need help with evidence for legal procedings

[yoda]

ok, in brief....
when winmx was forced to close a load of people got sued ect....
I'm one of those involved in legal action.... except its not for copyright infringement....
the complaint was originally raised that I was distributing files of an undesirable nature....
they don't have enough evidence to go for distribution so I'm being charged with 15 counts of makeing a copy and one count of posesion....
I never downloaded those files.... and no one else had access to my PC....
I've done my own investigation and I've got evidence submissable in court.... but I need more....
basically, I'm proceding on the lines that a law passed in the US in 2003 ish makes it legal for someone to hack into P2P networks and disrupt them. well actually the law doesn't put a limit on what is allowed... so efectively someone could come around your house and cut your phone line or cable....

Basically, I want more evidence that someone have been corrupting the winmx database befor it shutdown....

Does anyone have anything?

I used to be shairing over 100gb of files on winmx.... need some help please....

[GhostShip]

Hi yoda I am struggling to make sense of what your saying as most of it is not correct.

No one was sued when frontcode pulled the plug, also the law you are talking about was a proposed law , it was never passed onto the statute book.
Anyone trying to hide behind that as a defence is shit out of luck as obtaining unauthorised access to a computer within the UK is illegal under the computer misuse act anyway.

I hate to disappoint you but there is no such thing as "the winmx database", every file search result arriving at your machine comes from other network users, winmx is a decentralised network and no central server is required or exists.

If your being charged with having files of as you put it"an undesirable nature" then its likely you obtained those files yourself or someone else did using your machine as there is no chance they arrived by themselves, one or two viruses do pretend to be objectionable material and will infect your machine but they are not real files and nor do they download real files.

Much as I wish to be of help if your an innocent man I,m also sure that the police are in possesion of your machine and will have done a detailed forensic examination for trojans or viruses that would allow access to your PC , unless their report indicates that this is the case please look closer to home, anything else is wild speculation.

I suggest you concentrate on showing your movements on the day and time that its claimed the files where downloaded into your machine, this is your only real defence, as it must be proved beyond reasonable doubt that only you had access to the machine at the time claimed, if someone else was using it then its likely to be helpful to your case , although I,m sure the material that was found on your machine is the sort we all wish to see off the network its not our role here to pre judge you so I hope for all our sakes that you find another explanation for their appearance on your machine and this leads to justice being taking its rightful course on the person responsible.

 

[yoda]

ghostship,
it has been passed.... I found references to it on the FBI's website which lead me to make a copy of US governments website....

The files inquestion were downloaded from 2002 - 2006 how can I account for movements within that time period....

I'm aware that winmx is supposed to be de-centrilised, but if it was, how can they take it down in the first place....

They got my winmx username and my IP address their must be a central server of some sort.... or how do clients know what other clients are online....

[Bearded Blunder]

there needs be no central server or database to determine your name & ip.. anyone who turns your files up in a search can determine those, the only fixed point of reference is the cache.. which a user contacts once to connect, & pre shutdown had no furthur interaction with until they need to reconnect in the case of a stable primary.. potentially an unlimited period.. possibly as much as months.. during which time their name & shared files can change completely.. now there's a little more contact updating the blocklist.. but the cache holds no information about your share or name.. if those things were determined.. it was done through serches or browses & use of network tools...  searches simply shunt around between connected primaries .. which know about each other from being interconnected.. no central reference is made at any point regarding content.

[GhostShip]

Although bearded has already explained I,ll give you the short version, a decentralise network is near impossible to close down, and even when frontcode closed shop MX was still running , they only provide the "join to network" function nothing more, this is not open to debate its a fact.

If you believe that such a law was passed then I suggest you show the link as I dont believe it was.

I have no wish to give you bad information or false hope so please stop looking for fantastic reasons those files may be on your machine, human hands must have been involved in that act, look deeper into who had access and you will find your answer, I repeat your only defence is to be able to show your not the downloader of the material, trying to make outlandish claims will end badly for you if you try to rely on them in court.

