Microsoft-Funded BitTorrent Disruptor Won't Make Pirates Pay, But Might Break The Law

from the pointless dept

Mon, May 14th 2012 11:21am — Mike Masnick

There was quite a bit of chatter recently about a Torrentfreak article discussing an operation called "Pirate Pay," which was funded by Microsoft, and claimed it could track and shut down unauthorized works being transmitted via BitTorrent. The report claimed that Walt Disney Studios and Sony Pictures were already customers. The description of how it works is as follows:

“We used a number of servers to make a connection to each and every P2P client that distributed this film. Then Pirate Pay sent specific traffic to confuse these clients about the real IP-addresses of other clients and to make them disconnect from each other,” Andrei Klimenko says.

John Pettitt, former VP of engineering at BitTorrent (who we've heard from before in a very different context related to software patents), noted in a mailing to Dave Farber's IP list that what Pirate Pay described didn't sound particularly effective or (more importantly) particularly legal.

Reading the article it sound like they are spoofing traffic to confuse torrent clients and force disconnects. It's not at all clear if this will work against all versions of the protocol (particularly the udp based version). Leaving aside the technical issues it's also unclear if such action is legal. It sounds like a targeted denial of service attack, a major corporation paying for such an attack leaves itself wide open to civil and criminal legal action particularly if they accidentally target the wrong torrent which given the history is highly likely.

Anyone want to take a guess as to how long it will be until a major entertainment company issues one of these misguided attacks on the wrong torrent, leading to an effective denial of service against legitimate content?

One other thought on this. The company's name is "Pirate Pay," which I'm sure the Hollywood folks get a kick out of. However, it's worth asking the question: how much of this activity would actually get anyone to pay? We've noted in the past that the entertainment industry seems much more focused on "stopping piracy" than it is on "getting more people to pay." You can argue that the former leads to the latter but there's little evidence to suggest that's true. Yet there is tremendous evidence that offering compelling services without significant restrictions at a reasonable price does, in fact, get people to pay. It's a tragedy that the industry isn't doing nearly enough of that, but instead seems focused on these harebrained (and potentially illegal) schemes to attack people.

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Filed Under: bittorrent, john pettitt, p2p, piracy
Companies: pirate pay, sony pictures, walt disney studios

103 Comments

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Anonymous Coward, 14 May 2012 @ 11:26am

Anyone want to take a guess as to how long it will be until a major entertainment company issues one of these misguided attacks on the wrong torrent, leading to an effective denial of service against legitimate content?

Preliminary analysis suggests that it would not be difficult for a third party to redirect an attack launched by X intended for torrent A toward torrent B -- without X's knowledge. Emphasis "preliminary": a great deal more work needs to be done here.
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Anonymous Coward, 14 May 2012 @ 11:26am

Linux is distributed by torrents so M$ fund a torrent disruptor. M$ just hate anything free (as in beer or freedom) and love their unfair monopoly. They will try and force anything that hurts that monopoly out of existence.
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Anonymous Coward, 14 May 2012 @ 11:30am

Easily blocked...
It seems this would be extremely easy to block, as peer-blocking is already a pretty popular tactic.

Once these "bad peers" are detected, and added to one of the popular peer-blocking lists, their effectiveness would immediately drop substantially.

All this will do is force more people to use peer-blocking programs - and I suspect all the major torrent clients will eventually include such functionality if they don't already.

Yet more cat and mouse antics - and someone is there to gobble up the money from the corporations who believe this shit actually works (the same who spend millions on DRM schemes that fail quickly).
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Anonymous Coward, 14 May 2012 @ 11:31am

...how much of this activity would actually get anyone to pay?

What are you talking about? It got Disney and Sony to pay.

And the amount Disney and Sony are paying is most likely less than what they think they are losing by allowing Piracy to run rampant. So they CBA checks out.

This is one of those win/win situations everyone loves, right?

Except for the part of it not stopping piracy, not offering the consumer anything, costing legacy players more money in a futile attempt to change reality and potentially screwing innocent users - I don't see anything wrong with this plan.
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Anonymous Coward, 14 May 2012 @ 11:36am

Illegal? Maybe, but I don't see much of a problem.

Just don't complain when pissed off pirates DDoS microsoft.com.
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Robert (profile), 14 May 2012 @ 11:37am

Still don't get it.
All they will do is drive innovation for a new filesharing protocol and client/server application.

They won't get anyone to magically switch to "legal" methods of acquiring material. That isn't their goal anyhow, this tool won't even target movies or music from major labels, it will target the competition, the indies.

