Chilling_Silence's blogHow TO get caught downloading via P2P under the new law
You see, I’m asked pretty much every single day by somebody about it. There is still *so* much uncertainty around this new law and where it’s going to leave people standing.
So, I thought I’d show people how they can be caught (This is exactly how “the big guys” will catch you), specifically if they were downloading copyrighted materials. I’ll also explain why some people who think they are “safe” are not.
Then I’ll summarize at the end with some other nuggets of information about the new law.
Lets download a file (Though this one is a fully legal file) and show you first-hand how to get caught, and how you can catch others!
We start by downloading uTorrent in this exercise. You can do it now too from:Â http://www.utorrent.com
uTorrent is the name of the program we’re going to use to download in a “Peer-to-Peer” manner, meaning you share directly with me and I share directly with you. Don’t worry, in this instance, it’s quite safe.
Once you have uTorrent downloaded and installed, we’re going to go and get the .torrent file for Ubuntu from here:Â http://www.ubuntu.com/download/ubuntu/alternative-download
Ubuntu is a free open-source Linux distribution. For the non-techie people, it’s basically a replacement for Microsoft Windows. We want to download the ubuntu-11.04-desktop-i386.iso.torrent
Don’t worry, this .torrent file is tiny.
Quick explanation: A .torrent file is basically an “information” file, which tells your PC about where to go to get the *actual* files you want, about how big the file is (It’s probably split up by the .torrent program into a hundred odd different ‘chunks’), as well as some other checking mechanisms which basically mean you can’t be given a corrupt or ‘fake’ part of the file.
Now, load that .torrent into uTorrent, and uTorrent will begin to download Ubuntu. Again, don’t worry, this is perfectly 100% legal, in NZ and around the world.
What’s changed in NZ is not that it’s illegal to download certain files, it’s always been illegal to download copyrighted materials (Such as movies and music albums) but it is simply easier for you to be pulled up for doing-so. Nothing has changed about the way that you can be “found out”, the same people have been tracking down pirates for years using exactly the same methods.
So, You should see Ubuntu downloading in uTorrent right about now. You can cancel it in a minute if you want.
Before you do, click once on the Torrent that is downloading, and then click on the “Peers” tab.
What do you see?
If you’re anything like me, you should see the details of tons of different people that your PC has established a connection to, with the hopes of either downloading or uploading the file to / from.
Click for a larger image:
You can click on the great big red square stop button up the top now if you want.
Anyway, what did you see?
I saw somebody from Australia, somebody from the US, from Brazil.
This is simply how the “peer-to-peer” (P2P) technology works. It goes direct from your PC to theirs to trade that file. As you download it, you also re-share parts with others who’ve begun downloading it.
Now, lets take one of those IP Addresses, we’ll pick on our Australian buddy: 60.242.239.29
Replace the “-” with “.” as that is how an “IP Address” is supposed to be written.
What’s an IP Address? It’s the computer address that your PC uses to communicate with the world. Technically it’s probably being given to your ADSL Router / Modem, but that’s besides the point. You have to have one in order to communicate with the outside world over the internet. The IP Address that you get is given to you by your ISP, they’ve got a small “pool” probably of a few thousand. Each time you connect to the internet or your router restarts, you get a new one.
Anyways, about that aussie!
Go to:Â http://remote.12dt.com/
Type in the IP Address 60.242.239.29
It tells you the IP Address belongs to: tpgi.com.au
If you go to that website again, it’ll have your IP Address in there. See if it correctly identifies your ISP!
What does this mean?
Well simply put it means this is how the likes of the RIAA and MPAA discover who is downloading pirated copies of their songs / movies. They download & re-upload them, themselves.
It’s quite easy for them to see, really.
It also means that if you use something such as “PeerGuardian”, it isn’t going to work. Tools like PeerGuardian try and block IP Addresses that are ‘known’ to be bad, but there’s nothing stopping the RIAA or MPAA from just using the likes of a 3G Data Card, or working from home to catch you! You would be incredibly foolish to think that they will prevent you from being caught.
However, this also means that if you’re watching something from YouTube or downloading direct from a Rapidshare server, you’re significantly less likely to be “found out”, because you’re downloading direct from a server, so to a certain extent nobody else knows what you’re downloading.
Also, keep in mind that watching certain things on YouTube is still legal, but some is also illegal, depending on who published the materials to YouTube.
If, for example, you find a movie on YouTube. Depending on the movie itself, it’s probably *not* legal that you’re watching it, because it shouldn’t have been uploaded in the first place. Just because you found it, doesn’t make it legal.
Same goes for paid downloads. There are some paid download sites out there for music & movies which aren’t actually legal. It’s tough for end-users to know, but in a nutshell this law has two driving reasons behind it:
1) To get away from the mentality of “Oh I’ll just try it and see if I can get away with it”
2) To get users to question “Is this media that I’m watching / listening to legal?”
