Trident Media Guard now also operating in the UK

[Blitzen]

Heads up on some ip ranges worth noting, more ranges within the article


http://torrentfreak.com/file-sharers-monitoring-the-file-sharing-hunters-100424/

There does, though, appear to be an even greater threat. Fake file-sharing clients running on the IP address range 193.107.240.0 to 193.107.240.22 (again registered to TMG, this time in the UK) are connecting to users and gathering data about the files they are sharing. This is exactly the sort of data that will be used to generate warning letters which could eventually lead to Internet user disconnections.

[GhostShip]

You,ll be pleased to hear this company are not bothering us on the WPN but we shall keep our eyes open for them all the same, cheers Blitzen.

[Blitzen]

It certainly highlights the efforts the cartels go through, it is disgusting how they can get away with DDOS` ing  people just because they are downloading a file. And using the honey trap of a fake file just to gather info about what files your sharing/downloading is just low. I hope all filesharing networks will come together and share info and ips to help protect each others networks as at the end of the day it is a common fight for all.

[Bluey_412]

And a good reason why the 'new' winmx client, whenever it appears, should NOT adopt bit-torrent type transfers...

Our WinMX may be slow, but we love it for it's security

[GhostShip]

We have been lucky on this network to have many folks who care about it and learn how the attackers do their thing, we do have a company currently operating on the network via the host file users that flood the network with false listings and have recently stepped up their shared file scanning efforts from a minor stats gathering exercise into something more substantial which is why the blocking team asked for and where granted some "executive powers" recently to block those attempts to harvest data from the network, this unfortunately involved having to lock out certain host file primaries and was a partial success in that valuable data was gathered and many attackers where blocked from doing their work, however it was also seen that its going to require a larger team or full automation to stop them as dead as we would like and we are working on that as we speak.

The battle rages on but with the support of you all we will prevail.

[Pri]

Our WinMX may be slow, but we love it for it's security

No offence but Security by Obscurity isn't security.

[Blitzen]

With all the new laws coming out in many countrie,s security for anyone sharing files is now a major concern. The people at winmxworld work tirelessly to block anti p2p from the network and must be complimented for their efforts. Sadly these new anti filesharing laws is opening flood gates for antI  p2p organisations and personally if people use other networks such as torrents you are going to need extra security and at the moment the best option is being offered as peerblock but sadly its default blocklist is the p2p list from bluetack which has had allot of controversy. There is a site hosting lots of blocklists so you can choose which you feel most comfortable with using but of course there is no guarantees from anyone as the anti p2p can change their ips but some protection is better than none. The list of alternative blocklists can be found at iblocklist.com. Peerblock is now the preferred choice over peerguardian.

[GhostShip]

One important aspect of the WPN that many have overlooked is the primary encryption and how the messages are "chained" thats not simple obscuration thats real security, also to prevent false nodes becoming primary the protocol uses a double handshake and thus if someone is not where they claim they wont be able to recieve their half of the shared key and stay connected , this is once again not obscurity but real tech for ensuring the network is safer by design.

On another note some of you may have noticed that the flooders/harvesters etc are leaving themselves open to criminal action for their efforts, how so you ask ?
The WinMX protocol is the property of the company that designed it and like the coding on DVD's is legally protected as an "access control mechanism", current US law makes it an offence under the DMCA to "crack" or bypass such a mechanism and we are not talking civil offence here this is a criminal offence and the authorities are thus going to have to investigate as soon as a valid complaint is made, I suspect the cartel who pay for such attacks think that intellectual property rights are only something they have, but the law is pretty clear and they are breaking it by using their custom harvesting program to steal data from the network, this is why you,ll note I always refer to these companies as criminals as thats what they are under the law.

I'm not located in the US so unlikely anything will come of knowing this information but I thought its best to mention it as I'm sure they get a digest of what goes on here and I wouldnt like them to think we are as ignorant as they would like to believe.

Peerblock is for those of you who havent heard of it is an updated version of peer guardian that will work on Vista etc , once again a good program but backed by poor lists that block most of the Internet including other file sharers, data logging is more of a concern to torrent folks than anyone on WinMX as Blitzen states, obscurity cannot replace real security but a system that uses neither is pretty much one that no one should bother with.

