The latest print edition of Which?, a prominent consumer group, has raised fresh concerns about the fallibility of evidence against "suspected" illegal file sharers that is being provided to UK broadband ISPs via organisations like ACS:Law solicitors. So much doubt has been cast that even the UK's Internet Service Providers Association ( ISPA ) has now raised its concerns.
ACS:Law is known to be targeting several thousand UK individuals with settlement requests (to avoid court action) of nearly £700, though Which? points to a sample of 20 cases that could be catching innocents. The situation is similar to that faced by lawyers Davenport Lyons last year, which found themselves being reported to the Solicitors Regulatory Authority (SRA) for "excessive" and "bullying" conduct (original news).
The magazine article suggests that ACS:Law has effectively picked up where the controversial Davenport Lyons left off and appears to be making some of the same mistakes, prompting the ISPA to say that even they are "not confident in [ACS:Law's] ability to identify [ILLEGAL] users". Typically such organisations track abuse by monitoring the Internet Protocol (IP) number/address of online users, which is assigned to your computer each time you go online.
Much as we've said before, IP addresses alone are not an effective way of determining a computer user’s true identity. They can easily be faked, hijacked, redirected and generally abused and used in ways that the systems employed by such trackers cannot detect. The only real way to be sure is to inspect a person’s hard disk.
For the ISP this presents a dilemma because while it may be possible to tell whether somebody was downloading from a P2P service on any given time and date, it is another matter entirely to identify the content of that download; doing so would require more aggressive monitoring (Deep Packet Inspection) and turn ISPs into police. It’s also incredibly easy to encrypt a P2P download.
The situation is such that if you happen to be downloading a legitimate update from a BitTorrent source, such as the latest World of Warcraft (WoW) patch, at the same time as somebody is hijacking your IP for an illegal one then it could be very difficult to prove your innocence.
ACS:Law is known to be targeting several thousand UK individuals with settlement requests (to avoid court action) of nearly £700, though Which? points to a sample of 20 cases that could be catching innocents. The situation is similar to that faced by lawyers Davenport Lyons last year, which found themselves being reported to the Solicitors Regulatory Authority (SRA) for "excessive" and "bullying" conduct (original news).
The magazine article suggests that ACS:Law has effectively picked up where the controversial Davenport Lyons left off and appears to be making some of the same mistakes, prompting the ISPA to say that even they are "not confident in [ACS:Law's] ability to identify [ILLEGAL] users". Typically such organisations track abuse by monitoring the Internet Protocol (IP) number/address of online users, which is assigned to your computer each time you go online.
Much as we've said before, IP addresses alone are not an effective way of determining a computer user’s true identity. They can easily be faked, hijacked, redirected and generally abused and used in ways that the systems employed by such trackers cannot detect. The only real way to be sure is to inspect a person’s hard disk.
For the ISP this presents a dilemma because while it may be possible to tell whether somebody was downloading from a P2P service on any given time and date, it is another matter entirely to identify the content of that download; doing so would require more aggressive monitoring (Deep Packet Inspection) and turn ISPs into police. It’s also incredibly easy to encrypt a P2P download.
The situation is such that if you happen to be downloading a legitimate update from a BitTorrent source, such as the latest World of Warcraft (WoW) patch, at the same time as somebody is hijacking your IP for an illegal one then it could be very difficult to prove your innocence.
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Comments: 12
AgrajagPosted: 30 June, 2009 - 10:54 AM
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Of course the media companies will be reluctant to stop using IP addresses the catch illegal downloaders, as it's the only way they have of tracing offenders.
They probably wont care that for every 100 downloaders they trace, there will be a few that are completely innocent.
SPPosted: 30 June, 2009 - 11:45 AM
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Would be a lot easier to just charge a tax of a few pound per month and give everyone free access to any media. This gets rid of all the tracking, DPI, network resources and administration required. The only thing to work out is how to divide the money between the media creators - but I'm sure thats a much easier task than tracking/identifying/prosecuting users. It would also cost next to nothing to implement, in comparison to the hardware needed to setup DPI etc - and that wont be a full-proof method anyway. This would also save the tax payers cash. Have i made that sound simple or am I missing something the government need to consider?
MarkJPosted: 30 June, 2009 - 12:45 PM
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I doubt it would be an easier task :). There are literally millions of music, films, games and software applications to consider. It also runs the risk of legitimising piracy. Not to mention that you'd effectively be charging legal surfers for the crimes of illegal ones
.
AgrajagPosted: 30 June, 2009 - 2:50 PM
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Maybe consumers could purchase some of digital licence.
For example, If I purchased a licence for Transformers, that would allow me to obtain a digital copy of the movie from whatever source I choose. That copy could come from a download, or even making a copy of a neighbours DVD.
Whatever happens, these media companies do need to change the way they do business.
SPPosted: 30 June, 2009 - 3:07 PM
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I think an official on shop from each ISP would do the job. you click your purchase, download the content, and the ISP holds a record of which software/film/music etc has been downloaded and the fees are settled accordingly. I think it would be a lot cheaper and easier to implement than having to spend billions on network infrastructure to support DPI. Every single packet would need to be checked. Also, if this happened, it wouldn't be illegal to download. What options are there?
- Spend billions of tax payers money on hardware and prosecute people for silly sums of money. allowing record labels and films to charge expensive prices.
- Tax everyone and share it out among creators at a reasonable cost.
I think the main objective is to make media affordable.
MarkJPosted: 30 June, 2009 - 5:07 PM
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I quite like Agrajag's idea, though it would still suffer from the "hard to police" angle. Alternatively the principal idea of one massive shop sounds great (Amazon?) but don't forget about all the other online shops who make money and would suddenly be crushed by that.
CMPosted: 1 July, 2009 - 1:18 AM
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I'm one of the lucky few accused FALSELY by this ACS:law firm, this is some good news in a situation whereby i am expected to prove i am innocent and assumed guilty. Thank you IPSA.
otesterPosted: 1 July, 2009 - 1:19 AM
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You all seem to be forgetting that the business model needs to change, not P2P. Anything else, and we go deeper into fascism.
Artists and the movie industries are fine, if the software industry wants better profits then they better start producing better stuff and reduce prices, Valve & 'indie' developers are an excellent example of this.
MarkJPosted: 1 July, 2009 - 7:34 AM
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Except have you seen how much Valve charge for new full game releases on Stream (digital distribution platform)? Indie developers are well supported but AAA titles, once EU VAT is included, can be up to £15 or in one case even £20 more expensive than the retail version (retail also comes with a manual and no need to download the content).
otesterPosted: 1 July, 2009 - 1:00 PM
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@MarkJ
I was referring only to Valve's games, not the other digital releases on steam which are most probably dictated by the other publishers (EA etc.)
Also Valve does a lot of bargain weekends, I got L4D for £14 instead of the usual £27.
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