I'm fully aware that torrenting stuff is illegal in USA and Canada (where I live) but do people often get fined and arrested? I've heard stories of some people even getting a criminal record and being sent to jail. The thing is, I've been torrenting for a while now and I'm actually scared that one day out of nowhere I might get in serious trouble. My compsci teacher said that since they can't arrest everyone that torrents, they just pick and choose and arrest whenever they get the chance. Has anyone here ever gotten in legal trouble for torrenting?
Edit: I forgot that you can torrent legal stuff but I'm talking about torrenting stuff like video games, movies, or computer software that should be paid for.
If you torrent video games, movies etc, then yes, it is illegal and you can get arrested.
But it's nicer here in the UK, you get these things called warnings, one warning is just to tell you to stop, a second one will either temporarily disable/limit internet usage, a third one I think you get your internet shut off altogether.
I don't know if it goes like that though, but I know you get warnings.
Exactly how it works in California at least.
Technically you are very unlikely to get in trouble for piracy unless you're a main distributor, the worst that will happen is that your isp will cut your service and you'll have to move to another one. People that distribute a lot of data though or do actual program cracking are much more likely to be targetted by government agencies.
It is possible to get into trouble, and they sometimes make examples out of people to try and scare others from pirating Though, it is likely a tiny fraction of the files being downloaded, so I would not worry about it. From what I've read, the punishment isn't that bad for movies anyways, (iirc) for the Hurt Locker, they fined people $2,000 for downloading the movie, no where close to the $250,000 FBI fee posted in the pre-show disclaimer. The worst that I read about was a college student getting fined $600 000 from record companies, at about $30 000 a song.
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Most people that even navigate to TPB are put on a watch list the same is happening with KAT.PH as well. Torrenting/P2P is legal. It just happens to be the easiest way to distribute illegal material.
Watching some of you guys act as if you know what is going on is pretty cute.
Might want to look at how an ISP actually monitors traffic, including deep packet sniffing among other things (such as giving specific IP addresses to specific house/apartment addresses that they think are of "high risk" or part of "high data usage" pools), before saying "you won't get caught" or "it's a miniscule chance".
Comcast recently had to triple their email server's capacity and power because they were sending out so many DMCA emails. And that is only the beginning.
Trust me, if you have torrented something copyrighted, they know about you. You are on a list with any personal details. The packet sniffing doesn't just look for P2P oh, no, it even looks through HTTP (which is a felony, but who cares they are the ISPs, they can do whatever they want apparently), emails, IM messages, among other things.
Once this 6 strikes plan goes into effect, they already have a long list of people who will be instantly cut off.
I also kind of just broke part of an NDA but they don't know who I am so it's cool. I don't even live in the city where I was at.
torrenting and p2p is not illegal, since it is just a way of sharing files. Pirating licensed material however is. When it comes to law it is wrong, but whether or not it is morally wrong is debatable. The fact is, people actually being "punished" for it is quite rare.
Trust me, if you have torrented something copyrighted, they know about you. You are on a list with any personal details. The packet sniffing doesn't just look for P2P oh, no, it even looks through HTTP (which is a felony, but who cares they are the ISPs, they can do whatever they want apparently), emails, IM messages, among other things.
You're going to have to have an actual source for this; right now the best I can gather is that you might have worked at an ISP; but that still is only one ISP, and it's mostly anecdotal.
As for my side: my ISP has trouble keeping their DNS servers up so I doubt they have the technical competence for any sort of monitoring.
Fm87, I highly doubt any residential ISP in the United States has the resources or budget to do deep packet inspection on the entirety of their networks. I'd also love to see some reputable sources about the email servers / IP address assignments.
“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.” — Albert Einstein
"Never try to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and it annoys the pig." — Robert Heinlein
In NZ we have a three strikes rule, which went into effect last august, so any illegal torrents that have happened after that have been looked at. Charges are only pressed if the copy right holder decides to push it, the first convictions are starting to roll in now.
There is also a clause in ours which basically says if the product is available for purchase for a comprable (sp) price as over seas then it is illegal to download.
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Opinions are like armpits. Everyone has one and some stink, now if someone says your armpits stink it isn't very polite to go rubbing it in their face, it isn't going to make them say yours doesn't stink it'll just make them dislike you and your armpit even more. Remember keep your armpits and opinions respectful.
You're going to have to have an actual source for this; right now the best I can gather is that you might have worked at an ISP; but that still is only one ISP, and it's mostly anecdotal.
