downloading..

[JensJohansson]

..of you-know-what

Code: Select all

stats from Sun May 29 06:57:05 2005 to Wed Jun  8 20:00:11 2005 GMT
Brazil
	26%
Argentina
	15%
Finland
	13%
Poland
	6%
Czech Republic
	5%
Chile, Norway, Slovenia
	3%
Australia, Germany, Sweden, Mexico, Canada, Japan, France
	2%
Uruguay, Russian Federation, New Zealand, Lithuania, Bulgaria, United States, Cyprus, Gibraltar, United Arab Emirates, Ukraine, Portugal, Panama, Greece, 
	1%

Now why do we want to play in Brazil again!?!?!?!?!?

Well, because of the great fucking audiences there....

[ the usual technobabble...

a) Of course we are tracking IP addresses. Partly because it's so easy nowadays. Why do you think they call it a "tracking server" or "tracker"? Think about it.. old p2p networks made gathering this information at least a little bit of a hassle. Modern ones publish all the thieves' IP addresses as a matter of course. It's integral to the protocol, it's more efficient. They are not designed to be anonymous, and of course we come prepared into the fight this time. Regardless of what we will use it for, the logged info is quite interesting and if you don't capture that information it's gone.

b) It's of course trivial to find out if anyone here is participating in this theft. In fact, it's trivial to do automatically! Just look at the "tracked" time and IP with the time and IP of logins here, and see if there are overlaps (however you want to define those). That's like one line of SQL code.

Apart from the shame, any history you have here could of course also be used as part of the evidence...

If you are a regular poster here and downloaded some of our music illegaly, then you'd likely be in our logs already and it's possible that I'll make some automatic "shame symbol" appear on your posts later. Fuck it, maybe not

Well. Apart from this weird trojan issue, any time you have a partially completed download open, you for sure risk ending up in the log file of some lawsuit-happy copyright holder's (us or some much worse people than us). Who knows if we would ever take the time to sue anyone.. perhaps the original seeder if we can find him, that's for sure. I mean more like "star wars" or something, these guys have pretty deep pockets. Like I said the file sharing protocols are technically really quite good nowadays, but they sacrifice anonymity completely. ]

Just had sauna at TK's place. 3rd lapin kulta half gone. Summer night in Helsinki. That is something fucking nice! Today really was a gorgeous day here.

==
J

[Electric Eye]

Why and who shared this in internet?

[Jaakko]

I sure hope that you'll find the original "seed" but anyway I have to confess that I've downloaded the album too and *censored* is my opinion about it. I downloaded it the very first day it was released (illegally) because I so much wanted to hear what Tolkki came up with, no doubt that I will actually buy it too, basically on Latuman's ideology here. Of course it's kind of a mistake to download it pre-release but when I hear it's out, what can I do? I want to hear it!!

The best thing to happen in my opinion would be the album NOT to be illegally published by P2P before the release and the record labels have their work to do there... I can't offer a better option, but I think at least I would like to buy my music as .wav form from the internet for 1,5€ per song. Make a safe method to distribute your music that way and drop off the record companies off the chain and win! Oh well, you gotta make some music too in between all that, I guess it's not possible... You'll get your pathetic share when the album is out and I *can* buy it, but I would be happy to give you (the band) more than that if someone comes up with an option where where record label and distribution doesn't eat 95% of the cake.

Thumbs up anyway, there's gotta be a way to get through this in the (hopefully) next 10 years.

[Fireblade]

Jens, are those stats for the mickey mouse/file-wiper thing, or the five clips put up "officially"? How do Strato feel about the 5 clips being available??

Err... do they add to 100% ??

[Burning Reflection]

Sorry Jens, your English/Computer babble is kind of hard to understand. So what I got from your message is that you don't like "thieves" who download, you know who's been downloading the album here, and you may sue some people and use some evidence here to do so? I don't really get that statistic thing about each country. Is that the percentage of where the downloaded files went? Are those only infected files or are they legitimate non-virus Stratovarius files that were downloaded put into the percentage?Out of curiousity, I would like to know the total number of illegal downloads to see how many people from each country downloaded to see if the percentages/numbers add up. Who's the source of this information, p2p networks? If so, wouldn't you think that the estimtated percentages should be a bit higher because people can trade files/mp3s via other methods other than p2ps? Hopefully this works out for you guys! BTW Jens, you're a musical genious and should be labeled nothing less than the best keyboardist in the world. Peace.

