While we can be pretty confident that Reddit has its own motivations (i.e. self-interest) for fighting these lawsuits, this is still a good news story for pirates.
Food for thought: Lemmy instance admins probably can’t afford $800 an hour corporate attorneys to fight off subpoenas.
Sure, but that’s assuming the logs contain your ip in the first place.
Assume they do until proven otherwise
You can just look at the source code… no need to assume anything. You can’t prove a negative lol
And this is why you VPN.
MFW I went to upvote but couldn’t because “error: VPN blocked” 😑
Huh, I exclusively browse Lemmy through a VPN and I’ve never seen that one.
He’s probably talking about reddit They no longer allow vpn’s or any user obfuscators to browse the site
No they don’t. I use the site with a VPN often and it generally works
Are you logged in? I can’t access Reddit with a VPN if I’m not logged in
replace ‘www’ with ‘old’ in the address and it’s fixed.
I can access old.reddit.com with VPN. The new shitty layout will block you but there are browser extensions to automatically redirect. I’m never logged in since I deleted my accounts a few months ago.
I’ve been using a VPN with an account recently. Works fine.
Yes they do. The block is intermittent on Reddit, but it does occur frequently enough to be obvious they are trying to keep their user dta drsgnet uninterrupted under the guise of “stopping bots”.
No lmao, I tried to upvote his comment and Thunder spat out that error. A few subs have started doing that (or it’s instance-wide but only for certain VPN servers) in the last week or so.
instagram definitely does this, reddit seems fine for me so far
Reddit blocks access to all major VPN services (on desktop for sure) when they click a link from a search engine (maybe even navigating directly to it but I don’t do that). This has been happening for about a month now. There’s a specific page it shows that basically says “come back without a VPN.”
I don’t think it does it if you’re logged in and have cookies enabled.
Caveat: there is a simple way to bypass it, I’ll let you old.heads figure that one out.
The block is intermittent on Reddit, but it does occur.
That would probably be because your instance is different. Lemmy.world has recently blocked VPN traffic apparently because of bad actors uploading CSAM behind VPN. I also had issues with Lemmy with my VPN this week and either need to split tunnel or need to browse Lemmy as view-only.
That doesn’t help instance admins at all, though.
It helps admins help you stay anonymous by relieving them from having to cover for you.
I am not going to thank the unpaid volunteers who make the fediverse possible by getting them C&D letters/legal threats.
Well I appreciate that. But simply discussing piracy should be okay.
Not really, though. If they’re ordered to turn over IPs, they’ll turn over IPs. Whether those are legit or VPN IPs is another story, but the burden placed on the instance admin doesn’t really change much.
Oops, I accidentally fired the sd card containing my instance running on my raspberry pie.
If that is really how you do it, you won’t need to fry it, it will happen soon enough by itself.
Seriously. Lemmy is a house made of patchwork quilt, with a bit of pine sap here and there to steady the few boards.
“Held together with bubble gum and duct tape” is the phrase I usually use
Would be a real shame if my instance’s logrotate was set to, say, only keep a few days of webserver logs. Real shame.
Good luck establishing precedent with that!
I am so conflicted on which side should I be on :/
A rough translation of a brazilian quote for you: “In a fight between these guys, I cheer for the fight”.
I’m gonna say this all the time now
That’s poetry
How is it hard to root for the anonymity of people? This is pretty cut-and-dry.
If the film industry wins that could be a really awful precedent. Just sayin’
You don’t have to (and shouldn’t) side with any for profit company
I’m glad Reddit won here because it sets a precedent that will protect less well-funded Lemmy instances.
Ever?
Small exception for when two for profit companies are fighting each other. At that point it becomes a question of which is the lesser evil.
So like the US elections.
They’re the same picture.
Welll y’know what they say, the enemy of my enemy is my friend and all that
Firms wanted seven years’ worth of IP address logs
I doubt - or hope they don’t - Reddit stores them for that long?
It’s data that could have value, so I doubt they don’t store it. I think the movie studios didn’t offer enough. Or Reddit thought it was too damaging for this particular sale.
Reddit wasn’t offered enough.
I always assumed this would happen, so had a second account. Which had a special email address both of which I only used via Tor and private brower mode.
Le reddit wins legain, m’fellows!
You’ll never narwhal my bacon, see!
thanks for the pic it really makes my eyes piss jizz in my mouth
So… They’re happy?
yea steven
Is that a red hat?