In the words of Sam Kinison on It's a Bundyful Life "No, much like a neutered dog... you don't get it."
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:Lobo Santo (profile), 14 May 2012 @ 11:37am

Re: Now that was a sticky situation...
I guess those monopolists need to stick together...
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ltlw0lf (profile), 14 May 2012 @ 11:41am

Re:
Illegal? Maybe, but I don't see much of a problem.

When has Sony ever shied away from illegal? They certainly don't have problems with pushing out backdoors and using fraud to get their DRM installed on their customer's computers.
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John Doe, 14 May 2012 @ 11:49am

I for one am becoming less willing to pay
how much of this activity would actually get anyone to pay?

I am not currently a pirate. But the more difficult the industry makes it to get content, consume content, pay a reasonable price for content, the more and more likely I am to become a pirate. Putting in DRM, anti-piracy notices, region restrictions, etc is causing me to think more and more of getting my content elsewhere so that I can consume it when, where and how I want to not when, where and how the industry wants me to.
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DannyB (profile), 14 May 2012 @ 11:51am

Re:
But can't Microsoft claim that any "accidental" disruption of Linux ISO torrents is legitimate protection of Microsoft's IP?

After all, Microsoft has managed to twist the arms of various companies so that they sign patent extortion agreements. Examples would include: Tom Tom, HTC, Samsung, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and many others.

In fact, Microsoft claimed they make more money from each Android phone than from each Windows phone.

Sarcasm: this must surely mean that there is something there of substance to Microsoft's patent extortion license agreements of Linux devices.

Therefore, disrupting Linux torrents must be okay, somehow. Microsoft must just be protection unlicensed distribution of Linux which is covered by Microsoft patents.

(I'm going to be sick now.)
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DannyB (profile), 14 May 2012 @ 11:55am

Re: Still don't get it.
> They won't get anyone to magically switch to "legal"
> methods of acquiring material.

If talking about movies, what legal methods could you mean?

Going to the theater?

Eventually someday buying a DVD?

Or eventually being forced to buy Bluray instead of DVD?

Maybe someday it is on TV?
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DannyB (profile), 14 May 2012 @ 11:57am

There need to be serious statutory penalties
There need to be serious penalties if distribution of legitimate content is disrupted.

What's sauce for the goose, etc.
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RonKaminsky (profile), 14 May 2012 @ 11:58am

Sure confused those media CEO morons-in-a-hurry
Way to go, media industry. Back a company which intentionally calls itself "Pirate Pay" in order to "steal" the brand recognition of a famous website.

The hypocrisy would be pathetic if it weren't already so typical it's even expected.
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BentFranklin (profile), 14 May 2012 @ 12:02pm

If I were a studio, I would create a digital version of the movie that starts out great, but degrades slowly over the next 20 or so minutes, then gets completely unwatchable, followed by some kind of scolding anti-piracy message. Then I would use my astroturf minions to upload that file to all the torrent sites. That would teach those downloaders a lesson in their own language. All this other heavy-handed bullshit they are doing is just stupid.
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Anonymous Coward, 14 May 2012 @ 12:06pm

'Anyone want to take a guess as to how long it will be until a major entertainment company issues one of these misguided attacks on the wrong torrent'

you mean it hasn't already been done? surprising. since when have any of the entertainment industries worried about whether what they are doing is legal or not?

such a shame that even though they keep saying how many more legitimate sites there are, how many more legitimate options there are for downloading music and movies, not once has there been any admission that the prices being too high, the formats being what they want and not what the customers want, the speed being too slow, the availability being too spasmodic worldwide and the constant presence of crippling DRM is keeping people from buying from those legal options. they want people to buy. people are prepared to buy but it has to be what the people want, not what the industries want or think customers want. they have tried that approach and failed miserably. move on!!
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ahow628 (profile), 14 May 2012 @ 12:10pm

This is great news.
It will definitely hasten the creation of a faster, more secure version of BitTorrent, which is a good thing. End-to-end encryption is the final goal here, I think. Nice work MS and Sony. You are making the internet a safer place.
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Anonymous Coward, 14 May 2012 @ 12:11pm

Re:
Microsoft hates Linux. That is why it is one of the top code contributors to the project.
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weneedhelp (profile), 14 May 2012 @ 12:17pm

Re: I for one am becoming less willing to pay
"I am not currently a pirate."

I don't believe I am currently a pirate.
FTFY

Most likely by the definition of Pirates by the MAFIAA, you are, and just dont realize it.
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fogbugzd (profile), 14 May 2012 @ 12:17pm

I am dubious about the technology actually working broadly. BitTorrent is very flexible, and I think it is very likely that the BT community will route around the disruption. The torrent ecosystem might actually come out of the experience stronger and more robust than it was before the Pirate Pay technology attacked it.
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Nic, 14 May 2012 @ 12:18pm

You think the Pirate Bay can use a copyright claim to send a cease & desist to Microsoft about Pirate Pay?

