Report released detailing congressional employees' illegal downloading habits, CSI and Glee among most popular

We don't often discuss intellectual property issues here; though acts of copyright violation are a crime, the cases usually play out in civil suits. Also, there are many excellent blogs that already discuss the complexities of IP law, so we generally just avoid it altogether. However, there was one interesting release yesterday that I thought it worth noting.

Scaneye, a service which "monitors BitTorrent network mainly for statistic purposes," released a report today showing a list of TV shows and movies downloaded over the House of Representatives' network. Among the more popular were CSI: New York, Glee, and Australian soap opera Home and Away.

It's always interesting to see what is learned about the Internet activities of government employees. For example, the Missile Defense Agency had to remind employees why they should not watch porn at work only a few months back:

These actions are not only unprofessional, they reflect time taken away from designated duties, are in clear violation of federal and DoD and regulations, consume network resources and can compromise the security of the network though the introduction of malware or malicious code.

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Highlighted Paper: "The Case Against Combating BitTorrent Piracy Through Mass John Doe Copyright Infringement Lawsuits"

This month I'd like to highlight another Michigan Law Review article that is germane to this blog's focus. The article is: Sean B. Karunaratne, The Case Against Combating BitTorrent Piracy Through Mass John Doe Copyright Infringement Lawsuits, 111 Mich. L. Rev. 283 (2012).  I have seen much in the technology blog-o-sphere about this topic, typically highlighting some of the less than ethical tactics that these mass lawsuits engage in, but I can't remember seeing much in scholarly work on the subject.
That defendants may likely be successful arguing improper joinder or lack of personal jurisdiction is the thrust of the piece. The abstract is below:

Today, the most popular peer-to-peer file-sharing medium is the BitTorrent protocol. While BitTorrent itself is not illegal, many of its users unlawfully distribute copyrighted works. Some copyright holders enforce their rights by suing numerous infringing BitTorrent users in a single mass lawsuit. Because the copyright holder initially knows the putative defendants only by their IP addresses, it identifies the defendants anonymously in the complaint as John Does. The copyright holder then seeks a federal court's permission to engage in early discovery for the purpose of learning the identities behind the IP addresses. Once the plaintiff knows the identities of the John Does, it contacts them with a settlement demand. But often before such discovery is granted, the anonymous defendants have been improperly joined, and the lawsuit has been filed in a court that lacks personal jurisdiction over the defendants. This presents no problem to the plaintiff because the plaintiff does not intend for the lawsuit to go to trial. However, the defendants effectively have no choice but to succumb to the plaintiff's settlement demand because settling will be less costly than fighting the action. This Note argues that courts should not grant expedited discovery in such procedurally deficient lawsuits. To rein in these mass lawsuits, this Note argues that mass copyright infringement suits should meet certain minimum joinder and personal jurisdiction requirements before courts grant expedited discovery.

I think the strong-arm settlement tactics of these copyright litigation factories needs to be reigned in, especially in the case of pornographic works; the embarrassment of the consumer is often a boon to these outfits bordering on unjust enrichment. Copyright owners should have recourse for infringement, but not at the expense of cannibalizing individuals and legal rules in the process of doing so. Thankfully, there has been judicial push-back on these types of approaches.

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Magistrate orders individual suits in mass copyright violation case, evaluates use of IP address as evidence

A federal magistrate has determined that lawsuits for downloading copyrighted adult pornography on peer-to-peer networks against unknown defendants must be brought individually. In re Bittorrent Adult Film Copyright Infringement Cases, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 61447 (E.D.N.Y. 2012). Many recent cases involved thousands of IP addresses being given to the court with no further evidence, prompting the judge to evaluate whether an IP address alone is sufficient to state a claim. Because there is no other remedy, the plaintiffs should be allowed to proceed.

