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Court orders WhatsApp to suspend users sharing pirated movie
- tgsovlerkhgsel 5y ago> when provided with evidence showing that any other WhatsApp user is infringing Zee’s copyrights by selling copies of its film, WhatsApp must suspend the corresponding accounts within 24 hours. So this does not require Whatsapp/Facebook to proactively monitor its network and suspend users who share it (if it did and Facebook complied, it would disprove their claim that e2e encryption as they use it provides sufficient privacy).
- freeone3000 5y agoFacebook manages the keys, and can download your entire chat history to a new device. What privacy is their implementation actually providing?
- tgsovlerkhgsel 5y agoAs I understand it, with backups disabled, at least the text messages are protected. I would expect file contents of unknown files to be protected but file hashes to potentially leak.
- calt 5y agoDo they manage the private keys? I always thought that they only managed the public keys. I thought that your backup is stored in iCloud or Google Drive unencrypted. Facebook doesn't have direct access to that. You phone must be already logged in to those services.
- cesarb 5y agoAFAIK, there are two kinds of private keys here. There's one key used to encrypt the backups, which can be either local (on the device) or sent to Google's or Apple's servers; that key is AFAIK kept by Facebook (unlike Signal which asks you to write it down), but it's useless without the backup files, which most probably Facebook cannot access directly. The other key is the ratcheting end-to-end encryption key, and AFAIK that's only kept by the device itself; if you have the right option enabled, you can see whenever someone you're talking to installs WhatsApp or Signal on a new device, since you'll be warned that the key has changed.
- wyldfire 5y agoThey broker the public key exchanges and IIRC the clients trust the broker when it claims that the previous key owner (definitely not Eve) has generated a new keypair. There is a setting (opt-in!) to even see when this occurs but once it does your oh-so-compliant client has already re-encrypted the old messages with the recipient's new pub key and sent them along. This behavior is by design. Some folks will tell me "but it's end-to-end!" and it feels kinda like they're telling me that it's "what plants crave." EDIT: if you don't believe me, turn on the setting, have a friend reinstall the app and watch the re-keying happen. It's indistinguishable from an attack unless you trust the broker. If you trust the broker, then why claim it's "end to end"? Also refer to the various articles that describe this behavior that WhatsApp says is by design. Double EDIT: why is it this way by design? Because it would be a PITA if every time you replaced your lost phone your buddies got a warning that looked like "Either Dave has got a new phone or the NSA is attacking you. Resend ten years of hilarious memes and intimate conversations to whoever is on the other end?" Real cryptography comes with real inconveniences when you lose your keys. It's the same kind of headache with securing cryptocoins - if you lose the secrets you lose the money. Trusting an agent is the only way to escape, but it comes at a significant cost. Cryptocoin custodians like exchanges get attacked all the time. And communication broker/relays get lawful intercepts all the time.
- cesarb 5y ago> Resend ten years of hilarious memes and intimate conversations to whoever is on the other end? AFAIK, it won't resend already received messages; if the other end didn't have a backup, these ten years of old messages are lost for that end. I don't know whether it will resend sent but not yet received messages, and it certainly will use the new key for new messages (but at that point, you already received the "key changed" alert).
- petronio 5y agoIt says "when provided with evidence", so I would assume it doesn't require active monitoring from WhatsApp and is more like a DMCA takedown request.
- sp332 5y agoYeah but a DMCA takedown is focused on the content, not on deleting a user's account. Not after one "strike", anyway.
- mrzimmerman 5y agoThat’s true but the Digital Millennium Copyright Act is a US law and this is an Indian court. So it’s similar in that what has to be reported is the act of a user sharing the content, but the reaction the platform has to take is different.
- elliekelly 5y agoI’m not sure I would consider a DMCA takedown request “evidence”.
- WhyNotHugo 5y agoOdd narration though. What constitutes "sufficient evidence"? Is WhatsApp now the judge of this?
- petronio 5y agoMost likely, because if they refuse and it's infringing then it's them (WhatsApp) getting dragged to court for not following the court's orders. I suspect it'll end up similar to how most service providers handle DMCA takedowns: honor it without question. If it's invalid, the affected party can take it up with whoever submitted the request as far as WhatsApp is concerned.
- Legogris 5y agoAnecdata: I recently shared a private FB event link with a friend over WhatsApp (DM, not group chat) while we were in the same room. She saw and opened it. Some hours later it was gone from both of our chat histories on all devices, with no notice of deleted messages. Earlier and later messages were intact. I don't see how this could happen if that claim was true.
- dartharva 5y agoWhen did this happen? They hadn't implemented E2E Encryption before 2016.
- Legogris 5y agoDuring 2021.
- lifty 5y agoRegardless of e2ee, they might have code bundled in the WhatsApp app that just deletes local video messages based on a hash. That wouldn’t break encryption.