One more note, its possible to gather more evidence from your ISP of your activities online, as under UK law they have to log certain things on behalf of the goverment, and store it for a certain number of years as a detection of crime measure, this information collected under the Regulation Of Investigatory Powers Act (2000) can be obtained by asking the court to grant you access to it, this may be of further help to you ...or to the police.

It seems your faced with a possible civil action or definitely facing a criminal one, there is no middle ground here, your next move will decide your future.

[KM]

erm, have you been taken to court?

if no, what are you wasting everyones time for? nothing has happened, go mow the lawn or something

if yes, what are you wasting everyones time for? go mow the lawn while you wait for them to go through their list of excuses for why they have filed yet another law suit without any evidence of any crime, you should have had time to finish mowing the lawn by the time they finish their BS and the judge tells them to go away and find some evidence of their claims

[bughunter]

exactly km..........................
since the charge is questionable files and not copywrite its got nothing to do with RIAA..................
questionable files sounds more like animal sex or kiddie porn, and would be federal prosecution......................
but either way as km pointed out they would still have to prove the charge,
and in case ya didnt know getting someones ip on winmx or any other p2p is dead simple, even riaa are smart enough to figure that out..........

[sst75tss]

Ghostship wrote:"
I have no wish to give you bad information or false hope so please stop looking for fantastic reasons those files may be on your machine,,,"

There is that slight possibility of some trojan uploader placing them there for their personal scatter-net services.

[KM]

since the charge is questionable files and not copywrite its got nothing to do with RIAA..................
questionable files sounds more like animal sex or kiddie porn, and would be federal prosecution......................

in that case then (clearly i didn't read the thread properly) the charge would probably be possession, in which case they either have evidence (they found you in possession) or they don't (in which case there no no evidence)... quite clear cut there

of course you could try to claim someone else uses the computer and then try and pass the blame to them... but beyond that...

[Me Here]

I think the main thing to remember in this thread since we are not the EFF here is that WinMX has never and will never have a central server database to get corrupted.

Any questions aside from that one are not relevant here.

[stickyb]

One thing you can fall foul of is unwittingly downloading files that contain objectionable material. If a user sets up of file that contains some obnoxious video sequence, names it "beatles song" or something equally innocuous, you might then find it in a search and download it. Surprise surprise, when you play it it is not a beatles song but something vile. Then someone checks youir machine and bang your charged.

[SamSeeSam]

A good reason to always check the files you download and the files after you have downloaded them. And immediately delete it if you find it's not what you want.
I once got a video which was suppose to be a song which turned out to be P***. The name didn't even remotely resemble the content. Thankfully it's happened only once (and so far, the last)

Cheers

[GhostShip]

There is that slight possibility of some trojan uploader placing them there for their personal scatter-net services.

To speculate like this is unhelpful as 99% of trojans leave signs of having been present and would have been detected, if this is so they would appear on the report done on the drive and  as such be a valid defence as I mentioned in my first reply.

Much as I wish to be of help if your an innocent man I,m also sure that the police are in possesion of your machine and will have done a detailed forensic examination for trojans or viruses that would allow access to your PC , unless their report indicates that this is the case please look closer to home, anything else is wild speculation.

I,m not interested in talking waffle to this guy he need raw facts and a good knowledge of the charges he is facing and what it is neccesary for him to prove to avoid taking a fall, I am I hope providing that information.

[KM]

to be perfectly honest if you had a porn collection with 1000 videos in, and 3 or 4 were badly labeled ones you hadn't watched yet to delete that happened to be child porn or something along those lines, then even with something that bad you would probably not be facing charges - and if you did get some really anal cop out to get you try to press charges common sense would get the case thrown out at court without too much hassle

generally you only even get any attention (let alone any charges) if it is beyond reasonable "i didn't check the contents", or if the file names were quite clear what it is - then there could be an argument that it wasn't just an innocent badly named file

the law is stupid, thankfully police have the ultimate power - common sense, technically 1mph over the speed limit is illegal, but common sense is the reason I've never heard of anyone being charged for it (even though the police in this country absolutely love catching as many speeders as they can no matter how safe it was to do 80mph on that empty motorway they will still do you for being 10mph over the limit...)