Unfortunately nothing solid.
Relative works for an ISP a few cities over (one of the smaller ones owned by comcast) and has said lots of things, including many, many, many times ing at family gatherings when I talk to him about how "the [copyright] monitoring software they had us install is crap" and "sending weekly reports and gathering a list of IPs is a pain in the ass" since "it puts unnecessary strain on our hardware when they could easily monitor it themselves", as well as how most machines are running outdated software (Apparently an alarming number of servers run on RedHat 6) among other things. My favorite was probably the comment on how comcast puts their own people on hold when they call in about something, eg: If you called to quickly ask a network tech about a DNS problem you would first need to call their customer service line, dial a specific inside number, get forwarded to a CS rep, put on hold, then forwarded again to the network tech.
He is a networking and security specialist who worked for IBM until a few years ago (and worked for Bell Atlantic before then), so I am rather inclined to believe him. As farfetched as all this sounds, it feels pretty true when he ends up going on huge rants at family outings about specific things that everyone else there really has no idea what he is talking about.
Fm87, I highly doubt any residential ISP in the United States has the resources or budget to do deep packet inspection on the entirety of their networks. I'd also love to see some reputable sources about the email servers / IP address assignments.
wow, when did you change your name? (off topic so ill post something here that actually contributes in a couple of seconds)
Someone once counted on what the media industry claimed how many that are pirating their stuff, and compared it to the fines that people got. If you would count it all together, by the fines per movie/song, multiplied by the amount of downloads (according to the media industry), the total income the media industry would get if they'd sue everyone for every download, would be more money that even exists on earth.
Jesus christ that's a lot of money, like the media needs any more money to add to their millions/billions of dollars...
Fm87, I highly doubt any residential ISP in the United States has the resources or budget to do deep packet inspection on the entirety of their networks. I'd also love to see some reputable sources about the email servers / IP address assignments.
You've seen the internal documents from comcast last year, no?
They've been doing deep packet inspection for a long time now, though only if you are "flagged" (ex: broadcasting that you are seeding a public copyright infringing torrent that is being monitored).
Where do VPNs factor into this? I'm assuming they've found a way to bypass them.
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i5 4670k @ 4.9GHz - Stock Heatsink - The rest is melted silicon but I think I have a graphics card in there somewhere It surprises me how many people on this forum can't read benchmarks.
back to the original point though:
it is still mostly about "the content".
if you are off downloading movies and music and TV shows and similar, then yes, this is illegal and people may care.
likewise if it is pirated versions of various commercial software (say, Windows and MS Office), ...
if it is something like Fedora or Ubuntu, then it is generally fine, since after all, the original companies put the torrents up presumably with the intention that people will go download them. (likewise for a lot of other FOSS software).
similar may even go for some movies and similar, where some independent film-makers may do it in an attempt to gain more recognition or similar (they want people to see their movies). (granted, yes, many of these are typically low-budget movies that no one really wants to watch, like filmed out of their house using a tarp against a wall as a bluescreen type stuff, ...).
Relative works for an ISP a few cities over (one of the smaller ones owned by comcast) and has said lots of things, including many, many, many times ing at family gatherings when I talk to him about how "the [copyright] monitoring software they had us install is crap" and "sending weekly reports and gathering a list of IPs is a pain in the ass" since "it puts unnecessary strain on our hardware when they could easily monitor it themselves", as well as how most machines are running outdated software (Apparently an alarming number of servers run on RedHat 6) among other things. My favorite was probably the comment on how comcast puts their own people on hold when they call in about something, eg: If you called to quickly ask a network tech about a DNS problem you would first need to call their customer service line, dial a specific inside number, get forwarded to a CS rep, put on hold, then forwarded again to the network tech.
He is a networking and security specialist who worked for IBM until a few years ago (and worked for Bell Atlantic before then), so I am rather inclined to believe him. As farfetched as all this sounds, it feels pretty true when he ends up going on huge rants at family outings about specific things that everyone else there really has no idea what he is talking about.
They've been doing deep packet inspection for a long time now, though only if you are "flagged" (ex: broadcasting that you are seeding a public copyright infringing torrent that is being monitored).
Oh, flagged customers only? Yeah, I have to agree with you on that one. I thought you were saying they're doing it on their entire customer base.
“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.” — Albert Einstein
"Never try to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and it annoys the pig." — Robert Heinlein
Edit: I forgot that you can torrent legal stuff but I'm talking about torrenting stuff like video games, movies, or computer software that should be paid for.