- Legogris 5y agoIt was an event link, think: > The event next week: > https://.... (Neither of us remember if those two lines were distinct messages or two lines in the same message; regardless, neither is there anymore)
- tffgg 5y agoSame message doesn't mean same hash. Usually a nonce is used and if not: WhatsApp uses the Signal Protocol, which uses different keys for each message
- jeroenhd 5y agoThe client can delete the message if the decrypted hash matches a certain blacklist. It doesn't have to happen on the FB servers. Such a mechanism allows governments to turn WhatsApp into a propaganda machine very easily, though, so I'm not sure if I would consider such a mechanism for my app if I were in a similar position.
- thaumasiotes 5y ago> if it did and Facebook complied, it would disprove their claim that e2e encryption as they use it provides sufficient privacy You made me envision this "end-to-end encryption" scheme: - Alice sends a message to Bob. True to its word, WhatsApp encrypts the message on Alice's client and transmits it through to Bob without the WhatsApp server ever being able to read the message. - Bob receives the message, which is decrypted for his viewing by his WhatsApp client. - Bob's WhatsApp client reads the message and reports it back to the WhatsApp server.
- henearkr 5y agoExactly. So e2e makes sense only when the client is open source too. Signal got this right.
- cantrevealname 5y ago> Bob's WhatsApp client reads the message and reports it back to the WhatsApp server. In every copy of the app, WhatsApp explicitly says, "Your messages, calls and status updates stay between you and the people you choose. Not even WhatsApp can read or listen to them." Of course, the scenario you describe is possible, but WhatsApp would be lying.
- dTal 5y ago>Not even WhatsApp can read or listen to them WhatsApp is already lying. It can, as demonstrated above.
- WhyNotHugo 5y agoWhatsApp's TOS uses to state that the encryption key stays on device. This changed a few months ago.
- PeterisP 5y agoA lawyer could argue that sending a hash of the transmitted file (or, preferably, locally verifying the hash against a blacklist) is substantially different from sending/reading its contents.
- pjc50 5y agoThe encryption may be E2E. The key management is obviously central, as you can figure out by asking how whatsapp web works.
- BenjiWiebe 5y agoWhatsApp Web works by reading/sending messages through your phone.
- pmlnr 5y ago> So this does not require Whatsapp/Facebook to proactively monitor its network Welcome to Article 11 & 13: https://juliareda.eu/eu-copyright-reform/ https://juliareda.eu/eu-copyright-reform/
- Kbelicius 5y agoFFS, those do not require active monitoring. Article 17, formerly known as article 13, explicitly states: "8. The application of this Article shall not lead to any general monitoring obligation. ".
- tremon 5y agogeneral in that statement is a weasel word, and including it in the official article text is a clear indication of intent: "Yes, we recognize this requires setting up a monitoring infrastructure for compliance with the article, but we reserve the right to publicly condemn any company that uses that same infrastructure for self-serving purposes."
- pmlnr 5y agoLol. Then how else can it be followed?
- Kbelicius 5y agoYou could, you know, read the article before you start spreading FUD about it. Maybe the answers you seek are in it. In the end it doesn't matter how it will be followed. If general monitoring is the only way to follow it then nobody needs to follow it. Simple as that.
- pmlnr 5y agoTime will tell. Sadly, in my read, "no general monitoring" and "mandatory upload filters" are not the same, and thus, not mutually exclusive.
- throwaway888abc 5y agoI just read yet another naging popup with assurances that my messages are private and encrypted, so how can Facebook read message to supposedly pirated movie ? .... and to accept new policy 6 sense above the E2E encryption ? How they do this ?
- Areading314 5y agoyou could do it by hashing the content and then sending back the hashes to some server for them to check but really if the code is not open source it doesn't really help for them to claim E2E. You don't really have any guarantees they won't circumvent encryption.
- ab_testing 5y agoWhenever you communicate with a user or a group on WhatsApp, your phone number is visible to that user or group. If anyone of the users in that group is a rat, they can divulge all the conversations to law enforcement including all group member details. Bottom line choose your friends wisely or join seedy groups with caution.
- MertsA 5y agoNot possible, this order is to ban a list of users who got caught and future reported users not to try and identify the copyrighted material itself.
- mr_toad 5y ago> How they do this ? Easy, someone squealed. All the encryption in the world won’t do you any good if the recipient of the message can’t be trusted. And the larger the group the more likely it is that someone is a bad actor.