I would find it hilarious if they could.
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:Lobo Santo (profile), 14 May 2012 @ 12:19pm

Re: Re:
See: Microsoft used Apple as a free research laboratory for years.

Of course they contribute code, they also rip off tons of open-source projects and take credit for them.
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DogBreath, 14 May 2012 @ 12:19pm

Re:
Illegal? Maybe, but I don't see much of a problem.

"When the President does it, that means it is not illegal."

Replace "President" with "Microsoft", and it's still the same old pile of horse manure.
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Anonymous Coward, 14 May 2012 @ 12:21pm

Well this is stupid.
Unless your the one running this "Pirate Pay" scam, this is very stupid. It makes the assumptions that pirates and piracy is a static unchanging object. Considering most torrent programs are open source, it takes a surprisingly short amount of time to adapt to the 'bug' presented by any attempt to disable them. Open software, like the internet, interprets censorship like damage, and fixes the issue with patches and new versions.

As for the 'revolutionary' product they are selling; well, unless you're a bot, this won't stop even the stupidest of pirates. We have this thing called checksum now.
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Nathan F (profile), 14 May 2012 @ 12:24pm

Re:
Most likely a Trademark dispute, but something tells me that since Pirate Pay is a Russian firm and getting backing from the deep pockets of Microsoft they can afford the legal battle.
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Richard (profile), 14 May 2012 @ 12:26pm

Re: Sure confused those media CEO morons-in-a-hurry
In the Pirate Bay's shoes many companies would be issuing legal threats on this!
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DogBreath, 14 May 2012 @ 12:26pm

Re:
Yea, that will work. It worked for Madonna... oh, wait

Madonna swears at music pirates - 22 April, 2003

Popstar Madonna is known as a woman who does not mince her words.

She has used her forthright manner to try to stop online piracy of her latest album, American Life.

File-sharing networks have been flooded with fake tracks, which contain no music but instead have Madonna saying; "What the f*** do you think you are doing?"

But despite efforts to stop unauthorised copies appearing on the net before its release, the album was readily available for download on several MP3 websites last week.
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Anonymous Coward, 14 May 2012 @ 12:28pm

So it's okay for corporations to use denial service attacks but not anonymous. Reason why that's not a question.
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John Doe, 14 May 2012 @ 12:33pm

Re: Re: I for one am becoming less willing to pay
Most likely by the definition of Pirates by the MAFIAA, you are, and just dont realize it.

This is most likely true. Would you recommend I go ahead and just make it official?
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Anonymous Coward, 14 May 2012 @ 12:36pm

Bring it on.
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LDoBe (profile), 14 May 2012 @ 12:37pm

Re: Easily blocked...
Indeed,

The most popular torrent clients all have peer-blocking capabilities built in, if not turned on by default. These include:
uTorrent
Transmission (comes default with Ubuntu and variants)
Deluge
Azureus, and Vuze.

There are other security features available in bittorrent as well, such as using encryption, and blocking peers dynamically when they send too many bad packets.

Finally, there are also pseudonymous file sharing services like anomos, and others that can guarantee at the very least, plausible deniability.

Any attempt to try and destroy filesharing is bound to fail. People HATE being censored, and that is what blocking the transfer of ANY information is.

Even if society is willing to tolerate low levels of censorship, there will always be those who can't stand it.
"Like a splinter in their mind" as stated in The Matrix (fair use goddamnit, I can quote small passages without anyone's permission)
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Trails (profile), 14 May 2012 @ 12:38pm

This is a brilliant idea that will absolutely work!!!
..for two weeks, max, until some nerd develops a filter/workaround, and life goes back to normal.

At worst, a month until some more resilient protocol emerges.

In the meantime, have fun DDoS'ing legitimate bittorrent users (e.g. Blizzard) and getting their legal attack teams all frothy.

*golfclap* for MAFIAA.
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Anonymous Coward, 14 May 2012 @ 12:40pm

Re:
The pirates see a lack of real high quality content as damage, and upload around it.
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Anonymous Coward, 14 May 2012 @ 12:45pm

Re: Re:
Microsoft / Open Source = Oracle / Java (rip)
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weneedhelp (profile), 14 May 2012 @ 12:56pm

Microbloat
Shit, they need to focus on making their stuff work correctly before trying to break others.
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weneedhelp (profile), 14 May 2012 @ 12:57pm

Re: Re: Re: I for one am becoming less willing to pay
Yes.
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Jesse (profile), 14 May 2012 @ 1:03pm

This smells suspiciously like Microsoft legitimizing Anonymous' tactics.

