TV and copyright laws

[psyco]

im probably being an idiot, as usual... but im a bit confused; so ill need the law students/graduates input for this

got an email today from my isp asking me if i knew i downloaded copyrighted material(non TV related, infact it was my fathers stupidity - he used pritatebay), so now, im wondering if i could get in trouble for downloading tv episodes
when i watch tv normally, i dont notice any copyright symbols or copyright related text, maybe it appears in the credits, i dont know
so i logged onto abc.com to find this;

3. RESTRICTIONS ON USE OF MATERIALS

All information, content and materials contained on WDIG Sites are our copyrighted property or the copyrighted property of our licensors or licensees. All trademarks, service marks, trade names, and trade dress are proprietary to us and/or our licensors or licensees. No information, content or material from any WDIG Site or any Internet site owned, operated, licensed, or controlled by us may be copied, reproduced, republished, uploaded, posted, transmitted or distributed in any way, except that you may download one copy of the information, content or materials on any single computer for your personal, noncommercial home use only, provided that (a) you keep intact all copyright and other proprietary notices, (b) you make no modifications to the information, content or materials, (c) you do not use the information, content or materials in a manner that suggests an association with any of our products, services or brands, and (d) you do not download information, content or materials so as to avoid future downloads from any WDIG Site. The use of any information, content or materials on a WDIG Site on any other Web site or computer environment is prohibited.

The WDIG Sites are only for your personal use. You may not use the WDIG Sites for commercial purposes or in any way that is unlawful, or harms us or any other person or entity, as determined in our sole discretion.

In the event that you download software from any WDIG Site, the software, including any files, images incorporated in or generated by the software, and data accompanying the software (collectively, the "Software") are licensed to you by us or third-party licensors for your personal, noncommercial home use only. We do not transfer title to the Software to you. You may own the medium on which the Software resides, but we or our third-party licensors retain full and complete title to the Software and all intellectual property rights therein. You may not redistribute, sell, auction, decompile, reverse engineer, disassemble or otherwise reduce the Software to a human-readable form. Software from WDIG Sites is further subject to United States export controls. Without limiting the generality of the foregoing, no software from any WDIG Site may be downloaded or otherwise exported or re-exported (a) into (or to a national or resident of) Cuba, Libya, North Korea, Iran, Syria, or any other country to which export is subject to control or licensing by the U.S.; or (b) to anyone on the U.S. Treasury Department's list of Specially Designated Nationals or the U.S. Commerce Department's Table of Deny Orders. By downloading or using the Software, you represent and warrant that you are not located in, under the control of, or a national or resident of any such country or on any such list or otherwise in violation of export control laws or regulations.

is this related to the website content or to the shows they broadcast as well

now i guess this means downloading any content is fine, as long as its not for commercial use, great! right? cause im not selling it, nor distributing it(except in a small form, but ill explain that shortly)

now, im assuming that the copyright terms and conditions are the same where ever you go, downloading from the internet using torrents are fine, as long as you don't upload

im sure you are aware, those that use torrents. you upload without being asked, cause your not given a choice, could you argue that there hijacking your pc and using bandwidth, therefore there breaking the law... or am i just being irrational?

and finally where do i stand, will they cut our connection, or are they too money greedy to care if your breaking the law, but still have a obligation to warn you, to be seen as supporting the cause, even though they wont do jack shit?

