College/edu/dorm Warning

[auditcon]

I don't know if all college students out there should be alarmed or be worried about this, but I am pretty sure that some of you should be and better watch out. I have just witnessed an account of a person downloading a fake movie file and then getting a call from the campus judicial department about pirating movies! Now, our system is setup so that they can tell who generated what internet traffic. However, the only way for the school to be contacted by the MAKER OF THE FILM is if the maker of the film provided the fake file and traced the IP. At least, that is what I conclude. Correct me if I am wrong, but you all have read the stories about the crackdown and the film companines setting up bots to mess up the downloads with wrong filenames or blank movies. I suggest always using something like www.verifieddownloads.com. Hopefully the bots won't actually provide a real copy of the movie. And if you are a home user you probably have nothing to worry about. I think they are going after colleges because they have high bandwidth (therefore download a lot) and know that the university will do something about it (not exactly on the student side). I don't know if I should post the company specifically (I might be traced&#33 but since I don't advocate piracy in any way then it is OK. Watch out for New Line Cinema... I have heard that Universal might be sketchy too.

[sleepnmojo]

Originally posted by auditcon@28 February 2003 - 03:47
I don't know if all college students out there should be alarmed or be worried about this, but I am pretty sure that some of you should be and better watch out. I have just witnessed an account of a person downloading a fake movie file and then getting a call from the campus judicial department about pirating movies! Now, our system is setup so that they can tell who generated what internet traffic. However, the only way for the school to be contacted by the MAKER OF THE FILM is if the maker of the film provided the fake file and traced the IP. At least, that is what I conclude. Correct me if I am wrong, but you all have read the stories about the crackdown and the film companines setting up bots to mess up the downloads with wrong filenames or blank movies. I suggest always using something like www.verifieddownloads.com. Hopefully the bots won't actually provide a real copy of the movie. And if you are a home user you probably have nothing to worry about. I think they are going after colleges because they have high bandwidth (therefore download a lot) and know that the university will do something about it (not exactly on the student side). I don't know if I should post the company specifically (I might be traced&#33 but since I don't advocate piracy in any way then it is OK. Watch out for New Line Cinema... I have heard that Universal might be sketchy too.

Its all bs. They just look at filenames half the time, who cares what the content really is. Then they write the schools threatening law suits. The schools comply, because they don't want to waste money for lawyers, and don't want to get a bad rap. The only thing the school can really get the student on is the fact that he may have violated the rules for correct internet use. They usually slap them on the wrist. They might look at logs and such, but they don't really look at the content of what you send.

Then there is the case they download off you. They naturally assume that everything you have you dont own. IE music, movies, games, etc... I could understand new realeases, but they can't tell about games, music, and dvd rips. Thats what court is for. Which is the last place you want to be.

[auditcon]

I realize that they probably don't analyze that actual content of the downloaded files. And students probably won't get in much trouble. Still, shouldn't you be a little worried if you downloaded a file from the company of the film? They may not analyze the content of what you send, but they can tell from an IP address who was using the computer. A hassel I don't think is worth going through.

[Shinigami_[R.I.P.]]

Heh, it's a risk we all take sharing. Some worry ALOT and others worry very little. I think this board relieves some of that stress of worrying and its a great way of meeting new people that have similar interests. So, we take the risk for entertainment and private use of the files we DL.

[Fatal Error]

Originally posted by auditcon@27 February 2003 - 21:47
I don't know if all college students out there should be alarmed or be worried about this, but I am pretty sure that some of you should be and better watch out. I have just witnessed an account of a person downloading a fake movie file and then getting a call from the campus judicial department about pirating movies! Now, our system is setup so that they can tell who generated what internet traffic. However, the only way for the school to be contacted by the MAKER OF THE FILM is if the maker of the film provided the fake file and traced the IP. At least, that is what I conclude. Correct me if I am wrong, but you all have read the stories about the crackdown and the film companines setting up bots to mess up the downloads with wrong filenames or blank movies. I suggest always using something like www.verifieddownloads.com. Hopefully the bots won't actually provide a real copy of the movie. And if you are a home user you probably have nothing to worry about. I think they are going after colleges because they have high bandwidth (therefore download a lot) and know that the university will do something about it (not exactly on the student side). I don't know if I should post the company specifically (I might be traced&#33 but since I don't advocate piracy in any way then it is OK. Watch out for New Line Cinema... I have heard that Universal might be sketchy too.

This has been going on for a while now..but with increasing frequency especially lately. I realise that copyright laws differ from one location to another, but it has been my understanding, that it is not illegal to download copyrighted material for your "personal use".. if you upload it,publish it or otherwise distribute it however, and you get caught..then you could have a big problem. I've also noticed alot of "journalistic interest" on the topic of filesharing around the board lately.. The best advice that I can give anyone that fileshares is this.. take every precaution that you can. get a good p2p program like k-lite v.2.10, download Peer Guardian and update it daily. ..and then find yourself a good anonyomous proxy server, preferably one outside the U.S. .. "Drastic Actions" call for "Drastic Counter-measures" .. its gonna be a long ride, thanx for the heads up. Happy Burning !