But something tells me nobody from Microsoft will be facing 15 years in prison.
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Anonymous Coward, 14 May 2012 @ 1:04pm

Re: Re:
So if the album was released to the hounds before everyone else in the country even had access to it, seems like the problem is from Inside the Industry, not Teenybopper Jake sitting at home with torrent software.
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Anon Coward, 14 May 2012 @ 1:05pm

No More TV For Me
I used to be a huge couch potato and hated to miss even a single show. Since I would use Megavideo to stream the ones I missed, I kept going back for more and more and more, even though I was paying over $700 a year for cable television. Once they had their goons in DC kill Megaupload, I started missing shows and just stopped watching them altogether. In the past year, not only have I cancelled my cable TV subscription, but my TV habit has gone from close to 30 hours a week to maybe a half an hour. This wasn't done in protest or because I can't afford the content, it's just too hard to make an appointment to see a show and my interests changed. Now that I've lost 40lbs, I'm healthier and a lot happier and wouldn't consider signing up for cable again, even if they started to pay me. Maybe I'm not the norm, but good job Hollywood, that's $700 less per year that you get to support your industry.
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BentFranklin (profile), 14 May 2012 @ 1:08pm

Re: Re:
Well, Madonna gets +1 from me now! She at least has a thinking brain.

It would be easy to write a program that made minor modifications to file bits and titles and kept uploading files via Tor. Before long the poisoned files would vastly outnumber the real ones. It would take pirates many manual hours to identify the poisoned files and take them down. Meanwhile they will have proliferated to other seeds. You can't fight automated with manual, no matter how many ways you paraphrase John Gilmore.

The AAholes can do this legally (or at least as legally as their opponents) and I would support it if that would mean they would get off their imperial control trips and stop attacking liberty.
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Anonymous Coward, 14 May 2012 @ 1:11pm

Re: Re:
It's a denial of service attack - I'm not point blank endorsing all illegal activity, but this honestly seems pretty harmless.

Again, assuming they don't inevitably cry foul when the same denial of service is done to a service like Windows Update.
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Anonymous Coward, 14 May 2012 @ 1:16pm

Re: Re: Re:
It would be easy to write a program that made minor modifications to file bits and titles and kept uploading files via Tor. Before long the poisoned files would vastly outnumber the real ones. It would take pirates many manual hours to identify the poisoned files and take them down.

Are you not aware that this has already been tried and that it was a miserable failure?

If it were that easy to disrupt P2P networks, they wouldn't be nearly so useful. But it's not.
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TDR, 14 May 2012 @ 1:23pm

Re: Re: Re:
Again, assuming they don't inevitably cry foul when the same denial of service is done to a service like Windows Update.

You mean Windows Downgrade? Taking that out would be something like a public service, I think.
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Anonymous Coward, 14 May 2012 @ 1:27pm

Re: Re: Re:
"It would be easy to write a program that made minor modifications to file bits and titles and kept uploading files via Tor."

AHAHAHAHA, yeah, good luck with that.
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Josh in CharlotteNC (profile), 14 May 2012 @ 1:30pm

Re: Re:
Of course they contribute. It's a key part of "Embrace, Extend, Exterminate."

Thanks for the link, though. I especially liked the part about Microsoft contributing 20k lines of code for server virtualization, and after a few years of work, that part is down to 7k, and is now less buggy and supports more devices. Hadn't heard that one before.
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Anonymous Coward, 14 May 2012 @ 1:36pm

Re: Sure confused those media CEO morons-in-a-hurry
But the pirate party stole the word "pirate" from IP extremists.
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Anonymous Coward, 14 May 2012 @ 1:39pm

Re: I for one am becoming less willing to pay
Boycott The MAFIAA !
Support & Buy INDIE !
Frak Off MS............we already know who you are and what you are about.
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byte^me (profile), 14 May 2012 @ 1:40pm

Stock major entertainment company answer
The major entertainment companies have already essentially stated how they feel about bittorrent traffic:

All torrents are infringing.
(Summarized from previous statements.)

Based on that, they will not care what traffic gets blocked.

End of debate.
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Anonymous Coward, 14 May 2012 @ 1:45pm

Re:
Most torrent sites these days have rating systems, a stunt like that one would more likely to get the first 5 or so guys and then get struck down with a bad/unreliable rating.
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Anonymous Coward, 14 May 2012 @ 1:50pm

Re: This is a brilliant idea that will absolutely work!!!
There was a workaround even before this thing was released! Mostly decent torrent clients block/ban bad peers for a long time now.
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Josh in CharlotteNC (profile), 14 May 2012 @ 1:50pm

Re: Re: Re:
It would be easy to write a program that made minor modifications to file bits and titles and kept uploading files via Tor. Before long the poisoned files would vastly outnumber the real ones.

