Germany Launches Massive eDonkey2000 Offensive

[SlyckTom]

Germany is well known as an eDonkey2000 safe-haven. By many accounts it’s the most popular method of sharing information online; exceeding even the mighty BitTorrent protocol. Some of the most coveted file-sharing software has its origins from Germany, namely the highly popular and open source eDonkey2000 client, eMule.

Recent enforcement actions against the eDonkey2000 network has come in the form of several raids against the largest indexing servers. Perhaps the most significant action taken was the February 21, 2006, seizure of RazorBack2. At its height, RazorBack2 was the indexing home to over 1.2 million users – sharing over 170 million files. After the raid, there was a noticeable dip in the total eDonkey2000 population; falling from approximately 3.5 million users to 3.0 million.

But like all things file-sharing, these numbers were soon replenished. Within days, the amount of users and files traversing the eDonkey2000 network was restored to their pre-RazorBack2 levels. In the face of never ending replenishment, the entertainment industry finally resorted to an old tactic: getting personal.

In an announcement made today by the IFPI (International Federation of the Phonographic Industry), German authorities searched over 130 premises this morning of alleged eDonkey2000 pirates in Cologne and Bergheim. According to the IFPI, the alleged pirates were sharing up to 8,000 copyrighted works.

The searches were part of a larger effort against a total of 3,500 individuals. Presumably, the 130 individual searches were against the most egregious of pirates. Evidence in the form of their personal computers, along with all the information contained on the alleged pirate’s hard drive, was confiscated during the raid. The raids were coordinated by the Public Prosecution Service of Cologne and the Police Authority of Bergheim, who had been investigating these alleged activities with the assistance of the IFPI for several months.

"I am pleased that the German authorities recognise the serious impact of copyright crime and are taking action against it,” said John Kennedy, chairman and chief executive of IFPI. “Internet piracy has hurt the whole music community in Germany, with legitimate sales falling by a third in just five years. The victims are investment in music and everyone who makes a livelihood out of the music industry.

According to the IFPI, each of the 3,500 individuals faces both criminal and civil prosecution for distributing unauthorized material online. However considering the scale of the enforcement, many of the 3,500 individuals will likely settle for “several thousand Euros” instead of going to full trial.

This action against the eDonkey2000 network is likely the most intense enforcement effort to date against individuals. At worst the most prolific of sharers, at least in the United States, face the threat of a lawsuit. Taking the unusual step to actually search the premises of alleged pirates is a step usually reserved for indexing server operators or warez scene distributors, not for individual sharers. It’s a considerable escalation in the war against online piracy; the repercussions of which will only be realized in due time.

[jokster]

Good Article, Bad News
Although the comparisons between the **aa backed actions around the world of late and German troops kicking in doors in the wee hours has not gone unmissed be me for one.

[nikt]

Sad day for all German ed2k users
I`ve just seen original press release
Now browsing anxious comments ...
Too bad , I fear there will be massive movement towards 0 uploads eMule mods from this moment at least in Germany. And I don`t blame them for it. The IP laws are slowly getting damn strict , not only filesharing is affected , you can not even link to news , some sites and some software without consequences.
The German ed2k community is great in numbers and contributed much creating indexing sites , ed2k servers and great eMule mods.I hope they don`t give up easily.

[Mel_Smiley_VIP]

Damn thats fracked up! Sad days as this is a sign of things to come.

[nikt]

I hope what German Minister of Justice said will be truth eventually

Zypries ist der Auffassung, dass beim illegalen Naschen an Tauschbörsen "in 99,9 Prozent der Fälle das Verfahren eingestellt wird". Eine Verfolgung koste der Staatsanwaltschaft "zu viel Zeit" und würde sie von wichtigeren Aufgaben abhalten.

Basically they have better things to do and not enough time or money to pursue filesharers , so like 99,9 % will be spared.

[OmegaGreg]

Well its sad that Germany is going to do this. This will bring the eDonkey network way down because many many servers are hosted there and if their going to play the scare game, people will be more reluctant to host servers.

[tm,]

This press release is - as expected - very vague and ambiguous.

This action appears like it might be a two-front assault. The major releasers (numbering 130?) were apparently being targeted over a period of several months.

The listed 3500 victims could not have been regular releasers since there are simply not anywhere near that many. But in fact, 130 seems like a rather high figure for music album releasers. I'd estimate the number at not more than about two dozen people who release the bulk of albums onto ED2K.

