Just a heads up, thought I should mention this, but should be the answer you are looking for.

The DMCA operates automated systems that go through BitTorrent seeds and report IP's of more complicit ISP's(Comcast, Cox, etc) and of course exclude IP's of foreign ISP's or other less complicit internet providers. In a gesture of good faith/to avoid getting sued, ISP's, if notified of copyright infringement, will notify their customers.

Being your first notification, it would be extremely unlikely for Cox to terminate you. They want your buisness and will likely only terminate if it comes down to a court order for your traffic records.

So what should you do now? In your BitTorrent client, change the IP that gets sent to trackers, and never again will you have this problem. That's what I did with uTorrent. Just make up an IP. If you don't want to do that, then stay away from film torrents, especially more recent ones.

If the DMCA chooses to file a lawsuit then you will recieve notification by mail, and in addition your ISP will notify you(likely via mail as well) that your records have been subopened, and possibly will also let you know that your service is being terminated.

Because of ISP logs, it is very very difficult to defend yourself in a trial. Increasing the amount of traffic over your connection might help cycle your poor decisions out of your ISP logs, but that's just speculation.

Hope this helps, now start breathing again and go dl whatever you want.

This is what Cox has replied with:



And also



The second e-mail makes it seem like this kind of thing happens a lot, so I'm not as worried as I was before...

Thanks for the reassurance, Eloquent.

As for torrenting again, I think I'm gonna pass on that for quite a while. Now that I have a job I an actually buy things I want.

Don't worry about it, this time at least. I have to go through about a dozen or so copyright complaints a week that we've gotten about students sharing files. Then we slap them on the wrist by blacklisting their MAC address (which, while fairly easy to get around, still baffles 99% of people), make them remove their offending crap and give them a stern talking to, and then remove them from the blacklist.

I doubt that will help, Since they connect to the torrent and see who they can download from. The IP is got from YOU not the tracker.

I suggest you download and install peerguardian. It's not perfect but it should help

The best way of all is just don't warez.

You can get almost anything you want used on Amazon for less than retail (in some cases, next to nothing if you buy at the right time) Often the stuff is in better condition than the average rental, so you win on all counts.

Best of all, by buying used, you get your content legally but at the same time you aren't funding the RIAA/MPAA at all. For example, if you find a cd that you really like, buy it used and send the artist a check. That way, the artist gets something for their trouble and the greedy industry gets nothing, as it should be.

Cal a lawyer.
DO IT NOW!

Does this actually work to help keep your activity anonymous? Seems like too simple of a fix, with all the programs like Peer Guardian out there that need to be updated constantly and actually run in the background.

Btw, where exactly is this setting located? Under Preferences -> BitTorrent I found "IP/Hostname to report to tracker." Is that it?

That will not make any difference.. except maybe stop you connecting to some trackers.

It's for helping you connect from behind a proxy.

From the uTorrent FAQ:

I would suggest that you start using TOR or I2P.

Yes, that is the right option. And I should also clarify that the only thing it does is hide you from trackers.


Nope, you are wrong. What does "IP to report to tracker." sound like to you? This setting is for peers connecting to YOU, not the other way around. Obviously if you are are the one establishing the connectinon to peers, then this has no effect. Changing the IP that is sent to the tracker sends the wrong IP to peers looking for seeds/peers. But clearly if you are the one who establishes the connection, whatever IP you are sending to the tracker dosent matter. How would it stop you connecting to some trackers? The only trackers that you would be excluded from are those that require registration, which would be done using your real IP, thus making it impossible to connect to that tracker because the tracker believes you are someone else, because of your fake IP/proxy.

As far as the uTorrent FAQ goes, you can see it dosent explicitly state anything that contradicts what I said. uTorrent FAQ isn't going to tell you "change this so you can fool trackers! haha!"....they want to promote seeding and as such, allowing you to enter the IP of a proxy will aid in that process.

So in conclusion, changing the IP that gets sent to trackers will prevent the DMCA from picking you out of a list and contacting your ISP. End of story.

Trackers != Peers

What I'm not going to say is that I work for Cox Communications. What I'm also not going to say is that it's a form letter.

^^^ What he did not say.

But it's not YOUR ip, it belongs to the cable company. So the court is actually relying on the cable company's word that it was in fact you who was connected at the time. And we all know how easy it is to alter log files (which are simply text files).

Yes, I am aware of the history of this defense losing, but I swear I remember it actually winning sometimes, too. A LOT of things have to fall in place in order to convict you of a crime. It's your job to make sure they don't.

But seriously, maybe you should just stop pirating games.

Yes. Lie about it because, you know, that is the honorable thing to do.

I say be a man and take the consequences! In this life or the next...

