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Originally Posted by Mr Angry
Which court is that win by default recorded at?
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Small Claims Court.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Reedy
As you can change your IP by changing the MAC address and powering off your modem, surely this means you *could* inherit an IP of a heavy downloader and subsequently end up with a court summons even IF it's nothing to do with you.
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That happens all the time.
The problem is that BitTorrent trackers and eDonkey/eMule servers only get updates very infrequently from clients. For BT this can be as little as once every 24 hours. As such, any information, such as lists of client IP addresses, contain information which may be up to 24 hours out of date.
Also, the trackers/servers do not bother to verify IP addresses at all. There are publicised campaigns of seeding them with random IP addresses assigned to major ISPs, in order to make legal action very difficult and thwart attempts to gather information.
Even if they download data from an IP address, they still can't prove much. An IP address does not identify an individual or a computer. Also, it does not rule out hacking, such as a trojan inside the users network or unauthorised use of wifi. This latter point is a major problem, especially as last week a practical attack against WPA with TKIP was made public and many ISPs have supplied thousands of routers pre-configured with that system. Within range of my house there are six networks which are either unencrypted (2) or using WEP/WPA-TKIP (4) which I could gain access to in minutes if I wanted to.
That is also quite a good defence. If I were accused of sharing a copyrighted file, I would point out the number of vulnerable wifi networks within range of my house and how effortlessly I could access them, and then ask the accuser why I would risk using my own connection when I could just as easily use someone else's.
Even if they could somehow rule all that out, downloading a chunk of a file does not prove much either. Unless they have the whole file, downloaded entirely from one IP address (virtually impossible if your client software only seeds to a 1:1 ratio) it is very difficult to prove that it is indeed the file they think it is.
We have also seen the "leecher mod" defence used recently, where the accused showed that she was using a modified client which does not upload any data to other clients; it only downloads. Since only uploading is enough for them to win in court (downloading for personal use would generally not be enough to claim damages).
What we need is a court case where these arguments are made. That would make all of their "evidence" worthless and hopefully put a stop to this scam.