[Pri]

What is to stop them from taking any of us to court for operating the network?

[GhostShip]

Simply the fact that we are using the official client and not stealing data for commercial gain also I think its clear the network is decentralised and thus technically none of us operate it.

[Pri]

That doesn't stop them from taking Bittorrent websites down. Even ones that don't operate a tracker. Simply indexing or facilitating access is enough to get people arrested these days it seems.

[GhostShip]

Access to what exactly Pri ?

Your paraphrasing the law incorrectly in my opinion, there is no financial gain or encouragement of copyright infringement going on here and thus I really cant see any legal case to answer, also its my opinion that the chat rooms are expressions of free speech and thus protected by the US constitution.

The bit torrent sites allow secondary infringement by firstly listing copyrighted material titles and secondly providing a file that will link/allow anyone using a bit torrent client to obtain the copyrighted file, once again no such activity takes place here nor do we encourage such activity, are you seeing a pattern here yet ?

Making no money is also a legal protection as it ensures we are not helping folks use winmx to make a personal gain, the trackers and torrent sites often fail to recognise this is why they are shut down using commercial piracy legislation.

[Blitzen]

A quick mention on the blocklist side of things for peerblock, although the default anti p2p list that comes with it seems to have allot of controversy due to the people at bluetack who maintain the list as i mentioned there is several lists available at iblocklist.com that can be added to peerblock manually. One list that seems to have gained a reputation as being "well maintained" is the Primary Threats list and indeed it did contain the ips mentioned in the above article. At the end of the day these anti p2p change names and ips quickly so no present blocking system can be 100% proof, Some protection is better than none leaving yourselves wide open  .

[Pri]

The RIAA pressured the WinMX network operators to stop before. There is nothing to say they won't come after us. We facilitate copyright infringement by enabling users to connect. The peercaches are the linchpin of the WinMX network and if they want the network gone they would continually sue us until we couldn't operate it any more. Are you seeing this pattern yet?

Not only that but we are active in our role to stop Anti-P2P companies from connecting to the network, we distribute blocking lists, we filter fake files. This gives them a case in that we have the ability to filter content from the network but choose not to. This is the same thing they accused Limewire of and made them put in filters to detect and remove copyrighted content.

They could for example get an injunction against us to force us to filter any search in the WinMX built in search system for the phrase 'Britney Spears'. We have that capability and we do not use it to their benefit.

They could claim a case that by not doing anything we are supporting the users copyright infringement indirectly.

[GhostShip]

I,m unable to say what reasoning was behind the closure of WinMX Technologies (aka Frontode Technology) or why it pulled its infrastructure prior to the Grokster ruling that would have made it safe to continue operating the network, that is for them to know and us to guess.

I,m glad you mentioned the file filtering technology as you will be pleased to hear we do no such thing nor do we have to power to control such a thing, what we do is to block commercial entities from stealing bandwidth from WinMX users by misusing the network illegally with their custom made attack programs.

You need to look at how the protocol works in detail to see that IP blocking and individual file blocking are two separate activities one of which is possible and the other simply is not.
I am always willing to attend any court to show how the system works and why blocking IPs does not mean we have a facility to control every individuals activities on the network, as made clear its a decentralised network and I have no clue what the flooders pretend to share all the time only that they are misusing the network on a mass scale and therefore I am able deny them access based on their method of attack not each individual attack they undertake.

I hope your not suggesting that connecting to WinMX is copyright infringement Pri ? Lets be clear here there is no law that says connecting to a network is any any way shape or form illegal, what is actionable is to share copyrighted material or encourage others to do so, that is the current state of the law, please read up on this important subject, don't take my word or the word of Cartel propaganda depts who say many things that are not true to scare filesharers.

I deny I have the capability to filter or block anyone searching for "britney spears" and I don't see how you can make that claim either given that the search results come from thousands of individual users directly to the requesting node without any participation by ourselves , please take the time to learn how this network operates Pri, you do us a disservice by speaking about topics that are outside of your knowledge.

