Viacom wins in court case against Youtube, Every single video watched by every single IP on Youtube... Options

[Raij|Away]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7488009.stm

[Irysa]

This is silly.

[Rhiannon]

I don't recognize IPs as "personally identifiable information."

[H. Tsukiyono]

They could be, though. Given the right know-how you can use them to locate personal computers and/or networks, and those are potentially identifiable.

Well, I don't know for sure, but someone's probably written a program like that somewhere so the whole giving-out IP's thing makes me nervous. You can find out if something's online just by punching a ping command into MS-DOS with an IP address anyway--I'm only mildly tech-savvy, at that, so it sort of seems a cause of concern for me if that kind of information was given out to people who know how to use that kind of information.

This post has been edited by H. Tsukiyono: Jul 4 2008, 04:47 PM

[Rhiannon]

You might be able to find a location or network (I can do that, actually), but that doesn't mean that's actually where the person is located. Proxies, dynamic IPs, and even specific types of connections make IPs basically meaningless. Multiple people can have the exact same IP, and live in completely different places in the world. Not to mention the fact that many people steal Wifi, and many places offer free Wifi. That's definitely going to mess up the whole "LOCATING YOU BY IP" thing.

[Yuka]

I don't even think this is legal.

[Rhiannon]

Pretty sure it's not. I don't even know how they managed to win.

[Wally]

I wonder how much it will cost to check 12 terabytes of data.

[Dr Strum]

Not to mention the fact that many people steal Wifi, and many places offer free Wifi.

That's what I'm doing right now. >_> And oddly enough, one of the ones I'm "stealing" identifies as a Wisconsin IP (not totally surprising since the ISP does provide to Wisconsin, as well, but still). Too bad I'm not just a little closer, or I could pick up my school's internet here.

I don't even think this is legal.

It is and it isn't. Essentially, refusing to turn over information that identifies those breaking the law is a criminal act (those Google is in the frying pan) but not everyone has viewed these allegedly copyright-infringing videos, so to hand over all IPs is not only a miscarriage of justice but almost equivalent to wiretapping based on the fact that a person knows how to dial out.

[Raijinili]

Rhia, some people have static IPs.

[Rhiannon]

Do you know why people on IRC that have dynamic IPs end up getting banned for no reason sometimes when they connect? It's because they managed to get the IP of someone who was banned before, someone that might have had a static IP. The fact that there are people with static IPs changes nothing that I said.

[Raijinili]

Yes it does. It's possible to identify a person with that information, so it's "personally identifiable information". Just like having a name you once gave is "personally identifiable information" even though some people can lie, others can change their names, and still others share names.

Which is stupid. People shouldn't share names. It's not like food, which can be divided without disappearing.

The only solution to this problem is forced deathmatches.

[Rhiannon]

It's possible, but extremely difficult.

[Dr Strum]

They should assign IPs when IPv6 comes out. And make our IP our phone number, too. And which port you connect through (eg, 80 is for HTTP, 25 for mail or something) would decide whether you connect to their cell or landline or whatever. >_>

I just want to keep in contact with people really easily, but I know this would only lead to bad things.

[Raijinili]

Two computers = two phone lines?

Spam?

You?