RE: 23,000 IP addresses

[Deepak Jain <deepak () ai net>]

> A Federal Judge has decided to let the "U.S. Copyright Group" subpoena
> ISPs over 23,000 alleged downloads of some
> Sylvester Stallone movie I have never heard of; subpoenas are expected
> to go out this week.
>
> I thought that there might be some interest in the list of these
> addresses :
>
> http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/threatlevel/2011/05/expendibleipaddre
> sses.pdf

This will stop when a 80+ yr old is taken to court over a download her 8 year old grandkid might have made when 
visiting for the weekend. The media will make the case that technologists can't.

For examples, see the RIAA's attempts and more recently the criminal investigations of child porn downloads from 
unsecured access points. From what I understand (or wildly guess) is that ISPs with remote diagnostic capabilities are 
being asked if their provided access point is secure or unsecure BEFORE they serve their warrants to avoid further 
embarrassments. [It'll probably take another 6 months and more goofs before they realize that customers are perfectly 
capable of poorly installing their own access points behind ISP provided gear].

The torrent stuff is fundamentally no different in that a single IP can and is shared by lots of people as common 
practice and the transient nature of it (e.g. airport access point, starbucks, etc) reasonably makes the lawyer's case 
much, much harder. 

There is a real theft/crime here in many cases, but whether there is actually any value in prosecution of movie 
downloads will depend... but most likely, the outcome will be iMovies or similar and the movie industry will shrink the 
way the music industry has.

DJ