“Why should I care about their privacy policy?” If Reddit doesn’t store this info then they can’t give it to the film studios.
tl;dr: The users’ comments say that a certain ISP is pirate-friendly. Studios want to use the comments against the ISP (not the users).
“pirate friendly” meaning not snitching on their own paying customers? Wow
Basically, yes. They want ISPs to police us.
I just thought “pirate-friendly” was concise.
Literally illegal. Discussing crimes doesn’t equal crime, so there’s no reason for them to requeust IPs. And at least in the EU you aren’t even allowed to disclose information related to your person.
It’s not illegal if they ask for it and reddit gives it to them.
This is why companies sell your info to the police.
I could give you a full breakdown of how it works in EU, but basically there needs to be indisputable evidence that a crime occured for any party to subpoena any ISP or service provider company. Otherwise those companies will be in huge trouble. The one doing the subpoena because they wouldn’t have an order for that and if they fuck around right before suing, courts will not take kindly to that. And the other receiving the subpoena for disclosing personal information (although they’d maybe win a defense to that, because if they did their due diligence they are not supposed to tank the damages).
What I’m saying is, considering currently laws in the EU, I think we’re good. Of course IANAL so ask one if you need specific advice.
Did they actually issue a subpoena though, or did they just send some emails saying “give pls”.
A subpoena is a legal document and thus there are rules that go along with it. But an email asking to be given something is not a subpoena.
even if they have our ip addresses, they can’t take any legal actions for discussing about piracy right?
Not unless you talk about how you will commit or have committed a specific instance of piracy. E.g. “I downloaded back to the future last night from (insert website)”. Then they have reasonable suspicion and can start to subpoena.
Obligatory IANAL. Always do research and ask in lawyer if you wanna talk specifics.
They don’t care. It’s the film industry equivalent to the Microsoft support scammers. Get a bunch of targets, spam out hundreds of thousands of threatening emails, profit off the small percent of people who fall for it.
I had a Microsoft support scammer once… I let him in to my system too…well not really.
I quickly spin up a quick fresh install of slack ware Linux in a virtual machine that didn’t even have x11 never mind wine installed. When it was up I told him a friend uses something called tellynet (aka telnet but I was playing dumb) to help me on the computer.
He telnetted in and could not understand why any of his malware wasn’t working…
uses something called tellynet (aka telnet but I was playing dumb)
I wonder if he got the joke, or was a scriptkiddie who just relies on existing tools without understanding them, and thought you meant television or similar.
They’re basically telemarketing workers with hacking tools provided by an employer. They follow scripts and click the buttons they’ve been trained to use.
I’m surprised they got in with telnet and not their usual RDP. However I’m not sure they would have gotten anywhere on a Linux box with commands that are so different, unless they were a little familiar with at least MacOS (bash or zsh based now a days).
If discussing crimes equals crime then police, CEOs, and politicians should all be in jail.
You should read the article. I don’t agree with them, but it’s more nuanced than that/isn’t about discussing piracy.
They are basically trying to get the IP‘s so that they can claim frontier is at fault and not being proactive. It is not actually targeting the users in a way that is designed to go after them individually. It’s trying to prove users are using frontier to pirate with impunity.
That’s not really extra nuance, and is about discussing piracy.
The premise that an ISP has an obligation to proactively monitor traffic when they shouldn’t even legally be permitted to do so is disgusting.
I literally said I don’t agree with them lol but the point is they aren’t trying to figure out who is discussing piracy on Reddit. They are trying to implicate frontier. Again, I don’t agree. I am against this.
That’s not a meaningful distinction.
They’re still trying to take action against discussion of piracy. The target does not matter and is not meaningful to the discussion.
What? That is incredibly meaningful. The legal implications are are very distinct, and also open some pretty frightening doors.
If we can’t even distinguish the legal channels they are trying to screw us with, how can we possibly protect Internet privacy?
I get you want to win an Internet argument or whatever but let’s keep our eye on the ball here, dude
The important legal concept is that it’s literally impossible for discussion of piracy to entitle them to any information in any possible context.
The target of their harassment does not matter. Giving them a single bit of data is every bit as unconditionally unacceptable in either case, and you don’t get to any ruling on anything else unless you bypass that.