[NeonVomit]

Hmm... I think a 'Shame' symbol would be cool

the original 'Seed' should be made to pay, not just because he ripped files and shared them illegally, but he abused the trust which was placed on him by being one of the few people who recieved a real cd.

[Aresius]

i guess im a part of that 15%... by the why jens you shoudnt question why do you want to play in south america... we are a energetic crowd but we also buy albums and that is a sacrifise to us.. maybe not to europeans but here yes

[Holy Light]

When I download something I like, I buy it. My friend downloaded the new Angra and sent it to me. I just bought it last week when I found a copy. The truth is that the actual cd has better audio quality in the first place. Obviously, if it's one of your favorite bands, you don't screw them over and not buy their album (unless you are an asshole).

Jens is a smart guy. I figured he would be doing something.

[fifthtea_sausage]

Mr. Jens Johansson here is using computer jargon to try to frighten you, but those who have downloaded the album are pretty much safe. One must truly be insane if they think that the record company will take the time to find, track, and file a lawsuit against tens of thousands (or more) of people.

And furthermore, thats only if you directly downloaded it through P2P. If you got someone to send you a song say through messenger or yousendit, your capture is impossible!

It's of course trivial to find out if anyone here is participating in this theft. In fact, it's trivial to do automatically! Just look at the "tracked" time and IP with the time and IP of logins here, and see if there are overlaps

I would highly doubt that the record company or Stratovarius has the authority to locate the IP addresses of the people who have downloaded the song from X site, and X p2p application. The time of download has almost no legal bearing, and IP's can be static.

But I can understand his position, its no fun for you to work so hard and have someone steal all of your work from you.

[JensJohansson]

Jens, are those stats for the mickey mouse/file-wiper thing, or the five clips put up "officially"? How do Strato feel about the 5 clips being available??

Err... do they add to 100% ??

If they are not rounded, they add to 100%. Also perhaps I could have been be clearer -- 1% means 1% for each country..

Which five clips?? You have to excuse me, that I don't know anything about..

So what I got from your message is that you don't like "thieves" who download, you know who's been downloading the album here, and you may sue some people and use some evidence here to do so?

I don't really particularly like or dislike the thieves, it's not a personal relationship. I can understand wanting to listen to music in the short term. I have little understanding for a selfish disregard for the future of intellectual property in the long term. In particular when this selfishness involves trying to make money. And believe me, there are a lot of entities desperately trying to make money from p2p.

I don't really get that statistic thing about each country. Is that the percentage of where the downloaded files went? Are those only infected files or are they legitimate non-virus Stratovarius files that were downloaded put into the percentage?

I don't know if these would be infected or non-infected. There are a few different variants with many completely different index files "referring" to these variants' respective peer clouds. Which ones might have the trojan and which one might not I couldn't even begin to say. I am not actually downloading anything, I just set up a "robot" machine which request and collects statistics about the individual IP addresses in these peer clouds.

It's assumed that if an IP address is on a cloud then the user behind that address is in the process of downloading that file.

But you raise an interesting point (well.... interesting technhically!) It could be that Brazil is overrepresented because people connect to p2p services even using using dial-up modems (where thieves' IP address would change more often across downloading attempts, than for broadband thieves).

For "fun", this is what the list looks if you consider just the first three bytes of the internet address:

Code: Select all

Finland
	13%
Sweden
	10%
Brazil
	8%
United States
	7%
Canada
	6% etc

Unfortunately there is no simple way to see what type of connections these addresses have.

You have to realize that I am making up also the statistical methods and models as I go along here........

Might we want to skip to play countries where people download a lot, or raise the ticket price, or dream up other weird ideas? Damn right we might.

You often play some places at a loss because you want to promote CD sales. Why waste the money on a territory where it's clear the people there completely shit on our rights?

