Illegal downloaders in federal court’s crosshairs

[twitchyzero]

Originally Posted by vafanculo

I can't stand people that say "I download it to see if I like it. If I do, I buy it".

B.S.

How many of the free content you've stolen have you purchased? Do you stop watching/listening and delete the content half way in if you don't like it? Or do you just stick around for the ending? Can you walk into a McDonald's, order a number 3, and only pay for it if you enjoy it?

Just look up how popular Humble Bundle is and when artists release CD by naming your price...if you release something great and expose it to as many as possible...you'd get more people interested to preorder/buy your follow-up work.

The Origin Humble Bundle managed to rack in $10M in a week

And that's exactly what many 'pirates' will do when they play a game that blows, they'll quit after investing an hour of their time.

Originally Posted by PeanutButter

And this is why you should use a VPN or proxy. Not even for just piracy, but for your anonymity.

Private Internet Access is having a sale right now. 12 months for $31.95 USD. They're amoung the cheapest VPNs who provide amazing speed and service. They also have an iOS and Android app, which is just gravy.

I just got a VPN and can't believe I haven't been using one all these years. The security and anonymity it provides is amazing.

Is proxy nearly 100% anon or does it just take longer to track down the original IP?

Originally Posted by m3thods

I wonder why HBO doesn't raise a stink regarding their highly-pirated shows. GoT is consistently the highest-pirated show these past few years, yet I never hear about them going after seeders. If anything, they seem to almost take it as a badge of honour, as one of you suggested.

Speaking of GoT and hit TV shows..I remember when Breaking Bad's creator was in town and touched on the subject of piracy. This article summed up what he said:

Vince Gilligan said illegal downloads of “Breaking Bad” clearly helped the show win new fans — but he also acknowledged the economic harms caused by piracy.

“I see that there’s two sides to this coin, if I’m being honest,” Gilligan said in an interview with the BBC.

“In some ways the illegal downloading has helped us, certainly, in terms of brand awareness,” he said. “The downside is a lot of folks who worked on the show would have made more money, myself included, if all those downloads had been legal.”

After the “Breaking Bad” series finale aired Sept. 29 on AMC, the episode was downloaded more than 500,000 times within 12 hours of the first illegal copy showing up. That made it the show’s most-pirated ep on record, according to piracy news site TorrentFreak.

Piracy is “ultimately a problem and will continue to be a problem going forward,” Gilligan said. “Because we all need to eat. We all need to get paid.”


“I think Netflix kept us on the air,” he told reporters after the show won the Emmy for best drama last month. “Not only are we standing up here (with the Emmy), I don’t think our show would have even lasted beyond season two.”

http://variety.com/2013/tv/news/brea...ty-1200737192/

[willystyle]

Originally Posted by twitchyzero

Just look up how popular Humble Bundle is and when artists release CD by naming your price...if you release something great and expose it to as many as possible...you'd get more people interested to preorder/buy your follow-up work.


Is proxy nearly 100% anon or does it just take longer to track down the original IP?

Nothing is 100% Anon, in fact, proxy's are somewhat dangerous because you have completely no idea who is running that proxy. Proxy's only hide your IP address, and the data that's tunneling through is non-encrypted and can still be compromised. Essentially, the entertainment industry can setup a fake proxy and nail everyone that's using it to download illegal content.

VPN is the best and most ideal, as there is a good reputation that stands behind what they offer (PrivateInternetAccess, for example), and all of the data tunneled through a VPN is encrypted and not logged (PIA, for example).

Honestly, in this day and age, particularly with the NSA scandal, if you are a frequent or an occasional downloader, there is absolutely no reason why you shouldn't be using a VPN for peace of mind. It's only $40/year. You have no one else to blame but yourself if you get busted.

[twdm]

Originally Posted by PeanutButter

The only way they could prove this is to get a court order to seize your computers and routers in the house. All they would have to do is check the MAC addresses and they could find out who was downloading what.

And, just because you leave your wifi unprotected doesn't exempt you from legal action, you can still be held responsible.

In the time they needed to get their warrants, you could have already replaced your hard drives with new ones.