So then if the rest of the 3500 - the vast majority - were just regular file sharers, how did they get caught? They must have revealed their shared file list. Either they turned on file browsing, or they unknowingly logged into "fake" ED2K servers run by the music industry.

It might be assumed that merely having material available for download constitutes a crime in Germany. In the USA, only the uploading of complete files has been used so far as evidence in many of the nearly 20,000 of the RIAA's civil claims.

In ED2K, however, uploading a complete file to a single destination for collection is very difficult because of file segmentation and rapid queue rotation that distributes the upload as small file fragments to many separate users. That's unless the target files were MP3 singles, which although once rare, are becoming increasingly common on ED2K.

Considering the source of this information, we should expect a lot of distortion, omission, and misrepresentation in this press release - as it is, after all, just one facet of industry propaganda. It may take time before the full truth finally comes out.

Up until now, sharing music on ED2K has been quite safe. Certainly compared to Fasttrack.

[no_dammagE]

by the new copyright law in Germany ~ 50% of the whole population got criminalized as copyright infrigement is not for civil cases anymore.

Why can't people just ignore the products instead of consuming them? Or as snoop dogg said (I just say the semantics, i dont remember it anymore): "Much more I'm worried about the day when my works won't be downloaded at all"

And he is really really right - the majority of the works are not of the value the gestapo pretends to be of. Presence of those works in the shared folders just makes them confident of this idea and this presence gives them their power.

Unfortunately people just free ride and tell that that's their personal fight against bad contents. Personally I don't know what party is more ignorant

Beating cheats with cheats lead to nothing before and will lead to nothing

[yaveznodo]

Why don't they just leave people alone? It's getting ridiculous now. Nobody is being hurt, nobody is profiting off sharing files, there is no real crime going on here. Yet all these copyright enforcement agents want us to think they're like the Untouchables going after Al Capone.

A day will come when they're extinct and P2P is the norm.

[no_dammagE]

there is no real crime going on here

The german law says that the crime falls into the same category as hurting or stealing somebody or something. A crime and not just a civil conflict.
The law is very ridiculous as no personal or financial damage exists, but the law exists there and as long as it exists, the lordis may call 911.
Can't wait for darknet *already getting a LOT of popcorn*

[qm2003]

They mirrored the networktraffic of one of the smaller ed2k servers
(probably this one: Elite : dark-force-elite.org 85.25.134.173:4661)
for about 2 months and logged the ip's and shares of everyone using this particular server.

Figuring from the police statement the server was based in Germany in the Cologne district and also pretty small.
40000 IPs logged within 2 months and only 3500 IPs in Germany, there aren't a lot of candidates fitting those attributes.


Other facts right from the police :

- managing and hosting a ed2k server is legal in Germany
- only users sharing more than 500 files got their doors kicked in right away, the others still have plenty of time to do whatever they think is appropriate.
(what kind of files were included into the count remains yet unclear)


It was pretty clear for a couple of years now, this would be a probable angle of attack. It is a miracle to me it took them so long.

Time to abandon ED2K servers (at least the german ones) and move to KAD (no mass logging possible there, at least for now).

[no_dammagE]

Time to abandon ED2K servers (at least the german ones) and move to KAD (no mass logging possible there, at least for now).

Just wait for preventive global logging in the whole EU

First they say they want to fight witches so you can feel secure, then they fight you.

[IceCube]

I noticed a lot of people logged in to fake servers when using eMule. I wondered from time to time when there'll be enforcement against these people who share on fake servers. It was only a matter of time really.

[jimmy90]

Freenet anyone?

[tay_highfield]

This is going to have even less of an effect than RB2 being taken offline.

Will increase my upload speeds a little bit more to hopefully help in making up the difference!

When will they learn...

[Andu]

I'm wondering if this was a fake server or if it was a real one.
Because if it was a real one wouldn't that collide with privacy laws at some point? I mean they cannot just tap into our phones without a court order so why would there be any difference for data flow on the internet. On the other hand if the server was owned by the IFPI or the police that might be different since they would just be data mining their logs.

[tm,]

I'm wondering if this was a fake server or if it was a real one.

If you suspect that the data might have been taken from Razorback when it was seized, I doubt that's even possible because servers have no reason to store people's file lists beyond the time when they log off the server, and doing so would only fill up their hard drive with useless data. Of course, if a fake server op were to install software to log this information - which is the primary reason fake servers even exist - then reams of incriminating evidence could easily be harvested and archived.