 

[Solo]

I assume its like the tv license letter where they are just trying to scare you and won't actually do anything, even after the 7th warning. Just be a bit more stealthy

 

[psyco]

I assume its like the tv license letter where they are just trying to scare you and won't actually do anything, even after the 7th warning. Just be a bit more stealthy

yeh, that was in the back of my mind, its gonna get dodgy explaining it for the 11th time though>.<

 

[psyco]

been doing some research, tbh, the stuff ive uncovered is outstandingly amusing

im going to do some linking to piratebay site and various stuff related to the matter, in an attempt to satisfy mods ill put the links in spoilers, if you dont like it, you'll have to remove it, but i feel it is more of a resource to prevent people getting caught... as a result i dont think its against CoC, but delete at will

Spoiler

.../legal this shows the amount of complains/legal threats, pay particular attention to the 'our response' parts they obviously don't wish to protect *us* nor there site and trackers - however it shows(as my report was related to microsoft) a list of company's, stuff you *may* wish to stear clear of

Spoiler

.../blog this rocks, it shows with great amounts of sarcasm, pay attention to 'We're in the news again' 'More TV + Legal threats' 'Steal This Film' 'Who framed The Pirate Bay' 'Reality show contestant gives money to The Pirate' 'Ebay auction going once, twice and sold for $8 100' and 'Merry X-mas!' - this has real no relevance, still a good read imo, and shows there complete disregard for the law

Spoiler

.../about pay special attention to the 4th paragraph, not much else i can say really, but very funny nether the less

for those confused, about the where abouts of the links, these are just trees within the piratebay site, a bit of smarts and maybe a google search should throw up the actual location...
anyway, ive come to the decision that, using piratebay, specifically stuff related to the first spoiler is a bad idea

however i still would like the questions in the first post answered, if at all possible, not that it will stop me from continuing to use BT, i just would like to know where i stand afterall, legal fees are just stupidly large these days

 

[tris-]

got an email today from my isp asking me if i knew i downloaded copyrighted material

if thats exactly what they asked, explain you didnt know.

theyd have to prove you are lieing, and no mother fucker can really be arsed with that.

 

[Dillinja]

if thats exactly what they asked, explain you didnt know.

theyd have to prove you are lieing, and no mother fucker can really be arsed with that.

Yeah, but just because you didn't know you are breaking the law, doesn't mean you are above it.

Granted, I didn't read the whole thread - forgive me.

 

[psyco]

if thats exactly what they asked, explain you didnt know.

theyd have to prove you are lieing, and no mother fucker can really be arsed with that.

they said you downloaded X from X, it is copyrighted, please reply

kinda the same thing, but isn't, sorry

 

[fl3a]

they said you downloaded X from X, it is copyrighted, please reply

from what i hear, in estonia at least, the suspicion of you downloading something according to the file names in the torrent is not enough for them to do anything. they first have to verify that you did indeed download the files, and that it was the copyrighted material, which means they must confiscate your hdd. so if they have enough clues of you downloading copyrighted material they can come and take your computer away, look through it, and charge you according to the material found.

 

[tris-]

Yeah, but just because you didn't know you are breaking the law, doesn't mean you are above it.

Granted, I didn't read the whole thread - forgive me.

thats quite right, you cant claim to be ignorant to the law. but if they asked "did you know you downloaded copyrighted shiz?" he could claim he didnt know. but apparently they didnt ask that, so i suppose none of this matters

 

[GReaper]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_infringement

The emails you're currently getting seem to just be a slap on the wrist, asking you not to do it again. However in future you might not be so lucky, the next copyright violation may end up with the company taking your details and sending you letters threatening to take action against you.

First action I'd recommend is switch ISP. BT probably isn't the best ISP to do this stuff on.

Secondly, try and torrent a bit more safely. There are guides available on how to avoid this, use things such as PeerGuardian, don't download risky torrents, etc.

 

[Gamah]

they said you downloaded X from X, it is copyrighted, please reply

kinda the same thing, but isn't, sorry

I'd say..go fuck yourself and give me my MAC code I'm going somewhere else and if they refuse to give you a mac code point them to the new MAC code regulations and report them to OFCOM.

 

[psyco]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_infringement

The emails you're currently getting seem to just be a slap on the wrist, asking you not to do it again. However in future you might not be so lucky, the next copyright violation may end up with the company taking your details and sending you letters threatening to take action against you.

First action I'd recommend is switch ISP. BT probably isn't the best ISP to do this stuff on.

