p2p complaint through esat

r3boot

anybody get contacted regarding "a company" "complaining about illegal distribution through bittorrent"?

Got a phone call this morning; very worrying.

I was told that I was distributing movies through the internet and that although esat couldn't give the company my identity the company could go to the garda and get it that way.

Could they do that ? Would they ?
Anybody else had a similar experience ?

JNive

well at least they dont divulge the info unless contacted directly by law enforcement lol. just 'stop' seeding movies and make sure you have adequate 'protection' in place for your computer

Blaster99

Not personally as I don't believe in stealing other people's copyrighted works, but it's fairly common for the studios to go after people who share out movies. They don't want a repeat of what happened to the music industry. I'd say they will do their damndest to nail you if you don't remove whatever it is that they don't like.

damien

They would need to get a court order before they divulge your details. This is interesting that they are tracking bittorrent usage now.

r3boot

Could it be a bad tracker ?

thats the problem with bit torrent its so transparent !!!!!

julius

WHAT!!!!

It would be very difficult for "a company" to get your IP unless they were themselves taking part in the torrent!

Also as we use dynamic IP's mostly here how could they accurately backup such claims???

This is a very weird situation I must say.

BigMoose

The company most likely are taking part in the torrent for as short a time as it takes them to get some addresses - what's so weird about that? They will set their upload speed to next to nothing and get a list of IPs no problems. Besides they own the copyrights to the material so no one is likely to sue them.

The ISPs log who has which dynamic IP address at any given time, so it's trivial to tie up a dynamic IP to a user at a known time.

zoro

But does that not class as entrapment?

Or at the very least - gathering illegal information, through illegal activities produces unadmissable evidence for court ...

Or maybe I'm just watching too much TV

Sponge Bob

depends on what was seeded, if they seeded crap on the uplink they may not have broken any law and may have harvested the IP addresses as a 'side effect' .

how good is your lawyer

WillieDH

What if you are not seeding just leeching ?

zoro

WillieDH wrote:

What if you are not seeding just leeching ?

Although I've nothing to back it up bar a few posts here on boards - that's obviously not saying much - but I think it's illegal to upload it ... but not download it

*shrug*


*edit*
I think we should leave it at this ... talking about leeching illegal content is forbidden, and I may have over stepped the line on this post. If so I'll expect a swift mod-edit

Dr_MalPractice

r3boot wrote:

anybody get contacted regarding "a company" "complaining about illegal distribution through bittorrent"?

Could they do that ? Would they ?
Anybody else had a similar experience ?

A guy i know from some LANs got a mail from his isp, with an attachment from paramount, who had tracked his downloading an episode of enterprise. don't know what dl client he was using, but the mail said delete the file and don't do it again and no further action would be taken.

While their tracking the file is perfectly legal and and enforcable in the US, to the best of my knowledge such action is a breach of EU privacy rights, You should Probably get to know those inside out. If you've downloading lots of file similar to the one in question, they may have logged a litany of them, and shown the sample, so they can hang you in court if you persist. :eek:

hope this info is useful.

P.S. imagine getting busted for downloading star trek. the shame of it!!

Akula

anybody know anything more on the legality of it? visa vi EU Law?

Privacy rights wasn't an angle I had heard before.

Jumpy

There are 'dobbing' companies thats sole existance is spidering those torrents and reporting them. I suspect they mass mail to all ISP's whose customers are participating in that torrent.

r3boot

WillieDH wrote:

What if you are not seeding just leeching ?

Thats exactly what I was doing (and told them so) !

Apparently the complaint was regarding distribution (which I didn't techincally pariticipate in since I didn't give out the movie file). The guy from esat just said that it doesn't matter since they consider any upload (even 1kbps) to be distribution.

r3boot

Jumpy wrote:

There are 'dobbing' companies thats sole existance is spidering those torrents and reporting them. I suspect they mass mail to all ISP's whose customers are participating in that torrent.

the guy onthe phone told me the filename, movie and the tracker I was connected to and my ip address at the time.

cgarvey

You are distributing copyrighted material, if you upload a byte or 3GB. It's just a question of priority as to who they go after .. every BT user, or every guy that seeds a few files.

carrotcake

Akula wrote:

anybody know anything more on the legality of it? visa vi EU Law?

Privacy rights wasn't an angle I had heard before.

from http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=147253...

The enforcement directive creates a broad new “Right of Information” which requires Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to disclose personal information about their customers to recording industry executives for civil prosecution of Peer-2-Peer (P2P) file-sharing and other activities. Similar subpoena powers, created under the notorious US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) have been abused by the US recording industry to obtain personal information on thousands of US consumers and have resulted in financial settlements from those consumers, including 12-year girls who live in public housing and 70-year old grandparents. Under this directive, the personal information of European citizens must be forcibly disclosed to companies such as Vivendi-Universal who can now harass and financially extort European consumers as well. And the EU directive applies to all types of intellectual property infringements, not just copyrights.

smileyrecords

bittorent is a lame p2p, and yes what you are doing is illegal so theres no need to be complaining that yee are told that you are doing something illegal

Ruhan

OP, you'd better just disconnect and go outside for a while.

julius

Hey r3boot,

How often do you use torrents???
How much data would you transfer with them(upload/download)???
What part of the country are you situated in???