>:D

Cover your ***. Its the American way.

Yeah, really, no one cares if you pirate music and stuff except the RIAA, because honestly they're overpayed as it is. But you shouldn't pirate games, that's eventually going to kill off PC gaming and we don't want that.

And it was honorable of Cox for releasing his personal information to this ESA place? And it's honorable for them to take grandmas with no computers to court for allegedly pirating music? And it's honorable to embed anti-copy rootkits in people's computers that leave them open to viruses and other malware? And it's honorable to prevent fair-use backup copies by embedding a whole bunch of crappy DRM into music, games, and dvds?

Look, clearly if he was pirating games, he was doing something wrong. But if you step back and look at the situation as a whole, it may occur to you that he's not the only "evildoer" in this situation. Games are too expensive, partially because game publishers hog a huge % of the cash, because they have to pay hundreds of thousands for those copy protection schemes that don't work anyway, and because they're freaking greedy.

This of course doesn't justify wrongdoing, but in my opinion, it's similar to things like traffic tickets. Just because you were doing something illegal doesn't mean you were doing something wrong. It works in reverse, too, though. I once got pulled over for passing someone in the right hand lane on the freeway. The other dude was in the left lane going slower than the speed limit. The cop pulled me over and told me I wasn't allowed to pass on the right. I told him, clearly, I understand that, however, the dude in the left lane should be pulled over because he was breaking the law by being in the passing lane w/out passing (a law in WA state). I shouldn't have opened my big fat mouth because he then realized that I would probably fight said ticket in court, and those types of tickets are EASY to get out of.

So he wrote me a SPEEDING ticket for 70 in a 60. He fabricated the entire ticket, including his sworn statement, because he knew it would be virtually impossible for me to get out of. So, was it dishonorable for me to fight the resulting speeding ticket?

Maybe the damn game was released 5 years ago and you can't get it in stores anymore. Maybe he had it available on his computer but nobody actually downloaded it. Did they actually record him allowing others to download the damn file? Probably not, which is why they used this scare tactic rather than actually filing a lawsuit, because they have no fakking evidence that someone actually d/l it from him.

Cox didn't release my information to them. They notified me of ESA's complaint and gave me the chance to respond to it.

Uh....most ISPs won't release a damn thing to the ESA unless it is by court order.

Why are you telling us this, Vinny? I don't get it. Would you tell us if you got busted for shoplifting?

Piracy is good for America.

Maybe he's telling us so that we might learn something.

Brian, passing on the right is 'illegal' just about everywhere, and enforced just about nowhere. I do it all the time. On I95 between Richmond and D.C., I've been known to pass squad cars on the right while speeding. Sounds to me like your copper had a quota to meet.

Just as a further warning to people: this crackdown by BayTSP isn't happening exclusively in the US. They've been contacting ISPs in other countries as well (including Canada). We were contacted about downloading an image for a game that I own, so they shouldn't really have much there. Still, I just thought I'd let people know that they're enforcing elsewhere, in case you engage in these kinds of "activities."

Spud, with most filesharing services you automatically share the file (or parts of it) you're downloading. That's what they want you to stop doing. In many countries just downloading is legal.

Yes but unless you're seeding (and marked as such) they can't say that you have breached copyright.

Um... yes?

Would you rather the forums be deserted and updated with 1 thread a day?

And again, why would anyone have to justify their threads to you?

I've had a total of about 3 hours sleep. So, sorry for my unclear thinking about the whole leech/seed thing this morning. :downs: In any case, it shouldn't really matter since I deleted the image right after I received the message from my ISP, and replied notifying them about it. I'm still staying away from torrent sites from now on. I don't need legal troubles piled on everything else I have going right now.

... Just re-reading it, it's like I've been scared ****less by this or something.

I garuntee you the musicians you're stealing from care.

They make nearly next to no money with album sales. They make much more with concerts, which you're likely to go to if you like the music that you downloaded.

Hmm. This reminds me, is SerialBox legal? Some say yes some say no.

Eh. I don't have the energy or time to internet fight you Glyde. What Obi posted blew my mind (namely, that musicians are overpayed and that it's okay to steal music but not video games).

Put it this way: Record companies are more opposed to music piracy than bands are.

But games are a frivolous purchase. You don't NEED games for anything, so bloated prices, though annoying, are no excuse for stealing.

Laziness is, though.

No, I'm fairly certain he meant that the RIAA was overpaid. The musicians get reamed, and it's even worse from legal downloads (iTunes, etc). The RIAA doesn't give a **** about the musicians, they just use this as a means to get more money.

As others have said, Obi said that it was the RIAA being overpayed. The musicians and bands get jack.