Secondly, try and torrent a bit more safely. There are guides available on how to avoid this, use things such as PeerGuardian, don't download risky torrents, etc.

bt is shorthand for bittorrent>.<

 

[cHodAX]

Change ISP for a start, they have obviously grassed you up by giving the copyright companies your email address when they reported your i.p. address for downloading copyrighted material. Any ISP who does that without being served a warrant is breaking the Data Protection Act (in the UK at least), really they should not be giving out email addresses to anyone without some form of court proceedings but alot of ISP's like NTL and BT do sadly. I am not sure who your ISP is but they have obviously crumbled under the weight of a threating letter from either the MPAA or RIAA.

You can't ignore the warning so you have to plead ignorance and promise you won't do it again, then my advice would be to stop using PirateBay regularly, alot of torrents on there are being monitored it seems and you run a bigger risk if you download from there on a daily basis. Switch ISP if you can, that effectively resets any warnings you have had previously so you are taking less of a risk and are alot less likely to be taken to court. If you download alot of TV don't bother with PirateBay, stick to sites like EZTV or even better sign up to private ratio trackers, it can be a pain maintaining a decent ratio but at least you know that your account is private and you are alot less likely to be targeted by the copyright groups.

 

[psyco]

Change ISP for a start, they have obviously grassed you up by giving the copyright companies your email address when they reported your i.p. address for downloading copyrighted material. Any ISP who does that without being served a warrant is breaking the Data Protection Act (in the UK at least), really they should not be giving out email addresses to anyone without some form of court proceedings but alot of ISP's like NTL and BT do sadly. I am not sure who your ISP is but they have obviously crumbled under the weight of a threating letter from either the MPAA or RIAA.

You can't ignore the warning so you have to plead ignorance and promise you won't do it again, then my advice would be to stop using PirateBay regularly, alot of torrents on there are being monitored it seems and you run a bigger risk if you download from there on a daily basis. Switch ISP if you can, that effectively resets any warnings you have had previously so you are taking less of a risk and are alot less likely to be taken to court. If you download alot of TV don't bother with PirateBay, stick to sites like EZTV or even better sign up to private ratio trackers, it can be a pain maintaining a decent ratio but at least you know that your account is private and you are alot less likely to be targeted by the copyright groups.

the email was from my isp

 

[cHodAX]

the email was from my isp

Ok, so they have either been monitoring p2p traffic or have recieved a letter from a copyright organisation. Did the email give specific filenames for things you have downloaded or was it generic and just said you were filesharing?

What bittorrent client are you using and do you have forced encryption enabled?

 

[psyco]

Ok, so they have either been monitoring p2p traffic or have recieved a letter from a copyright organisation. Did the email give specific filenames for things you have downloaded or was it generic and just said you were filesharing?

What bittorrent client are you using and do you have forced encryption enabled?

it was very specific

utorrent, and im not sure about the encryption thing...

 

[cHodAX]

it was very specific

utorrent, and im not sure about the encryption thing...

If it is specific, then you have either downloaded a 'sting' torrent that was seeded by someone like the MPAA as a way of gathering offending i.p. addresses or if utorrent doesn't have forced encryption enabled then your ISP has been snooping your p2p traffic and managed to see what you were downloading.

First thing first, open Utorrent, goto Options -> Preferences -> Then select Bittorent in the left pane -> You should see a box saying 'Protocol Encryption' -> set that to forced and click apply then ok.

Hence forth all your p2p traffic is encrypted, it might lower download speeds but you are safer. You should also consider setting the port Utorrent uses to a random number between 50000 and 60000, this makes it harder for your ISP to use traffic shaping on your connection and the encryption will stop them snooping at your data as it downloads.

Personally I would change ISP as soon as possible, at least that way you start with a clean record.

Oh and avoid regular use of PirateBay, the MPAA are targetting it bigtime at the moment and it is too much of a risk to use it everyday.

 

[Pirkel]

I wouldn't worry about it too much.

