I was spanking Vinnie over this when he proposed doing it but he was
adamant that it would be good for the network. Partial files is not so
bad but I've been cleaning up after those unchecked downloads ever since. http://www3.telus.net/Aaron_Walkhouse/really.gif

So was my long lost cousin at BS Forums ! ;)

btw, now I understand why Vinnie was so happy on certain days... Spanking, huh ? :eek:

nope...AFAIK dban is for totally wiping a drive, not individual partitions...

your course of action is up to you...at this moment in time the powers of the RIAA/MPAA are waning and the forced forensic analysis of your drive might not happen (it HAS happened to others)...free space wipers and such might do the trick for you....of course the ultimate 'trick' is to throw away the HDD and replace it...

AW's comments in this thread indicate he has never heard the the Candyman Project which was conducted a few years back....the Law was supplying illegal images to ensnare people...apparently totally legal as plenty of people are paying the price for accepting those emails and such (including some law officers...big surprise eh?)....just remember, AW is from Canada and they have different laws than the rest of the planet....

and think of this: if you had spent the time to start a case against an individual, wouldn't you go 'all the way' once you had done a fair amount of work????? admit it, sure you would!

First: It's a tip they can follow up on in the most simple way: Getting a search warrant.

And I don't want to scare people away from p2p. I want to make them aware of the dangers of p2p, so they take the proper precautions to decrease the chance of getting into problems.

Sharing copyrigthed files (which aren't licensed under free or open licenses) in p2p is illegal in almost every country.

And I would be able to spot you as another downloader of a file I download myself - and I could do that at this very moment. There's no mumbo jumbo involved: Just having a look at the candidates section in Phex will get me the IP of anyone who isn't behind a LAN router (about half the people).

That's why I go for anonymous p2p, even though its speed is much inferiour to non-anonymous p2p.

Yes, but it is so freaking efficient for the network to do so...

Sidenote: Only abut 1/4th of the people of whom I download have the file as partial file, so sharing files you're downloading at the moment doesn't really increase speeds that much. But it's likely that the download mesh wouldn't work without partial file sharing.

The "What's new?" search should make it far more efficient, though.

And in anonymized p2p (for example i2phex) sharing partial files by default doesn't create problems. And i2phex works, albeit slow.

why is it that people who try to educate others as to the true nature of what they are doing are considered as trying to ''scare people away from P2P''?????????????

and really, AW, what is your great concern about people using p2p??????? sure, its great for the network and such, but is there some reason you constantly promote the use of such an insecure way of transferring data?

let's take the concept of someone downloading a highly illegal file by mistake...yep, it happens...and the most insidious way it can happen is if you, for example, download a file named 'dscn-1121'....or so it appears in your search result/browse host....if one had taken the time to expand the results (hitting that little +) one might have found that it had another widely used title...but skipping that thought process, you have mistakenly downed a nasty picture of a young child...even if you don't have sharing enabled and immediately remove the file, you will still show up as a search result on another's search for a while!!!!!!! and that may be all that the law needs to start work against you!

if you want some 'education' as to how the law works when it comes to protecting children pay close attention to what going on in El Dorado right this moment....maybe watch a few of those Dateline shows about catching predators....etc, etc, etc...basically take your head out of that hole in the ground and pay attention to what is actually happening across the world right now!....sure, the lawmakers apparently don't regard CP as a big thing, but there is certainly a rather large grass roots campaign being waged against the practice, let me assure you!..and many law enforcers don't give a big flip about the lawmakers anyways, as there are quite a few good laws already on the books....

what really irks me is that the penalties for having a few CP images on a HDD are often harsher than if the offender had actually had physical contact with the child....sheeshus....like life in prison on Arizona for a very small number of files, while a relative who actually rapes a child gets off with a much shorter sentence....


so you go right ahead with your way of thinking AW, but you are seriously uneducated as to what is going on in the world...

and really, what matters here is giving proper information to those who ask for it...how they use it is up to them....

most times the destruction of a HDD is not needed, but if it makes the person who does it happy, then what is the problem???...they are certainly 'safer' than having kept using it...do you argue that logic also???

It isn't that bad: If you have sharing disabled, you won't turn up on a search (Shareaza had that enables, as far as I know, but all others don't - because of technical concerns, not security: Polluting searches with incomplete files was seen as bad).

But you will be seen as download candidate by people who also download the file.

"but you will be seen as a download candidate by people who also download the file"...

OK...that is close enough to what I was saying...of course if one has sharing disabled then they cannot be a true source for the file, but they still show up as apparently being one!....

I didn't pay exact attention to that project going on in New Jersey (the one that got blown out of the water by the whole MediaDefender setch), but I think that all they were doing is looking for people sharing files with a known hash value, and that was all that was needed to start proceedings against the offender....

Note that sharing was the issue again. It always is.

Actually, showing up for a moment as a potential source for
the file would automatically trigger an additional search
through the same network. That's just normal police
procedure which doesn't require a warrant or even any form
of personal contact. But not showing up again as a source
and not being findable in a search for the same file and not
showing any suspect file in a browse is always going to
result in the same thing, being dropped for probable
suspects who do show up on the search and stay there.

The key concepts here are reasonable suspicion
and probable cause.

Reasonable suspicion is grounds for further investigation
but not a warrant, and only if that further investigation
brings up probable cause can any further action be taken.
It's as simple as that, and there's no getting around it. It's
the law everywhere in Europe, North America and all other
countries with a constitutional government and a highly
developed legal system. Any experienced police officer or
prosecutor will confirm it if you go and ask. This legal
principle goes right back to the days when modern law as
we know it was first brought forth and put into force.

There would never and could never be a warrant issued for
a single hit on a single download attempt and police would
never stop checking to avoid not finding corroborating
evidence just so they could beg for a warrant based on one
possible hit.

Show us one person in the whole planet who was ever even
questioned for an accidental download which they then deleted.
Just one will do. How many years did that one get? :p

Never, ever forget: The only thing that will get any
movement at all is a definite indication of sharing of such
files. That means documented verifiable proof that can be
brought to court. A possible indication of a download
attempt which may or may not have failed is not enough if
further investigation yields nothing. This is particularly true
when investigators already have plenty of probable cause
on dozens or even hundreds of other people to work on, and
we already know is happening everywhere because of reports
in the news on the topic.

Clinging to an untested theory for the sake of argument is
not helping those few people who come here for info about
what to do with accidental downloads. If you know
anybody in law enforcement or the courts ask them about
the distinction between reasonable suspicion and probable
cause, or search the web for articles that mention both
terms with that specific wording. Once this central and
basic concept of the law is made clear you will understand
a lot about how the law, the courts and the police work
together to protect the rights and privacy of people like you
and your fears will be somewhat relieved. :D

So is going about without knickers or your trousers when you have diarrhea...

That doesn't make either of them socially acceptable! :thumbsdown: