Tag: Peer-to-Peer
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The Latest in Nationwide Internet User Identification – Part 2 (the All-New, So-Called Federal Co-Conspirator Theory)
Since Part 1 in this series a few months ago, Plaintiffs have continued to file “pure bill of discovery” suits in Florida state court. These proceedings typically involve “John Does” who are accused of copyright infringement via peer-to-peer networks. The Plaintiffs (copyright-holders or their delegates) have continued to name as defendants in those “pure discovery”…
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The Latest in Nationwide Internet User Identification – Part 1 (The Ancient State Law "Pure Bill of Discovery")
Plaintiffs are engaging in aggressive and questionable new tactics in a growing wave of federal copyright “John Doe” lawsuits. In those lawsuits, the obvious objective of the plaintiffs is to discover from Internet Service Providers (ISPs) the personal identities of many of the ISPs’ subscribers. The plaintiffs typically present the ISPs with long lists of…
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Erroneous DMCA notices and copyright enforcement, part deux
A few weeks ago, I wrote about a deluge of DMCA notices and pre-settlement letters that CoralCDN experienced in late August. This article actually received a bit of press, including MediaPost, ArsTechnica, TechDirt, and, very recently, Slashdot. I’m glad that my own experience was able to shed some light on the more insidious practices that…
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Inaccurate Copyright Enforcement: Questionable "best" practices and BitTorrent specification flaws
[Today we welcome my Princeton Computer Science colleague Mike Freedman. Mike’s research areas include computer systems, network software, and security. He writes a technical blog about these topics at Princeton S* Network Systems — required reading for serious systems geeks like me. — Ed Felten] In the past few weeks, Ed has been writing about…
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A Freedom-of-Speech-based Approach To Limiting Filesharing – Part III: Smoke, smoke!
Over the past two days we have seen that filesharing is vulnerable to spamming, and that as a defense, the filesharers have used the IP block list to exclude the spammers from sharing files. Today I discuss how I think lawyers and laypeople should look at the legal issues. Since I am most decidedly not…
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A Freedom-of-Speech Approach To Limiting Filesharing – Part I: Filesharing and Spam
[Today we kick off a series of three guest posts by Mitch Golden. Mitch was a professor of physics when, in 1995, he was bitten by the Internet bug and came to New York to become an entrepreneur and consultant. He has worked on a variety of Internet enterprises, including one in the filesharing space.…
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Study Shows DMCA Takedowns Based on Inconclusive Evidence
A new study by Michael Piatek, Yoshi Kohno and Arvind Krishnamurthy at the University of Washington shows that copyright owners’ representatives sometimes send DMCA takedown notices where there is no infringement – and even to printers and other devices that don’t download any music or movies. The authors of the study received more than 400…
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Comcast's Disappointing Defense
Last week, Comcast offered a defense in the FCC proceeding challenging the technical limitations it had placed on BitTorrent traffic in its network. (Back in October, I wrote twice about Comcast’s actions.) The key battle line is whether Comcast is just managing its network reasonably in the face of routine network congestion, as it claims,…
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Could Use-Based Broadband Pricing Help the Net Neutrality Debate?
Yesterday, thanks to a leaked memo, it came to light that Time Warner Cable intends to try out use-based broadband pricing on a few of its customers. It looks like the plan is for several tiers of use, with the heaviest users possibly paying overage charges on a per-byte basis. In confirming its plans to…
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Universal Didn't Ignore Digital, Just Did It Wrong
Techies have been chortling all week about comments made by Universal Music CEO Doug Morris to Wired’s Seth Mnookin. Morris, despite being in what is now a technology-based industry, professed extreme ignorance about the digital world. Here’s the money quote: Morris insists there wasn’t a thing he or anyone else could have done differently. “There’s…