[HN Gopher] YouTube Class Action: Same IP Address Upload Pirate ...
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YouTube Class Action: Same IP Address Upload Pirate Movies and File
DMCA Notices
Author : parsecs
Score : 228 points
Date : 2020-12-21 19:23 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (torrentfreak.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (torrentfreak.com)
| ArtDev wrote:
| There are multiple good reasons to enable wifi guest network from
| home. It is nice thing to do; like in case someone gets in a car
| accident nearby and doesn't have cell coverage/service.
|
| I have mine throttled and they can't access the rest of home
| network.
|
| Having a guest network also means you are not liable if someone
| misuses it:
|
| https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/08/open-wifi-and-copyrigh....
| skinnymuch wrote:
| Will your ISP or whoever is suing really care? It'll cost you
| too much to defend yourself, I'd think.
| sn_master wrote:
| 911 doesn't need cell coverage from your specific provider or
| even a SIM card to be in the phone. It'll use whatever cellular
| network is there.
|
| https://www.scienceabc.com/innovation/how-can-mobile-phones-...
|
| If that was your sole reason for having it enabled, you can
| turn it off now.
|
| Public places can easily claim its not them, but for a house I
| can imagine it can get tricky, specially if its long-term abuse
| by a neighbor.
|
| Case in point:
|
| https://www.registercitizen.com/news/article/Man-mistakenly-...
|
| The truth was found after all, but the loss of reputation and
| legal stress are not worth it, specially in your Good Samaritan
| scenario.
|
| As a side note, I like that almost all new cars will
| automatically call the police for you when they sense an
| accident, using built-in cellular systems.
| toast0 wrote:
| > According to the Google-owned platform, the same IP address
| used to upload 'pirate' movies to the platform also sent DMCA
| notices targeting the same batch of content.
|
| Could be CGNAT? (I mean, it probably isn't, but IPv4 exhaustion
| is real!)
| sn_master wrote:
| They can look into more logs and check fingerprinting elements
| (screen resolution, browser, OS, time zone etc) and they'll
| very likely all match up. Timezone alone actually should be
| sufficient to convince most doubters.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| I wonder what ISP has customers in both Pakistan and Hungary...
| indymike wrote:
| More likely a VPN endpoint.
| justinlink wrote:
| Prenda Law used a similar tactic when they uploaded films to
| pirate bay and then sued anyone who downloaded them.
|
| You can bet if Schneider loses the case, she'll be left holding
| the bag as Virgin Islands-based Pirate Monitor Ltd disappears.
|
| Creative folks who hire these law firms that specialize in pirate
| hunters or "monitoring" companies need to realize they have
| incentives to pirate your content to keep your business. And when
| you sue people off information they provided you, it's your name
| on the lawsuit. Sure you can try to sue the companies after you
| lose, but good luck with that.
| runlevel1 wrote:
| It was even shadier than that. They were also producing content
| solely to upload to The Pirate Bay and sue whoever downloaded
| it.
|
| After years of running the scheme and raking in millions, they
| finally got caught when a defense attorney noticed some
| oddities while trying to identify who Prenda was representing.
|
| The Prenda attorneys continued to be evasive about the identity
| of the complainant in court. Pulling that thread eventually
| unveiled their shenanigans. The judge then referred the Prenda
| attorneys to the US Attorney for criminal indictment.
|
| Two of the attorneys behind Prenda were convicted and sentenced
| last year: One for 5 years, the other for 14. [1][2]
|
| [1]: https://www.justice.gov/usao-mn/pr/florida-attorney-
| sentence...
|
| [2]: https://www.startribune.com/judge-throws-the-book-at-
| minneap...
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| This reminds me of something hilarious happening on Twitch that I
| recently learned from younger relatives.
|
| There are normal people on the game 'Among Us' playing
| copyrighted music into their mic, so that if a celebrity Twitch
| streamer gets too close to this individual there is a chance
| their account would get banned due to the DMCA.
|
| They are using DMCA as an in-game defensive aurora. Ha
| josefresco wrote:
| Isn't mic support 3rd party only? I don't understand how this
| would help a "normal person" playing Among Us - care to
| explain? My kids play but I've never heard them using a mic.
