Whispers from the Wild

A while ago I was browsing websites when I came across this image, a screencapture of a live Fox News broadcast.  It should go without saying that the country in between Syria and Iran is in fact Iraq, not Egypt.  I submitted it without hesitation to failblog.org who have now published it.

Reading through the comments, one thing shocks me completely.  This comment:

Curbie says:

August 12, 2009 at 6:15 am

I hate to do this, because there is obviously a lot of hate for fox news here, but they were probably high lighting those two regions by magnifying or enlarging them on the map. I’ve seen every single news source do this, not just fox news. This was just a creative, convenient screen capture for the person who submitted this. That is all.

I had to read it several times before I could come to terms with how many ways this fails in itself.  In fact, it made me quite sad, because this poster appears to be serious.  First he says that there is a lot of hate for fox news (he’s evidently an avid viewer and dislikes seeing the site ridiculed) and goes on to talk about the highlighting.  Yes, he’s quite correct, news sources do indeed – and have here – highlight countries they are specifically talking about – but that wasn’t the reason this was posted, and the fact that he can’t even spot that the country in between those two highlighted groups of countries is wrongly named is extremely sad.

There are a few accusations that the picture is photoshopped; it was not.  Fox News broadcast that Iraq is actually Egypt.  While it’s sad enough that such a mistake made it through to broadcast, it’s even sadder that some people would criticize the screengrab for being hatred towards the news station that broadcast it and of being edited, and yet not spot the actual problem.

What is the world coming to?  Is this the state of American education nowadays?

Well, that was a travesty.

It all started when the defendant decided to be brutally honest and say that he used KaZaA to download files.  He made a huge mistake and agreed that he distributed them too.

As I’ve already said, it IS possible to install KaZaA and not actually distribute anything.  It’s possible to restrict access to the shared folder without any third party software.  This works because the way a directory listing is read is not the same form of access as actually reading the files.  You can have access to view a folder but not access to read the files within the folder.  With the correct set up, it’s entirely possible for KaZaA to see – and serve the list of – the contents of a folder, but not to be able to send the contents of the folder to anyone, as in effect anyone accessing the filesystem through KaZaA has guest access privileges, and if the guest account can’t share the folder then nobody can request a file.  The actual KaZaA program has system access privileges to read the folder contents, which can be different from the guest account access privileges.

So, as soon as he admitted to this, the judge decided to instruct the jury to find him liable, despite the fact that up to that point the plaintiff hadn’t presented anywhere near enough evidence to prove liability.  Of course, in an appeal, the plaintiffs will grab hold of this admission which could cause an appeal to fail too.  This is unfortunately not the first time I’ve seen someone open their mouth in court and say too much.  He should have admitted to using the program, no more than that, and said that it was up to the plaintiffs to prove anything was actually downloaded from him (since they’d already effectively admitted they couldn’t.)

So damages wise it’s not as bad as it could be, it’s less than a million, but it’s still going to drive him into bankruptcy.  Result for the RIAA, travesty for the rest of us.

I really wish that the judges in these cases were a lot better at finding someone who was not only tech-savvy but good at explaining in laymans terms what goes on with these programs.  Using KaZaA – or in fact ANY P2P program – does not necessarily automatically equate to full file sharing.

But those who really know what they’re doing don’t bother with P2P anyway – it’s slow, it’s inefficient and it’s insecure, and there are far more efficient, faster and safer ways to transfer files.

Judge Gertner will instruct the jury in Sony BMG vs Tenenbaum to return a verdict of liability in the case.

I have to say, from what I’ve seen, the plaintiff’s haven’t proved anything except that the defendant may have had the ability to commit the offense.

I’ve been doing some tests over an intranet of KaZaA under Windows XP Professional SP3.  And what I’ve found is very interesting, and, I believe, quite relevant.  It is possible, if one is careful about how one uses the network sharing options to make a folder visible to KaZaA but not actually readable.  Let me detail my experiment here.

Two laptops and a desktop, both run Windows XP SP3 on virgin installations.  On two machines the same 30 tracks are placed on the hard drive.  On one of the two machines file and printer sharing is set up so that files are NOT shared with the network, and this attribute is given to the KaZaA shared folder.  The third machine has KaZaA loaded but no music files.

All machines then have a “packet sniffer” and bandwidth monitoring program installed.

The machine without music on it correctly reported that two peers it could see had the files I asked to search.  However, no matter what, only the one without the file and printer sharing restriction ever actually served a file.  If you disconnected that machine during the transfer, the transfer stalled, even though it still (correctly) said that 1 peer was connected with the files that were to be transferred.

How does this relate to the Tenenbaum case?

Well, firstly, the plaintiffs allege that the defendant’s computer SERVED files.  They haven’t actually proved this, and in fact Media Sentry admitted that although they could see the files on the defendant’s computer, they couldn’t actually download from the defendant.  So this whole case is about did the defendant’s machine permit the DISTRIBUTION of music.  My argument would be to say no, it didn’t.  It could perhaps receive, but it never sent anything.  The best prosecution the plaintiffs could hope to bring would be for receiving or handling stolen goods (in the form of music files).

So, to my mind this entire case is a miscarriage of justice because the judge will order liability to be found, and not allow the jury to consider whether there is liability.

It just remains to see whether or not the plaintiffs will also get the overinflated damages they seek.  My guess is, they will.

The world is great.  The RIAA and its associated music companies make the world great by the service that they provide, expensive as it is to them to provide it.  The ONLY thing that isn’t great is pirates who cost the music industry it’s metaphoric arms and legs in lost revenue and legal costs.  People like the defendant.

Just look at the testimony of Dr Jacobson, the music industry’s P2P expert who testified today in Sony BMG vs Tenenbaum.  Dr Jacobson has never EVER been spoofed or rickrolled in all his internet life.  His has been the textbook perfect internet life, no faulty software, no physhing, no rickrolling… the only fly in the ointment being P2P illegal music sharers, just ganging up to force him to download copyrighted music.  People like the defendant.

Dr Jacobson did not, or could not, correct yesterday’s bombshell that there was no actual proof the defendant had at any time had a single file downloaded from him, and thus had committed the offenses the plaintiffs claim.

His opinion was based on the evidence that MediaSentry was able to start the download of 1000+ files and collect MetaData and successfully continue the download for a subset of these files.

Source

Now, there’s something wrong here to my mind.  Yesterday’s testimony by Chris Conelly specifically stated that he’d tried and failed to start downloads of songs from the defendant’s computer.  So something’s not right here.  Either Media Sentry WAS able to “start the download” in which case Chris Conelly’s testimony is a lie (and thus purgery) or they were not in which case his opinion isn’t worth anything since it’s not accurate.  And if it’s not accurate, why should the jury believe any other part of his opinion?  Of course, the fact that he was paid $9,000 for his opinion in this case shouldn’t hint that he might be biased in the plaintiff’s favor.  Absolutely not.  Even though he estimated he worked between 40 and 50 hours at a $200/hr rate.  Nothing to do with why his opinion might possibly be inaccurate.

Other highlights of his “expert opinion”:

* There were two registry files which could not be opened, which he indicated was evidence that they were attempted to be deleted.

What a load of cobblers.  There can be any reason why a registry file can’t be opened, but one of the most common is that it’s in use by another application, and normally if it’s a registry file that other application is the core operating system of windows itself.  Windows will not permit the accessing or deletion of such a “locked” file, but you boot with another operating system capable of reading NTFS drives, such as linux, and you can delete the file without a problem since Linux doesn’t read the activity flags that Windows sets up.  Any professional wanting to delete ANY windows-made file would simply use a Linux boot disk or CD, and delete the file.  If it was locked (which seems to be the case here, since the files were present but could not be opened) then it was either corrupt or already being used by a part of the operating system.

* The file sharing program LimeWire was on the machine, and he believed it to be operable.
* He found evidence of over 2700 music files in the C:\My Music folder which LimeWire was sharing, but that this folder itself had it some point been deleted.

Again, I have to say “So what?”  Even if you could argue that Kazaa was installed, so what?  That’s just hinting that the defendant COULD have shared files, it’s no proof that the defendant DID share files.  As such, it doesn’t deserve to be given major weight because it’s circumstantial evidence of the ability to commit the offense, not actual evidence of the offense being committed.

* He was able to identify several songs that were once in the C:\My Music folder that were at issue in this case.

Again, so what?  I might have those files on my hard disk.  Doesn’t mean I’ve ever distributed them.  I could have ripped them legitimately from CDs I owned.  Again, this “evidence” is circumstancial at best, at worst inadmissible.

* He found several hundred exact matches to files in the C:\My Music folder that were being distributed by sublimeguy14@KaZaA

Here we’re back to his testimony conflicting with Chris Conelly’s testimony.  Chris Connelly testified that he saw those files in the defendant’s list of available files, but couldn’t actually download them.  On the occasions he was able to download those particular music files, his testimony was that they originated at a different computer than the defendant’s.  Thus, the “were being distributed” is a misleading contradiction.

* He also found a My Music folder under Joel’s My Documents folder, which contained a similar folder structure and many of the files that were removed from the C:\My Music folder.

Again, so what?  Again, this is circumstantial evidence of the possibility that things were in place for an offense to be committed.  This is not evidence that an offense WAS committed, or that the defendant was the one committing the offense.

* He had formed the opinion based on the inconsistent meta data in the files he found during the forensic examination that they were downloaded and distributed on the internet.

Well of course he did.  He then submitted his invoice for a cool nine thousand dollars which was duly paid.  Naturally that has absolutely NO bearing on why he formed that opinion.  Absolutely not.  *cough*

Dr. Jacobson was then asked why MediaSentry only downloaded 7 of the files they found in the shared folder. He stated that it would have been infeasible to download them all, because it would have taken a long period of time. He was asked that for the remainder of the files it would be impossible to know if they were the sound files they stated they were or not, because there was no underlying file. Dr. Jacobson agreed that an audio comparison could not be made, but that it was still his opinion that all of the remaining files were present for distribution.

Hang on a moment!  Didn’t Chris Conelly admit under oath that the songs he downloaded did not start from the defendant’s computer?  I use Blizzard’s background downloader – which is a p2p program – to download my World of Warcraft updates, but they seldom if ever use the same machines.  Surely if the plaintiff is alleging that the defendant distributed music files, that means that he distributed the entire music file.  If he distributed the entire music file, then he broke the law – but what if only a few tiny chunks ever came from his machine?  If you were to join those chunks together you probably wouldn’t even be able to play them back; surely the plaintiffs must, if they wish to claim damages, prove that the entirety of each file came from the defendant?  And again, Mr $9000′s opinion has to be called into question because of the money aspect.  Would he still be of the same opinion if the defendant had been the one paying him $9000, not the plaintiff?

Professor Nesson asked Dr. Jacobson that if a spoofed file was present in the directory if it would look the same as the other files from the meta data, to which he admitted that a spoofed copy could contain the correct meta data as well.

What’s a spoofed copy?  Another tactic used by the music industry.  Basically it contains the first few bars of the song it pretends to be, then either garbage, profanity or repeated recordings of voice overs discouraging music piracy.  And Dr Jacobson admits that a spoofed file would contain the same meta data (it would have to be if it was to successfully masquerade as authentic) and thus blows the 7 files Media Sentry DID get out of the water, since their evidence is based on meta data, and there is thus no evidence that they were genuine song files even if by some miracle the evidence could be cobbled together that the files were distributed from the defendant’s machine in their entirety – itself looking like an impossible prospect at this point in time.

One final thing:

On recross Dr. Jacobson was asked if KaZaA contained Malware. He stated that it would be more accurate to say that it contained Adware. He was asked if the MediaSentry computers had adware on them. He stated that he has not investigated their computers beyond what MediaSentry has told him, which is that they keep their computers clean.

I hope the defense brings this up again.  Because here we have another contradiction, and it’s a pretty major one.  If KaZaA contained Adware, then it follows (and this is born out by the warning you get when you run Spybot: Search and Destroy that if you remove software related to programs, i.e. the adware that comes with KaZaA, the programs themselves will stop working) that Media Sentry’s computers must have been infected with Adware, because they would have to have the Adware for KaZaA to continue functioning.  This leads us to one of the following possible scenarios:

• Media Sentry’s computers run KaZaA (and it’s associated Adware) and are thus not “clean” but KaZaA works
• Media Sentry’s computers had the Adware removed after KaZaA was installed, which would have disabled KaZaA and required a re-installation (the re-installation would then reinstall the adware, leading to an endless loop of deleting adware and reinstalling KaZaA)
• Media Sentry have illegally modified KaZaA so that it no longer checks for the Adware that it was installed with, but in doing so they revoke their own license to use KaZaA in an unmodified form and thus commit the offense of using unlicensed software every time they run KaZaA

These are the only three possible outcomes.  I’d love to know which it is.

There were two other witnesses today, but neither of them had anything near as interesting to say as this one.  The trial continues tomorrow.