I have spoken about this before but as you seem to have repeated your claim again about WinMX requiring a peer cache let me once gain put that to rest, a tool exists that will be distributed should any court decide that simply operating a peer cache to deliver node addresses is somehow copyright infringement ludicrous as it sounds, thus any such ruling will simply make the whole network more anarchistic and outside of anyone's scope or control at any level, the tool is based on a simple peercache mechanism and of course you can see an example of how such programs work by looking over the robomx src code that can also do the same thing.

[Pri]

When I say we filter out files I'm talking about how we stop these files from appearing in results. By blocking those that share those files wasn't something that I said as I thought that was obvious to someone like yourself.

Now what I am saying is, because we have the capacity they could say we choose not to do so and they can sue us civilly not criminally. And yes you can release peer cache software for everybody but that is beyond the point. Yes the network is decentralised but the network also requires the peercaches to fist locate other peers. Without those there's no way in to the network for clients not already connected.

If you were to release peer cache software for everyone do you really think WinMX would survive that? Honestly? Do you think without a cohesive way for people to find information about how to connect that the network would still survive? If I was a media company I'd just sue all those operating peer caches today and that would severely impact the service if not kill it entirely.

Also stop being so condescending saying things are outside of my knowledge and so on. You are making assumptions because you don't understand what I am trying to convey in my messages either through me not explaining every insignificant detail or you overlooking the obvious.

The smart thing to do would be to release a new Patch that includes a Peer Cache built in and once peers connect to other users they record that IP as a possible Peer Cache. Making us less up-front in the necessity of the network. That would protect us and the network in the future.

And if I sound worried, that is because I am. I know how fragile the network is and I also know how these courts are working these days. And you keep telling me to look in to the law but you need to remember that we are spread out all over the world and the laws are constantly changing. What laws you live under may not be what other peer cache operators live under.

If there is one thing I am most worried about it is that American MPAA/RIAA companies are currently trying to get the entire world to bend to their will when it comes to what constitutes facilitation and simply operating a network like this could be enough for them to take down web servers, domain name registers and so forth. Look at Limewire for example. It is identical to WinMX really. Has its own network its own encryption standards. They still lost at every hurdle to the MPAA/RIAA interests in many countries. Kazaa also the same as WinMX, they were raided by police and that was at the start of P2P now the regulations and laws are much tougher in many countries.

If you truly believe that we are untouchable then I dunno what to think. You are either very confident, crazy or 100% Right. And I don't know which yet.

[GhostShip]

Please read the winmx protocol Pri your assertions are flawed as they are not based on technical reality, I hope that's clear enough.
Please also note I didnt say we would release peer cache software I said a tool, the tool replaces the need for a peer cache.

I,m disappointed that your seemingly willing to make false claims that are not supported by any technical fact, we do not nor have we ever had the ability to filter file requests not interfere with filesharing transactions Pri, I hope this is clear to you and if not I,m willing to discuss the matter with you to further your understanding, I,m not asking you to take my word for it simply understand what the protocol does or does not allow us to do as a third party.

As regards to your other statement both Limewire and Kazza are commercial money making enterprises and thus the law allows for some action to be taken to ensure that a perceived financial gain is not made for any of their potentially infringing activities, we are not making any gain we do not tell folks to break any laws and we do not operate this network, once you realise these simple legal concepts you may then understand that anyone can claim something but in the law certain requirements are demanded  one is that any claim has to have some bearing on the facts fortunately.


If they feel they have a case against anyone here then I suggest they try to bring such a case as for the last 5 years they have not done so, perhaps they know something you don't?

[GhostShip]

I have had a discussion with Pri regarding this thread and its contents and we both agreed nothing helpful would be delivered from continuing with it, we discussed some of the definitions involved in our posts and how they relate to the law as it currently stands in fact we had a decent conversation that cleared some of the bad air that was starting to build up here, I have posted this here for you all to read rather than simply remove the whole topic which would be unfair to those who may have read some of our posts and would likely become victims of the "conspiracy" fad that often comes with moving posts or unwanted comments out of the public areas of the site, alls well that ends well in this case and we both know where the other is coming from