Anyway to block the RIAA?

Hi,

I'm a little worried about getting a death threat from the RIAA... is there any way to block them.. or block them from seeing my IP Address?

Thanks,

Vasant

Bittorrent relies on your IP:PORT. Many people pay for services such as VPN tunnels or other proxies which add you as another layer of obfuscation behind the "public" proxy everyone sees you connect to swarms as.

As far as "death threat".... the worst they do is leave you penniless, the best is to possibly have a case against you serve a precedent.

In the meantime check out http://utorrent.com/faq.php#What_is_ipfilter.dat.3F and a search on this forum about ipfilter.dat to give you insight on what types of peers to block and how to spot them. Most often peers which don't upload in the same subnet block and peers which repeatedly send bad data should be added to ipfilter

Look here:

Automatically update your ipfilter.dat

ipfilter.dat / any other blocklists are pointless. The big ones are maintained by bluetack. The guy that runs bluetack adds IP's to the blocklist based on personal grudges and whims. Nor does he actually check what IP's get caught up in the blocklists. So not every IP in the range banned actually belongs to a bad organization. You're doing more harm then good by using any sort of blocklist that you don't maintain yourself and independently verify every IP. Which is time consuming and not worth it.

> You're doing more harm then good by using any sort of blocklist

Explain how using a blocklist is doing harm? Not sharing with a specific IP address is inconvenient, but I don't see how that creates "harm". On the other hand, receiving a take down notice or being sued for copyright infringement because you did not block IPs is very harmful to yourself. Bluetack's blocklist is not perfect but it reduces risk much more than not using a blocklist at all.

Harm because you block tons of legitimate IPs. Far, far more than the "bad" ranges.

EVEN if you successfully blocked ALL the RIAA ips, the torrent tracker still hands out your ip to them. That may be all they need to send a nasty letter to your ISP to demand your identity.

> Harm because you block tons of legitimate IPs.

Again, please explain how that is harmful? I hope you're not suggesting that being able to connect to any IP is more important than not getting caught by RIAA so they can come after your assets.

> That may be all they need to send a nasty letter to your ISP to demand your identity.

They need proof you downloaded copyright content.

this is how to be safe: block every IP range.

because honestly, blocking a few ranges won't stop you (because gasp, they can get MORE).

.... Hermanm I doubt anyone here is a lawyer. As such one cannot say what one "needs" in order to go to court. Current sentiment in the US is either put up (pay the "hush money" threats) or risk a court case. Sure due to the legal system you will not pay much yet, and when you do it's going to be 3-7 years in the future... people have won/lost $$$ over much less.

In fact all court cases to date have yet to set a precedent for this. Judgments for and against "filesharing" are system specific. Most have not focused on bittorrent due to the time-shift between charges and cases. The default judgment infavor of defendants was due to lack of evidence. The judgment recently (110 million) against torrentspy related to destruction of evidence.

In ALL CASES, it is advisable to not download copyrighted content for which you may be prosecuted (whether or not it is a civil offense). I don't use pre-made blocklists because I like niche content. I make and maintain my own from connected peers and verified whois lookups of suspect peer/IP data. ipfilter.dat support exists in uT so people may do what they want. Effectiveness of bluetack lists is... spotty and one needs only give an honest opinion of their practices to see how "fair" the list is. http://forum.utorrent.com/viewtopic.php?pid=302355#p302355 http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showpost.php?p=1187767&postcount=14 Additionally blocking utorrent.com can only be seen in my eyes as an anti-competitive move as uT is the way things should be, unbloated and free of spy/mal/ad-ware

They need proof you downloaded copyright content.

And that's why there have been so many stories about people's computerless grandmothers and their grandmothers' dogs getting bullshit copyright infringement notices?

> because gasp, they can get MORE

You can block more IPs as they become apparent. I never said a block list is perfect nor does it provide absolute immunity. If you're going to torrent then sticking with legal content is the only safe way. But if you choose to take the risk of sharing copyright material, a block list provides some protection.

> Hermanm I doubt anyone here is a lawyer.

There is nothing illegal with connecting to a tracker.

I feel the same way, but noone has yet gone to court regarding the actuality of trackers being legal in general. Cases up until now have relied on specific files... perhaps the most well known being the shutdown of elitetorrents for Star Wars Episode 3 the same day it premieres.

Hermanm,

Have you gone through the entire list yourself? Have you checked every single line entry? How do you know that the list your using is "good". There is an article floating around about why d/ling and importing OTHER ppls lists are a bad idea (just Google-it), nothing is stopping the RIAA, MPAA and lets not forget their counterpart overseas, Canada, Latin America (if your in the US), its not just the RIAA you need to concern yourself with. Lets say that you indeed grab their Net Addresses and add them in. What if they grabbed another domain? What if they outsource to private companies? What about private individuals? How do you KNOW that your favorite "private" tracker doesn't have someone onboard there making reports? One of my favorite private trackers received a "take-down notice". I wonder how that happened, after all they are private and they all "know" each other (har har har).

Also, for some fun, since you don't see ANY problem w/ lists blocking innocents, try using PG2, ensure that HTTP is Blocked and go visit www.utorrent.com and see what happens. I'll bet you (unless you went in and ALLOWED that particular IP to pass), that you'll not be able to visit it...(look for BitTorrentInc)

But after all, why bother, so what if a few innocent sites get blocked right, one can always UN-block it... but HOW MANY sites are being blocked that you don't visit or even know about, traffic that could be (and legally) be allowed to your particular torrent is forever being blocked, thus possibly reducing your seeding ability.

The argument isn't whether is useful or not, its that unless you verify every single address, its going to be rather difficult and fruitless. There are many many many different anti-p2p campaigns running w/ many different IP's, you might get a smack here and/or a smack there, but your not going to get them all...

However, keep up the good fight.

If you import the list into µT's ipfilter, the blocking of legitimate websites doesn't occur. Legitimate peer blocking can still occur, but the blocking is limited to µT.

Also, there are ip ranges inside 38.x.x.x for instance that are regularly poisoning and monitoring torrents. There are also websites using very close/similar ips, so you can't just use the ip ranges for everything...only in uTorrent.

There are numerous other ranges as well.

Even if you don't want to block big ip ranges "just to be safe", would you block ip ranges registered as part of an anti-p2p company?