Something really got up and hit me when I was reading about the testimony from Media Sentry in the current Sony BMG vs Tenenbaum RIAA court case:

[Chris Connelly of Media Sentry Inc] He then described the evidence that they found, such as the screenshots of the sublimeguy14@KaZaA shared folder. He described the user log that they created which showed the meta-data they were able to transfer from over 800 files in this shared folder. He also described the data log showing packets between a Cox Communications IP address and MediaSentry. He was brought many pages of these logs showing mp3 files, kpl files, and MetaData collected about them. He testified that most of these files most likely did not come from ripped CDs due to disparities in format of meta-data, varying bitrates, et. cetera. which indicated that they most likely came from different originating sources throughout the internet. One part of the data log showed a portion where the sublimeguy14@KaZaA computer did not respond to several requests, which he described as ‘most likely because the computer was busy’ and the requested file then starting to download from a different PC. He described this process as part of the way KaZaA worked. He did testify that he had no evidence of other transfers between sublimeguy14@KaZaA and any other party, because peer-to-peer software does not show these activities taking place.

Wow!  And I mean, WTF?

We have two things here.  The first is that Mr Connelly tried to download files from this defendant AND FAILED TO DO SO.  The second is that Mr Connelly, who represents the organization the RIAA uses to provide technical proof of infringement CANNOT PROVIDE ANY OTHER EVIDENCE that the defendant did in fact do what the plaintiffs are claiming he did.

Let’s get this straight:  The case is that the plaintiffs claim the defendant cost them damages in that he knowingly distributed copyright material he held no copyright for to one or more other persons.  That’s the gist of the case.  Sony BMG and the RIAA are seeking damages for that specific crime.  Yet not only could their evidence collection company not actually download – thereby receiving unauthorized distribution of – any of the songs, but they now say they can’t prove anyone else received any songs either.

Were I the judge in this case I would have stopped the case there and then, and asked if there was any witness that COULD actually prove that the witness or any other person downloaded any files.  Because if they can’t, or no such witness is available, then I would direct the jury to return a not guilty verdict and close the case.

The case is not about whether someone COULD download songs.  It’s an allegation that someone DID download songs.  It’s an allegation that the defendant owes the plaintiff damages because they DID download songs which they may otherwise have paid the plaintiff or plaintiffs agents for.   To me, Mr Connelly’s testimony basically blew the plaintiffs case right out of the water, because it said the plaintiffs have no evidence that such downloading DID take place, only that it COULD have.  Whether that is a separate offense is debatable but even if it is, that’s not what this case is about.  This case is about an actual happening, not a theoretical possibility of a happening.  There’s a huge difference.

I’m going to be following this case very closely, because to my mind unless someone can stand up and say “Yes, I can prove he did that!” and then do so, it’s already over.  Media Sentry supposedly are there to do that, and they can’t.  If nobody else can, the theory behind whether someone may or may not have at some point downloaded music from Mr Tenenbaum is irrelevant – to get a conviction, it must be proved, and if they can’t prove it, he deserves a full acquittal.

Here we go already:

Sir.Anderson Clarks

Google Promotion Award Team

Email: sir.anderson_clarks@hotmail.co.uk

You are advised to contact your Foreign Transfer Manager with the

following details to avoid unnecessary delay and complications:

VERIFICATION AND FUNDS RELEASE FORM.

(1) Your contact address.

(2) Your Tel/Fax numbers.

(3) Your Nationality/Country.

(4) Your Full Name/Sex.

(5) Occupation/Age.

(6) Ever won an online lottery?

(7) Your Preferred Method of Receiving Your Prize (From Below)

Mode Of Prize Remittance.

(1)Cash Pick-Up (You coming Down to United Kingdom Personally to Pick Your

Prize).

(2)Courier Delivery Of your Certified Winning Cheque Name and other Winning

Documents safely to you.

The Google Promotion Award Team has discovered a huge number of double

claims due to winners informing close friends relatives and third parties

about their winning and also sharing their pin numbers. As a result of

this, these friends try to claim the lottery on behalf of the real

winners. The Google Promotion Award Team has reached a decision from

headquarters that any double claim discovered by the Lottery Board will

result to the canceling of that particular winning, making a loss for both

the double claimer and the real winner, as it is taken that the real

winner was the informer to the double claimer about the lottery. So you

are hereby strongly advised once more to keep your winnings strictly

confidential until you claim your prize.