In a lot of place buying a gun is perfectly legal if you follow the right steps.
If you rob a bank with that gun it stops being legal, same thing with torrents.
E.g. Its usually the content that is the problem not the method of transfer.
Exactly how it works in California at least.
Technically you are very unlikely to get in trouble for piracy unless you're a main distributor, the worst that will happen is that your isp will cut your service and you'll have to move to another one. People that distribute a lot of data though or do actual program cracking are much more likely to be targetted by government agencies.
It's not as bad as people make it out to be.
Protip: usenet
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Might want to look at how an ISP actually monitors traffic, including deep packet sniffing among other things (such as giving specific IP addresses to specific house/apartment addresses that they think are of "high risk" or part of "high data usage" pools), before saying "you won't get caught" or "it's a miniscule chance".
Comcast recently had to triple their email server's capacity and power because they were sending out so many DMCA emails. And that is only the beginning.
Trust me, if you have torrented something copyrighted, they know about you. You are on a list with any personal details. The packet sniffing doesn't just look for P2P oh, no, it even looks through HTTP (which is a felony, but who cares they are the ISPs, they can do whatever they want apparently), emails, IM messages, among other things.
Once this 6 strikes plan goes into effect, they already have a long list of people who will be instantly cut off.
I also kind of just broke part of an NDA but they don't know who I am so it's cool. I don't even live in the city where I was at.
torrenting and p2p is not illegal, since it is just a way of sharing files. Pirating licensed material however is. When it comes to law it is wrong, but whether or not it is morally wrong is debatable. The fact is, people actually being "punished" for it is quite rare.
You're going to have to have an actual source for this; right now the best I can gather is that you might have worked at an ISP; but that still is only one ISP, and it's mostly anecdotal.
As for my side: my ISP has trouble keeping their DNS servers up so I doubt they have the technical competence for any sort of monitoring.
"Never try to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and it annoys the pig." — Robert Heinlein
There is also a clause in ours which basically says if the product is available for purchase for a comprable (sp) price as over seas then it is illegal to download.
Relative works for an ISP a few cities over (one of the smaller ones owned by comcast) and has said lots of things, including many, many, many times ing at family gatherings when I talk to him about how "the [copyright] monitoring software they had us install is crap" and "sending weekly reports and gathering a list of IPs is a pain in the ass" since "it puts unnecessary strain on our hardware when they could easily monitor it themselves", as well as how most machines are running outdated software (Apparently an alarming number of servers run on RedHat 6) among other things. My favorite was probably the comment on how comcast puts their own people on hold when they call in about something, eg: If you called to quickly ask a network tech about a DNS problem you would first need to call their customer service line, dial a specific inside number, get forwarded to a CS rep, put on hold, then forwarded again to the network tech.
He is a networking and security specialist who worked for IBM until a few years ago (and worked for Bell Atlantic before then), so I am rather inclined to believe him. As farfetched as all this sounds, it feels pretty true when he ends up going on huge rants at family outings about specific things that everyone else there really has no idea what he is talking about.
They've been doing deep packet inspection for a long time now, though only if you are "flagged" (ex: broadcasting that you are seeding a public copyright infringing torrent that is being monitored).
It surprises me how many people on this forum can't read benchmarks.
If ANYONE, ISP, government, ANYONE found a way to bypass a VPN easily a large majority of the world would be royally screwed.
Banks, ATMs, among other things use VPNs, if they were easily broken into we would have a literal code red on our hands.
it is still mostly about "the content".
if you are off downloading movies and music and TV shows and similar, then yes, this is illegal and people may care.
likewise if it is pirated versions of various commercial software (say, Windows and MS Office), ...
if it is something like Fedora or Ubuntu, then it is generally fine, since after all, the original companies put the torrents up presumably with the intention that people will go download them. (likewise for a lot of other FOSS software).
similar may even go for some movies and similar, where some independent film-makers may do it in an attempt to gain more recognition or similar (they want people to see their movies). (granted, yes, many of these are typically low-budget movies that no one really wants to watch, like filmed out of their house using a tarp against a wall as a bluescreen type stuff, ...).
but, yeah....
a lot depends.
Thanks.
Shortly after being promoted.
Nope, link?
Oh, flagged customers only? Yeah, I have to agree with you on that one. I thought you were saying they're doing it on their entire customer base.
If it's encrypted and you've set your torrent client to disconnect if the VPN goes down, nope, they can't bypass them.
"Never try to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and it annoys the pig." — Robert Heinlein