I think they just achieved exactly what they wanted to achieve by sending out that email. They wanted to make you worry about it and maybe even spread this worry on a forum. Loads of people will read this thread and think twice the next time they want to download something.

Doubt is a powerful tool. But in the end of the day there isn't much they are going to do against small time downloaders.

On a related topic I would pay for it if I could download Heroes, Battlestar Galactica and the other series I'm following off iTunes or something. But they block that via IP so that only US residents can buy them... so as a fan of the shows I have no choice but to pirate the stuff or wait more then a year till it gets released on DvD.

 

[psyco]

If it is specific, then you have either downloaded a 'sting' torrent that was seeded by someone like the MPAA as a way of gathering offending i.p. addresses or if utorrent doesn't have forced encryption enabled then your ISP has been snooping your p2p traffic and managed to see what you were downloading.

First thing first, open Utorrent, goto Options -> Preferences -> Then select Bittorent in the left pane -> You should see a box saying 'Protocol Encryption' -> set that to forced and click apply then ok.

Hence forth all your p2p traffic is encrypted, it might lower download speeds but you are safer. You should also consider setting the port Utorrent uses to a random number between 50000 and 60000, this makes it harder for your ISP to use traffic shaping on your connection and the encryption will stop them snooping at your data as it downloads.

Personally I would change ISP as soon as possible, at least that way you start with a clean record.

Oh and avoid regular use of PirateBay, the MPAA are targetting it bigtime at the moment and it is too much of a risk to use it everyday.

done it, ty...

but wouldn't the random port thing be an unsafe way to do things? cause it leaves you open to other hackers

tbh, from what i know i think its Microsoft's fault... as i download so much stuff its rather convenient that the only report i have got is Microsoft related, and they seem to be monitoring the site, don't think it has to much to do with my isp

I wouldn't worry about it too much.

I think they just achieved exactly what they wanted to achieve by sending out that email. They wanted to make you worry about it and maybe even spread this worry on a forum. Loads of people will read this thread and think twice the next time they want to download something.

Doubt is a powerful tool. But in the end of the day there isn't much they are going to do against small time downloaders.

On a related topic I would pay for it if I could download Heroes, Battlestar Galactica and the other series I'm following off iTunes or something. But they block that via IP so that only US residents can buy them... so as a fan of the shows I have no choice but to pirate the stuff or wait more then a year till it gets released on DvD.

i dont do 'worrying'... well arguably

about itunes, there's just ***** they need to be permanently disabled
see https://forums.freddyshouse.com/showthread.php?t=214398

 

[cHodAX]

but wouldn't the random port thing be an unsafe way to do things? cause it leaves you open to other hackers

No, by using a non-standard port you are less likely to be hit by people scanning ports and your ISP won't be as likely to notice it as much as the default ports most p2p software use.

 

[psyco]

No, by using a non-standard port you are less likely to be hit by people scanning ports and your ISP won't be as likely to notice it as much as the default ports most p2p software use.

dont you have to open the router ports though?

 

[psyco]

If it is specific, then you have either downloaded a 'sting' torrent that was seeded by someone like the MPAA as a way of gathering offending i.p. addresses or if utorrent doesn't have forced encryption enabled then your ISP has been snooping your p2p traffic and managed to see what you were downloading.

if it was a 'sting' then why was it a working torrent?

also, its not hard to just browse there listing to find witch are related to the company(i feel its the company's telling them to send out threats) as the 'police' still have access to the servers, so its not hard to request info
then reverse trace the ip and then tell the isp to warn me/you

 

[psyco]

nerf edit timers

im on pipex, you really think that they can be bothered tracking me?

and i do use torrents alot... so i hardly think that them picking up on that 1 specific torrent was a calculated move, and im sure it was someone else telling them

however, if im wrong should i send a threatening email telling that they breached DPA and ill take em to court over it, unless they ignore my ingoing and outgoing connections?

