It feels dirty to agree with an ISP on something. But even the worst corporations are on the right side of something from time to time I suppose.
Internet shutoffs should require a court order. Not some emails that are “this person did a bad 🥺🥺🥺 no proof but can you please take our word for it 🥺🥺🥺🥺”
Internet shutoffs shouldn’t be a thing, outside of non-payment or legitimate abuse. If I do something illegal, they should have to sue me, not shut off my internet.
Yeah, they don’t disconnect a criminals phone service because they committed a crime and made a phone call. It makes no damned sense.
Only happens as a matter by court order and is a limit on the person not on the corporations. Though if found out after by the court it can be ordered terminated. And you will face further punishment.
government.They are responsible for their own tos
Piracy almost certainly violates their TOS
Actually, that’s been done several times over the decades. As well as banning computer access. The guy caught hacking into the fbi gets his mouse and keyboard taken away.
Maybe not a court order. But I could get behind a process similar to other utilities where you have months or warning and paperwork.
If you do something illegal, you should be arrested.
Copyright infringement lawsuits are a far cry from bomb threats or the like.
Not everything that is illegal is punishable by arrest
Yeah, I’ve been ticketed for speeding, and that certainly doesn’t come with the threat of arrest unless I’m driving super recklessly or something (but that’s a different offense altogether).
So you’re saying copyright infringement is on par with speeding or parking past the meter’s end? Eh, fair enough.
Honestly it is less severe than speeding. Copyright was an invention of the pre-digital era. Now that we all use computers, so many things we do every day are technically copyright infringement that it is absurd to even have these kinds of conversations.
I was just pointing out a logical fallacy. It’s literally impossible to do the thing you said.
This is just facts, they aren’t an opinion
Did you reply to the wrong comment?
I did not
I had to process these requests at a company I used to work for. They do send “proof” (proof in quotes because you have to believe in good faith they didn’t just make it up, which I have to believe they didn’t).
We never shut anyone off though. We worked with business exclusively and only ever sent “scary” letters. Though we had one client that was a major music venue (a very known venue that’s pretty famous) who would get these letters all the time. The irony was too much for me. I ended up calling them personally most of the time because it was too funny.
I remember getting a scary letter because I was torrenting. I thought it so funny because I had to the only person in the world only torrenting freeaoftwarr and public domain works.
Wait then what was it for?
They don’t give a shit about targeting accusations only towards people torrenting copyrighted stuff. Why would they? They have no consequences for being incorrect.
They are doing this automatically. They just grab all the magnet links they can find and target any IP they connect to, regardless of the content.
They have no consequences for being incorrect.
Which is why the DMCA shit is also bullshit.
Multiple false claims should result in you being banned from making future claims.
Add increasing penalties to that.
That’s not how it would work for us. We’d receive a report from the MPAA/RIAA that showed the torrent they were downloading, the IP address involved, if they were seeding or leeching and an affidavit saying that all the information was correct to the best of their knowledge.
The letter we sent basically was a notification that we received that letter (with a copy) and that if we received two more for the same IP (three in total) we would have to release their information to the reporting body and that they could be open to legal action. It also included some information on how to secure their network and check for viruses in case that was the cause.
In my 15 years working there, we never once released information about a client. Because this was business accounts, most clients had multiple IPs (at least a /29) and would cycle what IPs they showed up as on the public Internet to keep them from getting multiple notices on the same IP. The music venue I mentioned had an entire /24.
I’ve never gotten a scary letter, and I’ve certainly torrented my fair share of stuff, both legal and otherwise.
The trick, I think, is to not use cable. I’ve had municipal fiber, Google fiber, DSL, and small local ISP (RJ45 hookup at the wall), and never once had an issue. The last one is probably annoyed at me because I tend to submit tickets and call them within a few minutes of my service going down (happens once/month or so). It’s extra funny when they ask me to check my wifi settings on my router, and I tell them my router doesn’t have wifi (it’s a Mikrotik router, my AP is separate), and that my wifi is absolutely fine, it’s the uplink that’s busted (i.e. I can access all the stuff on my NAS).
