1006
Reddit beats film industry, won’t have to identify users who admitted torrenting (arstechnica.com)
submitted 3 years ago by [M, B] to c/technology@lemmy.world
123 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Reddit beats film industry, won’t have to identify users who admitted torrenting::Court quashes subpoena for names of users who talked torrenting in 2011 thread.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] 100 points 3 years ago (3 children)

Nothing on Reddit can be proved to have come from a "user", and it's been that way since the "Great Spezzing of 2016", where 'spez' admitted to falsification and alteration of 'user' content.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • hideshow 6 child comments
    •
  • [–] 24 points 3 years ago (2 children)

    I mean even IRL, people talk so much crap who knows what’s actually true. Imagine if we locked up everyone for what they say. The “film industry” is insulting for even trying to push people into guilt by nothing more than what they type on a website.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 4 child comments
    •
  • [–] 2 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    Some people in the UK have been locked up for making offensive jokes.

    I'm in favor of free speech for everyone, even the shitty right-wingers I hate. The solution to bad speech is good speech, not censorship. Not corporate censorship, not government censorship, not corporate censorship on the order of government censorship.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
  • [–] 1 point 3 years ago (1 child)

    I think that’s different. You’re held accountable to what you say and yelling bomb on a plane should subject you to a lengthy trial. That’s not the world I’m talking about.

    What I’m talking about is getting online and saying “man I just killed like 3 people lol” and being arrested for it. Without proof 3 people even were killed. Is it cool to say such things? No. Could someone be punished for it? Sure. But that’s not the same as being arrested for murder.

    I want a world where facts are still king and despite it all, tangible evidence exists of your actions.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
  • [+] -35 points 3 years ago (3 children)

    Everything can be proved if you're using INTERNET. Normies/Regulars dont understand how internet work. Google/ Facebook/Reddit is not internet. Source: I am a computer science engineer

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 6 child comments
    •
  • [–] 27 points 3 years ago (2 children)

    This is just objectively false.

    It seems like YOU don't know how the internet works.

    Logging of information is an active task, it doesn't just come with the internet as a concept. Your ISP doesn't know what you posted on Reddit and reddit doesn't know who you are behind your natted ip.

    Reddit might have logs and your ISP might have other logs, and they may be able to work together with other organizations to deduce information, but that is not a given.

    It is entirely possible for a website to not log ANY information about it's users. I have an occasionally online website like this, I don't even know the amount of bandwidth being used unless I actively monitor the connection. Additionally, a proper tls connection means your ISP doesn't know what data you send to a website, so if the website doesn't take logs and the ISP can't sniff traffic, how can you prove what was done?

    Fundamentally, the internet is just a connection between a bunch of computers, there are no intrinsic properties of the internet that leave a trail of evidence. The computer you are connecting to may choose to log your connection and activity, but it isn't required for the internet to function.

    Your statement is a conflation of what can happen and what does happen.

    I could open sockets between two computers and send encrypted bytes directly between them with keys shared beforehand in person if I wanted, the only thing that can be proved is that the connection was established (and when). This method is still using the internet. Short of cracking the encryption (which would be world wide news) the contents of that communication would be not be able to be ascertained by an eavesdropping third party without express consent from a member of the conversation.

    Tl:Dr, a website with tls, no logging, and no DNS, would have very limited information abailable to 3rd parties (effectively limited to ISPs only being able to deduce when and how often you access the site) and 3rd parties would not have the ability to prove any specific activity occured on the page. The internet, as a concept (interconnection, IP, tcp), is not even aware of the idea of 'proving' something, any effort done to contrary is performed on a layer of abstraction above these protocols.

    People communicate in untraceable ways on the internet every single day.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 4 child comments
    •
  • [+] -11 points 3 years ago (2 children)

    Reddit might have logs and your ISP might have other logs, and they may be able to work together with other organizations to deduce information, but that is not a given.

    Reddit might have logs ? Reddit has logs and they can see your public IP. With your public IP, they can contact your ISP and get all the details of people using their service in a household. Then its just matter of minutes and seconds to trace down who is the culprit. Just to add to this, your windows/apple machine also have logs.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 4 child comments
    •
  • [–] 18 points 3 years ago (2 children)

    Yes reddit might have logs, in fact it's incredibly likely that they have detailed logs about their users. however, it isn't an intrinsic aspect of a website to have logs.

    I am not claiming that they don't have logs, I am simply refuting what you said, which is that everything on internet can be proven, which is an objectively false statement.

    A windows or apple computer are not prerequisites to use the internet and there are no logging requisites for computers at all.

    Again, logging is an active task, something being 'on the internet' does not mean that logging is happening implicitly.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 4 child comments
    •
  • [–] 0 points 3 years ago

    Dear diary,

    Today I forgot about how the internet functions, and have decided to ignore how a router + infinite cpu & storage works, without websites that are not documenting who their visitors aren’t, so they can’t sell advertising, nor sell to groups who aren’t affiliated with state governments.

    Sincerely, Not a computer scientist

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • [+] -20 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    Whatever makes you happy my dude.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
  • [–] 16 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    It's ok if you don't understand. Since you are a computer scientist, it should be trivial for you to open up a socket connection between two computers and send some pgp encrypted bytes over the wire. It's a pretty good way to see an example of what I mean. Though you probably learned about the osi model pretty early on in uni and are aware of how tcp/IP works.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
  • [+] -13 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    🤦‍♂️

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
  • [–] 3 points 3 years ago* (1 child)

    IP hasn't been an admissible form of identification for over a decade now.

    Now, suppose that someone hasn't been piggybacking off of their neighbor's wifi, and it leads to a household with multiple adults renting the place with internet included in the rent, how would you determine which specific person to take legal action against? Secondly, in order to actually file the suit without it being a waste of time, they would have to have independent data showing that this person did indeed do the action and aren't just making it up, in which case getting the IPs from a third party would be completely moot.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
  • [–] 0 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    Good question, once police knows the household they will check the background on all the occupants and neighbors. If still they can't find anything and they dont feel like wasting time , they will get warrant and confiscate all laptops for forensics but most of the time they can tell just by checking the background who's the culprit.

    I would suggest to watch the documentary about the guy who was behind the darkweb site - the silk road.

    That's some impressive police work right there.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
  • [–] 13 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    what does a computer science engineer even do lol

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
  • [+] -16 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    🤦‍♂️

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •