Category: P2P

Posted on

An answer to Arstechnica.com and Dslreports.com about the Skype outage issue

A dslreports.com article – bounced by Arstechnica.com – quotes my Skype outage recent post as contributing to of the “list of the evil-doers who all had a chance to get blamed for Skype’s problems”.

The scope of my post was to raise a general issue – distributed vs centralize network design and legal consequences – and not blame Skype “per se”.

They just are an IT company, and they do their business as usual. Closed source software, hype and cheers to users but no “real” communication. To put it in other words: Microsoft might maybe “lead the way”, but – as Skype shows – there are a lot that can “perform” better than Redmond giant.

Posted on

Skype outage raises again network design issues

Recent Skype outage, apparently fault of a denial-of-service attack on the Skype centralized login infrastructure, raises again the intrinsic flaw of designing a service or an application (even partially) based on a centralized network topology.

As the recent facts show, offering a service with a Single Point of Failure creates a “domino effect” whose legal implications (in terms of damages suffered by paying clients) might bear unforeseen consequence. The “flawed-by-design” kind of liability might, indeed, lead to a class action against Skype for having knowingly chosen to build their service on a technical structural weakeness.

Of course, I imagine that should that issue be taken into Court, ICT expert witnesses will play the major role in addressing the underlying technical issues.

Posted on

Is the “Peppermint case” a scam?

The “cease and desist” letters sent by Peppermint lawyers to the Internet users’ – whose identity has been dislosed by a questionable decision of the Court of Rome – allegedly infringing German label’s copyright contains a legal trick almost unnoticed that expose people to criminal investigations even after having paid what Peppermint’s lawyer ask for.

Peppermint scheme is easy (at least at first glance): you pay us 330 Euros, we file ? no legal action against you. The problem is that in Italy copyright’s infringment is a criminal offense and the Public Prosecutor can charge somebody even if the “damaged party” (Peppermint, in this case) states to having waived any claim.

Peppermint and its lawyers, than, cannot enter into an agreement that includes the waiving of ? such legal claim because they have no power to waive ALL the possible legal claim. But they completely fail to advise their counterpart on that issue.

The result is that people who already paid the 330 Euros, cannot rest in peace… or do they?

Posted on

Peppermint, copyright and personal data

A side issue arising from the Peppermint affaire is the relationship between criminal and civil trials rule of evidence.

In a criminal investigation, access to ISP owned traffic data and log files is possible only with a public prosecutor search and seize warrant. One seized, these information are strictly confidential and cannot disclosed – even to the defense counsel – before the trial starts.

The very same data – as the Peppermint affaire shows – can indeed be obtained by a private entity alleging a civivl – not criminal, then – copyright infringement, just asking the civil court to force an ISP to disclose information.

This is a paradox of the Italian legal system, since criminal action is supposed to be the only reason to allow the breach of constitutional rights, while the a civil case only gives the court limited powers. This common-sense rule has been subverted when talking about copyright. Is it fair or acceptable?