How is Animesuki going to handle the ISP trackers on July first?

[hlhaskett]

I was told about this article the other day about ISP are going to be set to track users using newsgroups/mIRC/bittorrent and can report the user to whoever their internet provider is.

How is Animesuki and other people who are mainly bittorrent sites going to do with this?

Here's a link to the article. http://news.yahoo.com/cnet-news-repo...150239837.html

I thought this should be brought out in the open because it seemed like people in my circles know about this. I don't wanna loose my only way to get my anime. It's not like I'm downloading True Blood or Game of Thrones. :/

[SeijiSensei]

Your IP address can be harvested from the tracker and associated with a file any time you use Bittorrent. Your traffic might already be scanned using "deep packet inspection" technologies. If you think this changes anything fundamental about the lack of privacy while using Bittorrent, you're wrong. The article describes the usual methods of avoiding surveillance, particularly the use of proxies. There might be even easier methods of avoiding detection. If the ISPs are simply going to log traffic to the standard BT ports 6881-6900, then using a non-standard port avoids that entirely.

There are a couple of obvious methods to detect BitTorrent users. I assume that all the major copyright holders have robots running on trackers like Nyaa that connect to torrents, pose as peers, and compile the IP addresses of the machines exchanging each title. This wouldn't be a very hard program to write.

Another way to identify BT users is their uncharacteristic pattern of Internet traffic. Few other Internet services create such a profusion of separate connections to individual peers as does BT. It's not hard to identify network users who have a much larger than average number of peered connections.

I can't speak for GHDpro, but I would think none of this matters at all for AnimeSuki as a listing service for English-subtitled unlicensed Japanese animation. Obviously all the production houses and R1 licensors know that AnimeSuki exists and cope with that fact in their own ways. AnimeSuki itself has complied with takedown orders like these.

Since I live in the US, nearly every show I watch these days is streamed. I rarely torrent files any more except for the occasional unavailable show like AKB0048 or Showa Monogatari. Personally I'm much happier paying my $7/month to Crunchyroll to stream legally and avoid any moral qualms or legal hassles involved in downloading torrents. People living outside the US don't have the same access to streams as I do, so torrents serve a useful purpose for them. As the article talks about US ISPs, though, the problems of foreign anime viewers aren't relevant here.

[synaesthetic]

Most of the ISPs, especially those who don't have a stake in Big Content, will probably ignore this "agreement" because it's a lot of extra work for them.

I also doubt very seriously that the RIAA and MPAA give two shits about unlicensed fansubs. It's not about what's wrong or what's legal to them--it's about money. They're not going to care about anything they don't control the license for and can sue over.

[Vexx]

I'm going to call "bullshit" on anything but torrents simply because "deep packet inspection" puts an ISP at risk of running afoul of privacy/wiretap laws if its run broad-spectrum. Its also hugely expensive. The only ISPs I've seen even pretending to wave this noise around are the Very Large ISPs owned by the media content peoples (Time-Warner, etc). And since they're Very Large, that implies a massive issue of rolling out the infrastructure and we already know they barely do basic service right

Small ISPs and mom'n'pop ISPs simply do not have the budget to do this kind of bullshit. They barely have enough funds to track down a stupid DMCA "request" takedown demand. ISPs routinely challenge laws that attempt to make them do the work of law enforcement in court and are usually successful. A warrant has to be specific and not put undue stress on the business.

mIRC/xdcc and DDL are still relatively safe - just avoid US corporate music&video files which is mostly crap anyway

[Solafighter]

Originally Posted by Vexx

mIRC/xdcc and DDL are still relatively safe - just avoid US corporate music&video files which is mostly crap anyway

Thats right. Stay away from the mainstream stuff and you are safe.

[mangamuscle]

Originally Posted by Vexx

... "deep packet inspection" puts an ISP at risk of running afoul of privacy/wiretap laws if its run broad-spectrum. Its also hugely expensive.

Lets not find shelter in this idea since technology is moving target. I still remember when I heard for the first time a song with vocals played on a computer, it was a 10 second sample of She Blinded Me With Science. Back then it would have been quite optimistical to think someday people would hear music only on their computer powered gadgets since ti would require *gasp* 40 mhz or maybe more of procesing power. I think we have reached the peak size of single files (1080p video is not getting bigger, it is even getting a trim with 10bit) and I have already read a year or two ago about procesors with 100+ cores for the near future. In the years to come the USA congress might (yet again) do some legislation on privacy/wiretap laws and deem DPI to be fully legal (and we all know what will happen when the supreme court hears about it, they will clap with both hands).

