Enforcing the Digital Millennium

["Hamaker, Chuck" <cahamake@email.uncc.edu>]

http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20020919.html
We Can Run, but We Can't Hide 
How BayTSP is Enforcing the Digital Millennium 

By Robert X. Cringely 

...BayTSP acts as the primary enforcer for the Digital Millennium
Copyright Act (DMCA), a law that is widely reviled in the technical
community.  BayTSP's business falls into two areas -- law enforcement and
anti-piracy -- and it uses the same tools for both businesses. These tools
are spider programs that scour the most traveled parts of the Internet
looking for users who are offering to others files that are either illegal
to even own or at least illegal to share

... If you think your activities on the Internet are anonymous, you are
wrong. When BayTSP finds an IP address that appears to be the source of
child pornography or pirated music or video files, under the DMCA, it can
subpoena ISP logs. These logs can directly connect even dynamic IP
addresses to user accounts, making it clear very quickly who owns the
offending account. Every ISP keeps these http logs, and even products for
so-called anonymous surfing aren't effective in circumventing the
technique.

"We have 100 percent coverage of peer-to-peer file sharing," Ishikawa
claims. "If you are illegally sharing copyrighted materials, we know who
you are."

FROM: digital-copyright Digest 23 Sep 2002 15:00:00 -0000 Issue 73