The plaintiffs sought to require ISPs to identify their customers by the IP addresses that had been found downloading the videos on BitTorrent. Several of the John Does had sought to quash for a variety of reasons, including:

• Being at work at the time of the download
• The account had been closed because it was compromised by a hacker
• Doe was "an octogenarian with neither the wherewithal nor the interest in using BitTorrent to download the file"
• Downloading the video was "contrary to [a Doe's] 'religious, moral, ethical, and personal views'" and her wireless router was unsecured

The magistrate also analyzed whether an IP address alone is sufficient for such an allegation:

The complaints assert that the defendants — identified only by IP address — were the individuals who downloaded the subject "work" and participated in the BitTorrent swarm. However, the assumption that the person who pays for Internet access at a given location is the same individual who allegedly downloaded a single sexually explicit film is tenuous, and one that has grown more so over time. An IP address provides only the location at which one of any number of computer devices may be deployed, much like a telephone number can be used for any number of telephones.... Thus, it is no more likely that the subscriber to an IP address carried out a particular computer function — here the purported illegal downloading of a single pornographic film — than to say an individual who pays the telephone bill made a specific telephone call.

The court also acknowledged that wireless routers make this assumption even stronger. "Different family members, or even visitors, could have performed the alleged downloads." As a result, an IP address does not sufficiently identify the alleged copyright violator.

Distinguished from this scenario was the case in Arista Records (2d Cir. 2010). There, the defendant was using a university network where the exact user could easily be determined. They had also downloaded hundreds of files, making "it far more likely that the subscriber to the IP address would have conducted or at least been aware of the illegal downloading."

However, because the plaintiffs would be left without a remedy to protect their works, they should be allowed to proceed - but not with swarm joinder which is a "waste of judicial resources." Future actions must be filed against individual defendants "so as to avoid unfair outcomes, improper joinder and waste of judicial resources, and to ensure the proper payment of filing fees." Thus, the judge recommended that the complaints be dismissed to all defendants other than John Doe I.

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Tech Watch: How to track Internet activity back to a user

Be sure to visit Cybercrime Review's YouTube channel in the future for more videos like this. If you have any suggestions for video topics, post your ideas in the comments below.

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Site tracks torrent users by IP address, allows database search

A new website has file sharers terrified. Somewhat. Maybe. Not really.

The website, www.youhavedownloaded.com, tracks torrent downloads against the downloader's IP address. A visit to the website will automatically display files downloaded using your current IP address. You can also do a search for a specific IP, torrent, or filename.

This Minnesota IP address downloaded
two episodes of the new tv show, New Girl.

Of course, if you have a dynamic IP assigned by your ISP, it may come back with files downloaded by others. The website claims to be able to track about 20% of downloaders, and the database contains about 52 million users. Read about IP addresses here.

The purpose of the site is to encourage users to improve their security by the use of VPNs, proxy servers, or seedboxes. For more information about these topics, read an earlier post here.

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Tech Watch: New privacy add-ons and services

There are always new browser add-ons or other services being introduced to provide more privacy and security while online. Though I have never tried any of these (and also do not endorse them or guarantee how well they work), the concepts may be helpful for us to understand how they might be used.

• A service called BTGuard allows BitTorrent users to download files from the file sharing network with anonymity. The service "gives you a[n] anonymous IP address and encrypts your downloads" for $6.95 per month. Or, upgrade to a virtual private network (VPN) for $9.95 and have all of your Internet activity anonymized.
• Seedboxes have become popular in the P2P world because it provides great privacy to file sharers. All uploads and downloads are handled through an overseas server. Users may connect to the server through FTP or HTTP to find the files they set the server to download. One of the more popular services, ExtremeSeed, has services starting at $20 per month.
• Just to clarify, this means that instead of someone showing up in America as downloading illegal files, their files would show up in Luxembourg, for example. They would then enter an FTP site to download their files.
• Several browser extensions allow users to set certain domains or topics to automatically load in the browser's private browsing feature. Ghost Incognito for Chrome is preset to do this with all .xxx domains.

Have you heard of a notable extensions or privacy apps recently or do you have a question about how they work? Send an e-mail to .

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Tech Watch: BitTorrent to release television

BitTorrent, a peer-to-peer networking service that uses "advanced, innovative technologies to efficiently move large files across the Internet," is releasing a television that will allow users to find, download, and play media found on the BitTorrent network.

The computer software has been around for years, but is a little complicated for the average user. After installing the software, the user must find and download a torrent for the file they want, open the torrent, and then download the file. This new system will simplify the process.

BitTorrent, I'm sure as an intended consequence, makes it easy to download items such as copyrighted movies and child pornography. Of course it has other legitimate uses, though I the only ones I can think of are entirely hypothetical. At least now, someone will be able to download illegal Disney movies and watch it from the comfort of their recliner.

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