| corobo wrote:
| There's a mod that adds proximity voice chat to the game
| which a few Twitch streamers have started using after
| exhausting the vanilla game and house rules
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > There are normal people on the game 'Among Us' playing
| copyrighted music into their mic, so that if a celebrity Twitch
| streamer gets too close to this individual there is a chance
| their account would get banned due to the DMCA.
|
| You mean "due to copyright law". The DMCA doesn't do anything
| to encourage the ban, it just stops Twitch from being liable
| for copyright infringement the moment the copyrighted content
| is on the stream at all.
| devwastaken wrote:
| DMCA is the copyright law in question.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| No, DMCA _weakens_ the incentive for Twitch to implement a
| policy like this compared to copyright law outside of the
| DMCA. With the DMCA, serial offenders are just a
| bureaucratic headache as Twitch has to deal with takedowns.
| Without the DMCA, Twitch would be potentially liable for
| copyright infringement at the first offense by a streamer,
| and facing much greater risk of large damages for
| contributory infringement for continuing to fail to prevent
| repeat violations by known serial offenders.
|
| The copyright law motivating the ban policy is the basic
| exclusive rights of copyright, not the DMCA.
| toast0 wrote:
| It's not really copyright law either, it's just Twitch's
| policy.
|
| DMCA provides a safe harbor for Twitch as long as they take
| down content in a timely fashion when notitified; they can
| put it back if counter-notified, and they don't have an
| obligation of prior restraint. They just don't want to deal
| with the hassle involved with accounts that get a lot of DMCA
| notices, so if you do, they kick you off.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Fair point. My point was just that copyright law outside of
| the DMCA is the legal impetus here; the DMCA, if anything,
| weakens the incentives to a ban policy, it doesn't create
| them.
| boxmonster wrote:
| I love how creative people are on the internet. I read
| something amazing like this just about everyday and is part of
| the reason I spend so much time on the net.
| recursive wrote:
| Any reason to believe people are any less creative off the
| internet?
| theshrike79 wrote:
| The same is a bit of a joke for recording "home videos" with
| your partner.
|
| Always play copyrighted music and prominently display Disney
| properties like Mickey Mouse in the video. If it leaks, it'll
| be taken down at the speed of light by The Mouse's lawyer army
| :D
| sn_master wrote:
| Unless the website it got leaked into ends in ".ru"...
| pas wrote:
| So just scream Navalny instead of whatever you'd scream.
| function_seven wrote:
| Is this like some real life polyglot thing? Instead of a
| program that is valid perl, python, bash, erlang, etc.;
| you "taint" your home movies to cover as many
| jurisdictions as possible?
|
| I'll try. Play the Frozen soundtrack, scream "Navalny",
| have a Winnie the Pooh plush doll in the frame, do some
| questionable saluting, and feature a poster-sized image
| from South Park S5E4 on the wall.
| aryamaan wrote:
| There is a joke in India. If you are in Airbnb and are
| concerned if there is a camera recording you, just play any
| song from T-Series label. They will find every corner of
| internet to get it removed.
| sn_master wrote:
| YouTube just mutes the music of that section of the video
| automatically. They only take the video down if there is
| video too. Maybe they used to take the whole video down in
| the old times, but nowadays they never do that.
| zbowling wrote:
| same joke here to play disney music in the background of any
| risky videos you send your significant other so if they
| upload it to a revenge porn site later, Disney will take it
| down.
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| Will be interesting to see how this pans out. A similar ploy was
| committed by the infamous Prenda Law firm, resulting in their
| eventual imprisonment:
|
| https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/07/prenda-law-porn-...
| xg15 wrote:
| Genuine question: How exactly do you get access to Content ID? Is
| there some kind of regular process or do you need to have a
| special partnership with Google?
| msla wrote:
| Now they'll have a huge come-to-Jesus moment about how IP
| addresses aren't sufficient to identify individuals.
| cwkoss wrote:
| When an agent acting on behalf of an IP holder uploads that IP
| anywhere it should be legally construed as granting an implicit
| license to use that IP within the context of that upload.
| sn_master wrote:
| What does "accessing content ID" mean? The article says they did
| all that to gain that access, but doesn't mention what is it or
| what do they gain by it.
| ev1 wrote:
| CMIIW, by being trustworthy enough to get access to content ID
| you can automate takedowns at will or demonetise videos at will
| instead of via reviewed DMCAs.
