The Glade 4.0

http://torrentfreak.com/ip-address-not- ... ys-110503/



Discuss?

It has implications far beyond file sharing and Intellectual property. Does/could this mean we can tie an Ip to a person for any other legal issue?

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

I'm guessing RIAA is not going to be happy about this...

I think this states rather clearly that you can't base anything on IP address alone.

The case in question is more the MPAA. The porn industry has been in on it recently. Cause, you know, who won't just settle when confronted with their weird kinky thing they like?

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"...the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?" -Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Actually I wonder what precedent this holds for those camera speed traps. A license plate is also not a person.

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Um, no. That's not what is being said. What is being recognized is that just because an IP may belong to a person, it doesn't mean that that IP is proof of that person doing something. A license plate is not analogous to an IP address. The plate is you more or less and I don't know about the states, but here in Japan the picture is your face in the car too. Someone can use your car you know about it unless it's stolen. A person may not know if their unsecured wireless internet is being stolen.

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"...the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?" -Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Actually, it does still set a precedent along those lines. You must prove that a person has done something, not that objects owned by or associated with the person were involved in the activity.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

Great now maybe we can get rid of speed cameras.

That's why the courts declared photo-radar tickets invalid years ago in Canada.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Shhhh don't tell anyone my plan...

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Number 6: Welcome friend, I'm number 6.
Number 15: I'm number 15. What number are you?
Homer: I am not a number! I am a man! And don't you eve…oh wait, I'm number 5. Ha, ha! In your face, number 6!
Number 6: Yeeessss... Well done.

I take my card and I stand in line
To make a buck I work overtime
Dear Sir letters keep
coming in the mail
I work my back till it's
racked with pain
The boss can't even recall my name
I show up late and I'm docked
It never fails
I feel like just another
Spoke in a great big wheel
Like a tiny blade of grass
In a great big field
To workers I'm just another drone
To Ma Bell I'm just another phone
I'm just another statistic on a sheet
To teachers I'm just another child
To IRS I'm another file
I'm just another
consensus on the street
Gonna cruise out of this city
Head down to the sea
Gonna shout out at the ocean
Hey it's me
And I feel like a number
Feel like a number
Feel like a stranger
A stranger in this land
I feel like a number
I'm not a number
I'm not a number
Dammit I'm a man
I said I'm a man

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This makes hackers pretty much immune, too, doesn't it?

Can't get a warrant on somebody's computer if their IP isn't enough to suspect them of something.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

This isn't true. If the government thinks you're a target then they are allowed to send in a death squad and shoot you.

The ruling was with respect to a civil subpoena. A search warrant for a criminal investigation is a different animal altogether. IANAL, but my guess is that the ruling would not apply.

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Sail forth! steer for the deep waters only!
Reckless, O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me;
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,
And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.

Hmm. I'm not cool with civil and criminal stuff being treated differently. That's basically "if government wants to accuse you of something based on this evidence, you did it. But other people have to have better proof." That's a terrible precedent.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

While that might be nice, the fact remains that civil law and criminal law have always been separate affairs governed by different rules. And in any case, a judge can only rule on something actually brought before the court. So even if the judge were to agree that the rules governing search warrants for criminal investigations ought to follow the same rules governing a request for (expedited) discovery in a civil trial, he (she?) cannot rule on the latter since it isn't a matter before the court at this time.

Regardless, the order wasn't entirely based on burden-of-proof/reasonable suspicion issues. It was actually as much about jurisdiction as anything. A search warrant has to name the specific people and/or places to be searched, and a given court unambiguously either does or does not have jurisdiction over those specific people/places. What the judge actually ordered was the he wouldn't grant the request for discovery until the plaintiff can name at least one specific defendant over whom the court held jurisdiction. In other words, he was unwilling to grant a subpoena for records that may not even fall under this particular court's jurisdiction.

_________________
Sail forth! steer for the deep waters only!
Reckless, O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me;
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,
And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.

Hmm. I guess that makes sense. I guess this is just another issue highlighting the silliness of treating IP infringement and hacking differently. Why is one information crime civil, and one criminal? It's a disconnect that I've never been satisfied with, so I guess that's one reason I often forget to look to the distinction when making those comparisons.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

The feds don't need warrants anymore. Remember, we're in a post-9/11 world. To protect our freedoms we had to get rid of some of the more pesky ones that were a threat to our security.

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"...the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?" -Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Hm, this is ever so slightly off-topic, but my curiosity was raised...

How is it exactly that IP addresses are used to link to a person anyway? Let's say I'm a college student living in a house with 7 others, and we all use wi-fi over one connection. Seems like it would be hard to pin down any one person as a lawbreaker. I suppose there is only one name on the service agreement with the ISP, which might be an easy way out as far as assigning responsibility goes though hardly has much sense of fairness about it. In any case, I figure this has already been hashed out in courts, and was curious how it gets resolved.

Yours is the IP address they have. You're the one who gets sued.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

Not really. A warrant already requires probable cause, whereas the burden of proof in civil matters is "preponderance of the evidence".

In other words, you already need a higher standard of proof to search (to say nothing of convict), than you do to find a person civilly liable.

Essentially, this is saying "IP addresses are not a preponderance of the evidence by themselves". If anything, that would make it harder to obtain a search warrant using them, because preponderance < probable cause.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."