This briefly worked back when Morpheus/Kazaa/Limewire were the main sources. Two things happened: they started to implement peer based ratings, then the copyright holders killed those networks off (kinda). Pirates moved on to the next platforms, and now anyone who regularly uses torrents knows to pay attention to the ratings and comments which fill up quickly with "Fake" for that stuff.

You can't fight automated with manual

Tell that to China, with their near inexhaustible supply of cheap labor. Tell that to the spammers who blow through CAPTCHAs with ease by using humans en masse who think they're doing something else.
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hfbs (profile), 14 May 2012 @ 2:51pm

Re:
I don't recall anyone advocating DDoS attacks.. >_>
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This comment has been flagged by the community. Click here to show it

Anonymous Coward, 14 May 2012 @ 3:30pm

Microsoft-Funded BitTorrent Disruptor Won't Make Pirates Pay, But Might Break The Law

That's funny Masnick. When your heroes at Anonymous are DDoSing the Library of Congress, The White House, etc it's a digital sit-in. However when companies do it to protect their own intellectual property, it "might break the law".

Your obsession keeps making you nuttier and nuttier. You should pirate a copy of "The Caine Mutiny" to see how you end up.
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aikiwolfie, 14 May 2012 @ 3:31pm

This isn't the first time this sort of thing has been offered. And while it might potentially break the law. People uploading pirated content are already breaking the law. So it's a bit late to cry wolf on that point.

What does bother me is the potential for accidentally or deliberately blocking a legitimate peer offering legitimate content. Microsoft are funding this thing. Microsoft are currently trying to kill the competition. Linux is part of that competition and many Linux distros use torrents.

And then there's Hollywood whom it seems regularly asserts copyright on content it has no right to if bogus take down notices are anything to go by.

And if you can block a torrent peer, surely it's not a huge leap to start blocking other content.

Given the potential for abuse I think this sort of thing should be illegal if it isn't already. The law exists to deal with criminals.
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Anonymous Coward, 14 May 2012 @ 3:35pm

Re:
fascinating... hahahahahahahahaha
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Anonymous Coward, 14 May 2012 @ 3:38pm

Re: I for one am becoming less willing to pay
" so that I can consume it when, where and how I want to"

Which is also the most cheapest way of doing things, on the consumers side that is.
On the corporates end, not so much!

Hence the resistence, cant buy a single media once, and then being able to use it on ALL my media devices, can i ....oh no, i gotta pay for the exact same media, again, for all my devices i decide to consume said media on

Its good to be greedy
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The Logician (profile), 14 May 2012 @ 3:41pm

Re:
Your insults and condescension undermine your credibility, Pink AC. If you wish to be taken seriously, remove those from your arguments. Also, it has been shown that this program will be quite ineffective at its stated goal. And its implementation does indeed tread the line of legality. The difference between this and what Anonymous does is that they have a legitimate grievance which they are expressing. The companies pushing this solution do not.
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Anonymous Coward, 14 May 2012 @ 3:55pm

Re: Re:
Your insults and condescension undermine your credibility, Pink AC. If you wish to be taken seriously, remove those from your arguments. Also, it has been shown that this program will be quite ineffective at its stated goal. And its implementation does indeed tread the line of legality. The difference between this and what Anonymous does is that they have a legitimate grievance which they are expressing. The companies pushing this solution do not.

No one takes any voice contrary to the Techdirt narrative seriously. It's simply laughable to suggest otherwise. For the record, you too are as full of shit as Masnick. The companies have a legitimate grievance in that their copyrighted intellectual property is being distributed in this manner. And for the record, fuck Anonymous for being the bunch of dumb asses that they are. When CISPA passes, they should get the credit. The stupid fucks swam right into the net.
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Anonymous Coward, 14 May 2012 @ 3:56pm

Re: Re: Re:
....*unlawfully* distributed.....
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Anonymous Coward, 14 May 2012 @ 3:58pm

Re: Re: I for one am becoming less willing to pay
Its not just DRM, that limits us to using one media per device either, you also have to contend with other stuff, which usually gets us poor folk locked down to a walled garden, i say poor folk, because if your well off, then you'd be able to afford what you want when you want and how you want it

You got your

Walled gardens
Proprierty cables
Proprierty video codecs
Exclusive rights to resources necassary for companies to stay competitive with one another such as popular, hence profitable, music, tv shows, movies, ebooks, games, "gadgets" etc etc
and my all time favorite, greed, negotiating to store, sell, host, produce, advertise, represent etc etc, is gonna be a pain in the butt, if the person selling is trying to butt rape you at the same time
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Anonymous Coward, 14 May 2012 @ 3:58pm

Re:
Too bad SOPA didn't pass. Now it appears like there's no need to go before a judge to start blocking stuff.
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Anonymous Coward, 14 May 2012 @ 4:03pm

Re: Re: Sure confused those media CEO morons-in-a-hurry
we stole the name pirate, lol

Poetry at its best
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Anonymous Coward, 14 May 2012 @ 4:09pm

Re:
"Your obsession keeps making you nuttier and nuttier."

