Why Your Printer Can Be Accused of Piracy
As many people are aware, the movie and record industries have been suing people who share music and videos through peer to peer services. In mosts cases, they may send what is called a DMCA Notice to warn someone to stop sharing before that happens. However, according to a new study from the University of Washington, the technology these industries use to detect “copyright violators”can produce a lot of false alarms. These systems don’t necessarily identify what the user is sharing, but simply identify the fact that they are sharing something. In some cases, the test machines weren’t even sharing anything at all, but only had BitTorrent clients open. Although BitTorrent can be used for filesharing, it is also used for legitimate uses such as NASA’s Visibleed project. These detection systems are also very vulnerable to spoofing, which means people can easily be framed from file sharing. The study also shows that certain inanimate objects such as laser printers connected to the network can also be falsely accused of illegal activity. In this case, the printers were accused of downloading copies of Iron Man and the latest Indiana Jones movie.