How "safe" is Usenet

[zot]

That's my point, how do we REALLY know that? Astraweb says they do not log up/downloads, but how do we know? ... How does one really know they do not keep logs? I think it just comes down to trust.

The main reason why usenet providers do not keep download logs is to PROTECT THEMSELVES from copyright infringement claims, which could get very expensive, if not bankrupt the company. Obviously, a list showing the number of times an infringed work was downloaded could be used as not just evidence proving infringement, but would likely form the basis of any financial settlement.

By not keeping download logs, a usenet provider can always claim plausible deniability in a lawsuit - 'we honestly don't know what people download. Perhaps Linux releases?'

In the recording industry's lawsuit against Usenet.com, it was revealed that Usenet.com had indeed been logging downloads (a stupid move!) and using that knowledge gained to adjust individual group retention as well as tailor their business around this customer profile.

And then, not wanting to reveal this 'smoking-gun' evidence of infringement to the court, Usenet.com deleted these download logs and then wiped the disks clean. (getting caught destroying evidence did not go over well with the judge, and since this judge declared Usenet.com 'guilty' of direct copyright infringement, under the DMCA they could conceivably be forced to pay from $750 to $150,000 for every single infringing download. Ouch!)

A few years ago, just before they shut down, Torrentspy was ordered by a judge to start logging downloads - and they refused for obvious reasons.

Given the adverse legal liability that download logs would bear on any usenet provider, I'm confident that the vast majority of providers do not log downloads. It's not a question of trust - its a matter of the provider's self-preservation. Any that are so stupid as to log downloads deserve to go out of business, just like Usenet.com

[fastplumb]

UK ISPs told to collect filesharers' data

• Fri, 28 May 2010
• Web User
• Comment on this article

UK internet users who are caught downloading copyrighted material three times within a year will have their names passed to the copyrights owner for possible legal action, under new rules proposed by Ofcom.





The UK's largest ISPs will start collecting the details of customers who unlawfully download films, music and TV programmes from next year, under proposals announced by regulator Ofcom.
ISPs including BT, Talk Talk, Virgin Media, Sky, Orange, O2 and Post Office will be required to send warning letters to customers who illegally file-share.
Customers who are caught downloading copyrighted material three times in the same year will have their names passed to the copyrights owner who could take legal action against them.
Regulator Ofcom said the proposed legislative measures aimed at reducing online copyright infringement form part of its new duties under the Digital Economy Act 2010.
It said: "Ofcom is proposing a three stage notification process for ISPs to inform subscribers of copyright infringements and proposes that subscribers which have received three notifications within a year may be included in a list requested by a copyright owner."
UK consumer and citizens' rights groups have warned that there needs to be sound evidence of wrongdoing before any action is taken against a consumer.
Robert Hammond, head of Post and Digital communications at Consumer Focus, said: "Consumers face considerable confusion while Ofcom tries to work out how to implement new laws under the Digital Economy Act. The aim should be to encourage suspected copyright infringers to use legal alternatives and achieving this rests on the process of notification being seen by consumers as fair and helpful."
Anna Bradley, Consumer Panel chair said: "It is imperative that a system that accuses people of illegal online activity is fair and clear. By publishing these principles we want to make sure that customers get fair treatment, are fully informed of what's happening to them and that they have real rights of appeal."
Ofcom has opened consultation on its draft of the code of practice, which also needs approval from the European Commission, until the end of July.
Read Ofcom's Online Infringement of Copyright and the Digital Economy Act 2010 consultation document.

[Gt3911]

IMO ISP's have so many torrent users who are sticking to postive ratio rules that this is the traffic they will monitor, and hand over when required. Its far easy to identify the packets of a torrent than newsgroup transfers.

Plus, if you're not posting, then they are really not interested at all.

There are not a shortage of users to make examples of, or to hand over upon request - Its not effective in anyway to make the identification of the users traffic more complex than they need to, and indeed the case.