| sn_master wrote:
| huh, now their YT username makes sense (RansomNova). the
| potential of extortion if they get that kind of power is
| incredible.
|
| Edit: Apparently its not the first time this has been abused
|
| https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20190205/10064941534/youtu.
| ..
| generalizations wrote:
| I wonder if this means "double jepoardy" is in play: once youtube
| gets this easily-dismissed lawsuit cleared away, no one can sue
| youtube again about state of DMCA takedowns on the site.
| [deleted]
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > I wonder if this means "double jepoardy" is in play: once
| youtube gets this easily-dismissed lawsuit cleared away, no one
| can sue youtube again about state of DMCA takedowns on the
| site.
|
| No, because:
|
| (1) "Double jeopardy" applies to criminal charges only.
|
| (2) "Double jeopardy" applies to charges for conduct that is
| part of the same transaction, not a similar pattern of conduct
| carried out at different times against different people, much
| less suits whose similarity is that they are merely in the same
| broad category ("has something to do with how DMCA takedown
| notices are handled".)
|
| As a general rule, you can't lose the right to file a civil
| suit because of a lawsuit you didn't participate in. (Class
| action might seem to be an exception, but class members are
| viewed as participants unless they opt out, so its technically
| not.)
| Justsignedup wrote:
| DJ is for criminal situations, and only for specific instances.
| For example:
|
| If I am accused of killing a man, and I am proven innocent, I
| cannot be accused of killing THAT SPECIFIC MAN again. If I was
| to go and kill a man, I cannot claim "but I was already
| exonarated for killing a man". Because it is not the same
| crime. DJ is all about being prosecuted for _the same instance
| of a crime_ more than once. Not that once I broke a law, I
| cannot break it again in the future.
|
| This can apply to civil cases if a judge dismisses the case
| with prejudice, which means that this specific case cannot be
| put to trial again. Sometimes a judge dismisses the case
| without prejudice which indicates that the judge felt there was
| a case, but not enough supporting evidence yet. If a case is
| not resolved, it goes up the chain of courts, eventually a
| court may reject the case, in which case a lower court's ruling
| takes hold. If a case is resolved I cannot go to trial for that
| same case again. Nor can I use the exact same evidence for a
| new case. Or rather... I can but it will get dismissed with
| prejudice.
|
| There is technically nothing stopping me from filing cases
| against you which were already resolved to harass you. But
| after like 2 times my lawyer's license will be revoked and
| possibly I will have a case against me for obvious harassment
| forcing me to cover any legal expenses. Overall courts really
| really don't like it when you act in bad faith, even if not
| criminally.
| naniwaduni wrote:
| Emphasizing "that specific man" is misleading. The only
| reason double jeopardy is likely to apply in this
| particularly situation is that most people don't generally
| die twice. For any other crime, you can most certainly be
| accused of perpetrating it upon a specific person multiple
| times.
| [deleted]
| naniwaduni wrote:
| Double jeopardy does not mean that, after being acquitted of
| your first murder, you're immune to prosecution for a
| subsequent killing spree.
| anotherman554 wrote:
| Though there is a dumb movie called "double jeopardy" where
| the premise is that it works that way.
| jacurtis wrote:
| Actually in the movie [SPOILERS AHEAD] a wealthy man,
| wanting to start a new life, decides to fake his death and
| frame his wife for his murder.
|
| His wife is subsequently tried for the murder that she did
| not commit, and found guilty. She then goes to prison and
| serves out the sentence for this murder. While in prison
| she learns that her husband is not actually dead and
| instead had framed her in order to start a new life. So
| after she is released from prison, having completed the
| sentence for her crime, she then proceeds to track down and
| publicly murder her husband.
|
| Because of Double Jeopardy, she can not be tried again for
| the same crime of murdering her husband. She had already
| been found guilty of it and had already served the sentence
| for the crime. She argues that it is not possible to murder
| the same person twice. So she is simply acting on the crime
| that she had already been convicted and punished for.
|
| If she were to go murder her friend or colleague after
| getting out of prison that would be a different murder and
| Double Jeopardy wouldn't apply. But murdering the husband
| that she has already served the sentence for is the same
| crime she already was found guilty of and can not be
| convicted of again.