If people were having their doors bashed in just because of their server-uploaded file lists, then it might be a good feature in future eMule mod versions to have random fake shares. DC users often have fake shares to get into elite hubs, but for eMule the purpose would just be to make data collection unreliable. That way police could not be sure if the person in question really had 500 files or not.

Even if people switched to Kad, authoriries could still harvest shared file lists by posing as fake nodes. It would just be a lot less efficient than using a fake ed2k server and collecting tens (or hundreds) of thousands of file lists from one computer/IP address serving as a fake.

[Ronny]

I've started to block my own country. If I ever get raided, I doubt that it will be by foreign authorities. Every little bit helps!

Of course, I'm not doing anything illegal, I'm just afraid that they might make a terrible mistake

[abou105]

DC users often have fake shares to get into elite hubs,

im intregued, how exactly do you do this

[Ratt]

I've started to block my own country. If I ever get raided, I doubt that it will be by foreign authorities. Every little bit helps!

I suppose it helps a little (at the expense of blocking lots of users) but within the EU, it's pretty easy for law enforcement to exchange information, and they'll be doing more and more of that.

[HEAT84]

DC users often have fake shares to get into elite hubs,

im intregued, how exactly do you do this

http://bellsouthpwp.net/v/i/vipero07dc/dcclients.htm


That EDonkey mug shot pic is hilarious.

As for the topic: So the Gastaupo is back.

[KoolKat]

"I mean they cannot just tap into our phones without a court order so why would there be any difference for data flow on the internet."


You must not live in the US or UK. They are tapping into phone calls and have been for many years. This is because the citizens of these 2 countrys have choosen to ignore these events for some odd reason. People we need to stop putting up with this sort of invasion of our privacy which they deem vital to the "war on terror". WE made these organizations and governements why do WE let the run amuck?

[MrFredPFL]

People we need to stop putting up with this sort of invasion of our privacy

just curious - do you have any specific recommendations? how would you suggest people go about doing something constructive?

[LD50%]

People we need to stop putting up with this sort of invasion of our privacy

just curious - do you have any specific recommendations? how would you suggest people go about doing something constructive?

The "OFF" button works well, "OFFbuttonPRO" is still available for the hard of thought on fastnet.......

But Fred is right, what do you suggest? The way I see it, turn off, fake your own demise, pretend to be a tree, and never answer the door to strangers with **aa badges.......... not that door's seem to stop them anyways.

Unless you are going to overthrow the government (popcorn ready) I don't think you will see much change from bantering slogans around.

I do agree they are all a bunch of inbread ugly failed trafficwardens, but, they are democracticly elected idiots non-the less, and that is something to be very happy about....

[SlyckScratch]

Are 3500 German eDonkey file sharers really facing criminal prosecution?

Should you be scared?
By Jan Libbenga

Published Wednesday 24th May 2006 15:28 GMT
Security White Papers - Download them free from Reg Research

The German state prosecutor this week claimed it has searched 130 homes all over Germany and identified 3,500 suspects who have been offering up to 8,000 music files through P2P network eDonkey.

These individuals now face fines of up to €15,000 or prison sentences of up to three years, according to the German Public Prosecution Service of Cologne and the Police Authority of Bergheim.

John Kennedy, chairman of the IFPI, the international recording industry association, this week called the raids "the biggest single action against illegal file-sharing internationally".

However, few details about the raids were given, other than that the German police have run the investigation for several months. This leaves open the question whether the Germans indeed have the names of 3,500 individuals, or more likely a large collection of IP addresses.

The authorities claim they have access to a server located in the German city of Hürth, southwest of Cologne, which acts as a distributor in the eDonkey network. The owners of the server are not prosecuted. German police say that through this server they recorded a total of 40,000 IP addresses, 3,500 of whom were located in Germany.

During the investigation more than 800,000 music files were uploaded. However, claims by German law enforcement that 3,500 individuals were identified with the help of internet providers seem rather unlikely, in particular since German ISPs are reluctant to reveal the identity of internet users who offer downloads of music files on the web.

Public prosecutor Jürgen Krautkremer says he doesn't want to give details while the investigations continue. He confirms that search warrants were issued for those users who shared more than 500 files or, approximately, 25 to 30 CDs during the period under observation.

According to IFPI, some 400 million music files were downloaded illegally last year in Germany. ®