And now that we've come to the realization of what your problem is and what effect it's having on you, what are we going to do about it? Perhaps stop visiting the site written by the Lord High Pirate Apologist and frequented by his Socialist Minions who reign praise on him daily? Seriously, you don't like it, get lost. You come off as having a huge hard on for Mike in general, in a "Mike get a restraining order from EVERYONE who resides at the address where this loon's IP address is coming from" kind of way.
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Anonymous Coward, 14 May 2012 @ 4:14pm

Re: Re:
Hey madonna, way to piss off the fans,,, i mean money bags actively LOOKING for your work, way to go clever clogs,

Stewie
you feel better now
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Anonymous Coward, 14 May 2012 @ 4:22pm

Re:
"Microsoft-Funded BitTorrent Disruptor Won't Make Pirates Pay, But Might Break The Law

That's funny Masnick. When your heroes at Anonymous are DDoSing the Library of Congress, The White House, etc it's a digital sit-in. However when companies do it to protect their own intellectual property, it "might break the law".

Your obsession keeps making you nuttier and nuttier. You should pirate a copy of "The Caine Mutiny" to see how you end up."

That one stank of desperation, try again
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Anonymous Coward, 14 May 2012 @ 4:26pm

Re: Re: Re:
All it takes is one legitimate copy with a few 5 star ratings to make most the damaged files just so much chaff that gets sorted through in an instant. If I see one marked 5 stars, and one not marked, the 5 star wins every time.
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Anonymous Coward, 14 May 2012 @ 4:28pm

Re: Re:
You find pointing out obvious double standards to be desperate? Interesting.
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Anonymous Coward, 14 May 2012 @ 4:40pm

Re: Re:
It's a fair comparison, though, and a likely outcome. Predicting the future isn't the same as calling for it.

(I dislike ddos attacks too, but it's pretty easy to spot where they'll happen now.)
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Anonymous Coward, 14 May 2012 @ 4:47pm

Re: There need to be serious statutory penalties
$25,000 per copy damaged!
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Anonymous Coward, 14 May 2012 @ 4:54pm

Re:
since when have any of the entertainment industries worried about whether what they are doing is legal or not?

Well, they wrote the laws and paid to have them put on the books, so they probably feel that they legitimately have the right to do whatever they want to "protect" their interests, including disrupt pathetic legitimate torrents from creators too bad at business to understand how to properly "monetize" their creations.

I wish I were being sarcastic.
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hfbs (profile), 14 May 2012 @ 5:01pm

Re: Re: Re:
Anonymous - people who care about the open internet and the freedom to have a dissenting opinion.

The 'companies' - only care about their profits.

Exactly the same, yes.
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Wolfy, 14 May 2012 @ 5:10pm

Hell with "content"... look at what they're doing with the tubes!
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Anonymous Coward, 14 May 2012 @ 6:17pm

Re: Microbloat
Maybe they're trying to bring everyone down to their level
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Anonymous Coward, 14 May 2012 @ 6:48pm

Re:
He means to pay for the content that Disney and Sony are trying to prevent you from getting for free.
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Rekrul, 14 May 2012 @ 7:15pm

Anyone want to take a guess as to how long it will be until a major entertainment company issues one of these misguided attacks on the wrong torrent, leading to an effective denial of service against legitimate content?

What difference will it make? Everyone knows that the entertainment industry gets a free pass, since they're the ones calling the shots...
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Shadeyone, 14 May 2012 @ 7:52pm

Re: Re: Re:
Respectfully disagree with you, even though it looks like you couldn't be bothered to do the same. It's not that no one takes an opposing view seriously, it's that it almost always comes wrapped in swearing, anger and ad hominem attacks.

If I told you to stop playing in the middle of the street because you'll get hit by a car in a kind manner you'd probably listen. If I swear at you, call you a bleeping moron, insult your mother and tell you to move your fat@ss, you're probably going to laugh, swear back at me, and keep doing what you're doing until someone runs you over with their truck.

I don't always agree with what Mike and Techdirt's views on everything, just most of the time. I've also seen some really good opposing views from some people, but it was framed in a respectful tone with evidence and support.

