RIAA and Government Snoops Thwarted by P2P Blocklist Software
If you share copyrighted files on peer-to-peer networks, it's almost certain that the RIAA and/or MPAA is monitoring your actions, according to a new study, meaning that it's only a matter of time or luck until The Man comes a-knockin'. (That's not supposed to be Him to the right, by the way... the cat-and-mouse metaphor comes later.)
To do this, The Man creates fake P2P accounts that search for shared files and record what you're sharing. These fake users often have the same range of IP addresses, which P2P blocklist applications (Bluetack, PeerGuardian, Trusty Files) compile into a list that P2P programs ignore, safeguarding you against unwanted scrutiny from RIAA and MPAA bots.
A new study from Anirban Banerjee, Michalis Faloutsos, and Laxmi Bhuyan of the University of California says that
users who do not use one of the apps "will almost certainly be
monitored by blocklisted IPs." In fact, a full 12-17% of all IPs that
contacted the researchers' computers were on the lists -- i.e. possibly
from the RIAA/MPAA/etc -- although the study also says that most of the
blocklisted IPs belong to government or corporate organizations, and that only a few belonged to record labels.
TorrentFreak wondered how effective these apps are, and asked "an expert in the field, who worked with several anti-piracy organizations" about them. He said that they help, but are not completely effective. Once the RIAA realizes it's on a blocklist, it probably just switches to a new set of IPs, and the cat-and-mouse game continues.
As for what the government's doing monitoring P2P share folders, that's anyone's guess.
(via torrentfreak; cat-and-mouse image from art.com)
I find PeerGuardian questionable since it blocks World of Warcraft servers. Who knows what other legit IPs they are blocking...
no, but I do think that other organizations that are polling the P2P networks...better to have a DL go a bit slower than to have a letter show up in your mail.
How hard would it be to dynamically generate a whitelist of ip blocks coming only from residential ISPs around the world. I would feel pretty safe knowing that I was only trading with AOL, ComCast, deutsch telecom, etc.. users. It would definitely be some work but I think it would pay off.
The idea has always been to block more than necessary - hence the blocking of WOW servers, Steam servers, and most RoadRunner users. The goverment institutions and colleges are almost certain to be monitored, so block those too. I would rather block 39% of the internet than get logged by a RIAA IP.
BTW, the PG app is also used to block aggresive ad servers which use some of the same internet backbones as games servers (gamespy and such). The key is setting up your lists properly to block what you want to.
Simpler solution where everyone wins. MAKE THE CONTENT AVAILABLE LEGALLY. And I'm not talking about those god awful online streaming players, though CBS' isn't too bad. Let me have the file. If people don't have to steal it, there's no reason to. I don't believe people inherently WANT to break the law and risk making themselves a target for prosecution. If the content is available by legitimate means no one has to break the law, the content producers get their money. Everyone wins. Well, maybe not the IP blocking companies, but they'll find something else to do. I don't use kazaa or torrents any more for music, and if I can get a tv show legally I'm happy to do it even if it means paying the 1.99 an episode to iTunes.
Maybe I'm an exception here, but that's the way I feel.
Just because the Government accesses a P2P share does not mean that they are necessarily monitoring. Ever think that people who work for the Government might not like paying "the man" for all his or her media either?
Just because the Government accesses a P2P share does not mean that they are necessarily monitoring. Ever think that people who work for the Government might not like paying "the man" for all his or her media either?
Blocklists are not a 100% solution to P2P protection, or any form of protection.
No one in their right mind would ever think they could provide bulletproof protection against an ever changing environment which is the internet.
No one I know who has been involved in maintaining the blocklists has ever claimed that you would have 100% protection from a couple of IP lists. People may assume otherwise, but it has never been advertised as the silver bullet solution.
What they can do is help restrict traffic from all the known identified groups of IPs used by malicious companies or individuals.
Bluetacks blocklists are the most comprehensive lists provided by any research group, the list database is updated daily and do not intentionally block legitimate IP networks. Anything proven to be on the lists incorrectly is removed.
There are many people who have counterarguments, when you look into their reasons, you will often find a personal disagreement behind their argument which is the real reason for their attemot to discredit the use of blocklists.
In the case of that moron2moron counterargument guy, he was pissed when Utorrent found it's way into the lists provided by Bluetack after it was announced the dev had done some work for a p2p hunting company.That guy then decided to get some kind of revenge by spreading his own style of FUD.
Now in hindsight we can see that a lot more people agreed with the principle of blocking utorrent.
To the unfortunate noob who thinks Bluetack block 35% of the internet trying to stop the likes of the MPAA/RIAA, well first you obviously have no idea of the intended targets of each list that Bluetack provide. While you may think that the MPAA/RIAA has 35% of all assigned IP's, you would be mistaken. Those two are also not the most dangerous groups to be blocklisted, while the RIAA may be the most public in their activities, the likes of BAYTSP/ESA/BSA/Mediasentry etc are much more prevalent on all p2p networks and are terrorising P2P users on a greater but less publicised scale.
You wonder why the lists are constantly growing, maybe it's because there are also new anti-p2p entities emerging who are added to this ever increasing blocklist, not to mention there are always going to be newly allocated ranges to the companies who find themsleves blocked to get around the lists.
You can find a breakdown of the enormous amount of anti-p2p groups that have been researched and included into the blocklists here:
http://www.bluetack.co.uk/forums/index.php?showtopic=1052
One of the highlights of the lists effectiveness was back in 2003 when BAYTSP was kicked off the sonic network after being blocklisted by Bluetack. This action on the part of the Bluetack list maintainers helped bring the malicious activities of BAYTSP to the attention of the Sonic network admins who dealt with them appropriately. Utlimately the success and failure of any blocklist depends on it's users for constant feedback, without that feedback they would not be as effective in keeping up with things that need to be addressed.
Now Winmxworld can hardly be considered a legit p2p group in any form. They are simply a group of script kiddies who attack any other site or group they don't like and then whinge like babies every chance they get whenever the sites they attack stand up to them.. Not only that but their obsession with macrovision and a total ignorance of any real high level anti-p2p group puts their whole user base at risk from the real threats which are a lot worse than anything fake files will do to a persons life.
There are real WinMX groups available taking their users safety seriously and I recommend you check them out for your own sake.
See here for more details: http://forum.mxpie.info/mxpiehelptopic342.html
Depending on which lists you use the amount of IP's you block can vary greatly.
The level 1 [antip2p] list alone will block roughly 17% of the assigned IP space. Thats not a huge amount on it's own.
The IANA reserved blocklist contains roughly 30%. These unassigned IP ranges can be used by hackers and antip2p companies to hide their activities.
Total IP Count: 1,329,572,862 (out of 4,294,967,296 IP's or 30.95653% !!
The BOGON IP blocklists provided by Bluetack are maintained by www.completewhois.com a leader in IP network research, not only in regards to BOGON ranges, but also research in hijacked IPs and the activities of IP network hijackers, and their lists are also updated daily. These lists are complemeted by the blocklist from D-shield, who actively compile data from firewall logs to map out the most active IP addresses used by hackers and other network attacks.
Any Emule servers on the lists are either fake servers, suspicious or otherwise unverified. There are various emule devs working closely with Bluetack to keep an eye on the increase of servers run by antip2p companies like mediasentry.
There are just too many self appointed experts like you on the internet these days commenting on things you have no actual idea about. Spreading false and innacurate information is a disservice to all other p2p users.
So basically, there are a wide variety of lists for many different purposes, they are not restricted to just providing people with P2P protection. Online threats are not limited to just P2P networks.
For anyone interested you can check out the FAQ here on the different lists and their intended uses and decide for yourself if they are useful to you or not:
http://www.bluetack.co.uk/forums/index.php...E=02&qid=17
Also I don't see how you could trust any comment from someone who works with the anti-p2p groups, as they largely rely on propaganda as their main weapon in that cat and mouse game.
EDITOR: Eliot Van Buskirk | 
web sites:
The network I use (winmx)has its own blocklist after it was noticed that PG was using the lists from Blutak and that they contained the dynamically allocated IP,s of millions of innocent P2P users.
Many seem unaware of the fact that they are blocking sources for the content they wish by utilising an ever expanding list that is never cleaned up to remove out of date blocked IP's, currently 39% of the internet is blocked by PG, you can verify this yourself by installing the app and seeing how many ips are on its lists, 900 Million at last count, does anyone really believe the riaa/mpaa and there ilk operate a third of the internet ?