Naive p2p users certain to be tracked
New research claims
ACCORDING TO NEW research from the University of California-Riverside, naive newbies on the p2p wagon will be trading information with "fake users" 100 per cent of the time, says Ars Technica.
The boffs were on a mission to find out just how likely it is a user would run into a fake user - perhaps an agent of the RIAA or similar - and run the risk of a lawsuit. They set about by collecting over 100GB of TCP header information from p2p clients using a tweaked p2p client.
The paper, which can be read here - though it's a PDF - found that users who don't use a blocklist will definitely be tracked. All of the test p2p clients which didn't use a blocklist wound up connected to an IP address that appeared on the lists. Trackers are sneaky too, it would seem - companies have gone to great lengths to not seem obvious, with only 0.5 per cent of blocklisted addresses could be easily traced back to media companies.
Potential pirates take note: while not using a blocklist could land you in heaps of trouble, if you're using one you need only avoid the top 5 blocklisted IP addresses to reduce the risk of being tracked to around 1 per cent, says the paper. µ
Comments
Well its a good thing
Well its a good thing that Azureus has its own built in filter to determine bad data and couple that with peerguardian and your not bad offBut is it illegal?
So if I understand correctly:1. You search P2P for a file
2. The potential results include a media company "spy" machine.
3. You connect to said spy machine and download one of the media companies tracks.
How can they take you to court for this? What have you done that is illegal? They OWN the track, therefore they have the legal right to distribute the track, (if they don't then THEY are breaking the law not you!!). They have advertised the track as available on the P2P network and then given you the track when you requested it without asking you for any money.
I do not understand how this can possibly be illegal.
Alternatively if you try to download a track and they feed you "junk" to try and corrupt your download and then try to take you to court, all they have is that you "requested" to download a song from them. That's like walking into a shop asking the shop to give you a free cd and them saying "no" and then trying to take you to court for attempting shoplifting! If the shop gave you the CD you have not done anything illegal, if they don't you've not done anything illegal. Same difference with this.
Maybe that's why dispite all the noise the RIAA has never actually won a court case.
I hear Gitmo is nice this time of year.
What I wonder about is if I’ll be spied on by the Bush and barney's bigets for connecting to peers in Iran or elsewhere. It’s not illegal, but you know what they say, garbage in, garbage out.re: but is it illegal?
Presumably having established that you are a p2p user, they then get the list of the files that you are "making available" for download, and then sue you.And they have just won a court case. Google on Jammie Thomas.