Mutant_Fruit

I think it's illegal to upload it ... but not download it

Without you providing proof of that, i'm going to say its just as illegal to download the music/films as it is to walk into a shop and steal the CD. Even if you have no intention of sharing the illegally obtained CD.

I was told that I was distributing movies through the internet and that although esat couldn't give the company my identity the company could go to the garda and get it that way.

They couldn't go to the Garda, but a court order would get your details... and if they sued ya, they could make you pay costs aswell.

TerrorFirmer

I've never used Bittorrent, never liked it.

I download everything from http, generally impossible to trace seeing you'd get nothing out of it conisidering the amount of money they'd have to pump into it to get any kind of results.

But its been a long while since I've downloaded anything, still have a backlog of about 30 games to play :eek:

zoro

Mutant_Fruit wrote:

Without you providing proof of that, i'm going to say its just as illegal to download the music as it is to walk into a shop and steal the CD. Even if you have no intention of sharing the illegally obtained CD.

Very true - I'm just adding to the rumour ... sorry

r3boot

julius wrote:

Hey r3boot,

How often do you use torrents???
How much data would you transfer with them(upload/download)???
What part of the country are you situated in???

torrents:alot .... but mostly legal torrents like fansubs for unlicensed anime.
upload/download: usually share ratio is pretty lame (yeah I'm a leech , I should know better)
location:dublin.

smileyrecords wrote:

bittorent is a lame p2p, and yes what you are doing is illegal so theres no need to be complaining that yee are told that you are doing something illegal

read the post, I never complained about being told off, just wanted to know if anybody else had any experience and if it was/is possible/legal for "a company" to get information regarding my internet use without me knowing about it.

ruhan wrote:

OP, you'd better just disconnect and go outside for a while.l

Yeah I need the exercise

****, that's worrying. No more bittorent for me.

.. not that I ever used it.

<_<

>_>

Giblet

Public torrents are generally a bad idea for anyone who values privacy.

PixelTrawler

r3boot wrote:

anybody get contacted regarding "a company" "complaining about illegal distribution through bittorrent"?

Got a phone call this morning; very worrying.

I was told that I was distributing movies through the internet and that although esat couldn't give the company my identity the company could go to the garda and get it that way.

Could they do that ? Would they ?
Anybody else had a similar experience ?

what kinda stuff where you downloading - films? music? games?

deadl0ck

I just got then exact same call. Very worrying, however, I don't think it's a big deal - he said they got a comlaint from Sony Pictures saying I was distributing via BitTorrent - I was downloading, But with BitTorrent, if you're downloading, you're also sharing out what you're currently downloading, so in effect you're uploading.
I didn't talk to the guy, just had a message on my machine.
I think (pretty sure) this is a warning, otherwise Sony (or whoever) would be in contact in writing - I've heard of a few other's who had similar calls - it's just a slap on the wrist and to be honest it worked - theree goes BitTorrent off my system !

PixelTrawler

sony arent in touch cos they dont know who you are... yet?
With regards to the recent IRMA prosecutions Esat BT and Eircom said they would defend customer confideniality

At the moment sony have your IP and contact esat regarding user 192.12.xxx.xxx or whatever. Esat in turn contact you. At the moment esat wont divulge the name. Sony have to apply to the courts for this information. In the uk and us companies have been successful in doing this. In canada they failed so its hard to know what might happen.

take a read of this blog
http://www.johnbreslin.com/blog/2005/04/22/irish-times-irma-strikes-warning-note-to-music-file-sharers/

your right its prob a warning and your also prob right to get rid of bittorrent - where you a heavy download - how much or over how long

r3boot

Joebloggs4817 wrote:

what kinda stuff where you downloading - films? music? games?

this was in relation to a (pretty awful) movie. So not worth it !

PixelTrawler

balls! at least if you go down it should be for something decent!

joke! im sure these are just warnings - like the music industry they'll prob hit big uploaders first to make examples of people and scare off potential downloaders

LegacyUser

Gosh bye bye bit torrent.

PixelTrawler

i think this is exactly their aim

apeking

Would ProtoWall have made a difference do people reckon??

Mutant_Fruit

apeking wrote:

Would ProtoWall have made a difference do people reckon??