- salawat 5y agoOne thing I've always wondered, and I think IETF needs to get a working group on. Where do snitches fall in reference to handling of evilness[originally defined in RFC3514]? Should the evil bit be set in reference to the activity of a group in isolation of the maliciousness of an implementation of a system operating on a network medium? Example: >A group uses a tool or protocol legitimately in the way in which it was designed [non-evil manner] to facilitate an illegal workflow [debatably evil, but at a level irrelevant to the network]. Based on RFC 3514, this group carrying out the illegal activity in a way not malicious on the to tge network SHOULD NOT set the evil bit; they are up to no mischief within the context of the network. as they are making use of hosts as they were designed to be used. A snitch within the group, however, SHOULD set the evil bit, and furthermore, if IPv6, should set the attack identifier to something appropriate since they are exploiting the implicit trust of the network in a malicious way [see RFC's 7258 and the IPv6 relevant part of 3514] Clearly, there is intent based on related work with optical switches and routing that the evilness bit should cascade appropriately between contexts, such as there being evil lambdas, and evil polarizations, etc.... How then, does one then handle the problem of "relative evilness", in which the state of the evil bit is dependent on higher order constructs, in particular where higher order activities are directly recognized to be a form of network attack, thereby warranting the setting of the evil bit by one party or the other? Note, this issue does not just impact the criminal element, as the same setup could easily afflict law enforcement by which a snitch jeopardizes legal activity through the same attack pattern, or rogue law enforcement participating in unlawful surveillance jeopardize the safety and integrity of the network. I believe the very future of security on the Internet and the integrity of activity mediated over it is at stake if we cannot reach a rough consensus on this topic.
- sneak 5y agoAnother set of people learning about how untenable Facebook's censorship regime is in the long term. I just wish they'd cast a wider net.
- perryizgr8 5y agoEverybody knows you use Telegram for such purposes. Don't know why people are doing it on Whatsapp.
- baby 5y agoWhatsApp encrypts your conversations end to end via the state of the art Signal protocol, Telegram doesn’t.
- dartharva 5y agoThe movie in question is getting streamed at a pay-per-view price of Rs.249, and is failing to generate revenue magnificently. It should have been obvious, no one is going to pay theatre-ticket prices to watch a silly[0] movie on their little phones. [0]: https://youtu.be/jD-jxRrSANY https://youtu.be/jD-jxRrSANY
- WhyNotHugo 5y agoWhat theatre-owners fail to realise is that many people pirate the movie not to avoid the payment, but because MANY people hate theatres as an establishment. I want to watch in a small, portable screen changing positions on my couch, not sitting in a static position for over an hour, on a huge screen, full of lines, people, smells, and even 20 minutes of ads. I wouldn't mind paying the price TO SEE A MOVIE. It's just that all the rest of the theatre experience is crap.
- karatinversion 5y agoWell, I could see several hundred people in the world doing this, but as a fraction of the relevant category? Did you yourself refrain from piracy when all the movie theaters were closed for the last year?
- screye 5y agoA similar point was made by Gabe Newell about gaming. Piracy is first about access and convieneience. Also, most cases of piracy are of those who otherwise couldn't afford or would not have paid the theater experience. So the pirate is a ghost customer who only exists in the pirated world. I never paid for western shows up until Netflix came along. I never paid for games until steam started using regional pricing. I never paid for music until Spotify. In every case it was about access, convieneience and the willingness of the service provider to meet me where my wallet was.
- Barrin92 5y agoGiven that WhatsApp is by default E2E encrypted and I think this includes group chats and files this is probably not even possible at any meaningful scale.
- Thorentis 5y agoWell, we're about to find out whether the trust people placed in a closed source chat app that claimed to be secure was well founded or not.
- PicassoCTs 5y agoIf you steal a candy bar, is it proportional for the state to cut electricity to your house?
- TomGullen 5y agoThat’s not a very good analogy
- mschuster91 5y agoOne may not help but wonder if the real reason behind this is not a movie with abysmal ratings, but rather a desire by the Modi government to get precedence that Whatsapp can be ordered to suspend accounts at arbitrary accusations. "Pirates" first, and the next wave will be people critical of his government and especially his Corona clusterfuck. The Modi government already ordered Twitter to silence critics.
- codeisawesome 5y agoAre attachments (like photo and video contents) E2E encrypted on WhatsApp?
- BiteCode_dev 5y agoCan't really blame facebook for once. Even 0bin.net must obey take down requests. In fact, we often have to comply for requests that don't match our jurisdiction because hosting will shut you down without checking anything. Facebook have their own infra but still, they can't ignore the law.
- pypie 5y agoHow is this possible with E2E encryption?
- bubblethink 5y agoThis is quite interesting. On surface, it may seem similar to the DMCA takedown mechanism, but the whole reason DMCA takedown works is because the movie company sets up stooges in the p2p swarm, and uploading to the swarm is the evidence that you are distributing content. Since there is no p2p network, the movie company stooge cannot really prove than anyone downloaded anything in a whatsapp group. So short of whatsapp's cooperation, which would break the e2e guarantee, this would not be possible.