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I hope that's the case, and I didn't read the legal text, but how would you protect yourself against that? Would we have to keep tamper-proof screenshots (or ar

by cm3 10y ago

I hope that's the case, and I didn't read the legal text, but how would you protect yourself against that? Would we have to keep tamper-proof screenshots (or archive.is-like snapshots) for each external link posted?

kuschku 10y ago
Read the legal text please – the article that was submitted is basically full of lies.
- cm3 10y ago
  Read now. The ruling acknowledges the target is mutable, but it also says that the poster of a link on a page that's for-profit must check the target content. However, I cannot find anything how one should prove it was legal at time of linking. The only sensible thing I can find is that once notified a link has to be taken down. Did I miss something?
  - Drakim 10y ago
    Perhaps it would work the other way around? The prosecutor has to positively prove that when you established that link, it was pointing directly at illegal content (and based on the context of your linking, that you knew it was illegal).
    - pbhjpbhj 10y ago
      Assumption of innocence, are you mad? /s Next you'll be wanting trials instead of summary rulings.
nickpsecurity 10y ago
Cryptographic, digital notaries. You could do screenshots and/or HTML pages. It's how I've always done it when I thought what's on a page would be significant and need proof later on. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_timestamping https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_timestamping EDIT: There's also newer ones that pull the site for you like a MITM to do what we're saying. Startups come and go, though, so I recommend scripted or manual scraping combined with long-running notary who will have evidence when trial happens. :)
- cm3 10y ago
  While we could implement a system to have tamper proof verification of stuff that's been archived, how do you prove that the archive (snapshot) is what was actually at the target at creation time and hasn't been modified before archival? I'm thinking in purely technical terms here, and that I can easily argue that such evidence is inadmissible, unless there's a certain number of independent, trusted snapshot services that would archive each link too, and allow one to compare the decrypted archive. To achieve that, one would probably want to use an indirection for linking so that such archives do not have to archive everything that exists, but just those that go through said indirection. Then, the last question is how many independents you need to put trust in the verification, considering that motivated attackers could circumvent, say, the 3 most used archiving services. Or you could bind the archival of a link in a federated number snapshot services to a consensus algorithm. Then you'd ask yourself how many networks (which consist of multiple services) you'd trust.
  - sonoffett 10y ago
    TLSNotary is one approach: https://tlsnotary.org https://tlsnotary.org, although I'm not certain it provides trusted timestamps.
    - Natanael_L 10y ago
      It doesn't, but you can feed the content through a digital timestamping system
  - sbierwagen 10y ago
    Hash it, store the hash in a blockchain: https://www.gwern.net/Timestamping https://www.gwern.net/Timestamping (One of the few things blockchain stuff is useful for)
    - cm3 10y ago
      Yes, but how do you conclude without a doubt that what was hashed hasn't been tampered, leading a site to believe it's legal or malware-free content, while it actually isn't, and you've just been fed a shadow version of the real thing. We can reach for consensus algorithms, but ultimately without something like Van Jacobson's Content Centric Networking, it will be very hard to prove with enough confidence for a judge to make a ruling.
unicornporn 10y ago
Screenshots are terrible proof. They were however used in a Swedish piracy court case many years ago. That led to someone building the "proof machine"[1] which created screenshots of BitTorrent clients with any IP you entered. Try it: [1] http://lekplatsen.org/bevismaskinen/ http://lekplatsen.org/bevismaskinen/
- amelius 10y ago
  See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_evidence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_evidence It could bring you into more problems than you started with.
  - unicornporn 10y ago
    Yes, this was a FTL proof of concept that was meant to show how worthless screenshots are as evidence.

by cm3 10y ago

kuschku 10y ago

Read the legal text please – the article that was submitted is basically full of lies.

cm3 10y ago
Read now. The ruling acknowledges the target is mutable, but it also says that the poster of a link on a page that's for-profit must check the target content. However, I cannot find anything how one should prove it was legal at time of linking. The only sensible thing I can find is that once notified a link has to be taken down. Did I miss something?
- Drakim 10y ago
  Perhaps it would work the other way around? The prosecutor has to positively prove that when you established that link, it was pointing directly at illegal content (and based on the context of your linking, that you knew it was illegal).
  - pbhjpbhj 10y ago
    Assumption of innocence, are you mad? /s Next you'll be wanting trials instead of summary rulings.

nickpsecurity 10y ago

Cryptographic, digital notaries. You could do screenshots and/or HTML pages. It's how I've always done it when I thought what's on a page would be significant and need proof later on. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_timestamping https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_timestamping EDIT: There's also newer ones that pull the site for you like a MITM to do what we're saying. Startups come and go, though, so I recommend scripted or manual scraping combined with long-running notary who will have evidence when trial happens. :)

cm3 10y ago
While we could implement a system to have tamper proof verification of stuff that's been archived, how do you prove that the archive (snapshot) is what was actually at the target at creation time and hasn't been modified before archival? I'm thinking in purely technical terms here, and that I can easily argue that such evidence is inadmissible, unless there's a certain number of independent, trusted snapshot services that would archive each link too, and allow one to compare the decrypted archive. To achieve that, one would probably want to use an indirection for linking so that such archives do not have to archive everything that exists, but just those that go through said indirection. Then, the last question is how many independents you need to put trust in the verification, considering that motivated attackers could circumvent, say, the 3 most used archiving services. Or you could bind the archival of a link in a federated number snapshot services to a consensus algorithm. Then you'd ask yourself how many networks (which consist of multiple services) you'd trust.
- sonoffett 10y ago
  TLSNotary is one approach: https://tlsnotary.org https://tlsnotary.org, although I'm not certain it provides trusted timestamps.
  - Natanael_L 10y ago
    It doesn't, but you can feed the content through a digital timestamping system
- sbierwagen 10y ago
  Hash it, store the hash in a blockchain: https://www.gwern.net/Timestamping https://www.gwern.net/Timestamping (One of the few things blockchain stuff is useful for)
  - cm3 10y ago
    Yes, but how do you conclude without a doubt that what was hashed hasn't been tampered, leading a site to believe it's legal or malware-free content, while it actually isn't, and you've just been fed a shadow version of the real thing. We can reach for consensus algorithms, but ultimately without something like Van Jacobson's Content Centric Networking, it will be very hard to prove with enough confidence for a judge to make a ruling.

unicornporn 10y ago

Screenshots are terrible proof. They were however used in a Swedish piracy court case many years ago. That led to someone building the "proof machine"[1] which created screenshots of BitTorrent clients with any IP you entered. Try it: [1] http://lekplatsen.org/bevismaskinen/ http://lekplatsen.org/bevismaskinen/

amelius 10y ago
See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_evidence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_evidence It could bring you into more problems than you started with.
- unicornporn 10y ago
  Yes, this was a FTL proof of concept that was meant to show how worthless screenshots are as evidence.