Caught Downloading Copyrighted Material—Now What?
Reader Liza is in a pickle and is looking for advice. She writes in:
I recently followed Lifehacker’s guide to BitTorrent and set my laptop up with the uTorrent program. Using a combination of PizzaTorrent and uTorrent, I downloaded several movies and albums, perhaps 30 in all. Yesterday I received a letter in the mail from Cablevision (my ISP) saying that Paramount/Dreamworks had filed a complaint with them regarding my illegal download of one of their films.
The letter states that I am not being sued and my service is not being disconnected at this point but that Paramount/Dreamworks has the right to pursue legal action against me and Cablevision was warning me of that. I know Lifehacker doesn’t endorse downloading copyrighted material—but we all know what uTorrent and these types of programs are being used for. Do any of you have experience with anything like this?
Anyone else receive the dreaded copyright infringement letter? How did you respond? Tell us what happened in the comments.
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Comments (AU Comments | US Comments)
My suggestion to you is to do 2 things.
First, stop the torrent business and go easy for a while ;) I hear Rapidshare is great at this time of year.
Second, do NOT reply to any communications, at all!
At this stage you are invisible so to speak. Your ISP, as far as I know, is not allowed to disclose your details unless ordered by the courts. To get a court order for an ISP to turn over their customer details requires a certain level of assurance (that it was indeed you) from the media company: they don’t have it. Since lets face it, you probably have a WiFi access point and your neighbour is probably leeching bandwidth of you, without your knowledge.
The whole aim of the exercise is to make you to tremble in your little booties and submit your personal details directly to the media company; in an apology or “hey, it wasn’t me” latter. At that stage you may find your self in a very smelly creek without a paddle.
Relax, ignore the notice and stop violating international laws (or at least stop getting busted) ;)
Another thing. This is unrelated to the media company… Your ISP could decide that you have violated their “Acceptable Usage Policy”. At this stage, although VERY unlikely, they will disconnect your service. It will probably take a little bit more than a single notice (maybe 2) but this is a more realistic risk.
What would the world be like now if Albert Einstein had taken copyright on his theories under the current US copyright laws?
If you are in Australia, have a low income or pension and limited assets, just ignore all legal notices. They can’t touch you.
Use Linux / Tor / Ktorrent.
It is only the Americans who think they have a right to force the rest of the world to kow tow to their Big Business Mafia copyright laws.
We all think these laws are crap and we won’t accept them.
The Yanks will try, but in the long run will not succeed, just as King Canute couldn’t hold back the tide.
Dude, Knut was proving a point, not trying to hold the tide back.
Fool.
Thank you! Finally, someone else who realises that Canute was trying to show his sycophantic followers that even he, the King, could not stop the incoming tide.
It’s not stealing,it’s not stealing, it’s not stealing, it’s not stealing, it’s not stealing, it’s not stealing, it’s not stealing, it’s not stealing, it’s not stealing, it’s not stealing,
The Empire want’s to impose it’s will on the world, and protect it’s evil merchants from competition.
Keep those bittorrents rolling!
is the xml tags in the torrent packets that bring this on? Paramount just got me too. Stating xml tracking.
even i got a warning message from my ISP while downloading age of empire from utorrent. I thought I was being sued or something. I’ve stopped using torrent for quite some time now,
But I want to know how it gets tracked!!
So yea.. definitely just got caught. strange feeling. I like downloading this shit too much to stop. I’ve heard Tor and Privoxy are good to help with that little problem. Anybody have any luck with it? I’m skeptical about using it, because I didn’t see the first couple warnings until they turned off my service. I had to click the little “I understand and will take steps to comply” button just to get my service turned back on. Anywho, I’m done for a bit, but probably not for good.
download peerguardian2… problem solved
I was downloading torrents for over two years without any protection at all and most of the people I know don’t use protection. In those two years I probably downloaded more stuff than the other people, but I still never got caught. Then in December 2007 I got a letter from my ISP saying they got a letter from TSPBay on the behave of NBC saying I downloaded an episode of 30 Rock. This really made me mad because I downloaded that two weeks prior watched it and deleted it. Why now? I then stopped downloading for 2 weeks and again I got the same letter from TSPBay on behave of Paramount for downloading ‘Into the Wild’. Now I was really scared because I didn’t get a letter for two years and now I got two within two weeks of each other. Again, why now? Was there an increase in anti-p2p activity or what. Me being the daring person I am started downloading again a couple of weeks later but with ProtoWall and PG2. The problem I’m having now is my Internet stops after like four hours of downloading and I have to restart uTorrent and my modem and I don’t know why. Another weird thing is when this happens my download arrow turns red and doesn’t just slow down.