Out of curiousity, I would like to know the total number of illegal downloads to see how many people from each country downloaded to see if the percentages/numbers add up. Who's the source of this information, p2p networks? If so, wouldn't you think that the estimtated percentages should be a bit higher because people can trade files/mp3s via other methods other than p2ps?

Me too... but unfortunately, we can't have everything we want. This is the best that can be done. Given the random nature of which peer's addresses appear in the list, a percentage is probably the best way to represent the information..

On these sites, you'll often see a figure for "number of downloads". They will be very much too low. The general unreliability of completed downloads being reported as such should be noted. I wouldn't be surprised if Sanctuary's losses due to this are in the ballpark of a million british pounds. Maybe more. So sure, Sanctuary might very well be EXTREMELY interested in who the "seed" was.

That would be my guess at the REAL losses. When the lawyers get hold of it, they will of course count X amount of loss per download that is a result of this leak. This number increases geometrically every day. It's like those dividing brooms in Disney's "Fantasia".

That "lawyer number" will be a lot larger than a million UKP and this is very bad news for the person who first seeded it.

[JensJohansson]

Mr. Jens Johansson here is using computer jargon to try to frighten you, but those who have downloaded the album are pretty much safe.

I guess you can guarantee that for them? I can not.

But go ahead, please paste this into a document, fill in your personal information, print it out, sign it, and fax it to me care of Sanctuary germany at +49-30-262 44 48. I promise I will put this up on our server. It's good if you can guarantee that it's safe. People who have been trojaned will then have an expert to turn to, to explain to them that it possibly could not have have happened.

Name:__________________________________________
Address:_______________________________________
Phone:_________________________________________
Social security or civic reg. number:___________________________


I, ___________________, hereby guarantee that all illegal Stratovarius downloads are free of trojans. Because I am so sure of this, I also assume all liability that might arise from trojans that are vectored by illegal Stratovarius downloads. Please feel free to contact me about any of these issues because based on some anonymous postings that I read on the internet forum and my general trust in p2p software and microsoft's operating systems, and many other things, I am REALLY sure. Really, I am!

Signed

________________________________

Date and Place

________________________________

One must truly be insane if they think that the record company will take the time to find, track, and file a lawsuit against tens of thousands (or more) of people.

This is probably correct. (But the seed we might find. There were not that many promos sent out.)

The law is pretty toothless. That apparently seems to apply to people who write trojans, as well.

I would highly doubt that the record company or Stratovarius has the authority to locate the IP addresses of the people who have downloaded the song from X site, and X p2p application. The time of download has almost no legal bearing, and IP's can be static.

Of course I'm authorized to run SQL queries on any server I am authorized to run SQL queries on. That sounded a bit circular

Do we or the police or Sanctuary have time to go after individual downloaders legally? No.

Apparently some sick, misguided individual has tried to "help" us by planting malware in some of these files. Like I said, it's somehow pretty funny but it's nothing I can condone.

Does anyone have the time to go after that sick, misguided individual either? Of course not.

[TrialByFire]

I am taking it that all the different types of ip addresses are being logged. Ones that are assigned to dial up,which change on each log on, dsl, cable, and other types of connections.

Jens, do you use any specific types of sql programs, like oracle? Just curious mainly on this one.

[TrialByFire]

Oh and on the downloading thing, I have always kept the policy of if I downloaded anything and I liked it, I immediately head down to the music store and special order the cds. If I don't like it it is wiped off and never downloaded again.

[Jaakko]

Oh and on the downloading thing, I have always kept the policy of if I downloaded anything and I liked it, I immediately head down to the music store and special order the cds. If I don't like it it is wiped off and never downloaded again.

I can't afford such policy, a million albums out there worth byuing musically, but I have to choose among the best to know which ones are least likely to be collecting dust around. If I were rich enough to just buy whatever sounds cool it would be easy, now it's a sacrifice to buy any album and several at once is a financial disaster. Such a shame Strato and Dream Theater are both releasing an album the same year, I'm gonna go bankrupt

[fifthtea_sausage]

Well, now that I think about it, the people who were [infected] with the mp3 (not the people who downloaded them) are indeed very obvious to catch, because the virus can of course broadcast information about them.

I am glad that I am not stupid enough to get a virus.
And of course, I would first die than downloading any strato-albums pre release!