 

[psyco]

fuck sake edit timers again>.<

i thing we conclusively busted the DPA breach idea, right?

so, what isp should i change to?

 

[psyco]

err ok, so this peer guardian thing... currently its blocked almost a 100million ip's is that normal... seems a bit weird, dont you think?
and im still getting 100kb/s downloads... i dont get it:-/

geeze, im such a n00b, thought i was a 'good' pc user

 

[Afran]

nerf edit timers

im on pipex, you really think that they can be bothered tracking me?

and i do use torrents alot... so i hardly think that them picking up on that 1 specific torrent was a calculated move, and im sure it was someone else telling them

however, if im wrong should i send a threatening email telling that they breached DPA and ill take em to court over it, unless they ignore my ingoing and outgoing connections?

with pipex too, got loads of emails regarding torrents but just ignored them and now they go into junk folder pipex's a horrible isp, wont be with em much longer

 

[psyco]

grrr... im really obsessing about this... so much so that i cant sleep, and the funny thing is i know its all over nothing... and i realize that this is making me sound rather idiotic

but anyway, im bored.. so im going to type up a dialogue, witch is how i think emails like this occur(specifically regarding mine), in an attempt to clear my mind and settle me(oh dear what am i doing>.<)

-----------------------------------------------
*Microsoft turns on there pc's, after getting thousands of errors at start-up, they log onto piratebay*

voice of Microsoft shouts out "alright boys, lets go hunting! errr... i meen protecting our material and/or coding'

a distant voice shouts out "got one boss!"

voice of Microsoft replys with levels of enthusiasm like you've never seen "Ub3r! contact our friends at MPAA, and lets catch these suckers! fuck, i did it again, i meen protect our material and/or coding"

the office gimp waddles along the corridor to the only fully working windows operated machine, and sends a list to the MPAA of torrents they want logged

---several days elapse---

voice of Microsoft is found at his desk in a alcohol induced comma, only to be woken up by the sound of incoming email
*Ding! Ding!*
voice of Microsoft jumps up in joy, while the other monkeys stare in awe, once again Microsoft booms out "WE GOT MAIL!!!" a huge roar of joy comes from within the office "its a reply from the MPAA, we have our victims! damn and blast... did it again" a long silence fills the floor only to be broken by the sound of the voice of Microsoft typing, he types an email to the authorities, asking for a reverse trace on the list of ips he received from MPAA

---more days pass---

this time, the voice of Microsoft's addiction to alcohol is far more worse than before as a result, he died at his desk...
*Ding! Ding!*
due to the inactivity at the boss' desk a monkey, who from now on i shall call Bill, stands up and pokes the boss, with no responce he shouts out "I Bill now proclaim myself as CEO of Microsoft" there was much rejoicing(SP?)

we rejoin Bill and the gang, huddled around the only remaining PC in the office personally replying to EVERY single ISP with a list of relevant customers, telling to hack the customers involved brains to pieces

---much much much later, at Pipex HQ---

the CEO opens his emails, and is astonished to find a huge list of ips/customers to kill, he calls a meeting and announces "we have mail!.." "and on a less important note, we have been asked to kill our subscribers" the employers mouths drop, one brave man steps up and says "cant we just warn them, sir?" the CEO replys "yeh, why not, i cant be bothered to do it, you boy are promoted..." the CEO sits back down with no enthusiasm "now, all leave, i need to jack off to some porn witch i downloaded from the pirate bay"
the enthusiastic man(ex-CEO) organizes a perfect plan to distribute various emails to there customers warning them that Microsoft are in fact on drugs

fin.

-----------------------------------------------
sorry about the ending, i ran out, and i began to loose the will to live half way through

 

[cHodAX]

dont you have to open the router ports though?

No, you should be using port forwarding and hopefully your router has a built in firewall that uses a firewall to handle that port using SPI (stateful packet inspection) so even though the port is effectively open it is only forwarding the packets after inspecting them to make sure the packets aren't malicious. If your router doesn't have an SPI firewall and port forwarding (most do) then you should really be using a software firewall as well so that the software scans all the packets before passing them off to Utorrent.