DubTrey speaks the truth.
PeerGuardian 2 will block a huge blacklist of media corporations and anti-P2P organizations.
It’s a good thing!
http://phoenixlabs.org/pg2/
Okay, I work for an ISP, and we deal with copyright infringement notices occasionally.
Basically we what happens is we get a notice from some watch dog group working for Paramount or Warner Brothers or whoever, and the notice from them says something like “IP address 172.19.136.128 downloaded Madea Goes to Jail at 11:30pm on 4/12/09″. Then we check to see which one of our customers had that IP at that time.
Then we usually tell the watchdog group we’re handling it, and temporarily disconnect the internet for the customer. We then contact them and tell them they need to sign a document saying they won’t do it again (this doesn’t admit guilt on the customer’s part though). Then, if the customer signs that, we’ll turn their service back on.
If that happens twice for the same customer, we’ll usually disconnect them permanently.
However, a lot of this is up to the discretion of the tech handling it. A lot of the time we don’t even both looking up who the infringing party was. Also, none of that has a legal bearing, it’s just about whether or not we’ll continue to give them service.
A customer can always say their computer was “hijacked” or someone was using their connection, etc.
I get those almost monthly for the last 3 years, it’s a scare tactic does not mean anything.
I Have been using torrent based SW since 2000. Down loaded 100 plus movies, 80,000 songs, 100 + games. Just last week my internet gets shut off for downloading hell boy2 , AOE3. No warning nothing. I know this is a long shot but there has to be a legal way to protect our ip address Against the mpaa, and other fascist entertainment moguls. And if for example the MPAA post a torrent to catch people is that not considered entrapment?(wich is what I believed happened to me on the hellboy 2 torrent)
The notion that “entrapment” means no criminal conviction is possible is quite often delusional (and completely irrelevant in Australia). As ever, I find it slightly remarkable when people boast about the volume of pirate content they’ve accessed and then complain when they get caught.
I got one when I download the Spore’s creepy and cute pack… I ignored it and jumped off torrents completely and resorted to using other things like rapidshare and Apex DC++. It turned out to be a good move for me, as the speed (usually) surpass those of torrents
I had gotten two letters and I learned my lesson. Don’t even bother with torrents.
There are a few things you should be doing in order to better secure your .torrent usage.
1. http://www.mininova.org/tor/535093
Grab the uTorrent IP Filter Updater and run it.
This is for updating the ip filter list in µTorrent which will create a blacklist of IP addresses to block (MPAA/RIAA/AntiPiracy etc). To enable IP filtering in µTorrent, set “ipfilter.enable” to “true” in µTorrent’s Advanced Options. To reload ipfilter.dat without restarting µTorrent, simply set ipfilter.enable to false, then to true again.
2. Download and install PeerGuardian 2
Make sure peerguardian is up to date and enabled.
3. Privoxy is also a good program to have running.
I’ve been using uTorrent for a number of years now and have never been sent a single notice. I would conclude in this instance at least that the above mentioned tactics have reduced the bullseye on my IP address from the size of the Milky Way Galaxy to the size of a sparrow in flight.
These are a couple of things that the LifeHacker article did not explain when telling its readers how to use Bittorrent.
There are plenty of legitimate uses for Bittorrent technology, one of which being how I downloaded my copy of Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope, as well as a copy of Command and Conquer Red Alert when Westwood was giving it out for free.
One thing I will concede is that Bittorrent, just like any technology, can be used for good and bad things, with good and bad defined depending on who you talk with. If the case is the latter, and you are downloading things which the RIAA/MPAA frown down upon (insert whatever intellectual property cartel exists in your country), then these three steps will reduce your bullseye.
Personally, I believe copyright is out of control and entities such as RIAA/MPAA have no jurisdiction to enforce such ridiculous and outlandish demands over the world. Copyright laws are not representative of the majority of people, as clearly seen by the rampant and flagrant disregard for it around the world.
Just because you have a lot of money to influence lawmakers in governments to make laws in your favor does not mean the general population will obey your newly bought laws. That’s why there is such thing as democracy… the majority did not agree to it, and today they refuse to comply, no matter how much money or how many lawyers are sent out to attack.
In short, just download whatever you want.
Yes there is a consequence for doing so if you are caught, and this is something you must realize. On the books it’s against the law, but those laws are meant to be made by the majority, and corporate interests as well as governments need to realize they cannot and will not cow tow the majority against their will.
This aint stealing >.:(