Newgroups are far to messy and insignificant compared to the alternatives. Its the 'safest' option.... Unless you want to get into renting a server to do you downloading / ratio maintenance.

[Rain3]

As far as I can tell literally no one gets in trouble for downloading. At least in the US there actually appears to be no legal construct called "illegal downloading." I think the only reason you even see the term "illegal download" or "download" in any civil or criminal action is a lazy, uninformed or likely in some cases intentional, conflation of downloading with uploading.

In every case where I have seen a press report on a case, or MPAA ir RIAA press release on a case or series of cases, looking at official transcripts and/or actual court filings on FindLaw or Lexis one sees that in fact the case relies on uploading, and it is uploading that is traced and uploading that is the actual issue being cited for damages.

OK on p2p the activities are combined, but on Usenet they are not. I think that is why there are None, not some, not few, but no actual cases in the US of anyone charged for any USENET downloads.

If anyone feels anything else is the case I would appreciate actual case citations , and not prior or subsequent press releases, or lazy reporting, using the term, but actual decisions where someone solely downloading has suffered a civil penalty and where solely downloading is the charge in the actual filing or decision.

[Beck38]

In the U.S., the biggest 'problem' with usenet use is the transmission media, and by that I mean that by far the most common HSI (high speed internet) connection is via 'party line' systems such as cable-TV.

Because an entire neighborhood (or even city) is on a single 'shared' line, the companies are very aggressive ('network management' they call it) toward what they define as 'excessive consumption'; and usenet traffic is right up there with P2P and FYP use as 'known problems' and are specifically singled out in their 'Acceptable Use Policy's'.

Up until very recently, consumer grade accounts didn't have any set 'CAPS', and this resulted in widely varying and enforcement of unpublished 'CAPS'. Comcast, the largest cable-TV company and largest internet provider in the U.S., finally settled on a 250GB/Month cap in the last couple of years. However, they are still using 'fuzzy language' in their commercial contracts.

Interestingly, one of their tv commercials selling those business level services, they claim that 8 office workers can easily use their service. When contacted as to, did that mean that their CAP on commercial accounts was 8 times the level of their consumer service (250GB x 8 or 2TB/Month), they revert to their 'fuzzy language'.

Rapidly disappearing DSL service, which historically had little if any CAPS, has now been targeted by the few telcos aggressively pushing the service, to stunningly low levels (As little as 5GB/Month).

Other providers, such as 3G (and 4G) wireless, are grappling with the issue in typical fashion. That is, either not at all or implementing high cost/low CAPS.

Many 'providers' have been caught messing around with the transmission of transfer protocols, in fact that was the original problem cited by the FCC re: Comcast a few years ago. That has really put the problem completely up in the air now that the courts have gotten involved and made rulings that don't make sense.

But life goes on. The Commercial entities, who buy internet access at the wholesale level, for literally pennies on the Terabyte, continue to figure out ways to sell it (at the retail) for hundreds of dollars on the Megabyte.

Meanwhile, they are just now figuring out that doing so is cutting off their nose despite their face, as their Wireless (Cell phone) divisions face huge cost increases providing wireless internet to their wide ranging cell towers, which (of course) are smack dab in the middle of a competitors land-line systems.

So, it's a never ending circle-jerk of greed. So, the biggest impediment to either downloading OR uploading continues to be the 'local loop', irrespective of any legal problems, one way or the other.

[zot]

As far as I can tell literally no one gets in trouble for downloading .... in fact the case relies on uploading, and it is uploading that is traced and uploading that is the actual issue being cited for damages.

That assumption is not accurate.

In Bittorrent and ED2K, the anti-P2P enforcers have always made accusations & filed claims on every IP address they could harvest from a download swarm, regardless of whether the computer behind any particular IP had actually uploaded any data to the accuser.