|
| A Famous REAL LIFE example of this would be OJ Simpson. He
| was found NOT GUILTY in the 1994 murders of his ex-wife and
| friend. Since then he has basically publicly confessed to
| having murdered them (via an interview with FOX). He has
| also written a book where he writes in detail how he "would
| have" murdered them. His book publisher has also come out
| and claimed that he admitted to the murder to his
| publisher. The reason he can be so careless about these
| confessions is because he can not be tried for this crime
| again. He was already tried for it and found "not guilty"
| so even if new evidence (or a full-blown confession) comes
| to light, he can not be tried for it again under the
| protection of Double Jeopardy.
| zeroimpl wrote:
| They were not acquitted for the first murder, they served
| the full sentence. Then later subsequently threatened to
| murder the same individual whom they had supposedly already
| murdered.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Yeah, DJ still doesn't work that way. That would be a
| distinct offense (now, it would be _inconsistent_ , since
| the same person can only be killed once), but just as
| there have been, IIRC, a few instances where multiple
| _different_ people were convicted of murdering the same
| person (like, directly, not some of them under vicarious
| liability rules that allow someone other than the
| proximate killer to be convicted of the offenses) in
| different trials despite the fact that it is logically
| inconsistent that all of those convictions could be
| accurate, it is quite possible to be (wrongfully)
| convicted of murdering someone and then convicted
| (rightfully) later if you then actually murder them
| thinking that having been previously convicted of doing
| that would give you a free pass.
|
| The same evidence used _against_ you in your second trial
| might be useful in getting any lasting legal consequences
| of your first convinction expunged and negated as a
| wrongful conviction, but that's likely to be of limited
| value if you are convicted of the second crime (though it
| might be useful to negate three-strikes or other repeat-
| offense enhancements.)
| not2b wrote:
| It's still stupid: they could be prosecuted for murder,
| because if they were wrongly convicted for a murder that
| allegedly happened in 2003, a murder that happened in
| 2020 would be a different offense, even if it's the same
| alleged victim.
| parliament32 wrote:
| Can you imagine if you got a robbery charge dismissed once,
| you'd be able to rob as many people as you wanted for the rest
| of your life?
| cduzz wrote:
| I spent some time at a university and got to field DMCA
| complaints. Typically they'd list the file getting shared and a
| timestamp (often without a timezone) and the university IP/port.
| They never included their own IP address...
|
| Of course, the traffic was behind a firewall. I had the logs but
| wasn't about to accuse / punish anyone when there were a bunch of
| potential students behind any given complaint, and without the
| other end of the connection I couldn't identify which one for
| certain.
|
| Funny thing is they refused to give their source IP because they
| didn't trust us to not leak it to whatever pirates to put on a
| blocklist.
|
| But of course, I had their source IP because I had the network
| traffic. Were I in kahoots I'd have just listed all 5 of the
| possible snitching peers to the badguys.
|
| Shady and incompetent then, same now I guess.
| ngokevin wrote:
| At my university of 20K+, we automated everything as student
| devs. Parsed the DMCA emails, followed the traces through
| various types of networks and network logs (public network with
| leased IPs, dorm networks, MAC addresses, etc) to see who was
| holding the IP at the time, responded to the DMCA email, and
| sent students automated emails with warnings and quizzes and
| reprimands. We put on management frontend on top of it to
| display data and let admins do manual actions.
| mulmen wrote:
| I worked in tech support at my university and also handled this
| type of request. Typically just triage to the network team
| because they didn't give students access to the network logs.
|
| We had strict requirements on not exposing student data. On the
| other hand we had to minimize the University's risk. This meant
| at least a nastygram to the offending student. I think there
| was some kind of three strike system where students may get
| booted off the campus network.
|
| The whole setup was pretty slick back then so if that happened
| they really wouldn't be able to do anything. Like they wouldn't
| even be able to get a wired connection in the library.
|
| Was a pretty neat place to work actually. Still have fond
| memories. Buy me a beer some time and ask me about working
| phones and email in ~2007 after news was published that Sarah
| Palin attended the Univeristy.
| riknos314 wrote:
| Similar at my uni. Our particular system handled tracking
| computers by MAC address. For absolutely no reason other than
| being a bored CS student working in IT I scraped the MAC
| addresses of all the uni-owned lab computers from the
| hardware inventory list, and configured my linux install to
| pick a random one to spoof at boot.
| andrewnicolalde wrote:
| LOL, but what would happen if that computer was in active
| use?