I made a promise to myself that once I left the house, I’d never get cable. And that’s a promise I’ve kept across multiple apartments and now my house. We’re finally getting muni fiber, so I’m pretty excited.
It’s more likely you aren’t using popular freely indexable trackers on currently airing popular media.
Try torrenting a current episode of a top 10 watched show within a week of release and see how fast you get one lol.
Yeah, I generally only torrent older media (like a few years old).
I don’t pirate these days, but when I did (and was stupid about it) the emails/letters had pretty exact evidence.
They included the name of the work, my WAN IP address at the time, and the amount of data transferred (uploaded) out from it.
This was in the US and I’m unaware of how such notices work in other countries that work similarly.
That’s all they can get though they have no proof it was actually you and not someone else using your Internet, how they find out is they join the public trackers and just log everyone in it generally even without a VPN on private trackers they have no idea what you are doing
I think their goal is to tie the evidence to the ISP account, not necessarily name exactly who was pirating that work.
Critical support
They’re 100% only doing this for money, but still, nice to see them in the right for once.
A lot of it is the sheer bureaucracy of chasing down actual pirates and weeding them from people who just happen to be on the same IP address.
If one guy visiting an apartment block downloads a torrent from a public connection, what is ATT supposed to do? Shut down Internet to the entire building?
This is an undue burden for ISPs, even if the content isn’t living in a gray zone of legality.
… IP addresses are assigned to modems… They don’t assign IP addresses to… Cables going to buildings I guess lol but ok.
And if you’re in some fucked up place that has the entire apartment complex’s internet going to one modem, then God save your soul.
I don’t know why you’re being downvoted for this. Even with CGNAT and related technologies, each modem still has a unique MAC address at the cable/DOCSIS level (even without loading Ethernet on top).
Where you could be wrong is buildings with large networks, say an apartment building with wired Ethernet to all the units but all being routed through the same WAN(s), but even still I’d hope that the network is managed in a way that it’s not hard to tell which unit is which IP internally. Unrelated but I’d also pray that each unit is on its own VLAN for security.
There are some apartment buildings with shared Internet connections that are just open and public; It’s crappy but cheap if someone can’t afford individual connection
Personally I’d die for Ethernet straight into my unit, I had that once in a new building and it was fantastic (though you still had to pay an ISP individually), if only to avoid cable modems and the like. My current cable ISP wouldn’t provision IPv6 to their very own (old, clunky) modem so I had to go out and buy one that doesn’t care whether or not it’s provisioned.
Some apartments double nat
Yeah IP owners really want to have all the benefits of ownership with none of the drawbacks. After lobbying for and receiving a blank check to be able to rent seek indefinitely, they are constantly acting to outsource any cost of detection and enforcement of “their” property. Disgusting how goddamn entitled they are.
this is why everyone should pirate literally anything they can, even if they don’t particularly want it.
er, with a few very gross exceptions that shouldn’t exist.
I guess even a broken clock is right twice a day.
something something broken clock
If you disconnect them you can charge them fees
Ohh for sure, they know that if they get rid of the pirates, they’d lose half their customer base and will struggle to pay the CEOs bonus.
Sometimes people do the right thing for the wrong reasons.
Something something broken clock
Task failed successfully.
or achieved unsuccessfully?
i cant decide
This is capitalism 101: whatever makes the most money is what they support. It doesn’t matter who is hurt (or not hurt), or what is right/wrong. As long as they can make more money than they are losing by lawsuits, they will keep doing this. If they can avoid doing anything at all and not get sued while getting paid by customers, that’s even better.
Why should ISP lose revenue enforcing laws for another corpos benefit?
If media industry was serious, they should pay for it 🫢
Their game is just to try to make the ISPs liable; they don’t actually want it enforced. In fact, failure to enforce is the feature. They paint the ISP as complicit in the piracy then sue the ISP for hundreds of millions in damages hoping for a no-fault settlement. That’s a much better revenue stream than suing someone for 10k who can’t pay it.
