Messing with the RIAA and MPAA
Some very smart people at the University of Washington figured out how to leverage the bittorrent protocol to cause the RIAA and MPAA to generate takedown notices. From the website:
* Practically any Internet user can be framed for copyright infringement today. By profiling copyright enforcement in the popular BitTorrent file sharing system, we were able to generate hundreds of real DMCA takedown notices for computers at the University of Washington that never downloaded nor shared any content whatsoever.
Further, we were able to remotely generate complaints for nonsense devices including several printers and a (non-NAT) wireless access point. Our results demonstrate several simple techniques that a malicious user could use to frame arbitrary network endpoints.
* Even without being explicitly framed, innocent users may still receive complaints. Because of the inconclusive techniques used to identify infringing BitTorrent users, users may receive DMCA complaints even if they have not been explicitly framed by a malicious user and even if they have never used P2P software!
* Software packages designed to preserve the privacy of P2P users are not completely effective. To avoid DMCA complaints today, many privacy conscious users employ IP blacklisting software designed to avoid communication with monitoring and enforcement agencies. We find that this software often fails to identify many likely monitoring agents, but we also discover that these agents exhibit characteristics that make distinguishing them straightforward.
For more details check out the technical paper.
Is there any university printer anywhere that hasn’t infringed today’s overly broad copyright laws? (Remember, fair use is a defense, not an exception.)