[synaesthetic]

At least until the resolution bump to 4k, anyway.

[Vexx]

Yes... I work in the industry - I know how expensive it is and how expensive its going to be for the next several years. I know that ISPs and most of the high tech industry is *HUGELY* against this "they must do MPAA thuggery" and I don't think the MPAA/RIAA still has a clue how much of an army is arrayed against them both at the individual and corporate level.

[synaesthetic]

Originally Posted by Vexx

Yes... I work in the industry - I know how expensive it is and how expensive its going to be for the next several years. I know that ISPs and most of the high tech industry is *HUGELY* against this "they must do MPAA thuggery" and I don't think the MPAA/RIAA still has a clue how much of an army is arrayed against them both at the individual and corporate level.

They're already dead, they just don't know it yet.

[Afternoon Tea]

well this sucks, hopefully I wont need to download anything major other then anime this year.. (*￣m￣)

[sarnagon]

I think you should not worry to much about it, because a lots of people are downloading stuff. It's very hard to punish every people who download stuff on Internet. If you want more secure than you could make a proxy server.

[Vexx]

Originally Posted by sarnagon

I think you should not worry to much about it, because a lots of people are downloading stuff. It's very hard to punish every people who download stuff on Internet. If you want more secure than you could make a proxy server.

Please don't assume that laws in the rest of the world and legal practices are the same as in the Netherlands (which has fairly open rules about downloading).

In the US, it is hard to get a legal verdict punishing someone but the lawyers can certainly *bankrupt* someone with legal costs unless the judge happens to be paying attention.

OTOH... its like herds of gazelle - they would overwhelm the courts if they tried to take down an entire herd and the courts have already ruled against them on such 'grab'em'all' lawsuits.

[Dist]

Originally Posted by CaptnAwesomee

well this sucks, hopefully I wont need to download anything major other then anime this year.. (*￣m￣)

Two words : Direct Downloads

How's an ISP gonna track what you download by direct downloads? I doubt they can. Just by typing google what you want and '' ddl '' and you'd find links to mediafire etc. with the stuff.

Still wouldn't it just be easier to pay a little for secure proxy server and download through that when using torrents?

[Vexx]

Originally Posted by Dist

Two words : Direct Downloads

How's an ISP gonna track what you download by direct downloads? I doubt they can. Just by typing google what you want and '' ddl '' and you'd find links to mediafire etc. with the stuff.

Still wouldn't it just be easier to pay a little for secure proxy server and download through that when using torrents?

For the record, "DDL" includes mIRC/xdcc and Usenet as well as a variety of file host serving sites. Seriously, the expense of *discovering*, *tracking*, and *proving* a violation ... not to mention the number of wiretap and computer fraud laws that would be violated ... versus the ease of just logging into a torrent and catching "clueless torrent kiddies" to make an example of is just too great a difference.

It would be a *huge* expense for an ISP to retain and analyze broad spectrum file transfer logs - possibly a bankrupting expense. Even then, if I have a file transfer called "Roman Holiday", someone is eventually going to have to actually *look* at the file = more costs and there are millions of files to look at that would be flagged. The ISPs are telling the RIAA/MPAA cabals to go to hell and they're starting to rally their customers ("everyone in the country") to let the politicians know where the real power is. The cabals are responding by trying to "own" the delivery conduits (hence the ISP/content mergers) but that isn't working either for a variety of reasons.

None of this is to say don't be dumb and don't be careful. But at the moment, the courts are really really tired of the antics of these buffoons, their poor grasp of technology, their legal sloppiness, and their inept arguments --- and its showing in the increasingly angry rulings.

[gsilver]

All I torrent is unlicensed anime and occasionally Blu-Ray rips of things that never made it in R1. For the most part, no one (in the US, anyway) cares about the stuff.

I'd never torrent RIAA/MPAA files... Too much risk, and Spotify/Pandora/Netflix/Hulu more or less have me covered through legit channels, anyway.

[Berserkguard]

I've been using a Swedish VPN just to be safe.

But I wouldn't worry too much about it as others have said; just avoid anything that would make the MPAA/RIAA feel like they're profit margin is dropping