Got a nice threatening letter through the letterbox today......

if there is a raft of successful court cases that result in serious fines then youd have to be dumb not to take notice.

 

You have to go to the post office and fill in a form that informs the police your intentions to download stuff from the internet and then they come and arrest you.

 

Its a file sharing service but its usually anonymous and 100% effectively anonymous. You get very fast downloads because its a file streaming from a server, but the offset for most people is that you have to pay for the service "most of the time also its usually pretty cheep" and its technically hard to use unless your computer savvy. I myself have not invested enough time to figure it out

 

it goes over a a central server, that server has your ip address, but placing those servers in a country where having log files is not legally required makes it safe (not all do that, you'll have to shop around).

 

True, assuming the verdict goes their way.
If it didn't however, which is a highly possible outcome, it would set a precedent against them and THAT isn't worth the risk.
Especially when they can just send out heaps of threatening letters and net a wedge of cash from the scared punters who don't know better.

Wiki.

Also, Google Newzbin, giganews and sabnzbd+

 

rapidshare.com .... mmmm huntable?

or is it?

If this company is sending out random letters, than it might be worth asking your ISP what they sent and why

 

rapidshare and other such services can be very safe or completly unsafe.... you wont know until the cops go after them, the question with them is if they keep logfiles or not.

 

Well people who download off of public torrents arn't clever anyway to be honest, I only download from private torrents and rapidshare.

 

This looks like a hopeless endeavor by the company..... Sending out letters saying to pay them totally based on a ISP traffic report? Why dont they sue me for watching a movie at a theater and then telling friends about it? Thats about as much sense as this makes.

I would nearly classify their actions as a form of terrorism. Its literally scaring people to comply to them with no proof. Scary indeed to be told your actions that you may/maynot have committed.....

 

Rofl.

 

They're not really safe either, it's not too hard for a company to get an account on a private tracker.

 

was your dad pissed???

 

He didn't sound too pissed, more worried, I suppose we'll find out in a few days what will happen if we don't pay.

 

A private website, which hasn't added new members for years?

 

Every. Single. Time.

 

Anyone that has recieved one of these letters got wireless that isn't quite as secure as it should be? I want to see one of these cases go to court and see how the blame gets passed around and around until it turns out to be the router manufactures or even governments fault you didn't set up a secure wireless network... or perhaps you just don't want to admit you have been caught.

 

From googling, the law firm replies to you that you are responsible about who uses your internet. Which is effectively like saying if you don't use your TV to watch TV so don't pay a license and someone breaks into your house and starts watching TV, it's your fault and you've broken the law. Anyway, even without the unsecured wireless excuse, it's still not provable beyond reasonable doubt that you or anyone in your house downloaded anything just by going from the IP information these types rely on.

 

true the law can be bent...

for instance this guy in the office next to my got flashed by a camera doing 96 in a 50... went to court said he doesn't know who was driving the car at the time, they obviously couldn't prove that he himself was driving so he got away with it...

Doesn't always mean it is right

 

Not actually a great example as you need to pay your TV licence even if you never use your TV to watch TV. You need to have a licence if you have anything capable of recieving a TV signal in your home.

It kinda makes sense to say that you're liable for who uses your internet, but there's always gonna be n00bs who can't secure it and leave it open.
Or secure it with WEP which is almost like leaving it open anyway.

In fact, that might be a great way to get around this.
Say you had WEP security enabled as you couldn't get WPA working or you need WEP to allow your DS to connect.
Obviously WEP is as broken as can be and it would be trivial for a war-driver to crack your WEP and use your connection.
You still took reasonable steps to secure your wireless but its still easily crackable and you can say someone must've been stealing your bandwidth.