All over Europe thousands of people are being threatened with
court action for allegedly sharing games like Dream Pinball 3D on
P2P networks. Now, documents obtained by TorrentFreak show
details of the anti-piracy companys techniques for identifying
alleged file-sharers on the internet and the gathering of claimed
'forensic quality' evidence for use in court cases.
In March we reported in some detail about the case of 500 UK file-sharers being legally
pursued following claims that they uploaded games from the German
publisher 'Zuxxez' onto file-sharing networks.
Since then, many people have been in touch with the law firm who
sent the threatening letters, demanding evidence that they actually
did something. TorrentFreak has obtained copies of the latest
letters and within the claimed evidence is a description of how the
anti-piracy system used by Logistep AG (the company hired to track
the alleged pirates) is supposed to work.
The cleverly named 'File Sharing Monitor' is the system being used
by Logistep to gather evidence against file-sharers. It is actually
just a modified version of the Shareaza P2P application that is
configured to search for infringing files, and collect the
information from the hosts that share these files.
The 'File Sharing Monitor' only targets Gnutella and eDonkey users,
so it is still unclear how they track down BitTorrent users. Here
is how it works:
1. The client connects to the P2P network, searches for sources of
the infringing file, and collects the IP addresses that were
gathered through the search.
2. The client requests to download (a piece of) the file from the
host that was found through the search.
3. The filename, file size, IP-address, P2P protocol, P2P
application, time, and the username are automatically inserted into
a database, if the host permits the download.
4. This is the 'best' part. The application does a WHOIS search for
the ISP information and automatically sends an infringement letter
to the ISP if needed.
The claim is that the 'File Sharing Monitor' is totally foolproof
and that it can provide forensic-quality information to a court in
order that file-sharers be punished. The question remains whether
an IP-address is sufficient evidence to sue a person for
downloading copyrighted material. Recent cases suggest that the
RIAA and the MPAA will need more evidence than that.
Here is the 'evidence' for the functioning of the Logistep system.
You decide.
The full article: http://torrentfreak.com.nyud.net:8080//images/20070414093506062-1.pdf