Well of course I will buy the album, they would have to kill me to prevent that!

[EzeCuervo]

I am glad that I am not stupid enough to get a virus.
And of course, I would first die than downloading any strato-albums pre release!

Well of course I will buy the album, they would have to kill me to prevent that!

Me too..

[The Enigma]

Since all record companies anyway will keep making and handing out promos to the press and electric media, I wonder if it was possible to tag all the tracks on every individual promo with a codenumber or something (a few bits mixed in the bitflow in every few seconds in a form that mp3 or other rippers would leave intact, and it would not effect the sound?) and then keep a record of those who are given a particular tagged promo? If all who get a promo would have to sign to get a copy, they'd be careful to avoid getting sued for illegally publishing the CD. And then it would be easy to find the "seed" of possible leakage by just getting on to the person who got that very tagged promo. Hmm.. Well, just an idea...

[JensJohansson]

Well, now that I think about it, the people who were [infected] with the mp3 (not the people who downloaded them) are indeed very obvious to catch, because the virus can of course broadcast information about them.

Now I'm not sure I understand what you mean.

Do you mean that the malware originators would leave a trace similar to the original seeders or downloaders?

Well.. if someone is risking prison terms for distributing something, they'd probably be more careful about covering their tracks. Go into a starbucks, change your WLAN card's address, buy some WLAN time.. just a thought..

Normal seeder even probably would do it from a home dsl. Ripping and seeding an album is not brain surgery. Writing a trojan probably requires some real dedication (or a bored 12-year old and a virus kit perhaps)

Normal downloader FOR SURE just does it from their own connection.

Like I said, I don't know which (if any) of the variants I am tracking is a malware one.

No patience to download them, no particular desire to have malware on my little windows laptop, no desire whatsoever to make an MP3 format checker, start looking for illegal frames, buffer ovverruns.. somehow either in the actual data frames or more likely in those ID fields (song titles etc.).

http://mpgedit.org/mpgedit/mpeg_format/MP3Format.html

I have no idea how lazy media player authors are. But I suspect at least handing the frames off to a MS windows library function to decode them -- while proclaiming that the player waz c0d3d by a t0ta77y 3733t h4x0r -- is very common. The windows media functions have had several severe holes already. They even managed to fuck up playing of MIDI files once. Now THAT'S pretty fucking pathetic I think.

Microsoft should trademark the phrase "execute arbitrary code on target user's system".

Execute arbitrary code on target user's system™

That looks fucking great...

Hey, isn't there also an optional layer of compresson on top of that "frames" crap, like some sort of huffman?? I can't even remember.

And of course, I would first die than downloading any strato-albums pre release!

Of course.

Well.. were I tempted to find it I would for sure play the file on an OpenBSD box or something. But I have a master already and I've heard it. It's a really good album by the way!

Well of course I will buy the album, they would have to kill me to prevent that!

Of ocurse! They would have had to kill us to prevent us from making it too.

[OceanSoul]

and music kills the pirate

[empi]

I don't know much about computers but if i have nothing to do the whole day and i want to have such trojan crap i download one add it with a binder to an executable file reanme it to for example strato.exe and tata my trojan is ready to attack people. and people who open those files ..............
by the way those trojans are very comfortable they alert you with a pm when the target goes online.
so every bored child could do that shit.
but i have no motivation to waste my time with attacking other peolpe. i don't understand why people do that where is the satisfaction ?

[Burning Reflection]

Well when you refer to this incident as "shitting on your rights", it shows that you are hurt by this and I'm sorry Jens . It's true in a way too, any joe shmo can download your files and not have heard of or give a rat's ass about Stratovarius and still have your music for free. I mean, you've come all this way and have worked very hard for many years to get where you are only to have people today hurting you and the band in general by downloading unreleased material that you've worked very hard on. Guys, musicians are humans too, so let's appreciate what they do for us and support the music/band please. Jens, about raising the ticket prices comment for countries that download, what if I've already purchased tickets Nah, I'll pay the extra amount if it'll help you you guys out! See you October 9th and 10th! Woooooo!

[StratoRico]

I cannot understand the process.