There is a lesson in here about decentralization here folks 🫢
The ISPs? doing something nice?? for the customers???
Shit, I must have slipped into the wrong timeline or somethingIt’s less work and cost for them if they don’t have to do this.
iiNet in Australia used to fight for their users’ privacy until they eventually sold out.
Nope, they just don’t wanna be bothered. But if it’s a win it’s a win.
It means they can fire the one guy that sends the angry letters and get rid of a printer.
Don’t wanna be bothered/Don’t wanna lose that sweet, sweet monthly
It’s without a doubt motivated by their own loss of revenue but a consumer friendly take is still commendable
ISPs can’t take your money if they cut off your internet
Fuck the dmca!
I’ve heard it’s quite fun to stay there
This is less than interesting.
ISPs don’t want to cut off their income here. I’m certain they have a very good idea of how many of their customers, especially those paying for higher tier plans, are either getting constant DMCA requests, or have a persistent connection to a VPN service. They have a good idea of how much money they’re making from people pirating content, so this position for them is hardly surprising.
At the same time, I’d rather they fight with the copyright trolls than me. Regardless of the reason for why they’re doing it, it’s a good thing to fight for.
IMO, they shouldn’t be responsible for this because they’re not tasked with enforcing laws. They must abide by them, and they have a legal, or at least, moral obligation to report any felonies/crimes that they’re aware of (with varying degrees of obligation depending on the severity of the crime. Eg, I’m less bothered if they don’t report, say, piracy, than I would be if they don’t report CP/murder/violent crimes, etc).
If the LEO’s want a service cut off for a good reason, then let them get a court order for it. They should not be obligated by law to enforce such laws. Any enforcement should be handled by an independent organization, and be filtered through the court system as a check/balance for the whole cabal. They shouldn’t be forced to both find and enforce infractions. Reporting suspected infractions, maybe. Forwarding legal requests to customers, sure (like DMCA notices). Oblige disconnect requests from law enforcement by request (when confirmed necessary by courts in the presence of reasonable evidence), absolutely.
But having the ISPs do all that themselves with little oversight, is both a danger to their clients, to their liability, and to the public at large, mainly in the context of free speech. The ISP is just the middle man, the messenger. They don’t host the content, nor should they police it, or the access you can get to it. I’m all for collaboration in the interest of enforcing the law, but putting the entire obligation on the ISP seems foolish to me.
Cyber crimes is one area of law enforcement that I don’t think should be defunded. It may be that ACAB, but those doing the investigative work, away from public interaction (and possible abuse), are not the root of the problem there.
I dunno, just my opinion man.
those doing the investigative work, away from public interaction (and possible abuse), are not the root of the problem there
They’re the root of privacy problems, which is a non-trivial issue for many of us.
I’m not sure how real companies handle this, but I can share what we did in a student organization at my university that provided internet to its members.
Not only could we monitor who was downloading a lot of data, but we also received emails from legal organizations informing us that a specific IP in our network(All members had a public IP) had downloaded copyrighted content. They would ask us to disconnect that user. These emails typically came with an XML file attached, filled with legal information and details about the content being downloaded, often including the exact torrent filename.
We built a system that would automatically parse the XML and forward the email to the user responsible. The subject line may or may not have been “Use a VPN, you idiot!” at some point.
We also maintained a “high score” list to track what was trending. The last time I checked, Rick and Morty was in the top 3, but that was a while ago.
So I’ve rented a server for years. It’s in the US and it’s a couple bucks a month. It’s fun to play with and I use it however I want. I’ve had an email server, a next cloud instance, and an open VPN instance to name a few things on it. Well I decided to connect a torrent client from my home to the openvpn instance on my server to see if I could do it. It worked really well until the company I rent from forwarded the DMCA hit back to me for downloading Rick and Morty. I should’ve known better but I thought a nameless faceless server farm wouldn’t be worth the hassle of a DMCA but I was wrong.
