> 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

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