More to the point are the key copyright words, "without express written
permission." I would feel very comfortable betting a month's salary
that being hired to look for copyrighted materials by the owner of that
copyright in this fashion is just that kind of permission. :)

On Fri, 2002-07-12 at 04:27, Kayne Ian (Softlab) wrote:
> 2 points about this thread.
>
> First, a lot of people have posted responses to the effect of "Unless xxx
> downloads the file that is supposedly breaching copyright, they can't tell
> if you *are* breaching copyright or not, thus breaching it themselves".
> Unfortunately this isn't true (at least for EDonkey). EDonkey creates a hash
> of the file on your hd, and compares it with the hashes on everyone elses
> hd. If you're in the middle of downloading the file, Edonkey can be sure
> it's resuming the same file from someone else (regardless of filename) by
> these hashes. Therefore to prove copyright infringment, all these companies
> need to do is to confirm your hashes are the same hashes as a "real" warezed
> version of whatever movie. Of course the movie house give the company legal
> permission to download etc the file, therefore they are not in contravention
> of copyright law. So all the company does is run a donkeybot or similar,
> scan the network and log all the people who are sharing a file with hashes
> that match a warezed ver of the movie. Until it becomes illegal to own a
> checksum of a file...
>
> As a side note, this hashing works against them too. They may have been
> flooding the p2p networks with "bad" versions of movies, but all any
> sensible person needs to do is to use a website (sharereactor.com, for
> example) and use the hash link off there. Providing the website is "true"
> (and there are enough of them), you'll always be garanteed to download the
> file you actually want.
>
> Secondly, companies & "entities" in the USA really need to get a damn grip
> of themselves. A friend of mine received an email from a company saying he
> was breaching the DCMA etc for exactly the same reason as Keith Tyler. The
> problem? He lives in the UK, just like me. Sorry to tell you, no matter how
> much you don't want to believe it (and how many times you put a Skylarov in
> jail) American law does NOT apply worldwide.
>
> All that said, piracy is of course a crime. Views are my own. Standard
> disclaimer applies etc etc.
>
> Ian Kayne
> Technical Specialist - IT Solutions
> Softlab Ltd - A BMW Company
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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