I hope this has been useful to you. Leave me some comments with your thoughts, as always
[…] How TO get caught downloading via P2P under the new law Sep […]
the article was very interesting but what do you advice torrent users how can we secure ourselves from being caught?
i thought configuration of utorrent (like protocol encryption and stuff like that) could decrease risk of being caught
That’s a good question!
Basically, Encryption will prevent your ISP from seeing what the traffic is, but they’re likely still able to “put two and two together” by figuring out the .torrent file you just downloaded, unless you’ve done it from a website via an SSL connection (and a few other things). Encryption may also prevent certain throttling methods, but it certainly won’t prevent you from connecting to the tracker and your IP being seen by the likes of the RIAA / MPAA. They’re the ones (At least in NZ) who’re looking for you. For the better part, most ISP’s couldn’t care less.
IP Blockers are a waste of time. If you can change your IP Address, so can the likes of the RIAA and MPAA. Besides, they’re worth trillions of dollars, people aren’t clever enough to realize that they’ve got the manpower, brainpower and money to figure out “Maybe I could work from home and catch people”, or “Perhaps we could use a prepaid 3G datacard”. But alas, I digress.
Proxies work, but they’re not ideal in a few way. It’s possibly better than nothing, but I still wouldn’t.
What you really want is one of two things:
1) A VPN / Darknet of some description.
2) A Seedbox
The best solution is a Seedbox in my opinion. Once you’ve got a Seedbox, it’s easy to use things like transmission-remote-gui, as well as the ability to then download from it via HTTP / HTTPS / Whatever else your heart desires. They’re usually incredibly fast and allow you to maintain a subscription with a private tracker. Usually private trackers have other seeders who have a Seedbox, so sharing is insanely fast, and the latest in “releases” is usually very, very quick!
thanks for an interesting answer, i tried VPNs but most of them (the free ones) don’t work as good as people expect. Never tried seedbox though, i’m gonna make some research and will see if it worth to use.
p.s. i have never had problem with isps or RIAA but would like to be prepared :))
Yeah they’ve just sent out some notifications from the RIANZ this last week. It’s hard to find a good seed box provider, some of them are downright terrible. However, ask your friends, they may well know of a good one 🙂 Expect to pay, something around NZD$15-25 a month, depending on your requirements and what you get for it. Don’t try and go free though, it’s not worth it…
I don’t believe there is any service that will protect you, VPNs and Proxies etc still have IP addresses that can be tracked and when the copyright holders come knocking on their doors they will not take the heat for your illegal activities, they will pass on your details in order to stay in business. I’m sure if you read the terms and conditions it will say this somewhere.
All you can really do is rely on the fact they really can’t chase up everyone, if they paid ISPs $25 for every infringement going on every day they would soon go broke. Instead I believe they will chase the worst offenders, those who download the content they most want to protect, and maybe seek to make a few public examples of people to put a scare into others.
This is true, however some countries like Sweden don’t have the same copyright laws we do, so they care less about turning over that sort of thing. Some VPN / Darknet services are specifically setup so that you get a dynamic “internal” IP each time, and they don’t log who had which IPs at which times. Means that by the time they turn over the IP of who *currently* has XYZ internal IP Address, you’ve re-established your connection and the information is useless.
That, and they’ve also proven in the USA that they’re happy to chase down people for just one song, and try and do them over for millions. For one song. Think about it though, they win one $15,000 lump sum and that’s enough for another 600 infringement notices to be sent out. Tell yourself whatever you want to help you sleep at night, but the fact is it’s quite easy, and they don’t look at you and say “Well they’ve only downloaded the latest Transformers, but this person over here downloaded Transformers and Xmen, so we’ll get Person #2”. Nope, they just see that you’re connected to the torrent tracker (either downloading or seeding the same torrent as they’ve got a hold of), do a reverse DNS lookup, and contact your ISP with an infringement notification. It’s dead simple, and that’s all there really is to it.
I do not see how knowing someone’s IP address make it liable. What if you have an unsecured wireless connection. Anyone could use that wireless connection to download the file. Unless they confiscate your hard drive and find the stolen media, there is no way to prove it. If you do not have the files they can not prosecute as you do not have the “stolen goods”. Also IP addresses can be faked. So there is no way to know for sure who did anything. I would say that the best recourse for safety is to have everything stored in military grade password protected drives not attached to your system,. This way, unless you give them the password (and hopefully you are not an idiot and have it posted somewhere where anyone can get a hold of it), then it does not matter if they take your gear. The cost of cracking it would be very high with no guarantee of payback. Specially if you have multiple drives.
IP Addresses can’t be faked if you want to receive the data back, you have to give your IP Address to get it back. Proxies work to a certain extent but you get my point.
I’m not saying I agree with it, just saying “this is how it is”.