Copyright Infringement Letter.

So, a friend of mine just received a letter from their ISP about a letter the ISP received from Warner Bros. It seemed pretty serious. A few exerpts:


Anyone ever get anything like this? What did you do about it? Thoughts?

tl;dr version:

You shared/downloaded a movie/music on BitTorrent/whatever that Warner Bros owns the rights to, and they are officially pissed.

You might want to stop.

Backup whatever you downloaded to removable storage and then get rid of it on the internets and you'll be good.

lol and this is why we stream.

It's not 'serious', just something telling you to stop, if you continue it, eventually the ISP can and will terminate your account..

Simple solution, just stop sharing ***online. (or do so under a proxy if they really feel a need to continue)

Depends who your ISP is (or your "friend's"). Personally I've received about 5 of these letters over that past 6 years or so. If you have time warner cable then yeah you probably should stop, lol.

If you have cablevision though like I do, they change your IP every 3-5 days so that way if you get caught again they can say it's a different customer, since it's a different IP.

Cablevision is known for pretending to care about this stuff in the face of lawyers, but they don't care and take steps to ensure the casual downloader doesn't get caught. Especially if you use their triple services :D

The only reasons I got caught was when you seed something for more than 12 hours or share files on direct connect for more than a day or so. I've stopped seeding and sharing for over a year now, download like a fiend and haven't gotten a letter in awhile.

As far as I know it's only when you share something that you can get in trouble, downloading in fine.

This game keeps me Sane and away from downloading ***and instead, crafting SHITHEI.

This games keeps you busy enough to stay away from trouble. :P

this is why I stream...

There used to be a program called Peer Guardian that you ran along with your bit torrent client, it blocked the movie companies and other nosy IPs from sniffing who was d/l their movies and prevented you from getting the nag letters.
I think Peer Guardian was replaced with a newer version similar in name but I cant remember what it is.

I assume this is only going to be followed up in Canada...

There's no way in hell a threat like that could be followed up on in the US.

And yeah I've heard reports of this before.

i had the ISP call and ask what the specific material was. Luckily it was at my g/f house, her mob answered the phone and said "wtf are you talking about", so they said ok and that was the end of that story

America: Home of the manifest destiny!

No but really what's up with your guys ISPs? I'm in Britain and i've DL'd probably over 500 gigs of content, never received one letter or complaint.

Generally, they dont care if you download unless its an insane amount. They go after the seeders.

It is what it says it is. You (or your "friend" ;]) simply stop downloading and/or seeding stuff =P

Wrong.

That letter is the equivalent of "lawyers from Warner Bros. have contacted our lawyers at <ISP> and reported you are breaking the law." If it becomes bad enough that WB becomes pissed, they will then file a "John Doe" lawsuit against your IP address, which will include a request to your ISP to cough up the name and address of the account holder. John Doe is then replaced with "you," and the lawsuit proceeds as you can imagine.

The majority of these lawsuits will either be settled outside of court for an undisclosed amount, or will be ruled in the copyright holder's favor with damages in the tens or hundreds of thousands.

As others have said, stop sharing ***. I've downloaded multiple gigabytes of anime, but generally I don't seed the licensed stuff (read: the ***you will get these letters over.)

This happens rarely but copyright holders can pressure your ISP if you break copyright laws. A warning like this is pretty straightforward, if it gets ignored and your friend keeps violating the copyright, the ISP could be pressured to cancel supplying you with internet access, though a far more likely procedure would be, they forward your contact details to the Copyright holder, in which case he would face serious legal actions. Usually happens for people who upload/download torrents, even streaming can be iffy though they usually attack the domain owner in that case (ie: why youtube removes videos if a copyright holder notifies them). Overall I don't think it's a very common problem.

I get wireless off of neighbors for the past 5 years. I haven't had this problem!

It doesn't work that way. ISPs (even cablevision) keep accurate logs of who had an ip and when they had it. I can't say for sure how long they keep those logs, but they do keep them.

What happens if you download stuff and right after u download it you remove it from the download software? does that do anything?

No. Your IP is logged as having downloaded xx. So the copyright holder contacts your ISP, who warn you. They ask you to delete whatever it was you downloaded, and not to upload/download anything from that copyright holder again. Unless the person in question actually ignored the warning and continued downloading/uploading, you could keep whatever you downloaded and just say you deleted it.

ah ok

so if you get one of these warnings you should just stop downloading?

if you stop seeding it wont show up? i dont get what happens

When I used to work at FSU, we used to get letters like these from the RIAA/MPAA. We hated them because they would force us to send out letters like this to our students.

I wouldn't admit guilt to their accusations, he still has his 5th amendment right. There is always the possibility of a user's computer being compromised to transmit the data without the user's knowledge.

You don't seed, that's all it does. There will still be records of you uploading or downloading the item (uploading only if you're using BT).

megaupload
rapidshare
hotfile

etc...will solve your issues

however,

From my understanding the way they track you is the large companies seed/leach the torrents themselves to find out who is doing it, use the ISP to track them and tell them to stop. There are programs out there that have these companies addresses and will block them if they are recognized.

I got one of those after I had been dling Fallout 3 for the pc. They had everything from the time to the down load speed, caught me red handed. I still have the game though ^^

The great thing about this, is that you don't actually need the disc to play the game. Not that I've ever taken my copy and given it to friends or anything!

Ok, with this in mind:
Not wrong. Unless they can tie a specific person, to a specific computer, to a specific IP to the specific ISP, the letter is just an idle threat. Even if they do subpoena your ISP for your personal information, your ISP will inform you of it by law. Anyone with an ounce of common sense will take off the seed. Even if they do manage to "track you down", they'll still have to prove everything listed above. And just with the information of your address and name tied to your IP address is not enough for them to file a subpoena for your computer. Also with wireless networks readily available today at just about any site with an internet connection, the argument "someone else was using my connection" is enough to let you off. If you think you'll still be held responsible after that argument, you read too many Onion articles. So, there's no way in hell they'll be able to follow up on it if you live in the US. It's not like we're in China where they can kick down your door, take your computer and your first born child, slap you on the wrist and tell you not to share files anymore.

When large (media, software etc) companies go after people, they go after the torrent file hosting sites and those who host tracker info. And guess what the large sites do when they are "caught"? They jump servers, ISPs and or account names and they continue their business. Granted some curl and give up but that's just simply because they don't feel like dealing with it anymore. Rarely if ever they will actually go after the individuals sharing the files. Of course they'll send a letter to scare them off, but it generally ends there. Maybe at times they'll want to make an example out of the complete dumbasses but you have a higher chance of getting hit by lightning.

If you want to stretch it, the only investigating will probably be done by your ISP. They'll most likely assign you a static IP and change it in regular intervals without you knowing then nail you with an infraction of their P/ToS and disable your account.

Don't loose any sleep over this, keep seeding. It keeps the P2P networks alive. Just don't make too much noise while you're doing it like hosting a torrent site unless you know what you're doing.

You're the one person that they've decided to make an example of this year.

They do that to remind everyone they don't like torrents.

fight the power!

*edit: 90% of media ends up being free in one form or another, so leave us alone

Only if they follow through with the law suit, they send out plenty of those emails, probably on a weekly if not daily basis..

But you are right, they do single a couple of people out every year or so and completely ream them in court, which of course gets a lot of attention, and thus scares the newbies (sheep) into thinking the same will happen to them if they keep it up.

The only place I allow seeding after downloading is Demonoid, though downloads from that site only make up probably, 2-3% of all that I download.

If I was the one to be made an example of, I would probably be the biggest one yet, my downloading nearly qualifies as an addiction.