Again, this isn’t about the discussions. They are taking IP’s discussing it and tracing them to frontier. They’re “moving upstream” instead of targeting users, which means they need less info,the discussion themselves are immaterial because they aren’t targeting individuals - which means it’s more likely. This is a different tactic.
Great explanation, it’s what I was hoping to write until my lemmy client crashed with the unfinished comment.
I’m curious what would happen if some copyright holder tried to get information about a user on lemmy. Iirc only the users instance could log their IP, but almost all instances are run by volunteers, so risking a lawsuit might no be viable. Just look at what Tachiyomi devs have to go through, even though all they’re doing was and is legal.
I am very much against this and totally agree. I think this could open some really dangerous doors re: internet privacy.
Wear a VPN, folks.
More corporations with zero responsibility and way too much fucking power. We need regulators with teeth and we need to remove the legal hand of business from the pockets of our legislatures. I can’t believe someone actually burned down Studio Ghibli HQ before Citizen’s United was. Wtf.
It’s reddit, so I’d be surprised if they don’t cave.
Man that place. I know it’s cliche to talk about it like talking about your ex on a date, but I posted there for good reason.
I found the solution to a rare bug that was bothering a group of people. I posted the solution, and my account was immediately banned sitewide for violating the terms of service, whatever that means.
I thought to myself: yeah… it was a mistake coming here. Leave it to the bots to have conversations with themselves.
just remember to be honest with the police and give your real name, Robert’); DROP TABLE Prisoners;–
Please tell me this never worked for the sake of humanity
little bobby tables destroyed his schools records. :(
I believe under the first amendment in the US Constitution and section 2 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in Canada you cannot silence someone’s freedom of speech/expression just because they discussed something you don’t like. This legal claim is bullshit right from the start due to constitutional protections
That’s not really how that works.
The Constitution only protects you from the government.
Explain to me then how two US Federal District Judges upheld the first amendment during this entire fiasco with film studios
Are you talking about Burstyn v. Wilson (1952)?
Because that was about the state of New York attempting to censor a film. Not sure what case you’re referencing.
oh, boy, am I ever glad I overwrote all of my comments before deleting my account…
This is the best summary I could come up with:
For the third time in less than a year, film studios with copyright infringement complaints against a cable Internet provider are trying to force Reddit to share information about users who have discussed piracy on the site.
In the first instance, US Magistrate Judge Laurel Beeler ruled in the US District Court for the Northern District of California that the First Amendment right to anonymous speech meant Reddit didn’t have to disclose the names, email addresses, and other account registration information for nine Reddit users.
Film companies, including Bodyguard Productions and Millennium Media, had subpoenaed Reddit in relation to a patent infringement lawsuit against Astound Broadband-owned RCN about subscribers allegedly pirating 34 movie titles, including Hellboy (2019), Rambo V: Last Blood, and Tesla.
In her ruling, Beeler noted that while the First Amendment right to anonymous speech is not absolute, the film producers had already received the names of 118 Grande subscribers.
She also said the film producers had failed to prove that “the identifying information is directly or materially relevant or unavailable from another source.”
This week, as reported by TorrentFreak, film companies Voltage Holdings, which are part of the previous two subpoenas, and Screen Media Ventures, another film studio with litigation against RCN, filed a motion to compel [PDF] Reddit to respond to the subpoena in the US District Court for the Northern District of California.
The original article contains 588 words, the summary contains 228 words. Saved 61%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
lol get fucked wanker bros
So, okay.
Let’s say these film studios DO get ‘permission’ or ‘access’ of these IPs. Haven’t we already proven in the court of law that IP Address does not equal a person? How come that is? Well, it’s because people can hide under VPNs, they could use proxies, they could use open wi-fi, they can change their address by ISP request .etc
They aren’t assigned permanent IPs and they aren’t tied to their IPs through identity.
This whole effort is just a waste of their time, proving once again, that they’re desperate for anything.
On the other hand, the r/piracy subreddit is full of entitled jackasses who pick you apart for stupid arbitrary reasons. I’ve posted news posts on there before as a means to inform the pirating community as to what to look for in case things could go wrong in the future, as a lead. And any time, people kept commenting like “WHUT DUS DIS HAVE TU DU WITH PIWACY?!” every fucking time.
