3 piracy warnings in 2 days...wtf

[stackrainer]

Step one is to ask your ISP for the proof you have been involved in Piracy. Make them get specific with the dates and times as well as the supposed pirated material. While you are waiting for step one change your wireless password and check to make sure none of your machines have any kind of torrent client installed. (Could be an old file getting pirated by others off your machine without you realizing it.)<BR><BR>Once you have the data from the ISP then compare with your computer usage and the files. This will let you know if someone is hacking your network. <BR><BR>Contact the ISP, explain what you found for the issue and what steps you have taken to resolve this matter for the future. As for the permenant putti8ng this on, that does not sound right, most ISPS expunge the record after one year with no issues. If you give me the ISP's contact info, I do not need your info, I will call them as a reporter and see if I can get what thier policies are for you in case they are not making them clear to you.

heres the number I call. It just redirects me to one of their tech places. 1620-442-2280

[stackrainer]

Have you requested the details on each of the four instances they have accused you of pirating before? That may give you an idea of how and who has reported your IP address for pirating. Was it an AP2P, was it Cox themselves? Were the warnings for downloading, uploading or both?

 

In the past when you were "pirating", did you take any precautionary measures such as changing your default sharing port, using an app such as Peerblock, or going through a Proxy server? Or were you just plugging along totally un-shielded?

 

How did Cox warn you? Via email, a written notification in the mail or some ridiculous GUI popup?

 

If I were you I would want to know the exact dates the supposed infractions occurred and compare that to the date you received the warnings. I don't understand how they can go back through months of data records and then start issuing consecutive warnings for those offenses without first giving you the opportunity to cease and desist in the first place.

 

If it's any comfort, I'm on Cox too and started reading up on their AP efforts sometime in late '08 or early '09 and (at least accordingly to their publicly released statistics at the time) the number of customers they actually permanently disconnected from service was really small (less that 1% if I remember correctly).

1. No i havent but they send me the exact details by email evertime I get caught. It was the companies that owned the matterial that sent an email to cox. and cox sent a letter to me with the companies email attached. and the warnings were for distribution.

 

2. I was pretty much un-shielded if thats what you want to call it.

 

3.Email

[Muchoman1]

i thought only england had anti piracy laws like that.

 

here in australia as long as you dont go selling what you download noone really cares

[Tjj226_Angel]

i thought only england had anti piracy laws like that.

 

here in australia as long as you dont go selling what you download noone really cares

 

Technically as long as you download from the piratebay.org no one really cares, it is only when you seed that the internet companies catch on.

 

The other thing is that it is not the government that is cutting off his internet, but rather the internet company.

 

To me it is all very stupid. Pirating really isn't hurting anyone. That is just the bottom line. Sorry, but bill gates is already throwing his money away simply because he can not spend it all. When the guy is throwing money away (I am referring to his donation organization that he and his wife established that literally throws money at anything that can be considered tax deductible) then I think it is time to just take advantage of his generosity. And seriously game pirating? How many games have we downloaded and dogged a 60 dollar bullet? To me I am glad I torrented skyrim. It was not worth 60 bucks due to all the freaking patches you have to install just to get the game to work right. My friend right now is having difficulty getting some guy to TALK. SERIOUSLY?????? 60 bucks for a game and one of the freaking characters can't TALK???? And god knows that we need to pirate from EA as much as possible to drive their company into a BIG ditch so the gaming world can rid itself of that cancer.

 

ANYWAYS................ just to be on the safe side with this situation, I would delete ALL the torrented files, clean out off of the internet history (I only say that because you said that you think they are using your old internet history. I know it won't do much of anything, but I am just really anal about doing anything and everything possible). Just do that in addition to Computer Ed's crusade.

[wevsspot]

also cox is a horrible ISP, I would switch on principle alone.

Many of us live n areas where there is only one maybe two internet service providers. Out where I live for years I was stuck with dial up. Finally our small regional phone company was bought by CenturyTel and we finally got DSL. That was a big upgrade, but not nearly what I wanted. Finally Cox brought cable out our way and I was able to get "real" internet. I've been very very happy with my Cox internet service.