More info can be found here...

http://www.homenethelp.com/router-guide/features-firewall.asp

 

[cHodAX]

if it was a 'sting' then why was it a working torrent?

also, its not hard to just browse there listing to find witch are related to the company(i feel its the company's telling them to send out threats) as the 'police' still have access to the servers, so its not hard to request info
then reverse trace the ip and then tell the isp to warn me/you

They are collecting i.p. addresses and there is no way to prove that it is a sting operation in a court of law unless you keep a full data transmission log of EVERYTHING you up and download, no one does that to be honest because the logs would be massive and it would serve little purpose apart from defending yourself legally. It has been going on for years and all the copyright people do is say that they kept a log of everyone who connected to the tracker for that torrent, it is a lie though because to get the i.p. address of everyone downloading the torrent it is much more effective to seed the file yourself and log the entire swarm of i.p. addresses leeching the files.

As for your second point, it isn't hard to trace you if you use a fixed i.p. address for your net connection but most people don't have that because it costs extra, instead the ISP uses NAT (name address translation) to share one i.p. address between multiple dynamic i.p. address users. If your ISP is using NAT then it is much harder to find out who the downloader was and requires the ISP to filter through many hours of logs, in that case they generally do not give into the demand unless legal action is forthcoming. If you are on a static i.p. your ISP can identify you easily and check the logs to see if the complaint is correct, if the complaint is that serious (multiple downloads of copyrighted material, or multiple warnings in the past) then they may well pass on details to the copyright companies even though they are legally not allowed to under the Data Protection Act. In all cases the copyright holder is supposed to obtain the information and logs by court order, alot of ISP's just crumble though and either warn the user themselves or really cave in and pass along the request information. When that happens you find yourself in a tight spot, you will either recieve an email from a lawyer representing the copyright holder that warns anymore copyright breaches will result in legal action or as is happening in America they will take legal action and sue for losses. If that happens you have no defence.

That is why you need to protect yourself, switch to non-standard port, change to an ISP who doesn't care what you download if you can and make sure your torrent program is using encryption on the data itself. Oh and steer clear of PB as much as you can, plenty of other sources if you look around.

Personally in your situation after being warned (is it the first time?) I would change ISP, alot of the smaller ones aren't really bothered about what you download until you start going over your usage caps. If you are in the U.K. I would recommend Aquiss, bit more expensive than most ISP's but you get some very nice off peak usage caps and the tech support people are diamonds. A mate of mine is a very heavy downloader and has been for over 2 years, he is with Plusnet and has never been warned but I did set his Utorrent and router up so he was a little safer than you were anyway.

 

[cHodAX]

err ok, so this peer guardian thing... currently its blocked almost a 100million ip's is that normal... seems a bit weird, dont you think?
and im still getting 100kb/s downloads... i dont get it:-/

geeze, im such a n00b, thought i was a 'good' pc user

It is blocking i.p. adresses commonly used by organistions like MPAA, RIAA, Microsoft, Sony and many others. This stops alot of these organistions in thier tracks but it isn't 100% coverage so you still need to be careful about what you download and where you download from as well as making sure your data is encrypted and your firewall is doing it's job properly. A good friend of mine who I played Prydwen with (Slainyou) got 3 warnings when he was on NTL for filesharing on Emule, basically he had left his share file full with all the files he had downloaded and had not disabled remote browsing of his share folder. The first warning came from NTL themselves, he didn't realise wht was happening and carried on until he got 2 legal warnings in the space of a week from copyright holders, he just didn't understand how they knew what he was downloading until I explained that they could see his entire download collection all because he didn't set Emule exactly as I had told him. Anyway, I sorted Emule out for him and tightend up his PC security. Since then no problems at all, he has switched ISP this year and effectively starts with a clean record.