I got a Cease & Desist Letter!
 

Did you get a Cease & Desist letter? Want to know what to do if you get one?
The EFF put together a new site "ChillingEffects.org" at
http://www.chillingeffects.org/

"The Chilling Effects project works by publishing cease-and-desist letters received by Internet
users and providing detailed information about the relevant legal rules. For example, if an
Internet user receives a letter demanding that she remove a synopsis of a "Star Trek" episode
from her website, members of the Chilling Effects team would post the letter online, embedding
it with links to information about basic copyright protections, the rules governing synopses, and
the fair use doctrine.

"EFF receives hundreds of requests for help and information from recipients of
cease-and-desist letters," said EFF Legal Director Cindy Cohn. "This project should help
individuals gain access to greatly needed information as well as allow us to track who is sending
these letters and research larger trends."

(you should make this sticky or at least add the link to your sites)

Great idea, but unfortunately the site doesn't exist. Maybe they were asked to 'cease and desist'.

The site works for me

This one could use a sticky, Morgwen :) It'll help people understand their rights and the legal mumbo-jumbo. For instance, take this Q and A from a C&D letter (found at http://www.chillingeffects.org/prote...gi?NoticeID=95):

paste it in here with any info you deem necessary deleted :)

Ok!

But if CycloCide beats me now its your fault! :)

Morgwen

I dont' find the site amazingly helful. It posts explanations of terms to some degree, but it doesn't really conclude anything about individual letters. Interesting site though.

I got a Copyright Violation Notice from MPAA/BSA for File Sharing on Gnutella and Fas
 

I got a Copyright Violation Notice from MPAA/BSA for File Sharing on Gnutella and FastTrack!

Summary:
People are getting Copyright Violation Notices from the Business Software Alliance (BSA) and Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) via their ISPs saying they have broken the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) and Copyright Act for File sharing over the Gnutella and FastTrack peer to peer networks as well as IRC and others. At least 17,000 incidents have been recorded. They have the IP address, time of transfer, file name index, file sizes, protocol and program names as evidence.

Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA), Title 17 United States Code Section 512.
Copyright Act, Title 17 United States Code Section 106(3).

Here's some more info I found reading the DMCA and searching with queries like
WIPO WTO DMCA TRIPS MPAA BSA ISP OSP Gnutella FastTrack etc.

Did the ISPs violate privacy rights?
No. They forwarded the notice and didn't share my E-mail or home address.
The MPAA or BSA can subpoena my contact info and the ISP must comply but the info can only be used for the Copyright Case.

Did the MPAA or BSA violate privacy rights?
No. My IP and file index were offered by me to the Public p2p net.

Do they have to prove I don't own the material in question?
No. Distributing copyrighted material is illegal even if you own it.

Do they have to prove that I shared copyrighted material?
Yes. Just the filename and size should not be enough to prove the material was actually copyrighted and not just named like it. For example I had a movie with the words "is FAKE" added to it, but it was still included in the violation list.
I don't know if they had a sample of the file contents. The collection methods from RangerInc are secret.

Are users who aren't doing massive transfers going to face this?
Yes. It is bots collecting this data, so there will be no "flying under the radar"
Because bots are cheap and easy and will lower the horizon of the radar to the ground.

Will this kind of thing happen in other countries?
Yes. This is happening in Canada and the US right now. Also there is a global agreement on Intellectual Property which is enforced by the World Trade Organization and overrides all WTO countries laws. The DMCA is how the USA is complying with this treaty. The EU and Russia are working on their versions of these laws right now.

What are the penalties?
Your ISP can cut off your service before proving anything. Just "good faith" by MPAA or BSA is enough. If your ISP doesn't cut you off they lose their "common carrier" immunity from liability. Qwest and @Home ISPs are two that are taking part. If you are found guilty the penalties are upt to $500,000 and ten years in prison. If you choose to challenge the notice then you MUST agree to be under US Federal jurisdiction, even if you live in another country.

Here's more info and some links ...

The Information is gathered by RangerInc Corporations bots.
They were hired by the MPAA and BSA.
The bots have been running since April of 2002.
http://www.rangerinc.com/solution/solution_main.htm

Reverse lookup on www.rangerinc.com/
shows
I.P. 216.122.215.13

An arin whois query from http://ws.arin.net/cgi-bin/whois.pl
on 216.122.215.13 to find out who actually owns it
shows
LightRealm Communications (NETBLK-LR-BLK4) LR-BLK4
216.122.0.0 - 216.122.255.255
HostPro, Inc (NETBLK-HSTPROSEA-NETBLK204) HSTPROSEA-NETBLK204
216.122.204.0 - 216.122.223.255

If your client for Gnutella FastTrack IRC etc allows you to filter hosts then add
216.122.*.*
to your block list.
That should stop them from connecting unless they change hosts
providing the bots run from that IP range and don't spoof their address when connecting to your client.

Here are some more links.

Another customer cut-off
http://www.ekosweb.com/wipout/essays/0904guha.htm

OSP requirements (take-down) or be liable
http://www.arl.org/info/frn/copy/osp.html

More info for those who have been notified or want to learn more.
http://www.chillingeffects.org/dmca512/faq.cgi#QID132

Also please check out
http://www.eff.org
http://www.anti-dmca.org
http://www.macfergus.com/niels/dmca/index.html

I'm dial-up 56K now. But when I get broadband again I'm going to drop Gnutella and only use encrypting and anonymizing apps like Filetopia http://www.filetopia.org and FreeNet http://freenetproject.org

If they are relying on bots there are two possible way to fix it.

1. Jam the bots.
2. Make source untraceable.

Any ideas for how either could be achieved?

1.) Find out where they are located, tell the USA that "terrorists" are camped there, sit back and watch the bombs drop ;)

2.) That would require proxies which is in no way efficient or entirely untraceable. (Unless someone comes up with another method.)