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12/04/09
The ISPs are NOT tracking where you are going, or what you are downloading. There are too many people to track, and not NEARLY enough manpower to track what you're looking at in your 15 browser tabs of Firefox, let alone what everyone else on your network is doing.
Instead, companies like Paramount Pictures, Disney, the RIAA, the Business Software Alliance, the Entertainment Software Association, etc. are instead hiring companies who WILL track your P2P filesharing. Let me say that again - they track your P2P filesharing.
Whether it be on Limewire, Frostwire, Bittorrent, whatever, they take a look and say, "Oh, IP address xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx is filesharing X-Men: Origins - Wolverine (or whatever filename is being shared) at such and such a time on such and such a date." They then look to see which ISP that IP address is issued to.
At that point, they contact the ISP and say, "You have customers who are doing filesharing of copyrighted material that we own the rights to, and they're doing it through your network. Unless you want us to come after you, you, the ISP, need to prevent it from happening."
There is NO ISP out there that is going to go head to head with the movie studios, RIAA, or other ilk of this nature. They're going to take the easy way out and say, "Ok, well, we suspended them for violating our terms of service." This way, the ISP remains within its legal boundaries.
Now, as to filesharing - IT IS NOT ILLEGAL TO FILESHARE!!!! IT IS NOT ILLEGAL TO USE BITTORRENT! IT IS NOT ILLEGAL TO USE P2P SOFTWARE!
If you make a video on the internet, or you write a song, and you want to share it out there with the general public, guess what? YOU OWN THE RIGHTS TO IT. You CAN do that! It's legal to distribute your own material out there for everyone to see it!
If you start to fileshare COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL (i.e. movies that are still in the movie theatres, video games that were just released and you didn't want to buy, etc) it's most likely ILLEGAL!!!
There are VERY few exceptions to this rule.
Blizzard Entertainment distributes patches of World of Warcraft using Bittorrent. Perfectly legal; they give you the rights to distribute the patches in their TOS.
Nine Inch Nails was allowing fans to bittorrent their album, "The Slip". Free. Gratis. Trent Reznor stuck it up on Pirate Bay and let people d/l the crap out of it. And it worked REALLY well for them.
But those are the only exceptions I can think of that have been LEGAL.
Now, as for redirection to a different webpage, people, it happens all the time.
Try not paying your bill for a few months. Most likely, you'll get a message stating that your services have been shut off and you have to pay it before you can go out on the internet again. The message that pops up on your screen stating you were filesharing is just another message for interruption of service.
ISPs are well within their rights to shut off your service if you do things illegally - most of the time it's spelled out in their Terms of Service, Acceptable Use Policy, Service Agreement, or whatever that ISP calls it. Look it up.
12/04/09
12/04/09
Yeah, they do, and you agreed to it when you checked "I Agree" on the Terms of Service/Acceptable Use Policy page. :)
Most of the time, though, the people who I talk to are 1) either lying through their teeth about filesharing ("I don't know who Taylor Swift is! I don't listen to country music at all!" Hello, you don't know who Taylor Swift is, but you know she sings country music? RIIIIGHT.), or they didn't do it, but a neighbor getting on through their UNSECURED wireless router IS doing the filesharing.
In that case, I tell them, "You want to get your router secured. Otherwise, you're paying for your neighborhood to get free internet from you, and since your neighbors aren't kicking in for your bill, why should you provide them free internet?"
It's funny how quickly people want to get their routers secured after that. :)
12/04/09
12/04/09
So some of us will get stung by crap purchases and let everyone else know it's crap.
The best way for consumers to affect the MAN is with our wallets.
My guess is the reason most of you use the torrent system to pirate is because you dont have the money to purchase products you want.
Even though the large pirates operate outside the bounds of the law little pirates still act as promoters of content by pirating it.
Maybe the MAN needs to figure out a way to help the have nots get the stuff they want, ad supported maybe??
12/04/09
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12/05/09
12/05/09
If you can successfully bypass these notices, however, you won't know what hit you when TW disconnects your service or you get subpoenaed.
12/05/09
Kyle - Time Warner DNS - *intercept* - Time Warner Response - Stop Downloading Illegal stuff Dude - Type in URL - The site you want.
Kyle - Google DNS - The site you want.
A lot of companies are now doing DNS intercepting as a way to advertise; and now apparently inform their users who aren't checking e-mail.
@brodie7838: This isn't a forward though. Time Warner has hijacked his browser on a request and responded to his browser request with their own custom page. Lots of companies are doing this now to promote their own stuff.
@Donathius: I have COX and they hijack my browser every time I type in an incorrect URL. Once I changed my DNS, the Hi-Jacking stopped.
12/07/09
12/04/09
12/04/09
Lets be honest people. A ISP is a company, companies love money.
How do they earn more money?
By selling the consumer (You) bigger plans.
Why would most people need 100G(Gigs) plans?
Because they are downloading stuff. Maybe pirated maybe not...
So my theory is that in the long run it is not going to be beneficial to the company/shareholders, if the ISP start shutting peoples internet down.
Plus the fact, why should my ISP be able to see what im looking at? I mean what happened to privacy! And on that point I feel scared that a ISP can force you to a page/message. I fear im going to end up on wowomg.com (Please dont go there).
12/04/09
12/03/09
8.54 TB uploaded
528 GB downloaded
That is a 16.56x ratio :]
(735 different torrents and no emails from Verizon )
12/03/09
12/03/09
I don't know if it's right or ethical for TW to do this but it was pretty effective in my case. I don't use TW e-mail (much) and a letter would have taken multiple days to arrive.
12/03/09
They even asked me, "Did ****** call you?" so I said, "What?"... "Because ****** called us and told we we're in trouble for downloading illegal stuff".
So in response I said, "oohh, riiigghhhttt... they haven't called me and I don't think they ever will."
And you know why? Because I don't download something EVERYDAY and I use my common sense.
Apparently, after that incident, I discovered their download habits. They download stuff everyday which causes their monthly cap to exceed thus automatically putting their connection under increased supervision and manual inspection by the ISP. Which then making them get caught.
After a few months of not doing it ever again, they're back to downloading... but now they use their common sense and they rethink if they actually wanted to download something. Because they used to download something because they wanted to try it or just because they felt like they wanted to.
So far, NO ISP calls to me, still, and no more ISP calls to any of my friends... But, one of my friends friend had a snail mail notice from EA about downloading and seeding a particular torrent. lol, and that's the most EPIC thing I've heard. lol
12/03/09
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12/03/09
i also got a usenet account and will probably have one as long as i can afford the $11 a month. If you like to torrent, then you'll LOVE usenet. I have astraweb. Find a banner online to get their $11 unlimited +ssl deal and click through
12/03/09
12/03/09
12/03/09
Oh, the irony.
12/03/09
i bought special forces directly from ea and can't friggin install it, go figure
12/04/09