[wevsspot]

To me it is all very stupid. Pirating really isn't hurting anyone. That is just the bottom line. Sorry, but bill gates is already throwing his money away simply because he can not spend it all. When the guy is throwing money away (I am referring to his donation organization that he and his wife established that literally throws money at anything that can be considered tax deductible) then I think it is time to just take advantage of his generosity. And seriously game pirating? How many games have we downloaded and dogged a 60 dollar bullet? To me I am glad I torrented skyrim. It was not worth 60 bucks due to all the freaking patches you have to install just to get the game to work right. My friend right now is having difficulty getting some guy to TALK. SERIOUSLY?????? 60 bucks for a game and one of the freaking characters can't TALK???? And god knows that we need to pirate from EA as much as possible to drive their company into a BIG ditch so the gaming world can rid itself of that cancer.

Tj - I think you really got derailed here (respectfully speaking of course). And please be careful about admitting to piracy. I think we all know that many of us "may have" pirated stuff or may still be doing so, but I wouldn't be so careless as to as openly admit it.

[Krieg1337]

NVM

Edited May 20, 2012 by Krieg1337

[fire_storm]

I'm not a legal expert but this is what I have learned over the years.

 

When you get warning letters it's usually not just from your ISP.

 

Typically what happens is the music, video, and software companies hire special companies to track down pirates. What these companies typically do is they join bit torrent sessions or other types of download services and try to connect to you. Once they connect to you they record your IP address and then send a complaint to your ISP which looks up the IP address to find who on there network owns it and then forwards the warning letter to you. After a certain number of warnings typically your ISP cuts your service also the company that sent those warning letters may take legal action against you.

 

There are usually two different types of copyright infringement letters that get sent.

 

A warning letter which basically say's you've been caught downloading copyright files and if you don't stop legal action may be taken against you.

 

A court order letter which says that the company that owns the copyrighted material has already gone to court and the court has issued a subpoena that is requesting that your isp hand over information that will identify you and you have a certain amount of days to challenge this subpoena or your information will be turned over and then the company that's going after you can take legal action against you.

 

The best way to avoid these problems is to stop downloading.

 

All the other stuff that people usually suggest like saying someone else is using your wireless internet doesn't usually work because typically the internet subscriber is suppose to be responsible for what happens on the internet connection although in recent years this statement has been challenged in court.

 

Doing other things like erasing hard drives can be seen as obstruction of justice or cause other problems.

[wevsspot]

If you live in the US, don't share or upload copyright protected material via public P2P period. Problem solved. And, while I wouldn't erase a hard drive that might be part or party to a legal proceeding - not much they can do if the hard drive "goes bad" and you destroy it for recycling purposes.

[VaporX]

Okay sent some time this morning on with the Cox corporate offices. The question I asked was what criteria of proof had to be presented to Cox in order for them to send out a warning. Now I identified myself up front as well as the show and explained that I was doing show research and was take notes, not recording the call. They were happy to talk to me until I asked the specific question as I stated above. They then explained that I needed to be transferred and so up the food chain I went. I went from the base caller to an unknown position, to his supervisor, to his supervisor, to another unknown position, to that woman's supervisor and was then met with the person telling me before I could speak that they had no comment on this matter and I was hung up on.

 

So I cannot speak to Cox's position on this because they literally ducked the question. I can however say that when I put the same question to our local IPS, Mediacom, I was directed within about 3 transfers to a corporate lawyer who told me bluntly that the only proof they needed was an affidavit from the person accusing the user of piracy. Now here is the kicker, this affidavit was not even accusing a person but an IP address and the provider determined the user. NO proof beyond the word of the accuser was required.

 

I am willing to lay money that this is the same policy at all ISPs. The only way to be safe from this is to not pirate but even that is not safe since someone could spoof using your IP address or steal your Wi-Fi signal. Once this becomes a court case of a user suing an ISP THEN we will see this change but until then I expect this will stand as is.

 

 

 

[Master Binky]

ISPs in general have just bent over to any media corporations, and won't require anything more than accusation by now. In many of the proposed laws and policies it is simply stated that all it requires is the accusation and then if the accuser is wrong they'll handle that later separately (which rarely happens). For ISPs it is simply the smartest business move, it is the least impactful to their bottom line which is why most reported disconnections are less than 1%.

 

The whole thing when you look at it without the moral implications, it is a scam with the lawyers as the con artists. They are factually the only group that benefits from any of it. It’s almost comical, they have media companies believing this will help them, when it is empirically proven that it does not. They have gotten the ISPs to stop fighting, and those that do just keep the lawyers employed so it isn't like the lawyers are bothered either way. And as long as there are end users, pirates don't even have to exist or be caught to keep the media companies’ scape goat for everything that is wrong in their world.

[Forte]

+1 MJCRO lol but I have no idea if you can take it to court i would talk to a lawyer about that.