My first Copyright infringement Letter

[Cowthief]

ISP woes.

Hello.

When I want to get stupid with the internet I sign into the local notell motel that has free WiFi.
I am right now at a public WiFi location, just try to send my dumbass a letter, ya gotta find me first.
I went at it with Motorola a while back, the same people who Kevin Mitnick had trouble with.
A am a LOT harder to find.

[enven]

Sounds like a lottery if you get one of these...

I havent gotten one yet thankfully, but if I do..I'll surely let you know. I wouldnt worry too much about court or anything of the sort. As the jur1st said; "A nasty letter is a long way from going to court." very true. I wouldnt worry too much.


Although,
I did get a call from my ISP once asking why my bandwidth usage was so high. I just said I know of nothing they speak of. They let it go, and offered me a better plan with higher bandwidth...

[jur1st]

can you scan a copy of the letter and post it?

I read a article somewhere a while back where two kids, I think it was in Michigan, got caught useing P2P software, and had an archive of illegal music when caught. In any case, there Mother was givin 2 years prison, 8 years supervised probation, and a $80k fine.

This sounds like FUD. I'm not aware of anyone being thrown into the pokey for file sharing. Such a trial would have made the news.

The reason NBC is involved because my IP was somehow involved with a seeding pool of a 'As Is Distribution' licensed video demo. Technically it was legal as long as it was un-altered, but I'm sure with high budget lawyers you can find a negative loop hole in everything!

What video game, and what is NBC Universal's interest in this? As far as finding a "negative loop hole" goes...license agreements aren't designed to trap people for distributing IP when the distribution is allowed. "High budget" lawyers have nothing to do with it.

Hopefully I can get the case dropped if it's taken to court, I also have computer forensics on my side.

A nasty letter is a long way from going to court.

[robosycho]

Has anyone else received one of these things from there ISPs'? I have to say this is the first time the Corporate Big Brother senerio has hit home. This has assured me that all my communications are being monitored and sold to the highest bidder( in this case NBC entertainment; they know I'm useing a Gnutella client.)

Waiting for one of these myself... I would like to see the expression on my parent's faces though. They know very little about the internet at all, I had to do most of the setup and constantly do all of the maintenance on their five-year-old PC, which about kills me with its 200MHz processor and 64MB of RAM that I haven't ever heard of. In return, I get unlimited access, so I'm not complaining. Cable is such a nice commodity.

!E

[VAX_to_PBX]

I was transferring Gigabytes of data 72 hours before the letter arrived, but it was all legal open source software, specificlly OpenBSD images. I did use the Shareaza client which is Gnutella for 2/4 of the transferring.

My connection is 1.5Mbps/358Kbps, so that's probably why. I also agree that ISP administrators don't sit and look at data all day, most back the data up and run parsing algorithms over it looking for keywords and such. Atleast that's how it was when I worked for a ISP contracted data managment firm back in 2003. Rouphly 30% of service providers annual income goes towards backup media and the computing power to break it down according to patterns(Of course you joined in 2001, so what can I tell you that you don't already know.)

The reason NBC is involved because my IP was somehow involved with a seeding pool of a 'As Is Distribution' licensed video demo. Technically it was legal as long as it was un-altered, but I'm sure with high budget lawyers you can find a negative loop hole in everything!

[converge]

Your ISP is contacting you because you have done one of several things to piss someone else off, the most common being overutilization of your bandwidth in a way to piss off fellow users on the same segment as you. I do not know of any ISPs that are actively 'cracking down' on filesharing, whether illegal or not. They do not sit around watching every packet that crosses hoping to catch someone being naughty. If you are at an ISP with enough resources to do this, then either they will be under within 6 months for how they run their business, or you need to stop using some kids connection up the road because he calls himself an ISP.

ISPs are required by law to respond to these complaints in a documented fashion and resolve them. If they look at your traffic and see completely legit transfers filling the band, there isn't anything they can do unless you are specifically violating a portion of the AUP that they chamion, ie... running web/mail/etc services from a residential cable connection. In most cases they won't even bust you simply for illegal downloading. You have to either be downloading insane amounts of copyrighted material or (as common to most P2P apps), allowing others to upload the content from you and thus becoming the provider of the copyrighted content. In most cases, failure to comply simply means that the ISP has to ACL your connection until you do, or otherwise terminate you as a customer, per the AUP that every ISP has you agree to before providing service to you. It is highly unlikely that any other form of action would be taken.

The easiest way to avoid this is simply to modify your downloading habits. I am not, of course, justifying or condoning download of copyrighted materials by saying this ... simply trying to point out the obvoius.

[Ridirich]

I musta missed the hardcopy part.

[VAX_to_PBX]

The Letter isn't a prank! It's a mailed hardcopy notice from my ISP telling me that certain companys are aware of my activity on the Gnutella network. I guess they got my IP off a source list, that's easy to do when the person(me in this case) isn't tunneling.

I've done my research, and sense all they have is a log showing I was a downloader of a file, and they don't have evidence showing I possesed the file; then they can't claim I was a 'Direct Infringer.' Hopefully I can get the case dropped if it's taken to court, I also have computer forensics on my side. There is no trace of pirated software on any of my hardware, be it hard disk, flash memory etc..

I'd happely turn over all my hardware! It would actually help my case.

