to respond to the subpoena in the US District Court for the Northern District of California.
The original article contains 588 words, the summary contains 228 words. Saved 61%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Fortunately for me, I'm too old to know how to pirate even if I wanted to do so.
However, I'm sure the fine people at Broderbund would like to have a long conversation with me from way, way back in the day.
Choplifter and Karateka took up hours and hours and hours of my elementary/middle school years.
If you were playing Choplifter in elementary school, you're really not THAT old. Or you are and that makes me old too, but I'm -hypothetically- completely capable of figuring out piracy. Don't short yourself, there's always room on the high seas.
I think I was in fifth grade when Choplifter came out. I got that sweet sweet apple ii joystick so I could play it better than with the keyboard
Of course, knowing how to do something has nothing to do with age; there are people over the new who could teach you just fine 😅
Well, if you download software like qBittorrent be sure to not accidentally download and torrents to copyrighted content.
Or use a VPN while you do it.
So, okay.
Let's say these film studios DO get 'permission' or 'access' of these IPs. Haven't we already proven in the court of law that IP Address does not equal a person? How come that is? Well, it's because people can hide under VPNs, they could use proxies, they could use open wi-fi, they can change their address by ISP request .etc
They aren't assigned permanent IPs and they aren't tied to their IPs through identity.
This whole effort is just a waste of their time, proving once again, that they're desperate for anything.
On the other hand, the r/piracy subreddit is full of entitled jackasses who pick you apart for stupid arbitrary reasons. I've posted news posts on there before as a means to inform the pirating community as to what to look for in case things could go wrong in the future, as a lead. And any time, people kept commenting like "WHUT DUS DIS HAVE TU DU WITH PIWACY?!" every fucking time.
I'd spell it out for them, I get downvoted, I get my post reported and it's removed. Seriously, fuck all of those e-begging pieces of shit.
Maybe I am wrong but it seems like some of y’all aren’t reading the article. They aren’t going after IP’s in order to identify the individuals. They are trying to prove that frontier is not being proactive in their efforts to prevent piracy. The IP’s are to prove that it is going through frontier. Reddit-Frontier-Pirated content.
I am not saying I am ok with that, because I’m not, but what many of y’all are describing is happening is not exactly what is happening here.
IPs alone aren't enough. IPs tied with usernames can be a lot more compelling.
Legally, not really. A username is also not a person.
This is a fishing expedition by the producers, nothing more.
From the article:
Another reason Reddit refuses to comply with the film producers' request is that “none of the posts depicted in Exhibit A to the subpoena appear to relate to movies that we understand are the subject of" the copyright infringement claims.
The users made no reference to pirating IP owned by the producers.
They want to do like they did with The Hurt Locker all those years ago: movie didn't pull in what they wanted it to, so they got a list of IPs from setting up a seeder, took those to the ISPs (who turned over customer names and addresses asap) and sent scare letters to all the customer addresses they received threatening to sue each person in each household for millions per number of copies they estimated (made up the difference in cost vs actuals plus a bonus on earnings for mgmt) were shared across torrents. Unless you paid them a couple thousand dollars instead.
They knew most would throw the letter away like the garbage it was, but a lot of people paid. Especially elderly folks whose grandkids came over and used the computer to do it. It works!
I believe under the first amendment in the US Constitution and section 2 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in Canada you cannot silence someone’s freedom of speech/expression just because they discussed something you don’t like. This legal claim is bullshit right from the start due to constitutional protections
Also, online discussion is not evidence. To wit:
I murdered seven people before breakfast today. I love murdering so much!
Even confessions are not necessarily airtight. For example:
I shot JFK.
Police, when you get here, please knock; the doorbell's broken.
That's not really how that works.
The Constitution only protects you from the government.
After reading the article, it looks like the studios want the IPs to show that Frontier is allowing piracy on their ISP and they claim they don't want it for financial compensation.
This is true.
What I also gathered from the article (for further context) is that these are the same lawyers who tried to the other 2 cases of piracy on reddit. This time the argument is that it is not a violation of the first amendment right because they want the data to go after the ISP
End state capitalism, the coportocracy / oligarchy using the legal system they control to wield the fascist police forces against the people who don't behave like they're told. Meanwhile, taxing what little those people have to pay the salaries of those forces abusing them.
I mean, the studios are doing it right and following SOP.
They wrote the DCMA, used the congress they bought to pass it, the president the bought to sign it into law, and now will use the FBI and local militarized police to impose their will by force.
Constituon was an obstacle they did away with when they bought the Supreme Court.
oh, boy, am I ever glad I overwrote all of my comments before deleting my account...
They will get my VPN address so good luck finding me.. 🤣🤣
🤣🤣
Right? These fucking morons can't even write/produce good movies most of the time.
They are going about it the wrong way with reddit. All they gotta do is show the $$$$ and spez will bend right over with that information. After all that's all he seems to see.
Why people insists using reddit is beyond me
most reasonable corporation
They do realize IP can be changed by just resetring your router, right?
Not everyone. Also, they should just give them their private range IPs for the lols (192.168.0.0/16, 10.0.0.0/16 etc.).
Your ISP will still have a log of which IP was assigned to you at any date and time
Those are notoriously shitty and unreliable.
Technically even with that list the studios have no power to do anything about it. It's illegal to redistribute other people's property, but most of those distributors are already running a virtual machine behind a strict NAT behind a VPN behind another VPN so good fucking luck, Hollywood.
The people merely discussing piracy have done no wrongdoings in the eyes of the law. Get fucked.
In fact, the Copyright Act of 1976 bans redistribution but not obtainment itself, so as long as you're not sending what you stole to other people you haven't broken a single law.
I'm so glad I don't use that shit platform anymore.
🤣 Fuck of reddit, they're handing over that data without putting up a fight.