They can definitely try to sue you, but having an unprotected wifi is not illegal. As long as you destroy all evidence of illegally downloaded materials, they can't do jack. Then you countersue them for defamation.

[Majestic12]

The armchair lawyering in this thread is staggeringly ignorant.

[bluejays]

Came across this a while ago and thought itd be a good share here
Pirates buy more music than legal downloaders, study shows | TechHive

[MG1]

I don't get it............ pirates pay for stuff so they can sell it to thousands for profit? So they are legal downloaders, then. Just kidding......... interesting.


How do they find this stuff?


thousands of phone interviews - wow!

Get honest answers from dishonest people.

............nuff said

[bloodmack]

Yall worrying about the WRONG thing. Just wait til 3D printing becomes cheaper to your average pirate.. There's already tons of 3D files on the web to print with a click of a button. BRB downloading a gun.

[twdm]

Originally Posted by Majestic12

The armchair lawyering in this thread is staggeringly ignorant.

Show me a case where someone has gotten a court order to seize computers for downloading movies in Canada. Yea that's what I thought. This is not America.

If it took them this long to even be able to force a tiny internet provider to give them addresses and names, think about how hard it would be to force the big telecoms to give up information and THEN get warrants for search AND seizure of computers and hard drives.

Heck this 90 year old child porn addict is smarter than you and was almost able to get away with it if he didn't reveal anything himself.

Prosecutor: Man tried to destroy hard drive after police search | PV Times

[Majestic12]

That's not what I'm referring to. The comment that prompted me to say that, however, is:

As long as you destroy all evidence of illegally downloaded materials, they can't do jack. Then you countersue them for defamation.

Sorry, bud, but that's not how it works. Do you really think the police would obtain warrants, but then give warning and time to permit the accused enough time to destroy any evidence? Do you even know what is required to get a warrant in the first place? By the time the warrant is in place, there's probably a decent enough pile of evidence against you.

Also, the worst part... "countersue them for defamation". No, just no.

[Ulic Qel-Droma]

lol piracy is like the war on drugs.

patent laws and intellectual property laws are archaic and need to be revamped to fit current human patterns of behaviour.

if youre against pirating because of monetary reasons, you're just on the opposite side of the same "immoral" scale.

one side is "stealing" and the other side is "greed".

if youre against piracy because YOU "made" it and and it's YOURS to choose what to do with... well, you're just an egotistical asshat. we'll steal it from you and not even use it, just to break your ego down.

nothing is yours. cuz i'll take it from you whether you like it or not.
what's yours is ours. what's ours is yours.

feel free to do the same to us.
the offer is there. if you don't take it, well too bad. cuz you're playing our game.

no amount of punishment will deter us. no amount of punishment will reform us.

i speak for the majority of the majority. come at us bro. we're waiting.

[Mancini]

Are they specifically targeting uploaders or BitTorrent users?

Vs. downloading from a file hosting site?
Posted via RS Mobile

[westopher]

Good thing the terabytes of porn that has crossed my computer screen has all been streamed.

[FerrariEnzo]

but what if people use a proxy and picked your ip... your going to be SOL and F@CKED...

[white rocket]

Side story: I caught Bad Boys II on the Encore movie channel a few nights ago. As I am watching it I noticed that the subtitles for the Spanish language were in Russian or something. My first thought; did the Encore channel just download this movie from the PB and broadcast it on their channel? Haha. I'm thinking WTF, I'm paying large for this channel package and all their doing is dl'ing shit for free and airing it? We've all dl'd a movie and realized the subtitles were not in English.

I know I'm probably way off base but just thought it was funny considering this recent thread.

[Psykopathik]

IMO why wouldn't ISP's simply delete their records now and protect their customers? is there some law that prevents ISPs from NOT keeping records? All that really matters to them is if their customer is staying under his bandwidth cap.

"Come to Shaw, where you can download whatever you want"

they would get my business.

[willystyle]

Originally Posted by Psykopathik

IMO why wouldn't ISP's simply delete their records now and protect their customers?

The Conservative government passed a law in 2011 (Bill C-11) to force ISP's to retain logs, which must be handed over to copyright enforcers on demand.