Careful now, IBM is also awfully litigious.
What is reddit?
it’s where everyone in Lemmy came from
What is lemmy? 🫣
I confirm.
An instance with poor interoperability and boot licker admins.
Baby don’t hurt me
For real tough, Steve can suck diseased dicks in hell.
It was insane to think they would comply with this to begin with. Downloading pirated media isn’t illegal, neither is discussing piracy. What is illegal is redistribution, and good luck proving that on a large scale community like this.
EDIT: These are 2 USA based companies, US Laws apply to this context.
Careful with this. Downloading pirated content can definitely be illegal depending on where you live.
It’s just not usually enforced as heavily as redistributing.
More specifically there is no US Federal Law about obtaining pirated works, only the Redistribution
17 U.S. Code § 506 - Criminal offenses (a)Criminal Infringement.— (1)In general.—Any person who willfully infringes a copyright shall be punished as provided under section 2319 of title 18, if the infringement was committed— (A)for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain; (B)by the reproduction or distribution, including by electronic means, during any 180–day period, of 1 or more copies or phonorecords of 1 or more copyrighted works, which have a total retail value of more than $1,000; or (C)by the distribution of a work being prepared for commercial distribution, by making it available on a computer network accessible to members of the public, if such person knew or should have known that the work was intended for commercial distribution. (2)Evidence.— For purposes of this subsection, evidence of reproduction or distribution of a copyrighted work, by itself, shall not be sufficient to establish willful infringement of a copyright. (3)Definition.—In this subsection, the term “work being prepared for commercial distribution” means— (A)a computer program, a musical work, a motion picture or other audiovisual work, or a sound recording, if, at the time of unauthorized distribution— (i)the copyright owner has a reasonable expectation of commercial distribution; and (ii)the copies or phonorecords of the work have not been commercially distributed; or (B)a motion picture, if, at the time of unauthorized distribution, the motion picture— (i)has been made available for viewing in a motion picture exhibition facility; and (ii)has not been made available in copies for sale to the general public in the United States in a format intended to permit viewing outside a motion picture exhibition facility.
So, basically, downloading cracked adobe products is always right. It’s always morally acceptable. But your provider is risking their ass.
The big industry names want to make you believe that you’ll be punished for downloading a car. It’s all fearmongering.
Yes but you commented on a global website, so your previous generalist statement definetly doesn’t apply to everyone reading it :)
It’s a US site and a US court.
US law is the only thing relevant to the case being discussed.
Then share your local law. Don’t be pissy that Americans are clarifying for other Americans.
America is such a small country though, no one would assume anything said online is directed at it’s miniscule population without an explicit reference.
Whoops, your bias is showing.
Thats why I stated at the top that more specifically there is no “US Federal law…”
And that’s why they specifically referred to “your previous generalist statement” where you didn’t do that.
Listen, they either reply to the comment they wanted to reply to, or they did it wrong. They replied to the comment that prefaced with a statement about US Law in particular. It should be clear to them that the statement applies to US Law.
this! there are countries other than the US
The US Media Companies demanding user details from a US Social Media Company is in the USA though. In case that was unclear to some people.
Fuck Reddit.
I’ll give it a go, but I don’t think you can fuck a website yet.
Not with that attitude you can’t
Hey I’m ready to fuck a website, I’m just waiting on technology to catch up!
This is the best summary I could come up with:
In a motion to compel that was filed last month, movie companies Voltage Holdings and Screen Media Ventures argued that “Reddit users do not have a recognized privacy interest in their IP addresses.”
But in Wednesday’s ruling, US Magistrate Judge Thomas Hixson said, “The Court finds no reason to believe provision of an IP address is not unmasking subject to First Amendment scrutiny.”
Voltage Holdings and Screen Media Ventures previously sued the Internet service provider Frontier Communications, alleging that it is liable for its users’ copyright infringement.
The fact that movie companies only sought IP addresses instead of names this time around wasn’t enough to sway the court.
As in the previous cases, the movie companies “cannot show that the information they seek here is unavailable from other sources,” Hixson wrote.
Voltage Holdings and Screen Media Ventures cited Reddit posts in which users say that Frontier didn’t terminate their Internet service despite sending many copyright infringement notices about torrent downloads.
The original article contains 598 words, the summary contains 160 words. Saved 73%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!