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TorrentSpy Must Preserve Data In RAM For MPAA
Posted by
kdawson
on Tue Aug 28, 2007 02:29 PM
from the good-luck-finding-merkin-computers dept.
from the good-luck-finding-merkin-computers dept.
Transient writes "Reaffirming a magistrate's earlier decision, a federal judge has ordered TorrentSpy to begin keeping server logs as it defends itself against an MPAA lawsuit. In her opinion, Judge Florence-Marie Cooper interpreted federal discovery rules broadly. ' Judge Cooper took issue with TorrentSpy's argument that data in RAM is not "stored." She noted RAM's function as primary storage and that the storage of data in RAM — even if not permanently archived — makes it electronically stored information governed by federal discovery rules.' Given that TorrentSpy has limited access for users in the US, the ruling may be moot. But it does set a precedent for other, similar cases. 'Under this interpretation, any data stored in RAM could be subject to a subpoena, as at a basic level it is a "medium from which information can be obtained" just like a hard drive. '"
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[+]
TorrentSpy Ordered By Judge to Become MPAA Spy 372 comments
PC Guy writes "TorrentSpy, one of the world's largest BitTorrent sites, has been ordered by a federal judge to monitor its users. They are asked to keep detailed logs of their activities which must then be handed over to the MPAA. Ira Rothken, TorrentSpy's attorney responded to the news by stating: 'It is likely that TorrentSpy would turn off access to the U.S. before tracking its users. If this order were allowed to stand, it would mean that Web sites can be required by discovery judges to track what their users do even if their privacy policy says otherwise.'"
[+]
Torrentspy Disables Searching For US IPs 277 comments
dr_strang writes "Torrent indexing site Torrentspy.com appears to have disabled torrent searches for IPs that originate in the United States. Instead of a results page, users are directed to this page, which states: 'Torrentspy Acts to Protect Privacy. Sorry, but because you are located in the USA you cannot use the search features of the Torrentspy.com website. Torrentspy's decision to stop accepting US visitors was NOT compelled by any Court but rather an uncertain legal climate in the US regarding user privacy and an apparent tension between US and European Union privacy laws."
Submission: TorrentSpy must preseve data in RAM for MPAA by Anonymous Coward
[+]
Entertainment: Court Rules Against TorrentSpy In MPAA Email Suit 130 comments
mikesd81 writes "C|Net reports that a lawsuit filed by TorrentSpy against the MPAA, accusing it of intercepting the company's private e-mails, was tossed out of court this week. Even though a U.S District judge ruled that the MPAA broke no rules, the MPAA does admit it paid $15,000 to obtain private e-mails belonging to TorrentSpy executives. The MPAA's acknowledgment is significant because it comes at a time when the group is trying to limit illegal file sharing by imploring movie fans to act ethically and resist the temptation to download pirated movies. From the article: 'Ethically, it's pretty clear that reading other people's e-mail is wrong,' said Lorrie Cranor, an associate research professor and Internet privacy expert at Carnegie Mellon University. 'Being offered someone else's e-mails by a third party should have been a red flag.' TorrentSpy is appealing the decision." This is just not a good week for those guys.
[+]
IT: Internal Emails of An RIAA Attack Dog Leaked 427 comments
qubezz writes "The company MediaDefender works with the RIAA and MPAA against piracy, setting up fake torrents and trackers and disrupting p2p traffic. Previously, the TorrentFreak site accused them of setting up a fake internet video download site designed to catch and bust users. MediaDefender denied the entrapment charges. Now 700MB of MediaDefender's internal emails from the last 6 months have been leaked onto BitTorrent trackers. The emails detail their entire plan, including how they intended to distance themselves from the fake company they set up and future strategies. Other pieces of company information were included in the emails such as logins and passwords, wage negotiations, and numerous other aspect of their internal business."
[+]
Technology: 'I Was a Hacker for the MPAA' 385 comments
Wired has up an article with a man named Robert Anderson, who was recruited by the MPAA in 2005 to inform on people in the BitTorrent community. In a tell-all interview with the site, Anderson explains how the powerful media organization encouraged him to obtain the information they were looking for: "According to Anderson, the MPAA told him: 'We would need somebody like you. We would give you a nice paying job, a house, a car, anything you needed.... if you save Hollywood for us you can become rich and powerful.' In 2005, the MPAA paid Anderson $15,000 for inside information about TorrentSpy -- information at the heart of a copyright-infringement lawsuit brought by the MPAA against TorrentSpy of Los Angeles. The material is also the subject of a wiretapping countersuit against the MPAA brought by TorrentSpy's founder, Justin Bunnell, who alleges the information was obtained illegally."