[elwell]

Netflix aint quick enough for me to stop

[rriggi]

Originally Posted by godwin

Illegal downloaders in federal court?s crosshairs


Canadians who illegally download music, movies and other copyright material may no longer be able to hide from potential lawsuits.

I also have the potential of being hit by a meteorite?

I have yet to see anything come from all these reports of Canadians being tracked down. It seems like we pass legislation regarding copyright, but nobody really cares at the end of the day. Shaw is busy screwing you out of money with its cable bundles, they don't have the time to help Hollywood sue you.

[haymura]

my co workers 2 buddies just got an email from Shaw, courtesy of Warner Bros., about downloading a movie. I guess they are pretty serious about this.

[saveth]

I used to get emails like that when I used my isps email service.
Posted via RS Mobile

[underscore]

The main things I pirate are shows you simply can't get here/can't get anymore (edit: this includes not being available in certain formats, why the hell make an HD show and then only release DVD and not Blu-Ray?), things I've already purchased in other formats (I'm not buying Indiana Jones 4 times FFS) and shit that doesn't work when you buy it legally. I've acquired several games legally (purchased, bundled with hardware etc) that don't work for shit with the legitimate setup, so I ended up pirating them and using cracks just to get it to work.

Originally Posted by vafanculo

I can't stand people that say "I download it to see if I like it. If I do, I buy it".

B.S.

How many of the free content you've stolen have you purchased? Do you stop watching/listening and delete the content half way in if you don't like it? Or do you just stick around for the ending? Can you walk into a McDonald's, order a number 3, and only pay for it if you enjoy it?

I can see why record/movie companies are doing this. Making a movie is serious business. It costs money. They don't do it to be nice so we can watch it for free.

P.s

I also download. I don't need to justify it though. I do it for the same reason other people do. Its at arms length and even better, costs nothing.
Posted via RS Mobile

I'll purchase content if it's any good, but take a look at the media right now, mostly everything produced these days is shit, and most of the things that are any good are becoming pay-what-you-want anyways. The industries are pumping out garbage and making piles of money even with piracy at its current levels, so they can go fuck themselves if they try to claim it's hurting them.

[nabs]

I always used to get those warnings from TELUS in emails. I just disregarded them and kept downloading as usual. They were all empty threats, I wasn't worried one bit.

All I download nowadays now are TV shows that I missed. I catch the rest on Netflix. I'm anxious to see who gets the caught first as and put as an example. (if they even do). TekSavvy is a small company, a lawsuit against them can easily force them out of business. Whereas Telus and Shaw have huge legal teams who know the system in and out and can possibly find loopholes, they would be less likely to sell out their customers because they have their reputation to look out for.

[Qmx323]

Good_Luck_Im_Behind_7_Proxies.jpg

not srs

[PeanutButter]

Originally Posted by godwin

You would be amazed even with VPN services, how lazy and incomptent people are.. eg using ISP's DNS etc.

If you use VPN, make sure you test whether the connection is leaking before go nuts on it. Personally I only use L2TP.

How do you check if your VPN is leaking?

Most VPN's don't keep logs, so does it even matter?

[PeanutButter]

VPN

Virtual Private Networks create an encrypted ‘tunnel’ between your computer and the host server, with the internet traffic going in and out of the host server. Your ISP or government can only see that you have connected to the VPN server and nothing else – your activities, IP addresses you have visited etc. are all completely hidden from them behind a minimum of 128-bit encryption.

However, the VPN server can see what you get up to on-line, which is why we feel it vital that a good VPN provider to keeps no logs. Anything less and its users’ activities may be compromised (thus making the precaution of using a VPN in the first place redundant!).

Although setting up VPN does usually involve downloading and installing a VPN client, or otherwise configuring your computer or mobile device, the computing skills needed are minimal, and most providers supply detailed step-by-step setup guides in any case. One good thing is that once set up, all your internet activity, no matter which program you use, is now safely routed through the VPN.

The only notable negatives to VPN are that it is comparatively pricey, and the encryption process taxes the servers so that when in heavy use internet access through them can slow down noticeably.

https://www.bestvpn.com/blog/4085/pr...he-difference/

Using a VPN is pretty much fool proof for any internet searching or downloading. The only way you could probably get outted is if you're planning some sort national security issue and the government is monitoring you.