Re: EU Official: IP Is Personal

[Eric Gauthier <eric () roxanne org>]

Heya,

> > In the US, folks are fighting the RIAA claiming that an IP address isn't
> > enough to identify a person.
> >
> > In Europe, folks are fighting the Google claiming that an IP address is
> > enough to identify a person.
> >
> > I guess it depends on which side of the pond you are on.
>
> They are both right. If you have a dynamic IP such as most college students
> have, it is here-today-gone-tomorrow.


Our University uses dynamic addressing but we are able to identify likely users
in response to the RIAA stuff.  There is a hidden step in here, at least for our 
University, in the IP-to-Person mapping.  Our network essentially tracks the 
IP-to-MAC relationship and the MAC-to-Owner relationship.  For us, its not the 
IP that identifies a person, but the combination of IP plus Timestamp, which can 
be used to walk our database and produce a system owner.

I'm guessing that Google et. al. have a similar multi-factor token set (IP, time,
cookie, etc) which allows them to map back to a "person".

Eric :)