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Reddit beats film industry again, won’t have to reveal pirates’ IP addresses (arstechnica.com)

submitted 9 months ago by L4s@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

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Reddit beats film industry again, won’t have to reveal pirates’ IP addresses::Firms wanted seven years' worth of IP address logs on users who discussed piracy.

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[–] tabular@lemmy.world 52 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Discussing " "piracy" " (unauthorized copying) does not equate to being guilty of it: title aught to say "alleged".

[–] Spotlight7573@lemmy.world 11 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

The film industry in this case wasn't after the data to go after the individuals who made the posts but to use them as witnesses against their ISPs who did nothing in response to piracy complaints. The DMCA has a requirement for a repeat infringer policy and evidence that the ISPs knew about the piracy and that their users chose them or stayed with them because the ISP wouldn't kick them off goes a long way to winning the case against the ISP. They were going after the deep pockets.

[–] halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world 7 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Nearly every ISP assigns IP addresses dynamically. So unless they're using IPs from very close timespans, the raw IP addresses are effectively useless to identify repeat offenders.

[–] QuadratureSurfer@lemmy.world 8 points 9 months ago

Yes? But as the person you are responding to has mentioned, they're not after the individuals, they're after the "ISPs who did nothing in response to piracy complaints."

Having the IP address of those users will reveal which ISP they are using.

Just run a traceroute or tracert command against any website and you can see for yourself how your connection initially goes through your ISP before branching out to the rest of the internet.

[–] Spotlight7573@lemmy.world 5 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

The ISP would have the records to identify the repeat infringers. Or should at least. That was the problem the film industry is going after: the ISPs not doing even the bare minimum required by law to terminate infringers, even when they had been notified many times by rightsholders.

From a previous article about this case:

https://lemmy.world/post/10751737

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/01/film-studios-demand-ip-addresses-of-people-who-discussed-piracy-on-reddit/

Last year, a Reddit user wrote that they received 44 emails from Frontier threatening to cut off their service due to torrent downloads, but “if they didn’t do it after 44 emails ... they won’t."

Either the ISP has the records to identify the users and the film industry can get their information to use them as witnesses that way or the ISP doesn't have their information and shows how not-seriously they are taking the issue. Either way, it's bad for the ISP.

Also, do IP addresses really change that often anymore, even if you aren't paying for a static one?

[–] halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Also, do IP addresses really change that often anymore, even if you aren’t paying for a static one?

For most ISPS, every time you restart your modem it will be assigned a new IP. Some ISPs may reassign the same IP within a small time period, but most will just assign a new IP for every new connection.

[–] systemglitch@lemmy.world 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Must be a regional thing. I have the same IP for years, no matter which ISP I use. Struggling to think of a single time it changed in the last 20+ years.

[–] iwasgodonce@lemmy.world 1 points 9 months ago

My parents' isp setup a static dhcp entry per customer. If you change the mac address of your router you don't get an address. The address you get with the proper mac address is constant and can't be changed.