I’d spell it out for them, I get downvoted, I get my post reported and it’s removed. Seriously, fuck all of those e-begging pieces of shit.
IPs alone aren’t enough. IPs tied with usernames can be a lot more compelling.
Legally, not really. A username is also not a person.
This is a fishing expedition by the producers, nothing more.
From the article:
Another reason Reddit refuses to comply with the film producers’ request is that “none of the posts depicted in Exhibit A to the subpoena appear to relate to movies that we understand are the subject of" the copyright infringement claims.
The users made no reference to pirating IP owned by the producers.
Legally, not really. A username is also not a person.
True, but when tied to an IP address known to be used by a suspected person, it can be used as evidence.
Also if the Reddit account is old, there’s a good chance they provided at least one piece of identifying info that further ties that account to a target.
It’s not definitive but it is a lot harder to toss out
Maybe I am wrong but it seems like some of y’all aren’t reading the article. They aren’t going after IP’s in order to identify the individuals. They are trying to prove that frontier is not being proactive in their efforts to prevent piracy. The IP’s are to prove that it is going through frontier. Reddit->Frontier->Pirated content.
I am not saying I am ok with that, because I’m not, but what many of y’all are describing is happening is not exactly what is happening here.
Buddy, go bitch at the author who wrote the article that plastered all over what we’re responding about.
What? I’m saying y’all are either misunderstanding the contents of the article or you aren’t reading it. It explains this quite clearly.
Why people insists using reddit is beyond me
Is it possible a film studio, or legal agency, could set up a Lemmy Instance and then capture all our IPs?
I’m not sure that this is how it works in practice, but ideally: Unless you are registered in their stance / are browsing directly in their website, your client shouldn’t be making any direct requisitions to their instance, so there is nothing they can infer your IP from. (Everything you interact with is comes directly your instance - the only thing that interacts with other instances is the server) That said, it’s possible for some links to direct to the original stance, in which case your client will have to make requests directly to the original instance hosting the content… looking around in this page a bit, it looks like the Community images (banner, icon etc.) are linking directly to the original instance, so I guess that’s a little bit of a problem - but just that shouldn’t be enough information for them to connect the dots between the IP address fetching the image and the account you’re using to browse
I think not as the only instance that has your ip is the one you are registered on.
One would hope…
Absolutely. One of the biggest child porn groups is an FBI front for this purpose. I’d google the subject for a link but umm…no
So basically the only thing protecting our anonymity is the relative unpopularity of Lemmy?
To expand on this. If you are talking about anything online it is not private. That doesn’t matter if it’s in a WhatsApp chat, a telegram chat, a Lemmy post, a Facebook feed, etc. as soon as it hits a computer if someone wants to see it they will. There’s just hurdles to get it.
If you want anonymity stop using computers.
Privacy and anonymity are not the same thing.
You’re not anonymous online either FYI.
Depends what and how you do it. VPN gives some level of anonymity. TOR even more so. These give you probably greater anonymity than anything else you have in offline live.
They would just have to start DMing us meme images hosted on a server they control, and they’d get a list of IPs. All we’d have to do is look.
Fwiw, this would work on Reddit too.
Unless anyone shared the in image link anywhere else on the internet. “Judge, they looked at this publicly accessible image” is hardly evidence
Only if you directly use their instance.
AP protocol doesn’t propagate your IP
unless you visit the instance yourself or activitypub starts including user ips
They are going about it the wrong way with reddit. All they gotta do is show the $$$$ and spez will bend right over with that information. After all that’s all he seems to see.
I for one want to be in compliance. Here is my IP, I checked it in Microsoft windows so it is correct. 192.168.0.1
Text me at that IP if I need to pay a fine or if I need to go to my local jail. Thanks guys, I’m sorry I pirated and I will re upload all the movie films that I downloaded to try to make this right.
Holy shit! My IP is 192.168.1.1!
What are the odds!?
Omg, you are probably my neighbor!
Neighbours awwww
They were neighbors!
hunter2
All I see is 192.168.0.2
