DMCA warnings

[Bikewer]

OK, I finally got an "abuse warning" from my ISP. I admit, I have done naughty pirating.

Are these people just sending out notices to folks who have hooked up to Bit Torrent sites?
Are they actually capable of scanning my computer? (they say I should remove any offending material)

That would take awhile....

[geni]

OK, I finally got an "abuse warning" from my ISP. I admit, I have done naughty pirating.

Are these people just sending out notices to folks who have hooked up to Bit Torrent sites?

Going by the lack of complaints from linux nerds so far I'm going to suggest it is slightly more refined than that.

There are a number of things they could be doing what exactly is hard to say.


Are they actually capable of scanning my computer?


Is the wrong question. They are capable of scanning your computer but they won't. Or at least they won't do it the way you are probably thinking of. Okey it depends if you are seeding as well.


(they say I should remove any offending material)


That is probably there so that if you don't delete the stuff and they do take you to court the damages will be somewhat higher.

[Mongrel]

They can detect what sort of protocol is being used to transfer information but they also monitor bandwidth usage.

I'd imagine they noticed you for bandwidth usage then checked what you where doing with it

[CrikeyBobs]

Maybe a third party (presumably affiliated with copyright owners such as RIAA, MPAA) has determined that you are making available copyrighted material via BitTorrent or another P2P application and has an agreement with your ISP to pass on the "abuse warning" letter.

I wouldn't think that your ISP would be scanning you as that might have repercussions with regards to safe harbour laws (? Not sure about this one, but I think that's how it works)

[Yalius]

Maybe a third party (presumably affiliated with copyright owners such as RIAA, MPAA) has determined that you are making available copyrighted material via BitTorrent or another P2P application and has an agreement with your ISP to pass on the "abuse warning" letter.

I wouldn't think that your ISP would be scanning you as that might have repercussions with regards to safe harbour laws (? Not sure about this one, but I think that's how it works)

I work for an ISP and this is exactly how it works. We get probably 10-20 letters a week from the RIAA or individual studios or record labels giving an IP address, and the filename of the offending material. We pass them along without identifying the user to the complainant.

[Bikewer]

A further read-through indicates they were complaining about a single file; the HBO "True Blood" thing.
I noticed that this had some 2000 "seeders" when I downloaded it.

In doing some research this morning, it's apparent that certain producers (notably Paramount) are particularly aggressive in sending out notices. Apparently they just note IP addresses that connect to a particular file.

There are a number of dodges available.... One that's recommended is the Safepeer plug-in for the Azureus BT client. This doesn't hide your IP or anything, it just keeps a rather huge log of known industry "sniffing" addresses and blocks them.

Another is to use the seldom-monitored Newsgroup or Usenet services.

[Kilgore Trout]

A production company will, as far as I'm aware, set up a P2P program and download like anyone else. When they get a certain percentage from an IP that makes it identifiable as theirs, then they send out a notice. They can't go by the filename only, but at the same time, they don't need to download the entire file to know that they are downloading their show/movie/song/whatever.

Other options to the safepeer plug in would be Peer Guardian and Blocklist Manager. Peer Guardian does the blocking, Blocklist Manager provides a list of suspect IP ranges.

I think it is possible to use a proxy-like system, such as TOR, but that seems like it would be so slow as to be unusable.

Usenet newsgroups are the ultimate solution, as it is a direct download and you upload nothing, however this has become a subscription service. It once was a regular part of the internet like email and the web, but the bandwidth kept creeping up to the point that ISPs shifted to providing a subscription to a third party newsgroup server and then to eliminating it entirely.

I'd also extend that all the big movie and music producers are very aggressive, as opposed to small/independent labels and, say, game companies (EA excluded).

[geni]

A further read-through indicates they were complaining about a single file; the HBO "True Blood" thing.
I noticed that this had some 2000 "seeders" when I downloaded it.

In doing some research this morning, it's apparent that certain producers (notably Paramount) are particularly aggressive in sending out notices. Apparently they just note IP addresses that connect to a particular file.

There are a number of dodges available.... One that's recommended is the Safepeer plug-in for the Azureus BT client. This doesn't hide your IP or anything, it just keeps a rather huge log of known industry "sniffing" addresses and blocks them.

So? Any company of a worthwhile size will have no trouble at all in picking up a new set of IPs every week. Even more fun if things get to court. Not only did you ignore a previous warning but then took steps to try and hide what you are up to. That gets you into the up to $150,000 damages per song/album territory.


Another is to use the seldom-monitored Newsgroup or Usenet services.

Seldom-monitored but painfuly traceable if the traffic levels ever go high enough for anyone to care about.

[van_dutch]

The companies search for the torrents and log the IP's of those who are downloading it. From there they can look up the ISP and send a notice containing the torrent information (name, hash etc) as well as IP. The ISP looks up the owner of that IP and notifies them of the situation. From there the offender has a certain amount of time (I forget exactly how much) to remove the content and inform their ISP that the offending material is no longer around. Then, the ISP will inform the party sending the notification that the material has been removed in the allotted time per the language in the DMCA. If this does not happen or the IP address is routinely in violation further actions may be taken. Generally if this is the case, it is already up to criminal violation which carries some serious penalties. This the problem with public trackers. Anyone can see anyone who is involved in the torrent process for a given file.

Gaining access to a private computer and scanning it for copyrighted material is illegal without a court order. Think of it as busting down the door to your house searching through everything. I don't think it happens with any regularity, but it would not surprise me if it has happened.

[Cl1mh4224rd]

I wouldn't think that your ISP would be scanning you as that might have repercussions with regards to safe harbour laws (? Not sure about this one, but I think that's how it works)


I think the phrase you're looking for is "common carrier (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_carrier) status".