I got a Copyright Violation Notice from MPAA/BSA for File Sharing on Gnutella and FastTrack!

Summary:
People are getting Copyright Violation Notices from the Business Software Alliance (BSA) and Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) via their ISPs saying they have broken the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) and Copyright Act for File sharing over the Gnutella and FastTrack peer to peer networks as well as IRC and others. At least 17,000 incidents have been recorded. They have the IP address, time of transfer, file name index, file sizes, protocol and program names as evidence.

Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA), Title 17 United States Code Section 512.
Copyright Act, Title 17 United States Code Section 106(3).

Here's some more info I found reading the DMCA and searching with queries like
WIPO WTO DMCA TRIPS MPAA BSA ISP OSP Gnutella FastTrack etc.

Did the ISPs violate privacy rights?
No. They forwarded the notice and didn't share my E-mail or home address.
The MPAA or BSA can subpoena my contact info and the ISP must comply but the info can only be used for the Copyright Case.

Did the MPAA or BSA violate privacy rights?
No. My IP and file index were offered by me to the Public p2p net.

Do they have to prove I don't own the material in question?
No. Distributing copyrighted material is illegal even if you own it.

Do they have to prove that I shared copyrighted material?
Yes. Just the filename and size should not be enough to prove the material was actually copyrighted and not just named like it. For example I had a movie with the words "is FAKE" added to it, but it was still included in the violation list.
I don't know if they had a sample of the file contents. The collection methods from RangerInc are secret.

Are users who aren't doing massive transfers going to face this?
Yes. It is bots collecting this data, so there will be no "flying under the radar"
Because bots are cheap and easy and will lower the horizon of the radar to the ground.

Will this kind of thing happen in other countries?
Yes. This is happening in Canada and the US right now. Also there is a global agreement on Intellectual Property which is enforced by the World Trade Organization and overrides all WTO countries laws. The DMCA is how the USA is complying with this treaty. The EU and Russia are working on their versions of these laws right now.

What are the penalties?
Your ISP can cut off your service before proving anything. Just "good faith" by MPAA or BSA is enough. If your ISP doesn't cut you off they lose their "common carrier" immunity from liability. Qwest and @Home ISPs are two that are taking part. If you are found guilty the penalties are upt to $500,000 and ten years in prison. If you choose to challenge the notice then you MUST agree to be under US Federal jurisdiction, even if you live in another country.

Here's more info and some links ...

The Information is gathered by RangerInc Corporations bots.
They were hired by the MPAA and BSA.
The bots have been running since April of 2002.
http://www.rangerinc.com/solution/solution_main.htm

Reverse lookup on www.rangerinc.com/
shows
I.P. 216.122.215.13

An arin whois query from http://ws.arin.net/cgi-bin/whois.pl
on 216.122.215.13 to find out who actually owns it
shows
LightRealm Communications (NETBLK-LR-BLK4) LR-BLK4
216.122.0.0 - 216.122.255.255
HostPro, Inc (NETBLK-HSTPROSEA-NETBLK204) HSTPROSEA-NETBLK204
216.122.204.0 - 216.122.223.255

If your client for Gnutella FastTrack IRC etc allows you to filter hosts then add
216.122.*.*
to your block list.
That should stop them from connecting unless they change hosts
providing the bots run from that IP range and don't spoof their address when connecting to your client.

Here are some more links.

Another customer cut-off
http://www.ekosweb.com/wipout/essays/0904guha.htm

OSP requirements (take-down) or be liable
http://www.arl.org/info/frn/copy/osp.html

More info for those who have been notified or want to learn more.
http://www.chillingeffects.org/dmca512/faq.cgi#QID132

Also please check out
http://www.eff.org
http://www.anti-dmca.org
http://www.macfergus.com/niels/dmca/index.html

I'm dial-up 56K now. But when I get broadband again I'm going to drop Gnutella and only use encrypting and anonymizing apps like Filetopia http://www.filetopia.org and FreeNet http://freenetproject.org

Good idea, and there are others like FILE PASS THROUGH and file rotation on a 24 hour basis that all these developers could easily add to their programs TODAY, right NOW.
So BearShare, Limewire take NOTICE!

You could have saved 17,000 people from getting a notice. How many more have to be DAMAGED because of your lack of motivation to add some simple routines?
Notice that I said that nasty DAMAGE word. As in Damaged Party. Need I say more?

And if you want to keep your "market share", and not have all your users switch to a more PRIVACY ORIENTED file sharing ap like freenet or filetopia, then you have another motivation to do this.

You are talking about developers damaging thousands of people.
Well since you are Unreg'd I dont know if you are the same guy
who posted this thread but you should definately check it.
It is the same discussion.
By the way,
I think you want reach anything if you are talking in such a way.
No developer will implement your features if you are talking to them like this:
http://www.gnutellaforums.com/showth...threadid=11773

Which party is "damaged"? The one who stole or the one that got stolen from?

I think I am going to have your car stolen by someone. Then I'll buy that car from this someone for a buck or 2. Once you traced your car back to me and are prepared to have me jailed, I'll just say "Hey, I bought it from 'someone'. I didn't know it was stolen??" and walk away free. Or so I would wish...

I'd call that "Car Pass Through"

Thats my viewpoint

Can I download a car?
Can you turn it into bits and bytes?
Can you COPY it easily, like we do with digital files?

Yes, you can download a car.
Yes, you can turn it into bits and bytes.
Yes, you can COPY it.

How? Visit GM's Research and Development department, go into their computers and copy all the CAD drawings onto a CD-R, then distribute it to Mitsubishi, BMW, and Fiat. Is it legal? Well, you're the expert on that

my only question is what are the music and movie business so worried about (software is another issue entirely)?

MP3s are not nearly as good quality as CDs (8 hours of music on a disk). Pirated movies are rediculously bad quality, and can be rented in a movie store for $3.00. Downloaded movies will not be able to compete with movie theaters until most people have 30 foot tall screens in their home-theater.

How much money do musicians and film studios need to make?

I think the people are speaking against CDs that cost pennies to make being sold for $15.00, concert tickets that cost around $35.00, and movie ticket prices going up by $0.50 every year (with a profit of millions of dollars). This is aside from big musicians and top-list actors making millions personally.

Perhaps this is also a reaction against the handful of media corporations being nearly the sole dictators of the content of media (Music, TV, Movies, News) available to the public.

These viewpoints are not intended to condone theft, however I think the Music and Movie industries would benefit by learning from the message implied by the huge increase in filesharing and implement changes in their sales methods accordingly: We don't want to pay so much for your products; We want to be able to pick-and choose the content we buy (buying only the songs we want, for example); We want a greater variety of content; We want at-your-fingertips availability.

I say again that I don't know what the music and movie industries are worried about. We are the same people who shelled out $300 for the first CD players, and repurchased our record, 8-track, and tape collections in the name of improved quality. We are the people who buy High Definition, flatscreen TVs, pay $2.00 extra to go to IMAX theaters, and will probably pay more for digital movie theaters to show movies as well as pay-per-view events.

Filesharing is an exponentially larger means of theft than taping songs off the radio or from CDs, movies off TV or from videocassettes, and sharing bootleg concert recordings. However, as long as the media industries continue to improve media quality itself, and perhaps reevaluate their sales methods, filesharing poses the same threat as these other pirating technologies.

Whew,
Gratis

Things are changing and the big corps are going to scratch and claw all the way down to bankruptcy.
There is almost no cost to distribute a movie or song anymore. So the price should drop 90%.
They have to wake up and smell the future. It's going to be a big long fight.

I'm going to repost this on its own.... I'd like to hear peoples' comments.