CBS requested user data from Last.fm, including user name and IP address. CBS wanted the data to comply with a RIAA request but told Last.fm the data was going to be used for “internal use only.” It was only after the data was sent to CBS that Last.fm discovered the real reason for the request. Last.fm staffers were outraged, say our sources, but the data had already been sent to the RIAA.

Reddit has noticed that TechCrunch is censoring comments critical of the post. Last.FM emphatically denies handing over the data:

Any suggestion that we were complicit in transferring user data to any third party is incorrect. [...] It really seems like someone is trying to slander us here.

Here’s a more realistic, simpler explanation of what happened–one that wouldn’t require any special access to Last.FM’s private user data at all. The RIAA either asked CBS for the data, or got it themselves, from the public song timeline of Last.FM users. For example, at http://www.last.fm/user/elliottback/tracks you can download ~400 pages of songs I’ve listened to:

This gives them the following data: user, song, time. This is enough to tell that a user is listening to unreleased music, which is probably part of what the RIAA would use in trying to make a case against music pirates. For example–the Eminem Relapse album came out on May 15th, so theoretically anyone listening to it before then is a pirate.

It is often very difficult, and in some cases, impossible, to provide such direct proof when confronting modern forms of copyright infringement, whether over P2P networks or otherwise; understandably, copyright infringers typically do not keep records of infringement. Mandating that proof could thus have the pernicious effect of depriving copyright owners of a practical remedy against massive copyright infringement in many cases.

The rest of the brief goes on to list the reasons why the MPAA feels it should not have to meet the full burden of proof in its case (i.e. proving actual distribution). For them, the existence of a location where the copyright material could be copied is sufficient grounds for prosecution. When you take this off the internet, this is equivalent to suing some for 12 * $150,00 for loaning someone a CD they later copied.

For more coverage, see Wired and TorrentFreak.

Hello **infringing party**,

It’s come to my attention that you are illegally reproducing content from the Elliott Back Blog Network on your site. If you are unfamiliar with copyright law and how it applies to the Elliott Back Blog Network, please review our legal notice at elliottback.com/legal/.

Here are some examples of your infringing content:

**some urls**

The Elliott Back Blog Network takes our own intellectual property very seriously. Please remove all of our network’s material, cease and desist further copying, and reply in writing of your compliance within 24 hours. A list of our network properties can be found for your convenience at elliottback.com.

Thanks,
Elliott C. Back

I’m also going to make a list of URLs I need to hear back from, and when I emailed them:

• 12/01/2006 18:44, BlogoWogo
• 12/01/2006 18:51, Fungz [CONFIRMED]

Perhaps Apple has been served with heavy legal paperwork from other Movie companies seeking to bar it from the business, or has withdrawn due to other pressures. If anyone knows why TV and Movies are not on iTunes right now, please leave a comment. I’m clueless.

You’ve heard that private file sharing networks exist, but you’ve probably never had a chance to explore one from the inside. These networks of software, music, television, and movie pirates often are run on the internal network infrastructure of private educational institutions. Because a university network has a fixed set of IP addresses, college pirates can run DC++ and write simple scripts to only allow users from the internal IP pool, or even the residential dormitory pool. This prevents unwanted interference (RIAA, MPAA, Police) with the network by simply making it invisible to the outside world. Also, most university networks are lightly-satured high-speed ethernet, giving student pirates the bandwidth to share large files.

While I attended Cornell University, students there ran a large DC++ hub to share files. There were anywhere between 1000 and 2000 users of the DC++ hub, which provided access to terabytes of shared files. Before I left the University to work, I transfered a complete set of users’ file lists to my home computer for later analysis. With 1215 XML file lists from DC++, I wrote a few perl scripts to calculate metrics on the 600mb data set.

Interestingly, the DC++ hub appears to still be around at its old redirect address thchub.no-ip.com:3307. Apparently a student r253141224 is hosting the service on his dorm computer 128.253.141.224.

Data From 20,000 Feet

From the file lists I have, there were 2,456,462 unique files, 5,424,446 total files, 19.07 unique terabytes, and 75.55 total terabytes. Here’s a histogram and data listing of the most popular file types:

mp3	1857432
jpg	828815
m4a	312173
png	264820
gif	224034
avi	203304
dll	133889
wma	116851
htm	82130
zip	79114

The file types follow a classic long-tail distribution, and let us query the data in more interesting ways. For example, for avi movie files, what were the most popular file names? Here’s the top 20:

crash.avi	90
pulp fiction.avi	76
garden state.avi	74
office space.avi	74
good will hunting.avi	72
wedding crashers.avi	67
sin city.avi	66
lost - 2x05 - ...and found.avi	65
super troopers.avi	63
zoolander.avi	60
robin hood - men in tights.avi	59
lost - 2x09 - what kate did.avi	58
eternal sunshine of the spotless mind.avi	57
lost - 2x04 - everybody hates hugo.avi	57
memento.avi	57
american beauty.avi	55
batman begins.avi	55
mean girls.avi	55
lost - 2x07 - the other 48 days.avi	54
old school.avi	54

We can take advantage of common patterns in the data to try and find other patterns, but I’ll save that for another day, and another post in what will undoubtably become a series.