People using *no-upload* BT and ED2K clients -and therefore never uploaded anything- will still get hit with an infringement claim. ED2K users who cancel the download before ever getting to the end of the queue (ED2K users know what I mean) --and therefore never uploaded OR DOWNLOADED anything-- will still get hit with an infringement notice. I know this for a fact because it happened to me once.

But don't just take my word for it. A 2008 University of Washington research paper titled Challenges and Directions for Monitoring P2P File Sharing Networks -or- Why My Printer Received a DMCA Takedown Notice documented the false and reckless accusations the anti-P2P enforcers routinely make.

see http://torrentfreak.com/study-reveal...antics-080605/

OK on p2p the activities are combined, but on Usenet they are not. I think that is why there are None, not some, not few, but no actual cases in the US of anyone charged for any USENET downloads.

Unless a usenet provider keeps download logs (and presumably none do) then there is no way anyone can know who is downloading a file - and therefore nobody to target. But possessing warez might be illegal - people have been charged when police notice someone possessing stacks of DVDs of unreleased movies (possibly downloaded from Usenet) and US customs officials can confiscate computers and drives in search of warez of people entering the country.

If anyone feels anything else is the case I would appreciate actual case citations , and not prior or subsequent press releases, or lazy reporting, using the term, but actual decisions where someone solely downloading has suffered a civil penalty and where solely downloading is the charge in the actual filing or decision.

I think you're missing the point here. Out of the tens of thousands of RIAA lawsuits (and threats of lawsuits), only two ever went to trial. In the current mass-lawsuits against an even greater number of Bittorrent users, it's quite possible that none will go to trial, as the law firms which created this sue-o-rama and recruited plaintiffs admitted it is being done strictly for profit (rather than any need for establishing legal precedent). Going to court is not even necessary for the plaintiffs to strike gold because the vast majority of accused people will simply pay up rather than take on the vastly greater expense of hiring a law firm and taking it all the way. (So-called 'nuisance lawsuits' are generally handled this way.) This is what makes 'protection rackets', compulsory bribes, and other extortion tactics so effective: it's much cheaper to submit than fight.

In the first Jammie Thomas trial, the judge ruled that simply *making available* counted as copyright infringement (therefore no actual uploading need take place) but this was thrown out on appeal. In several other countries, downloading for personal use (with no P2P uploading component) is considered legal, but this is apparently not in the USA.

[Rain3]

That assumption is not accurate.

Your quote of me edits out "at least in the US." My point is entirely 100% accurate for the US.

People using *no-upload* BT and ED2K clients -and therefore never uploaded anything- will still get hit with an infringement claim.

There are literally thousands of filings on findlaw and I don't see a single one where that is the case

Unless a usenet provider keeps download logs (and presumably none do) then there is no way anyone can know who is downloading a file - and therefore nobody to target. But possessing warez might be illegal - people have been charged when police notice someone possessing stacks of DVDs of unreleased movies (possibly downloaded from Usenet) and US customs officials can confiscate computers and drives in search of warez of people entering the country.

please indicate citations in findlaw or Lexis for this. Every single one I see indicated people are being charged with selling (IE also distribution).

I think you're missing the point here. Out of the tens of thousands of RIAA lawsuits (and threats of lawsuits), only two ever went to trial.

I don't think you understand the law. In thousands of cases, trial or not there are preliminary filings. There are thousands of cases and not one for downloading alone.

[QUOTE=zot;3470813In the first Jammie Thomas trial, the judge ruled that simply *making available* counted as copyright infringement (therefore no actual uploading need take place) but this was thrown out on appeal.[/QUOTE]
Making available is a synonym for distribution attempted distribution. In fact the case illustrates my point exactly, Thomas was not exposed for mere acquisition.

As far as the article on the University of Washington paper I think that illustrates my point and doesn't go against it at all. I think you are misreading it. What the authors found alarming in was that distribution of tracker information (announce url") triggers the the notices in that experiment.

And ultimately you don't seem to understand that False positives from mass enforcement schemes don't prove illegality or even indicate successful prosecution.