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so hand them a stick of RAM (Score:5, Funny)
Re:so hand them a stick of RAM (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:so hand them a stick of RAM (Score:5, Funny)
That sounds like a job for SELinux. Lock the system down so hard it doesn't allow root logins at all, and logins under the id that the servers are running under. Have all that become enabled, say, five minutes after boot, or that it starts enabled and must be disabled from the boot command line during boot.
Make sure the system responds with an error message that explains all this if you try to login as one of the protected accounts...that to login you have to reboot the server.
Parent
Re:so hand them a stick of RAM (Score:5, Insightful)
It might be easer to explain to the judge that sound is a moving pressure wave stored in air for a very short time from the time he says something to the time someone hears it. I need him to preserve the sound waves in his house from yesterday for permanent record. It may contain evidence of a copyright violation.
Parent
Re:so hand them a stick of RAM (Score:5, Interesting)
the problem here is(are) the law(s), not the judge's interpretation.
copyright is completely out of control, and *NO* reasonable discussion on any issue regarding rights for copyright holders has merit (IMHO) until the copyright terms are fixed - meaning, significantly reduced. I don't advocate copyright elimination - it is valid and useful thing to have - just that the tampering with the law by these big companies has given them exactly the opposite that they expected - they have people who don't take it seriously because it is so far skewed against the public interest.
On a long enough time scale, everything balances.
Parent
Re:so hand them a stick of RAM (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Bah, move the servers offshore. (Score:5, Informative)
According to United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea [wikipedia.org], passed in 1982, does not allow artificial islands to become sovereign nations. Sealand may have a valid claim to sovereignty before 1982, but any new attempts at creating a new nation will have to be based on a natural land mass.
Parent
Re:Bah, move the servers offshore. (Score:4, Interesting)
That's just it, isn't it? Claiming of territory in space is governed by some UN treaty as I recall. But that doesn't matter. If I go and somehow colonize Mars right now, I'm vulnerable to anybody who might want to take it from me. The only solution is to arm Mars to defend it, at which point any aggressor can either fight and lose, or fight and lose far more than Mars is worth to them. Either case makes it illogical to try and capture Mars, and therefore they have to work with Mars, not just invade it.
This is precisely why the world politica is divided into two groups: Nuclear and non-nuclear powers. If a country is a nuclear power, the rules change, because that country can inflict substantial damage to you, more than the country itself is probably worth.
Parent
Re:Bah, move the servers offshore. (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Bah, move the servers offshore. (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Soo.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Soo.... (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Soo.... (Score:5, Informative)
If this turns out to be expensive, TorrentSpy can make the MPAA pay for it. I'm not going to guess how probable that would be, but the option is certainly there to have the MPAA pay a few bucks for worthless IP information.
Parent
Re:Soo.... (Score:5, Funny)
The cost of paper may build up to something considerable after the first couple seconds...
Parent
Hippie FUD (Score:4, Informative)
The other 97% of deforestation is due to the locals and the Brazilian government. ~60% cattle ranches, ~30-33% agriculture (~30% subsistence, ~1-3% commercial), and ~3% urbanization. (I found a pretty good link here, which has a nice pie graph, which is where I'm pulling these numbers since I'm not at my home computer with all my bookmarks: http://www.mongabay.com/brazil.html [mongabay.com])
So anyway, stop blindly believing hippie FUD from the the 60s and do a few minutes' worth of research on Google. Shit, I just looked at the wikipedia article and even they have a pretty good section on Amazon deforestation. So yeah, go ahead and use all the paper you want, it's actually GOOD for the environment and has been for the better part of a century. (Oh, and totally unrelated, but if you're still believing the hippie FUD about nuclear power, you'll want to do research on that too.
Parent
Re:Hippie FUD (Score:4, Funny)
I will not make funny comments on
I will not make funny comments on
I will not make funny comments on
I will not make funny comments on
I will not make funny comments on
I will not make funny comments on
I will not make funny comments on
I will not make funny comments on
Parent
Re:Soo.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Imagine the implications if it is determined that memories are stored by some measurable physicality in the brain. With such an advancement, under this precedent, memories become subpoena-able.