NOTE: I read a article somewhere a while back where two kids, I think it was in Michigan, got caught useing P2P software, and had an archive of illegal music when caught. In any case, there Mother was givin 2 years prison, 8 years supervised probation, and a $80k fine. Keep in mind the mother had a clean record prior to the conviction. I'm amazed at the power of these corporations, isn't this Corporate Governance at its finest? I remember when being a honerable citizen meant something when taken to court. I think those kids are in foster homes currently, and there mom is still serving time.

[Ridirich]

Has anyone else received one of these things from there ISPs'? I have to say this is the first time the Corporate Big Brother senerio has hit home. This has assured me that all my communications are being monitored and sold to the highest bidder( in this case NBC entertainment; they know I'm useing a Gnutella client.)

No other information has been givin in the Letter other than the fact that they(My ISP,) and NBC Entertainment are aware of my Networking habbits, and if the copyright holding partys decide to take it to court I will probably be screwed. I'm sure hundreds of thousands of other people on the high badwidth hitlist have been mailed a letter. If I'm filed against you can bet I'll show up in my caddy shack lawyer plaid suit.

Most of these letters come from friends or family who have access to your email address and want to prank you. This is one example of said activities.

Use your head. Unless your email address is provided by your ISP, how would they get it without a warrant?

[TheCotMan]

Yea they probably do know I posted this here, but I'm American, so the freedom of speech is a factor. I also don't see how HTTPS would keep my information safe, this isn't a kid on a 2Ghz Desktop or Laptop I'm up against.

https would not keep your information safe, but if they are monitoring your posting, and you are chatting with other people, and you send a message to someone else saying that you've, "been caught," then part of your legal defense could be compromised. A statement of being caught without clarification, it can be argued, may signal that you knew something was illegal but were doing it anyway. Successful prosecution of some criminal laws require proof of intent, and if intent cannot be proven, then "weaker" laws (with weaker penalties) may be applied to your case. (This depends on what kind of case it is and if criminal, the charges.)

Doubt in court can be created through discussion of spyware, and trojans that control people's computers that may add them to botnets, to provide reasonable doubt until the prosecution can counter that with stronger evidence. However, doubt can be removed if they have text messages from you where you admit to something (especially if there is an implication that you knew it was illegal.)

Back to https: encrypted conversations are more time consuming to decrypt than plain-text. Though they may know you sent data to the forums, and can provide an approximate time for a post, they have a tougher time proving you are the user with a post made using encryption than they would if the post was completed in plain-text.

It's probably best to not discuss much about it, but IANAL ( I am not a lawyer) so what do I know? O:-)

For some reason I'm not paranoid or shocked by this. I don't make alot of money like people who commonly get busted for computer related activitys, so I can lauph if they decide to make me pay money. To me, Prison is just free living, and I'm around rouph necks daily so fighting isn't nothing new to me;

Yes, but STD and other diseases afflict a higher percent of the population, and exchange of blood or fluids increases risk of exposure and infection. Getting cut or sliced by a recently used shiv, or being near someone else who is cut with spilled blood or being "gassed" by a fellow inmate as you pass their cell, all put you at increased risk to disease.

On the other hand, you get free medical care, so if it can be cured, it is no big deal.

I may go for a masters in mathmatics if I go to prison, they have great FREE education programs.

Many prisons have limits on free education. High School and GED are becoming more and more common across the US to reduce recidivism, and courses in law (to allow inmates to support their own case) but access to advanced degrees is more limited to what is available and reasonable. Some of these advanced degree programs are limited to degrees in topics for which professors are willing to volunteer their time for occasional trips to prisons. (Math is reasonable, but realize that inmates are frequently denied access to computers, and the Internet, and perhaps graphing calculators capable of storing more than a few numbers.)

[VAX_to_PBX]

Yea they probably do know I posted this here, but I'm American, so the freedom of speech is a factor. I also don't see how HTTPS would keep my information safe, this isn't a kid on a 2Ghz Desktop or Laptop I'm up against.

For some reason I'm not paranoid or shocked by this. I don't make alot of money like people who commonly get busted for computer related activitys, so I can lauph if they decide to make me pay money. To me, Prison is just free living, and I'm around rouph necks daily so fighting isn't nothing new to me; I may go for a masters in mathmatics if I go to prison, they have great FREE education programs.

[TheCotMan]

Has anyone else received one of these things from there ISPs'?

We've received letters from lawyers that we have had to followup with visits to our customers or employees, but it has been a while since we've had to deal with it.

This has assured me that all my communications are being monitored and sold to the highest bidder( in this case NBC entertainment; they know I'm useing a Gnutella client.)

If they know about your networking habits, do they know you just posted this here? Are you posting to the forums with http or https? (heh)

[VAX_to_PBX]

Has anyone else received one of these things from there ISPs'? I have to say this is the first time the Corporate Big Brother senerio has hit home. This has assured me that all my communications are being monitored and sold to the highest bidder( in this case NBC entertainment; they know I'm useing a Gnutella client.)

No other information has been givin in the Letter other than the fact that they(My ISP,) and NBC Entertainment are aware of my Networking habbits, and if the copyright holding partys decide to take it to court I will probably be screwed. I'm sure hundreds of thousands of other people on the high badwidth hitlist have been mailed a letter. If I'm filed against you can bet I'll show up in my caddy shack lawyer plaid suit.