Re: Davenport Lyons - Watchdog Report

On Tue, 27 Jan 2009 19:11:42 +0000, Norman Wells wrote:

Phil Stovell wrote:
On Tue, 27 Jan 2009 17:05:53 +0000, Norman Wells wrote:

It's _not_ OK just to say it's probably that chap, you have to have
something to back it up, and that something is the ISP's
identification of the internet connection and the time and date of the
alleged illegal copying. That constitutes a prima facie case that the
owner of that connection more likely than not performed the act
complained of.

In the Watchdog programme, somebody received the bumf from DL including
the document from her ISP tying the IP address to her MAC. She wasn't
at home on the date and time DL claimed she'd shared the file and could
prove it (with some shop receipts from far away, iirc). That shows that
ISP records cannot be trusted as the DHCP lease logs were inaccurate.

Isolated examples do not make a general principle. Besides, as someone
else has pointed out, she did not necessarily need to be there at the
time, just have her computer turned on and connected to the internet.
Her computer could have been sharing a file she had, and she would have
been none the wiser. To download a file she would need to be there but,
as I understand P2P, uploading can happen automatically on demand
whether she was there or not. Maybe Watchdog, in its haste, overlooked
this.

I'm really getting a bit bored with this. It seems (from you) that DL can
scam anyone and they'll pay rather than go to court to prove that they
didn't download and upload "Army Fuckers". It's only £500 and what will
the neighbours think of us if it's reported in the papers that we watch
gay porn? Even if they're found, on BoP, not to have done it, there's no
smoke without fire, is there?

It is a logical fallacy, you cannot prove a negative.

P2P software, by default, will upload whilst it's running, and will upload
parts of files whilst it's downloading them.

You could accidentally start downloading DLscamfile.mpg, realise that
you're downloading copyright material, and cancel the download. You
haven't downloaded anything, yet you may have uploaded the part you
downloaded, before realising your error, to many people.

Another thing is upload speed. To upload a whole CD of data (600MB) will
take a considerable time on ADSL. My current speed is 2133/662Kbps. I
could download 600MB in 600000000*8/2133000 s = 2250 s = 37 minutes. To
upload, it will take 600000000*8/662000 s = 7250 s = 120 minutes. It's
this length of upload time that makes me doubt the claims.

BTW, BBC iPlayer uses P2P technology.
.