American ISPs to launch massive copyright spying scheme on //DELAYED//

/warning/


“If you’re a fan of downloading pirates software, games, music or movies, you may already be under the watchful eye of your own ISP. On July 12th, many ISPs in the US will start actively spying on your network traffic for acts of piracy, so just a heads up.

If you download potentially copyrighted software, videos or music, your Internet service provider (ISP) has been watching, and they’re coming for you.

That’s the date when the nation’s largest ISPs will all voluntarily implement a new anti-piracy plan that will engage network operators in the largest digital spying scheme in history, and see some users’ bandwidth completely cut off until they sign an agreement saying they will not download copyrighted materials.

The content industries calls this scheme a “graduated response” plan, which will see Time Warner Cable, Cablevision, Comcast, Verizon, AT&T and others spying on users’ Internet activities and watching for potential copyright infringement. Users who are “caught” infringing on a creator’s protected work can then be interrupted with a notice that piracy is forbidden by law and carries penalties of up to $150,000 per infringement, requiring the user to click through saying they understand the consequences before bandwidth is restored, and they could still be subject to copyright infringement lawsuits.

Participating ISPs have a range of options for dealing with customers who continue to pirate media, at that point: They can require that an alleged repeat offender undergo an educational course before their service is restored. They can utilize multiple warnings, restrict access to only certain major websites like Google, Facebook or a list of the top 200 sites going, reduce someone’s bandwidth to practically nothing and even share information on repeat offenders with competing ISPs, effectively creating a sort of Internet blacklist — although publicly, none of the network operators have agreed to “terminate” a customer’s service."

http://www.democraticunderground.com/101475500

oh.my.fuck.

I read about this a few weeks ago ._. It's ridiculous

Fuuuuuck. Thanks for the heads up I guess :/ Ugh wonder how serious this is going to be or if this is just a scare. SOPA, this, the bill in Europe recently voted on, wtf

and it' stupid how they would go to all lengths to make it inconvenient for you but won't terminate the service because obviously they're interested in retaining the profit they're making. So sketch on all aspects ugh.

Oh wow that's fucked up, thanks for posting this though. I haven't heard about this specifically. My bf doesn't think anything will come about with this since they've been talking about doing stuff like this for years but I might be more cautious >_>

I WILL BREAK THE LAWS

Does this mean that previously copyright infringements will come to light and I will have to pay the price or just from July 12th onward if I'm caught it's now reached code red seriousness? Also I don't see how ISP directly relates to a specific person committing a crime. Especially since anyone could be using my computer and that ISPs can be changed (wait they can be changed right? pretty sure you can change them). So would the punishment fall unto however is the account holder for the internet? The kitten of the house(or wo-kitten)?

Does this mean that previously copyright infringements will come to light and I will have to pay the price or just from July 12th onward if I'm caught it's now reached code red seriousness? Also I don't see how ISP directly relates to a specific person committing a crime. Especially since anyone could be using my computer and that ISPs can be changed (wait they can be changed right? pretty sure you can change them). So would the punishment fall unto however is the account holder for the internet? The kitten of the house(or wo-kitten)?

ISP = Internet Service Provider - the company who your internet is through.

So yes you can change ISP's but that means changing companies. I think you might have been confusing ISP for just IP which is something like Internet Protocol. I think you can get dynamic IP's that change in answer to your question but i dont really know enough about that.

Basically it is saying that the company who supplies your internet will be spying on you.

Sweet jesus. I'm tired as fuck. Yes, I meant IP address. But still - how will the ISP pin an act of piracy on /me/. How can you prove I am the one who did it? This is why the internet is a waste of shit. Most movies and tv suck anyway. Call me when you can pirate information directly to ur brain.

IP changes every time you turn off your modem/router, unless you have a static business IP (which you usually pay extra for).

ISPs keep logs of which customers use which IP at any given time (they have your home address, how else do they send you a bill), usually for about a couple of years at least (here in America anyway)

If you want to avoid being spied on, use a VPN:

https://torrentfreak.com/which-vpn-providers-really-take-anonymity-seriously-111007/

only drawback is that they charge for it, but he.y, you do what you gotta do. maybe share an account with a few friends etc

That said, it is only a matter of time that they ban VPNs either on a federal level or on a private level. Many people have been trying to guess when it will happen: https://torrentfreak.com/how-long-before-vpns-become-illegal-120615/

Case in point, ebay's Paypal has recently banned a VPN provider: https://torrentfreak.com/paypal-bans-bittorrent-friendly-vpn-provider-120622/

You have to keep in mind that there has always been spying, in particularly public torrents. Usually it is hired 3rd party scouts, that the Music and Hollywood biz hire to track down and in turn they send a letter to the ISPs to look into it (You are easily traceable via public torrents: http://youhavedownloaded.com companies set up spiders [kinda like google but for torrents] to search public torrent sites and the seed/peers/leechers using them). In turn, the ISP sends you a cease and desist letter. Sometimes it is mostly done to scare you (people usually just ignore them), others have actually turned out be lawsuits. The RIAA has even sued dead people: http://arstechnica.com/uncategorized/2005/02/4587-2/

"In 2003, they mistakenly targeted a 66-year-old woman for allegedly sharing gangsta rap. But this case goes a bit further, as Mrs. Walton actually passed away in December 2004."

That said, ISPs themselves have usually stayed neutral in the sense that it only acted upon with evidence provided to them or a warrant or w/e. So them making deals with the MAFIAA privately is pretty creepy. Only time will tell how effective and how legal it all is.

There are other ways to stay anonymous online, such as the Tor project (https://www.torproject.org/), but that isn't recommended for torrents at least, due to limited bandwidth. Usually people dealing with sensitive info use Tor e.g. activists in potential danger, journalist, military or uhh even the FBI/law enforcement uses it:

https://www.torproject.org/about/torusers.html.en

As a possible legal defense, you could state or even do (though I don't recommend it, since you set yourself up for an attack), is set up your WiFi router as open to the public (meaning not PW or encryption), as in anyone can login and use your interbutts.

I've heard of cases where it helped, but my mind is hazy at the moment.

There are also projects in the works about creating an alternative to the "internet" aka the Darknet. Which is basically a meshnet system that "real" people set up, not corporations, in which people become connected directly:

http://www.reddit.com/r/darknetplan

https://projectmeshnet.org/

"Our objective is to create a versatile, decentralized network built on secure protocols for routing traffic over private mesh or public internetworks independent of a central supporting infrastructure."

it is still very much in its infancy though, and how realistically it'd be on a massive global scale will remain to be seen.

/warning/

you won't make me pay for cc3 !!!


...joking

Why is the fine so high? Isn't all this based on the notion that artists lose revenue due to piracy? If so, then wouldn't it make sense to just have the guilty party actually pay the court (or artist) for what they stole? "Oh you stole this 5 dollar cd? $20,000 please."

Also - is saving a picture to your desktop piracy? Because I mean art costs money. If I save a Van Gogh on my harddrive I'm cheating the system yo.

In the court system, they have no way of knowing exactly how much of whatever you downloaded you shared, so they just make up these numbers out of the blue (they use some crazy calculations based on a fix price of say 9.99. lets just say you may have helped up to 10,000 people obtain a copy, possibly, who knows.... but just to play it safe, you now owe $99,900 at least) and if the judge is finds it believable, you pay for it etc That pretty much is it.

you won't make me pay for cc3 !!!


...joking

i lol'd