[dave]

I think you might find this interesting if you're in a college, etc. I made the following 2 posts in different discussions.

Post 1:
Well, I'd like to add my 2 cents (I know a lot about privacy, or think I do). To hide your IP address from other users go to the options menu. Under the Firewall tab, configure your copy of Kazaa Lite or K++ to use a privacy SOCKS5 proxy. This will hide your true IP from the downloader. Beware however, it will slow down your transfers.
If you are truly paranoid (after reading the articles, I'm sure more of you are), you could switch over to Filetopia (http://www.filetopia.com). This uses strong encryption to hide your activities from even your own ISP! Make sure you configure Filetopia to use a SOCKS or HTTP proxy, and switch the encryption algorithm from Rijndael to 256-Bit Twofish or 448-Bit Blowfish (I don't fully trust Rijndael). That way your IP will be hidden from the RIAA/MPAA, and your activities will be hidden from your own ISP!

Post 2:
I'm not sure if this would work, but I think it's worth a try. All the people who are not sharing based on the fact that they are using a college connection (getting stopped by the college) should use their copy of K Lite using a SOCKS5 proxy. I'm not 100% certain, but I think there is a good chance that the colleges would let you share if your connection was routed through a SOCKS proxy instead of the normal port (if they blocked SOCKS proxy access, the internet connection wouldn't do much good for firewall users).

End of Previous Posts

Well, the deal is this: if you are concerned with being traced, say by downloading a file from the MPAA/RIAA, a privacy SOCKS5 proxy should protect you. If you're concerned with someone from the college intercepting your downloads, switch to Filetopia, and use some strong encryption and a good SOCKS5 proxy.

[dave]

Yeah... it seems that they use port 1214 for incoming connections. That means that if they blocked 1214 at college, no incoming connections would be possible. If you use a SOCKS5 proxy and it comes through port 1080, it won't matter if port 1214 is blocked.

[Fatal Error]

Originally posted by dave@28 February 2003 - 00:46
I think you might find this interesting if you're in a college, etc. I made the following 2 posts in different discussions.

Post 1:
Well, I'd like to add my 2 cents (I know a lot about privacy, or think I do). To hide your IP address from other users go to the options menu. Under the Firewall tab, configure your copy of Kazaa Lite or K++ to use a privacy SOCKS5 proxy. This will hide your true IP from the downloader. Beware however, it will slow down your transfers.
If you are truly paranoid (after reading the articles, I'm sure more of you are), you could switch over to Filetopia (http://www.filetopia.com). This uses strong encryption to hide your activities from even your own ISP! Make sure you configure Filetopia to use a SOCKS or HTTP proxy, and switch the encryption algorithm from Rijndael to 256-Bit Twofish or 448-Bit Blowfish (I don't fully trust Rijndael). That way your IP will be hidden from the RIAA/MPAA, and your activities will be hidden from your own ISP!

End of Previous Posts

Well, the deal is this: if you are concerned with being traced, say by downloading a file from the MPAA/RIAA, a privacy SOCKS5 proxy should protect you. If you're concerned with someone from the college intercepting your downloads, switch to Filetopia, and use some strong encryption and a good SOCKS5 proxy.

Good advice..nice post. The only reason I opt for the use of an anonymous proxy server, is because it gives me the best of all worlds,it blocks my IP address from people that download from me,the RIAA/MPAA and other unknown hostiles, and my own ISP all at the same time...plus it has another advantage,it allows me to keep my k-lite !

[Ron]

Originally posted by Fatal Error@28 February 2003 - 05:29
I realise that copyright laws differ from one location to another, but it has been my understanding, that it is not illegal to download copyrighted material for your "personal use".. if you upload it,publish it or otherwise distribute it however, and you get caught..then you could have a big problem.

As far as I know, downloading copyright material is punishable by law all over the world.
What we are doing, is stealing revenue from the authors. Plain and simple.
Do I mind?
Hell no!
You are however allowed to make a copy of a copyright material for your OWN personal use, as long as you own the original. (e.g. a copy in case the original gets damaged)
I live in Belgium, and as far as I know, we're not even allowed to tape music from the radio.
Of course, the cops don't bother looking for that, they want the big shots, who copy entire CD's and sell them on the black market.

[J'Pol]

I am confused.

If you say that the copyright owner, or their representative is sharing the file then, by implication they are allowing you to download it. Even if that is not the case, then to use the fact that you downloaded it, from them, against you would be Entrapment (in the US). Agent Provocateur in the UK.

If they are sharing files which are not what they claim to be, then how are you stealing their copyright material.

I would be more than happy to download a file which the owner has put on a p2p site. They are then giving it to me. Very kind I say.

It is almost certainly pu ishable by law all over the world, if you include civil law.