Congratulations from the Staffs & Members of the Google interactive

Lotteries Board Commission.

Sincerely,

Dr. Leslie Spears.

Google Promotion Award Team

Dear User,

Thank you for your recent email.  Before we can proceed with your case we need the
following information:

*  No entry to any raffle is on file.  Please specify what raffle, when, who entered and
which email address they gave.

Until we receive the requested information your enquiry ticket will be placed on hold.
If we do not receive the required information within 28 days, we will close the ticket
and assume you have resolved the original issue yourself.

Best regards,

Bjorn Yestadae
For Emergency Computer Technicians

<@impossible> my buds and i share dedicated server hosting
<@impossible> so we all paypal our one friend for the monthly payment
<@impossible> so for the last four months it’s been paypal messages like, “less teeth, more attentino to the balls”
<@impossible> and he got an email today saying his account has been permanently closed for adult services, which is a violation of paypal usage

I had to LOL…

Bjørn Yestadae.

If you think that sounds like “born yesterday” – you’d be right.  Bjørn Yestadae is a fictitious person working for the company who is extremely grumpy and likes nothing more than to be a completely sarcastic bastard.  Bjørn will henceforth be dealing with all physhing and spam mail sent to us.

Quite frankly it’s an annoyance that despite several filters we still occasionally receive emails from wealthy south africans wishing to move money from their country to ours, or building societies that want to offer us unbelievably loan rates and just happen to have email addresses at hotmail, live, aol or any of the other free services, or banks needing us to give them our details again urgently because they lost them, but don’t explain how they can verify the authenticity of such details if the original details have indeed been lost.

So yes – from time to time, our good friend Bjørn Yestadae will be mentioned on this Blog after a particularly interesting exchange with spammers and phishers.  Think of it as a little light entertainment, for those who WEREN’T Bjørn Yestadae.

I responded to a call today about a DVD that a friend had burned in Germany with some home video footage.  The DVD was supposedly made with Windows Movie Maker, but now was refusing to play in anything, be it computer or DVD player.

I put the DVD in the laptop, and lo and behold Windows identified it as a blank DVD.  Obviously it wasn’t, a visual check confirmed from the difference in colour that there was data burned to the disk.  In addition, Nero could tell there was one unclosed session of about 90Mb, but couldn’t do anything with it, including close it.  It didn’t help that the person didn’t have the full version of Nero, her Nero was an OEM copy of Nero Express that didn’t have “import session” options.

Eventually using a combination of different products, I managed to dump the contents of that session to a folder on the hard drive, and ended up with two files.  An index file, less than 4k in size, and a file called 1.c00 that was the remainder of the 89Mb.

A quick scan for c00 files (that’s letter c, zero, zero) revealed that the most likely format for this file was a compressed folder.  So I downloaded WinRAR and tried to get it to open the file.

Lo and behold, the file contained a .WMV video – the footage concerned.  Using Nero I then reburned the file as DVD video, creating a working DVD.

This doesn’t answer two important questions though:

1. How did the video file end up compressed?
2. How did it end up authored into an unclosed DVD session, assuming that the burning program was indeed Windows Movie Maker – it simply doesn’t have those options!

I still don’t know at the end of the day how the DVD ended up in that state, and the original is still in that state, unreadable by everything.  But at the end of the day at least we did end up with a working DVD of the footage – and in the end, I guess that’s all that matters.

Unlike many people, I actually bother to scan the End User License Agreement (EULA) using a piece of software that highlights suspicious content.

I was therefore somewhat surprised when I installed the latest version of Apple ITunes to see the following in clause 10:

By using the Apple software, you represent and warrant that you are not located in any such country or on any such list.  You also agree that you will not use these products for any use prohibited by the United States law, including, without limitation, the development, design, manufacture or production of missiles, or nuclear, chemical or biological weapons.

Emphasis mine. Now I don’t know about you, but I prefer to think of Itunes as a music player.  It can do podcasts but that’s about its limit.  I only actually bother with it for a few tracks, and for Apple Quicktime.  I’ve never heard of anyone using a music player to build a nuclear missile, but hey, you never know – Al-Qaeda are supposed to be an inventive lot, right?

Pardon me if I don’t run away screaming to hide under my bed, Apple.  In fact… I think I’ll go to the kitchen, get the foil and cut you a nice tin hat…