The government should fear this as the boilerplate "I do not recall" answers will then become impeachable testimony.
Parent
power failure (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:power failure (Score:5, Insightful)
If you "forgot" to pay your colocation bill and they turned off your servers, that might work. You could claim you couldn't pay the bill because of all the money you are spending on lawyers.
Parent
Evidence destruction ? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Evidence destruction ? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Evidence destruction ? (Score:5, Informative)
int main() {
char buf[255];
puts("Enter something:");
fgets(buf, sizeof(buf), stdin);
return strlen(buf);
}
where on the disk did the contents of buf get stored (assuming we have no virtual memory)?
Parent
Re:Evidence destruction ? (Score:5, Funny)
It's impossible to say because your seven line program contains at least one bug. (I'm assuming that the presented program is C and not some imaginary language).
Firstly, although you've correctly specified that main() should return an "int" you are actually returning a value of "size_t" which may or may not be defined as "int", depending on the platform. Secondly, you haven't checked the return value of fgets(). On error, fgets() returns NULL. This isn't necessarily the same as the nul character so depending on the platform, strlen() may fail (possibly even catastrophically on certain machines, such as the DeathStation 5000).
You've used the strlen() function without including its proper header.
Lastly, although this isn't really an error but it does demonstrate your inexperience, you have enclosed "buf" in parenthesis in the sizeof expression. Remember, sizeof is an operator not a function. The only reason you would ever use parenthesis in conjunction with sizeof is if you were asking for the size of a datatype. For example "sizeof(int)" or "sizeof(*char)". Using parenthesis any other time would be equivalent to expressing a simple sum as "(1) + (2) == (3)". Not incorrect, but pointless.
A more correct program might be...
Remember, C isn't for amateurs. That's why high-level languages were invented. To demonstrate how difficult it is to effectively program in C, I've deliberately left a bug in of my own as well as a potentially confusing design issue. See if you can find them.
Parent
White Board (Score:5, Insightful)
Why can't the court grasp the transient nature of the content of RAM?
-Peter
Re:White Board (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:White Board (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
You CAN Preserve a White Board (Score:5, Insightful)
Does this mean they can subpoena the contents of the white board in conference nine at 7:23 AM on June the 13, 2005?
YES, if the court gives you notice that you must preserve everything that is written on the whiteboards in all conference rooms, then they will expect you to have it preserved, and produce it when ordered.
Take a picture, log the contents, don't erase it - whatever you need to do to preserve the information. Saying "But I erased it!" isn't going to fly when you are subject to a prior order to NOT erase it.
Why can't the court grasp the transient nature of the content of RAM?
It sounds like the company was saying "But I really don't have it, it's just in RAM". That doesn't mean you don't have the information.
Note that this is a prospective discovery order - YOU WILL HAVE THE INFORMATION IN YOUR POSSESION, I REALIZE IT'S TRANSITORY AND YOU NORMALLY DON"T PRESERVE IT, BUT YOU CAN PRESERVE IT, AND I'M ORDERING YOU TO PRESERVE IT.
What's so hard about that?
Parent
Silly (Score:5, Insightful)
Just a thought... (Score:5, Interesting)
hehe (Score:5, Funny)
Wait, what?! (Score:5, Funny)
I guess it's time to buy stock in storage companies. I wonder if this also applies to cache RAM? There could be an infinite loop in there somewhere...
Need more disk space now? (Score:5, Insightful)
so we need faster processors and bigger hard drives to handle the extra load.
A normal log may not be that big, but when you get to a few months full of RAM logs for a busy server... I think this precedent will get overturned when they find out just what they are asking for.
I want to to write down every single thought you have for the next 10 weeks...
Re:Need more disk space now? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
What about costs? (Score:5, Insightful)
For this the costs would be expensive.
There are two ways to archive this:
1. By snapshotting the ram.
2. By rewriting the server code.
By snapshotting the ram, it would require a program with root access to snap this and lots of data to be archive.
By rewriting the server code, it would take months to rewrite it properly and test it. Then they would to license the IP2location database to perform lookups on the IP address filter out US addresses. I suspect that this filtering would require one or two more computers to perform this.
