this post was submitted on 13 Jan 2024
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Reddit must share IP addresses of piracy-discussing users, film studios say::undefined

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[–] Dave@lemmy.nz 165 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Reddit must share IP addresses of piracy-discussing users

Uh oh, some sort of court ruling?

film studios say

Oh right, nothing to see here.

[–] prettybunnys@sh.itjust.works 4 points 10 months ago

That doesn’t mean they won’t do it, the more the “money taker” class takes control the more their internal regulations actually matter.

Unless we regulate that they can’t do this you can rest assured the businesses will play with each other.

Reddit is going public, they won’t give a fuck about your privacy anymore.

[–] LWD@lemm.ee 74 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)
[–] Toes@ani.social 8 points 10 months ago

Now you just gotta post that stuff to the DCS forums.

[–] Spotlight7573@lemmy.world 4 points 10 months ago

In this case, it's less about the actionability of going after the pirate and more about using them as a witness to go after the ISP with deeper pockets by showing they failed to kick pirating users off of their service. They don't care that they downloaded it, they care that the users knew they wouldn't get in trouble for piracy with that ISP and that the ISP benefited from that by keeping pirating users subscriptions active. Testimony from pirating users about why they chose that ISP and how even they knew the ISP wouldn't do anything to resolve copyright violation issues could be pretty helpful in court.

From the article:

In this week's filing, the film studios claim that six Redditors' IP address logs are “clearly relevant and proportional to the needs of the case" because the Reddit users all made comments that either establish “that Frontier has not reasonably implemented a policy for terminating repeat infringers sufficient for a safe harbor affirmative” or that “the ability to freely pirate without consequence was a draw to becoming a subscriber of Frontier."

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."

In 2022, another Reddit user said that they had used Frontier DSL for years and “despite the shitty internet, they didn’t give a shit what I downloaded.”

[–] Mostly_Gristle@lemmy.world 68 points 10 months ago

Oh, well, if the film studios say so then by all means...

[–] AceFuzzLord@lemm.ee 27 points 10 months ago

Imagine you have a right to know who's talking about doing something illegal without proof they actually carry it out. What is that, a cop run film company?

[–] bitwolf@lemmy.one 24 points 10 months ago (3 children)

Seems a little outdated to ask for IP addresses. Many use apps to browse reddit and phones get new IPs all the time.

Heck I can see some weird shit people download by toggling airplane mode on/off and visiting iknowwhatyoudownloaded

[–] Lojcs@lemm.ee 11 points 10 months ago (2 children)

They can get the ip history from isps

[–] Tangent5280@lemmy.world 10 points 10 months ago (2 children)

How about the four billions VPNs on the market

[–] bitwolf@lemmy.one 1 points 10 months ago

I believe if you visited using a VPN it would show a lot of downloads.

[–] RememberTheApollo@lemmy.world 2 points 10 months ago

Yep. People act like they’re suddenly safe because they switch IP addresses. All those addresses are logged and can be traced by history. Heck, even VPNs can be rendered useless if they keep logs and are subpoenaed, or you forget to log out of services that communicate automatically your IP address when you switch to a VPN. Just takes a little more effort to link the VPN traffic.

People don’t understand that the only thing between them and legal trouble is the willingness of the system to expend the effort to track them down, not that there’s any real security in the easiest methods people use to avoid detection.

[–] Lifecoach5000@lemmy.world 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Can you give an ELI5 for this site? Is it just a record of torrents you’ve downloaded/seeded from your current ip address?

[–] bitwolf@lemmy.one 1 points 10 months ago

I'm not sure exactly how but they show which torrents were downloaded from that IP address.

It clears after a certain interval though.

[–] Rooki@lemmy.world 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Neat page lmao

Never knew there was such a website.

[–] bitwolf@lemmy.one 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Oh yeah it's super helpful. They also have a bitorrent tester so you can see what the seeders see you as.

[–] Rooki@lemmy.world 0 points 10 months ago

Yeah i already suspected such thing, but probably because i dont torrent things, i have no experience in there ;D

[–] RedditWanderer@lemmy.world 23 points 10 months ago

Sponsored by Nord VPN

[–] hark@lemmy.world 15 points 10 months ago

Film studios must kiss my ass, says I.

[–] r00ty@kbin.life 15 points 10 months ago

Reddit must not, says I.

Seems we're at an impasse

[–] asdfasdfasdf@lemmy.world 15 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Even if they got the IP addresses, I thought I read an article from a while ago saying that the supreme Court decided that IP addresses aren't good enough to take any legal action on someone since they're shared.

[–] Spotlight7573@lemmy.world 6 points 10 months ago

It appears they aren't taking legal action against the pirates but instead wanting to use them as witnesses against the ISP who has more money to go after and from the sound of it didn't have decent repeat infringer policies in place. They also are after more than just the IP address, such as name, email address, and logs. That would presumably be enough to identify someone more clearly.

[–] PhlubbaDubba@lemm.ee 5 points 10 months ago

Also IP addresses can be spoofed, an extreme example was a teacher who's life was ruined because it was discovered he was stashing kiddy porn on the school issued computer, and then was exonerated because evidence was found that revealed that the actual pedo was using the victim's laptop address as basically a VPN to find this stuff without being tracked.

[–] Akrenion@programming.dev 13 points 10 months ago

I was merly discussing how to stay away from these easy to use services that allow people to pirate. Why do they need my IP?

[–] Nomad@infosec.pub 11 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Just wait for the IPO then buy a controlling stake. Seems easier than forcing reddit in court. Spwz loves dick as long as it pays well. No need for the hammer

[–] cooopsspace@infosec.pub 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Should be worth cents on the dollar since they fucked it up so bad

[–] Nomad@infosec.pub 1 points 10 months ago

should, yeah.

[–] autotldr@lemmings.world 9 points 10 months ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:


For the third time in less than a year, film studios with copyright infringement complaints against a cable Internet provider are trying to force Reddit to share information about users who have discussed piracy on the site.

In the first instance, US Magistrate Judge Laurel Beeler ruled in the US District Court for the Northern District of California that the First Amendment right to anonymous speech meant Reddit didn’t have to disclose the names, email addresses, and other account registration information for nine Reddit users.

Film companies, including Bodyguard Productions and Millennium Media, had subpoenaed Reddit in relation to a copyright infringement lawsuit against Astound Broadband-owned RCN about subscribers allegedly pirating 34 movie titles, including Hellboy (2019), Rambo V: Last Blood, and Tesla.

In her ruling, Beeler noted that while the First Amendment right to anonymous speech is not absolute, the film producers had already received the names of 118 Grande subscribers.

She also said the film producers had failed to prove that “the identifying information is directly or materially relevant or unavailable from another source.”

This week, as reported by TorrentFreak, film companies Voltage Holdings, which are part of the previous two subpoenas, and Screen Media Ventures, another film studio with litigation against RCN, filed a motion to compel [PDF] Reddit to respond to the subpoena in the US District Court for the Northern District of California.


The original article contains 588 words, the summary contains 228 words. Saved 61%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

[–] ryannathans@aussie.zone 7 points 10 months ago

Trying that one again? Thought they lost last time

[–] badbytes@lemmy.world 4 points 10 months ago

Such redundant 8nfo in post. States the same info 3 time for some reason.

[–] spirinolas@lemmy.world 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Time to get the retractable baton out of storage.

[–] fuzzzerd@programming.dev 1 points 10 months ago

That's an old callback. Fun times reading those posts back in the day.

[–] afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

I wonder what all the people attacking AI data harvesting are going to say. Sorry the face eating leopard is looking at your face