Battleangel

Now, this story has also reached WIRED magazine. Denmark Bills Users for Downloads.
Essentially, what APG did was to take the IP of unknowing users on Kazaa and eDonkey and then trace them back to their ISP and demand that the ISP would reveal the users’ real life identity. And of course the cowardly ISPs buckled under the threat of legal action and instead sold out on its users.
The APG is known for its controversial approaches to uphold copyright. Not so long ago, APG Sweden broke a series of laws by publishing the names and photos of alleged and convicted manufacturers and resellers of pirated material on the internet.
Approximately 150 p2p users have received invoices and half of them have payed up so far. The prospect of legal action scares a lot of people I suppose. Plus a lot of these people are probably under age xor lack the knowledge, conviction, time and burning passion to battle these intimidations.

What kind of proof could the APG have against these people? Their IP and a list of material that they would have shared on the network probably. But have they sampled every file of every user so that they can prove that they are for real? I suppose the defendants, should it come to a trial, could claim that all the files where fake. I mean, how difficult is it to create fake files? You can easily get hold of the legitimate names and file sizes and then all you have to do is to create a big .txt file and rename it. And you even have a reason to do this since it will make your node on a network appear more attractive. And since the RIAA has been spreading fake music files for a while now, you might not even have created the files yourself. You can actually claim you were helping them do their job.
It sounds like a stupid plan, but hey, go ahead and prove me wrong … and don’t forget they could never get a search warrant on such grounds. And, as a last line of defence we have DoD algorithms to stop hardware and software recovery.
So far, there are NO indications that the APG will make good on their promise to prosecute users who do not comply and pay up / remove the data.

What people really need to do is to lobby the ISPs so that they stand up to the opposition. They shouldn’t have to do anything. And it is surprising that an org. like the APG can just have the user data of 150 users pulled. I don’t know about Denmark, but here in Sweden, this could only be enforced in a police investigation. And guess what? The police does not have the time nor money to do that kind of research. And this has opened up a market for lawless operations like the APG. Look at the Verizon case in the US. They refused to give out a SINGLE USER and are currently battling the industry in court. Over here we just hand over 150 people just like that. This is also interesting since I was recently the victim of a scam (the TV Card, remember?) and as you can imagine, a REAL crime is no reason for an ISP to reveal data on one of its subscribers. It stinks …
Something we should remember is that about 75% of users currently on broadband are almost exclusively using their connection to download movies, music and games. At least according to newly published data in Sweden. Guess what would happen to the typical ISP if the users stopped using their services …
Furthermore, people need to realize what p2p networks are safe and which are not. In the wake of the recent attacks on p2p networks, there are a number of emerging ENCRYPTED networks. You see the files, but not whom they belong to. Ideally, the data being sent would also be encrypted so the ISP will not be able to see simple things such as file names for instance. With todays computers, real-time encryption is indeed feasible and will give the industry a few things to think about.

So, now we have come to a point where certain people want to uphold the law by breaking the law? And do we allow the industry to refashion a country’s laws, by lobbying and intimidation, as they see fit?