| wiredfool wrote:
| Only a problem if you're on the same subnet.
| nonamenoslogan wrote:
| Interesting, I too worked in tech support at that University
| in 2007--though I left 3 years ago. We could know each other,
| what a small world.
| Causality1 wrote:
| Frankly I'm surprised it was that lenient. The last time I
| was in university it took less than twenty minutes of
| torrenting to get my laptop's MAC address permanently banned
| from the wifi.
| cduzz wrote:
| The system I setup would quickly detect p2p (and some
| worm/virus stuff) and put you in a quarantine vlan (for
| virus) or just drop 2-3% of your packets (p2p). That
| particular network didn't have infinite bandwidth...
|
| As far as actually investigating / reporting file sharing
| stuff, we'd sometimes track down the students and let them
| know that they were suspected of doing things that were
| against the extremely lenient network access policies but
| we certainly never cooperated with the (non-LEO) agencies
| reporting.
|
| The thing that was most irritating to me was that if they
| were reporting abuse, if we had enough information to do
| something about it we'd obviously _also_ have the remote IP
| of the entity reporting the abuse yet they refused to offer
| it even when we 'd send them "we have 3 potential people,
| with 3 remote IP addresses ; which is yours?" which would
| always just get the same vaguely threatening boiler
| plate...
| dmix wrote:
| Punishing students that aggressively over DMCA requests
| sounds like a terrible idea. They are so easy to abuse.
|
| It also seems like it would affect their academic ability
| because they pirated a few movies. Who cares.
| stx wrote:
| I was at a school who was just starting to do some similar
| things. They had students register the mac of their devices
| (wired and wireless). So they identified students by mac.
| With this it was actually pretty easy for a bad actor to
| frame someone else by just changing their mac to another
| device on the network.
|
| Same school would also lock your university account after 3
| bad password attempts and you could only unlock in person
| at the library help desk. Again you can see the problem.
| mulmen wrote:
| We investigated each accusation and the strikes were only
| applied if the student was actually violating the terms of
| use of the network. Like _actually_ pirating stuff. I
| forget what it took to lose network access but it wasn 't
| something you could do on accident.
|
| Every "strike" would have included a warning.
|
| I mean they let us run Counter Strike servers out of our
| dorm rooms. It was a pretty relaxed environment really.
| jdmichal wrote:
| Not to mention that commercial ISPs also follow a three-
| strike system -- unless that's changed. I haven't been
| keeping track since it's not relevant to me. So it sounds
| like the only difference is that you all did a bit of
| investigation before issuing a strike.
|
| My friend was in a brand new dorm built for honors
| students. Network topology was quickly worked out that
| each floor was immediately visible, and I believe other
| floors could be found with some work. There were several
| 24-hour Halo lobbies going.
| mulmen wrote:
| We were like a non-terrible ISP basically. Our job was
| primarily to facilitate learning. Secondary was to
| protect the university. Students pay the bills so their
| interests were always put first and we would go to bat
| for students if necessary. I don't recall if we used a
| three strike system or if it was more case-by-case.
| antman wrote:
| I had created a script tha found the common external ips that
| appeared around those timestamps and blocked them. Problem
| mostly solved.
| im3w1l wrote:
| > one of the 'RansomNova' users that had been uploading clips via
| IP addresses in Pakistan logged into their YouTube account from a
| computer connected to the Internet via an IP address in Hungary
|
| Can someone parse this for me?
|
| Edit: A RansomNovaX-account was usually accessed from Pakistan
| ip. Then it was accessed from Hungarian ip.
|
| I kept trying to read it as "users that had been (uploading clips
| via IP addresses in Pakistan [while] logged into their YouTube
| account from a computer) connected to the Internet via an IP
| address in Hungary"
| vineyardmike wrote:
| RansomNova is the pirate and "is in pakistan"
|
| Copyright owner is "in hungary", and uses a hungary IP address
| to file DMCA claim against video uploaded from RansomNova.
|
| RansomNova suddenly logs in (to their youtube account) from IP
| address used by copyright owner, at the same time.
|
| Therefore, RansomNova and CopyrightOwner are in same place at
| same time, using same IP address -> Somehow connected to each
| other -> Therefore bad faith DMCA claim.
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(page generated 2020-12-21 23:00 UTC)