In my opinion, i think those kind of programs aren't really that useful overall. All it would take would be for someone in the *insert company name here* to get an IP address thats not on the ban list, and spend a few hours trawling torrents logging IP's. It'd be easy enough to check what IP's are on the list, so they could (in theory) bypass the apps easily.

julius

deadl0ck wrote:

I just got then exact same call. Very worrying, however, I don't think it's a big deal - he said they got a comlaint from Sony Pictures saying I was distributing via BitTorrent - I was downloading, But with BitTorrent, if you're downloading, you're also sharing out what you're currently downloading, so in effect you're uploading.
I didn't talk to the guy, just had a message on my machine.
I think (pretty sure) this is a warning, otherwise Sony (or whoever) would be in contact in writing - I've heard of a few other's who had similar calls - it's just a slap on the wrist and to be honest it worked - theree goes BitTorrent off my system !

Hey deadl0ck,

What movie and at what time did they call???

Zenith74

P2Pers in the US get warnings like this all the time but most seem to just ignore them without any reprecussions. I'd say Esat are just covering themselves by saying they warned you. Just me 2 cents.
I've only really heard of people getting warnings for downloading films, very few for music or software. I don't download much but make a point of avoiding films, especially new releases as these are bound to be watched.
I used Peerguardian for a while but gave up after a while. These companies are dedicated to tracking people down online, I'm sure they're quite capable of getting new IP addresses to get around the likes of Peerguardian. Waste of time IMHO.

julius

Sony probable have a couple of snoopers logging IP's who are connected to torrents on very public sites(we know who the big torrent sites are).

So the only way to get away from those snoopers would be joining small private torrent sites.

Who controls the motion picture industry in Ireland anyway???

r3boot

the problem is that you can tell EXACTLY who it is you are downloading from on bit-torrent. The only way of dealing with this is centralization and we all know what happened with that (napster)

Sparky

the only time i ever used bittorrent was to download the programme 24, because i cant wait for Sky one to show it.
Is downloading tv shows illegal?, like ar'nt the tv companies going to get paid for the airing rights anyway wheather or not there downloaded or not.

Ive never used BT for movies or music because of the possibility of being caught.

deadl0ck

I missed the call so I don't know - he left a message on my machine.

To be honest I've download about 15 movies (if even that) since I got Broadband over a year and a half ago - they're just too big and slow to get.

Supercell

r3boot wrote:

anybody get contacted regarding "a company" "complaining about illegal distribution through bittorrent"?

Got a phone call this morning; very worrying.

I was told that I was distributing movies through the internet and that although esat couldn't give the company my identity the company could go to the garda and get it that way.

Could they do that ? Would they ?
Anybody else had a similar experience ?

Just to clarify, the person calling identified themselves as an esat employee ?
If so what department did they say they worked in?, are you sure someone isn't acting the mick with you ?

Nephew

i've tens of gigs of music and movies on my pc which i ripped myself from cds and dvds my family own (i've never seeded or uploaded any of it), but i have downloaded albums and movies but they would only amout for maybe 10% of the files on my pc. in the unlikely event that you were brought to court by the irma how would they distinguish from what i download and what i rightfully own?

kaizersoze

"I have a wireless router. One of my neighbours must be tapping into it Your Honour"

Eye

my dad got a call from esat this evening, round about 7:00-7:30, dunno if he mentioned what department he was in, but he went on to tell my dad that a complaint had been made against us by M.G.M for having distibuted without person a movie of theirs :-\

My dad said the guy he was talking to was friendly and was'nt being an a$$hole about it, he explained that they received the complaint and had to inform us about it, kinda like a warning really, but if they got more complaints then they would disconnect our broadband service. He was able to tell my dad the film in question, the date and time of said offence and how it was downloaded....i.e ip address was logged from bit torrent.

He told my dad that while it is only a warning he should check it out with anyone who uses's the pc obviously to find out if it was kids that did it unknowingly or anything like that, from what my dad said, the guy he was talking too said it happens all the time, half the time people dont even know there is a program running in the background but they have to warn people that the complaint was made.

damnit anyway, was so enjoying my torrents
looks like i'll be giving things a miss for a while now *sigh*

mimix

r3boot wrote:

the problem is that you can tell EXACTLY who it is you are downloading from on bit-torrent. The only way of dealing with this is centralization and we all know what happened with that (napster)

Were you using PeerGuardian or something similar.

Nephew

out of interest, what movie was it?

Eye

Be cool was the movie in question :-\

Nephew

i downloaded that last night i think i'll be staying away from torrents for a while

r3boot

Longfield wrote:

Just to clarify, the person calling identified themselves as an esat employee ?
If so what department did they say they worked in?, are you sure someone isn't acting the mick with you ?

yes, yes and no

he was an esat employee, he gave me a name and a department and no it was no joke.

I used the wi-fi excuse, he just said that I should use a firewall (tell you how much expertise these guys have) and that should solve the problem if it were a firewall but as things stand at the moment I would be the person liable in court.

I doubt I'll be sent there anytime soon I just think it was a random thing where they picked the top 100 or so downloaders checked their logs and gave them a call.