Name calling usually ends up with more name calling
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That One Guy (profile), 14 May 2012 @ 8:16pm

Re: Re:
Yeah, because if SOPA had passed they would have been able to get a service shut down or impaired without a court order...

Wait a sec...
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That One Guy (profile), 14 May 2012 @ 8:22pm

Re:
This isn't the first time this sort of thing has been offered. And while it might potentially break the law. People uploading pirated content are already breaking the law. So it's a bit late to cry wolf on that point.

Umm, no. Just no. You do not respond to one person's act of breaking the law by breaking the law yourself. If nothing else, that just paints the person breaking the law in retaliation as a, oh, what's that word... ah yes, it's hypocrite.
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Anonymous Coward, 14 May 2012 @ 8:32pm

Linux is growing and Microsoft is falling apart.
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The Moondoggie, 14 May 2012 @ 9:01pm

Re:
The users will just report the torrent as fake to the admins of the site. Then it is removed.
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The Moondoggie, 14 May 2012 @ 9:07pm

And Nerdwars ensues....
Let's see how amusing this will turn out: Right now people pay for a secure P2P connection for their torrents. With this is in the picture, it would force developers of torrent clients to make it more secure, for free.

Corporate a55h0le nerds vs heroic pirate innovation nerds....

LET THE BATTLE COMMENCE!
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The Moondoggie, 14 May 2012 @ 9:09pm

Re: Re:
Hey, Mark Twain said your children are useless! Go burn yourself and your family already: they're wasting oxygen!
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The Moondoggie, 14 May 2012 @ 9:11pm

Re: Re: Re:
Ah! thread aiming fail.... sorry about that. I was replying to that IPdrone over there....
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Aaron, 14 May 2012 @ 9:27pm

Re:
Who said it's not illegal when Anonymous does it? Is it crazy to hold Microsoft to a higher standard than a bunch of angry script kiddies?
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Anonymous Coward, 14 May 2012 @ 10:19pm

Re: Re: Re:
Double standards? There's no mutual exclusivity in comparing DDoS attacks to sit-ins and pointing out how they break the law. That it breaks the law to demand certain penalties might be stupid, but it's still breaking the law.
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Anonymous Coward, 14 May 2012 @ 10:19pm

Re: Re:
Because people went before a judge to start blocking Dajaz1 and Megaupload, right?
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G Thompson (profile), 14 May 2012 @ 10:48pm

Re:
Anonymous Coward, May 14th, 2012 @ 3:30pm
Microsoft-Funded BitTorrent Disruptor Won't Make Pirates Pay, But Might Break The Law
That's funny Masnick. When your heroes at Anonymous are DDoSing the Library of Congress, The White House, etc it's a digital sit-in. However when companies do it to protect their own intellectual property, it "might break the law".

In other words.

Anonymous coward who is Anonymous states that he/her/it has committed an illegal offence Anonymously.

Please take yourself to the nearest LEO station and submit yourself for re-education or a new brain.. both are most likely needed.
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G Thompson (profile), 14 May 2012 @ 10:53pm

Re: Re:
Actually you are incorrect, uploading a file might be UNLAWFUL due to a breach of Intellectual property

A Denial of Service attack on a communications service is a CRIMINAL offence and therefore absolutely breaking the law

They are not the same. One is a civil offence (and only in certain circumstances can be considered criminal and only if for commercial purposes) the other is definitely criminal at all times and can also be classified as a terrorist action or even "act of war".
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G Thompson (profile), 14 May 2012 @ 10:55pm

Re:
Actually you are incorrect, uploading a file might be UNLAWFUL due to a breach of Intellectual property

A Denial of Service attack on a communications service is a CRIMINAL offence and therefore absolutely breaking the law

They are not the same. One is a civil offence (and only in certain circumstances can be considered criminal and only if for commercial purposes) the other is definitely criminal at all times and can also be classified as a terrorist action or even "act of war".

The rest of your comment is perfect though
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G Thompson (profile), 14 May 2012 @ 10:56pm

Re: Re: Re:
Crap... wrong reply place (disregard, burn, and recycle!)
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The Moondoggie, 14 May 2012 @ 11:04pm

Re: Re:
Anonymous Coward =/= Anonymous. The anons mostly came from /a/ or /b/ of fading 4chan. That Anonymous Coward came from somewhere as backwards like the old Southern US states(which isn't backwards anymore)...
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Anonymous Coward, 14 May 2012 @ 11:17pm

Re: Re: Re:
There is no double-standard, since Mike neither advocates nor approves of Anonymous' actions. You truly did make that up whole-cloth in your desperation.
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chris (profile), 14 May 2012 @ 11:31pm