I mean someone has put the album on the p2p.
But the only persons who had the album before the official release were the journalists,right?

So if i am one of those persons to receive the album,before his release,i will try not to put it in my list of "sharing" files,right?

or am i in wrong?

[MaFiaBoY]

So if i am one of those persons to receive the album,before his release,i will try not to put it in my list of "sharing" files,right?

or am i in wrong?

Some of those journalists are not as nice as you, it seems...

[NeonVomit]

Which five clips?? You have to excuse me, that I don't know anything about..

http://www.melodicrock.com/minibytes.html

I listened to them, they seem pretty legal. Only one minute clips.

But if they're NOT legal, there's someone to go after.

[khamael]

Glad to see that Italy is not in the list!

[Fireblade]

1% means 1% for each country..??

Duh, got it now.

Which five clips?? You have to excuse me, that I don't know anything about..

There are 5 1-min clips uploaded by MelodicRock.com : http://www.melodicrock.com/minibytes.html ... I assumed this was sanctioned either by Strato or the label..?

(warning, people: don't click that link if you don't want the song titles to be a surprise!) Personally, I downloaded them ASAP as they looked "official", and no Mickey Mouse has popped up yet. Manic Dance is sooooooo catchy! And great lyrics.

I 1000000% intend to get the CD.

[Johan]

Going after downloaders in Sweden would be really futile, since downloading is not illegal here, sharing is. Despite the new copyright law coming i July, the rettoactivity of it is not certain, let's assume ten thousand people in Sweden download the album, or any copyrighted material for that matter, now, they can not be punished for it now, and most likely not after the new law is instiutionalized either... Another point is that the internetproviders have no jurisdiction to give out the IPnumbers of their cosutmers, as well as torrenttrackers don't have no legal obligation giving out their trafficlogs.
However, Sweden is a very liberal country when it comes to this. Still, a futile fight...

[Paschendale]

This is to Jens:

I was a fan of this band until I came to this message board. This has to be one of the most distasteful f****ing message boards I have ever seen to represent a band.

1. Just from some of the old drama I have seen that has gone on here, I have never seen so much shitstorming on one message board in all my life.

2. Now you are actually fucking around with tracking ips of downloaders and telling your most die hard fans (the posters on your precious message board here) that you could check to see if they are downloading any of your precious fucking songs and make some shameful remark to expose them? What a crock of shit! YOU have WAY TOO MUCH FUCKING TIME ON YOUR HANDS! You are starting to sound like Lars from Metallica, this is something I could see coming from him. I lost respect for Metallica for several reasons. But mainly their whining moaning groaning sue happy shit. Not too mention their shitty ass music now days.

Hey everyone this is how the band pays you back for all the support you give them!

What the hell? A bunch of drama Queens here.

[Paschendale]

And just so you don't go busting your ass trying to see if I have downloaded any of your songs, don't bother I don't download anything that isn't offered for free by the bands. I don't even have any p2p software running on my system.

[Johan]

This is to Jens:

I was a fan of this band until I came to this message board. This has to be one of the most distasteful f****ing message boards I have ever seen to represent a band.

1. Just from some of the old drama I have seen that has gone on here, I have never seen so much shitstorming on one message board in all my life.

2. Now you are actually fucking around with tracking ips of downloaders and telling your most die hard fans (the posters on your precious message board here) that you could check to see if they are downloading any of your precious fucking songs and make some shameful remark to expose them? What a crock of shit! YOU have WAY TOO MUCH FUCKING TIME ON YOUR HANDS! You are starting to sound like Lars from Metallica, this is something I could see coming from him. I lost respect for Metallica for several reasons. But mainly their whining moaning groaning sue happy shit. Not too mention their shitty ass music now days.

Hey everyone this is how the band pays you back for all the support you give them!

What the hell? A bunch of drama Queens here.

Word!

I have always loved this band since the first time I got in contact with their music (through the use of p2p) and I have attended concerts, bought merchandise, bought all the expensive records etc... So what if I have an album on my computer? I even bought Elements pt 2, an album which I have jus tlistened to once and don't particulary like, just to support you guys, but the sad fact is that most of the money I spent on records is now getting obese with compound interest on some corporate capitalists' bankaccount...