Pretty much all cloud providers monitor their servers for piracy and malware distribution/downloads.
whispers quietly in your ear: “Usenet”
Use…net? Buddy, we’re ALL using the net right now!
Lol, I’ve been on that train for a decade. I just wanted to try using my own personal VPN server to torrent which kinda defeats the purpose of a VPN I guess.
You chose the wrong provider lol
you paid for that with an identity attached im guessing, i’m not really sure what else you expected to be honest.
Cox Communications being the ISP for the customers.
You will not ever, ever see Verizon, Comcast, Spectrum .etc doing this. They would happily snip your internet access and leave you high and dry.
Cox, the same company that would send me emails and cut my internet when I tried to torrent years ago 😂
Probably cause you’ve never heard of this thing called VPN.
Feels great not having to pay to pirate.
I work for Spectrum. I cannot officially speak for the company, of course, but…We don’t want to be doing this shit, either. We give people 12 strikes. First 4 I just a notice, next 4 is modem quarantine until notice is acknowledged, next 4 we also sent snail mail, with the last one being a 1 year suspension. Anyway, I worked in repair for 5 years. Not a single person at any level gave a crap. Sups, managers, VP’s. “We give them 11 chances to figure out they should use a VPN” was the common attitude. All these warnings and man-hours taking calls and dealing with unblocking modems is a waste of time and money.
I’m going to have to slightly disagree with you here. Yes I know, I’m disagreeing with someone who actually works with the company. Based on pirate experience that I’ve noted over the years on Reddit’s piracy subreddit, what I’ve read on TorrentFreak for the first 9 or so years I’ve been reading it off and on and vice versa. Spectrum falls under the category of an ISP to be wary of.
I was going to say that Time Warner also owned them, however, it’s actually the opposite. And now I’m knowing that Time Warner Cable isn’t really much of a thing anymore. But before it’s demise, pirates had been wary of it’s existence because of Time Warner’s relentlessness of targeting piracy.
I’m going to guess that maybe the reason you’re saying all of these warnings is probably because there having been that shift in control. But I do recall that Charter/TW was not to be trifled with.
Think it’s because they know the people pirating are the people paying for unlimited?
It’s becoming impossible to monitor. I have 5G Broadband Internet and I share a public IP address with everyone in my area. I look at https://iknowwhatyoudownload.com and it shows thousands of torrents that my neighbors have pulled downloaded.
What is this site? It feels like it’s a tool for anti-privacy copyright narcs. A domain it links to is “antitor.com.”
Especially since it specifically highlights porn in a different color, it labeled my VPN IP as “Likes Porn”.
Weird… I looked up the IP for my church group’s forum and it said the same thing.
I use proton VPN for torrenting. It doesn’t show I’ve downloaded anything. I think that means my VPN is working? 😅
Wow it actually knew 5 of the 50 torrents I downloaded recently
Didn’t find anything from me… Then again I’m using a private tracker, which should insulate me from that. (Random people knowing, the ISP probs does know… But I don’t think they care)
I didn’t find anything from me either. Since I’m using Alldebrid to download torrents. It’s a torrent cache that downloads the torrents to their own server and then you can download directly from those servers at high speed. And most of the time the files are already cached so you can download immediately.
Oh another cool site for my bookmarks.
Even a broken 12-hr analog clock is right twice a day
I love how you have to specify analog clock
If a one handed monkey claps in a forest, can anyone hear the tree falling on a lawyer?
Small ISPs have zero interest in enforcing piracy. They don’t want to lose the customers on their highest tiers. Comcast though, they suck
enforcing piracy
NOTICE
YOU HAVE NOT MET YOUR MONTHLY PIRACY QUOTA
YOU WILL BE TERMINATED,
THANKS.
This is actually how private trackers operate lol, I got banned from one because I forgot to torrent anything in over 3 months since I was playing a huge game during that time.
Absolutely the correct stance, nothing dirty about it. At this point, for better and for worse, the Internet is a basic necessity. Imagine having your water turned off because you threw water balloons at your neighbour.
