SoylentNews

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for nutherguy:

Anti-Piracy Outfit Hires VPN Expert to Help Track Down The Pirate Bay * TorrentFreak:

From the beginning, OVPN has insisted that it is a no-logs provider, meaning that it should be impossible for anyone to identify who was using its service to either surf the Internet or, in The Pirate Bay's case, use the platform as an anonymous exit point to hide its true location.

The battle is playing out in court in Sweden, with OVPN insisting that it has no useful data to hand over and Rights Alliance insisting that it has. Thus far the court seems to have leaned towards OVPN's claims, that it carries no logs and as such cannot hand over any information. However, the anti-piracy veterans at Rights Alliance, who have years of experience under their belts, are refusing to let the matter drop.

The most recent move, playing out this week, is that Rights Alliance has provided testimony from an expert witness, one that has masses of experience in the VPN field.

[...] "Although [OVPN] strive to store as little data as possible, there must be data connecting users and identities to make the VPN service work. In this case, a user has paid for a VPN account with the ability to connect a public static address to OVPN which the user has then chosen to link to the file sharing site 'the piratebay', i.e the user has configured his VPN account to point to the given domain."

As previously reported, the alleged use of OVPN by The Pirate Bay differed from that of a regular user. Instead of anonymizing a home connection, the site reportedly used the provider's Public IPv4 add-on. While that tool is covered by exactly the same no-logging policy, in this case a static IP address was connected to the service by a specific customer. The word 'static' is crucial here and also a recurring theme.

[...] Finally, it's worth repeating once again that the complications in this case, at least in respect of VPN security, is that The Pirate Bay's alleged use of OVPN required the allocation of a static IP address. When regular users of decent no-logging VPNs are allocated a dynamic IP address or one that's shared by countless other users, these issues should not raise their head.

Original Submission