Not surprising (Score:3, Insightful)
Which makes sense. Imagine that I do all my shady accounting on some Post-Its, then turn their contents into a bunch of spreadsheets and a ledger that look legit. If my accounting documentation is subpoenaed and I don't produce those Post-Its, and the court finds out about their existence, I am in deep shit for destruction of evidence and/or failure to keep required records. I certainly wouldn't get far with a claim that the Post-Its were a "temporary storage medium" or something.
I believe the fact that TorrentSpy is being compelled to keep server logs by the MPAA is fucked up on a few levels. I just wanted to point out that the last part of the summary is not as profound or earth-shaking as it might seem.
Re:Not surprising (Score:5, Interesting)
Worse yet, what about a digital calculator.....you can't use one. You need to have one that prints out, etc.
Parent
Let's be clear (Score:5, Insightful)
Um, isn't this some pretty heavy spin??? (Score:5, Insightful)
The magistrate judge didn't buy that argument, and in her opinion reaffirming the magistrate's order, neither did Judge Florence-Marie Cooper. Judge Cooper took issue with TorrentSpy's argument that data in RAM is not "stored." She noted RAM's function as primary storage and that the storage of data in RAM--even if not permanently archived--makes it electronically stored information governed by federal discovery rules.
Judge: "Choose to do so from this point on."
RAM isn't exactly relevant. This isn't some kind of temporary storage situation. This is a deliberate decision on the part of the software author. Now if you want to claim rights are being trodden upon, be my guest. But claiming that all RAM is now state's evidence is a stretch.
Re:Um, isn't this some pretty heavy spin??? (Score:5, Insightful)
While it is unlikely that always logging ALL data in RAM will become a federal requirement, it is quite possible that this will turn into one of those things that everybody has to violate in order to function. The result of this will be that someone, somewhere will be permanently fucked by a ruling based on this. Yes, the law might be changed after this, but only after someone's life has been permanently fucked with.
Remember the high-school senior who got a blowjob from a 15 year old? He's doing time, because a law designed to catch sex offenders was badly written. The law was changed in response to his conviction, but it was too late for him. He's still in jail, the football scholarship is now out of the question, and he will have a criminal record.
I'm paranoid because too many lawyers and politicians and people in general have abused bad laws for their own gain.
Parent
judges are not dumb (Score:5, Insightful)
This isn't about RAM, folks (Score:5, Insightful)
I can see a different problem. (Score:5, Insightful)
Summary sucks (Score:5, Insightful)
The judge wants them to start logging IP addresses. But a judge can't just order anyone to do anything they feel like, there has to be some precedent or law saying they can. This judge said in legal terms, stuff in RAM is stored data. Then he applied rules based on law that covers stored data.
It's like if a company has a policy to burn documents every night, but the judge orders them not to burn documents until the end of the case. There's no expectation that burnt documents can magically be unburnt.
Just Suppose... (Score:4, Interesting)
How about giving them a complete memory dump of RAM, letting them sort out what the data is that interests them? Can the judge require them to preserve it in pretty formats?
This whole order is such an overreach by this judge, and the US Judicial system, that an immediate halt should be put to it this very instant.
And just suppose, btw for the sake of argument, that the country were TS is located prohibits export of personal data due to privacy laws? Then who wins?
This Just In (Score:5, Funny)
RAM log (Score:5, Funny)
2007.08.28 15:40 set bit 1243434
2007.08.28 15:40 set bit 1243435
2007.08.28 15:40 cleared bit 1243436
2007.08.28 15:40 set bit 1243437
Obviously guilty!
Rank this Judge (Score:5, Interesting)
Who is responsible? (Score:5, Interesting)
In spite of all of the ramblings to the contrary, it isn't technically difficult to add a logging feature to a piece of s/w to collect and store IP addresses, or other sorts of data currently only held in RAM. This assumes that the operators of the service can either modify that s/w themselves, or contract the vendor of said s/w to add this logging feature. In the case of proprietary s/w, with licensing provisions prohibiting reverse-engineering or modification, the latter may be the only recourse.
Now, lets suppose the operators of TorrentSpy contact the vendor, request that logging be added per the court's request and the vendor replies, "No".
Re:Put down the crack pipe and pick up a book (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Put down the crack pipe and pick up a book (Score:5, Funny)
"Your honor, that's like asking someone to save every single bit of air they breath out so it can be examined later, and also a copy of the air they breath in too."
Parent