Not water baloons, but some companies will cut off your water if you’re sharing it with a neighbor. (especially if that neighbor had their water cut off for not paying a bill)
Garbage collection services dislike when people throw their garbage in neighbor’s cans even when the neighbor is paying for the larger can (e.g. the disposal volume being used). This has led to some garbage distribution piracy alongside recycling collection crews.
In case you wanted some cyberpunk dystopia in your cyberpunk dystopia.
Wow, that’s really odd. My garbage company doesn’t care what I do with my or anyone else’s can. I can even set mine on my side of the street, and as soon as it empties, refill it and move it across the street (there’s like a 15 min gap between them), and they literally don’t care. I also overfill it fairly often, and again, they don’t care. As long as the truck can pick it up and dump it, they’re happy.
Where does the cyberpunk come into play with the garbage bins?
Neon lights and vaporwave when you open the lid. It’s the bees knees.
Two ways.
The outer layer is the ad-hoc (often underground or criminal) system that serves to rectify a problem caused by the unjust rules of the legitimate system, in this case, refuse pirates who match overflow to underused capacity.
The inner layer comes from service to the community becoming punk when the mainstream becomes destructive. When recycling bandits start redistributing garbage they go from being commensal with their neighborhood (causing some noise pollution and some additional mess) to mutualist (providing a service to the neighborhood they scavenge).
I appreciate the explanation, but I don’t think I follow what that has to do with cyberpunk.
Wikipedia describes cyberpunk as “futuristic technological and scientific achievements, such as artificial intelligence and cyberware, juxtaposed with societal collapse, dystopia or decay”.
I understand the relation to dystopia, and even your comparison to the punk movement, but I don’t get the cyberpunk comparison, lol
If you move them wrong they start flying around the street at an ever increasing speed.
That’s Cyberpunk: 2077, not cyberpunk, lol
Which is absolutely ridiculous since you are paying for the water that you are sharing.
I know you know this but it bears saying explicitly: it’s because pretty much all laws are out there to enforce property first. Humanity is secondary. We all know implicitly that it’s not illegal to share your water because it’s unethical. It is illegal because making it illegal protects the water company’s profits, humanity be damned.
We all know implicitly that it’s not illegal to share your water because it’s unethical. It is illegal because making it illegal protects the water company’s profits, humanity be damned.
it’s perfectly ethical, unless i’m stealing the water, they’re using the same water i’m using and that means i’m paying for it. It’s literally not a problem.
It might cut flat charges but, get fucked.
I think you misinterpreted, because you two are saying the same thing. It is ethical to share. Therefore, it has not been made illegal for being unethical (because it is ethical), it has been made illegal to protect profits.
oh i think the phrasing just confused me lmao
How though? If you’re using extra water to share with your neighbor, and YOU still pay your water bill, they still get extra money for extra usage, right? It just comes from your wallet rather than your neighbors.
Because your sharing your water with them disincentivizes their paying their bill.
Extrapolating on this, if you could legally share your water with the neighborhood couldn’t an enterprising person with a zeriscaped yard sell their water to a thirsty lawned neighbor? That’s money the water company considers theirs
For sure. Even when it isn’t a law the same outcome happens when corporations get the police to enforce their policies.
Or Nestle asked your water utility to disconnect your service because you’re drinking free water instead of purchasing theirs. Not a direct correlation but closer.
Free water? Where do you live? Here I have to pay for that. 🤣
I mean, municipal water most places isn’t free, but for drinking water it’s effectively free.
Well water is a thing
I’ve had those things before. But there is maintenance and power to factor in; so not entirely free.
Power yea maintenance not really been running the same pump for my house for almost 2 decades now
Imagine having your water turned off because you threw water balloons at your neighbour.
gasp!
I do that ALL THE TIME!!!
I was thinking, imagine the media companies demand the power company turn off your power because you downloaded a pirated movie. Or gas stations stop selling gas to you because you speed.