Re: Re: Re:
It would be easy to write a program that made minor modifications to file bits and titles and kept uploading files via Tor. Before long the poisoned files would vastly outnumber the real ones. It would take pirates many manual hours to identify the poisoned files and take them down.

it's been tried before, a couple of years ago, and it didn't work. they were fake torrents uploaded by no-name accounts. even though they had thousands of seeds, the comments were jammed by warnings that they were fakes. within a day or two the bad torrents just fell off the vine.

release groups have reputations to maintain and they take it very seriously.
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Prisoner 201, 15 May 2012 @ 12:07am

Re: Re: Easily blocked...
One possible way Pirate Pay could work is to exploit the peer blocking functions by faking the traffic to be from other peers and sending bad data to get those peers disconnected.
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G Thompson (profile), 15 May 2012 @ 12:24am

Re: Re: Re:
*woosh* I was making a relevant point about the hypocrisy that is the AC in question.

Also Anonymous do NOT all come from 4chan's /b/ you might be intrigued where some of them actually hail from and who they actually are. I'm not talking about the script kiddies or those with the ability to download DDOS utils. I'm talking about the multitude of individuals who have been working with, for and via the internet (and before) who are fed up to the eyeballs with the hypocrisy that is the bureaucratic and corporate controlled feudalism we find ourselves in.

As I have stated before[...]Anonymous is everything anyone wants it to be and everything you don't.

It's an IDEA not a group, its a meme not a gathering, its a conceptual take on the original virtuality and Plato's shadows.

Or it's none of the above. Though it could just be that person sitting across from you, that person you see fleetingly everyday and give a nod too, or that person who stares back at you in the mirror.
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Anonymous Coward, 15 May 2012 @ 1:02am

Re: Re:
Microsoft hates Linux. That is why it is one of the top code contributors to the project.

Sure, but what kind of contributions are those? They are all drivers for the kernel to be used as a guest system in MS's Hyper-V. The code even fell out of the kernel development once because it was very buggy and after they put it in noone from MS maintained it.

Yes, Microsoft contributes code to the Linux kernel. But nothing useful. Only to keep companies who are switching to Linux as a VM to use Hyper-V (and thereby Windows) as a host.
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That One Guy (profile), 15 May 2012 @ 6:45am

Re: Re: Re:
Actually from what I understand of it they did go before a judge in the Dajaz1 case, it's just that (one of) the problems there though was the lawyers representing Dajaz1 were essentially stonewalled the entire time with 'you have no right to the info pertaining to this case'.

The difference between 'no judge order needed to shut down a service/site', and 'judge order needed, but both sides aren't equally represented or able to affect the case' are negligible at best.
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Trails (profile), 15 May 2012 @ 7:32am

Re: Re: This is a brilliant idea that will absolutely work!!!
Ha! Even better!
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Kirion, 15 May 2012 @ 7:50am

People asked questions about technology on one russian tech forum. Founder dodged most of it when pointed that it won't work. I seriously doubt that they actually have technology. Whole thing looks like scam for stupid rightholders
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Anonymous Coward, 15 May 2012 @ 10:01am

Re: Re: Re: Easily blocked...
Except, spoofing an IP address isn't really something you can do these days (because software can be smart enough to detect it at the protocol level) - unless you're working directly with the ISPs themselves.
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Bogo, 15 May 2012 @ 8:56pm

Doctrine of Unclean Hands may apply
is a content creator uses this technique.
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Radcow Anusymoon, 24 May 2012 @ 4:21am

Re: Easily blocked...
"It seems this would be extremely easy to block, as peer-blocking is already a pretty popular tactic."

As I gather, it involves spoofing IP addresses.

In that case, peer blocking is something that would have totally the opposite effect, it would assist the attack.

For example, nodes A and B are sending one another data. This makes them peers. Node C, sends fraudulent data to B while pretending to be A. B blocks A.

Node C never reveals its IP address. You can't add it to any kind of a blacklist.

That doesn't mean that there aren't ways to defend against the attack. I get the impression that an individual packet analysis hasn't yet been conducted.
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Mal, 23 Aug 2012 @ 11:22am

Congress specifically made this anti-piracy tactic legal about ten years ago. Sorry.
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Poor Micro$oft, 16 Sep 2013 @ 11:41pm

I really fell sorry for Microsoft. They've has so much trouble with people trying to steal their software. Bill Gates is down to 76 billion dollars personally and we all know how thoroughly Microsoft works on getting their software perfect and error free before it ever leaves development.

I heard that Bill sent out a worldwide notification that he wanted to return half his personal profits to customers who had had troubles with his software and EVERYONE wrote him back, saying, "No, we'd rather you go around the world giving it away while promoting vaccines and Monsanto.
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