said by NormanS :

I have never been able to find the law which explicitly makes downloading illegal. I've always assumed it is like the law against cannibalism; there is no such law. You can legally eat human meat as long as you don't violate some law such as the prohibition against killing humans, or committing mayhem on their corpses.

said by MrPeach :

Run Peer Guardian 2. I received 2 of those notices then started running PG2 and haven't gotten another since.

said by K Patterson :

And where does this appear in the law?

It is just as illegal as sharing. Just a lot harder to catch you at it.

said by K Patterson :

And where does this appear in the law?

It is just as illegal as sharing. Just a lot harder to catch you at it.

said by K Patterson :

Motown vs. DiPietro

»www.ilrweb.com/viewILRPDF.asp?fi···sSumJudg

She threw the computer away - apparently. As you read through the ruling, you'll see that she kind of goes with the wind.

The concept is called Spoliation of Evidence. Wikipedia has a short article on it.

said by K Patterson :

After you have been served it is a crime. Before you have been served it is simply stupid. Judges are not dumb. Ever heard of Arthur Anderson? That is exactly what they did, only with paper files. Bye bye company, leaders go to jail.

It is certainly reasonable to delete files that you shouldn't have downloaded, but do you really think that anyone can get away with denying that they did it? The ultimate sanction, by the way, is to be told that you may not offer a defense against the action. There is one defendant at present who did just what you suggested. Big mistake. The judge has already said in effect that she is a liar.

said by Maarvin :

It is legal to download.

said by axelrose :

Not trying to pick a fight BUT what if the person simply replaced the hard drive with a new one and put the old one in a nice acid bath or simply went to the local landfill?

The RIAA went so long knowing no one could afford a record duplicator and suddenly someone went and made evil magnetic tape recorders. They were caught off guard, then went to sleep for 20 years and complained no one woke them up in time.

I got 2 of those letters. Chewbacca defense.

said by K Patterson :

What you do NOT want to do is reformat your hard drive. There's a good reason why damning documents and emails show up in law suits - because the evidence against the defendants is less damning than the act of destroying it. It converts a civil wrong into a serious felony.

said by FiL :

"The evidence they likely have is a copy of the infringer's shared directory, and copies of files they downloaded from it containing material for which they or their clients own the license"

You mean the copyright holder hacked his way onto this persons computer, looked through the files in said directory JUST to find his one or two copyrighted works? I think THAT is a more offensive act to perform then downloading copyrighted material. lol. crazy.

said by FiL :

You mean the copyright holder hacked his way onto this persons computer, looked through the files in said directory JUST to find his one or two copyrighted works? I think THAT is a more offensive act to perform then downloading copyrighted material. lol. crazy.

said by jbob :

I think yours is more correct. Wasn't one of the "Privacy" concerns is that the government was trying make the ISPs maintain logs for over 30 days? The ISPs were complaining as to cost of maintaining unlimited logs where the public was crying "privacy" issues. I believe, at least until recently, most ISPs only maintained 30 day logs. Not sure which is correct though.

said by roztaylor :

Related question: My AT&T (SBC Yahoo) DSL account is setup as DHCP (i.e. I don't own/have a fixed IP address). When I do an IPCONFIG, it shows 10 minutes as the lifetime of the IP address. I typically reboot my PC a couple times per week. Each time I reboot, I receive a new IP address.

So, does my ISP maintain a log that shows which customer has which IP address at which time & date?

said by Apollo729 :

Ditto, but, I've seen the flip side too, more then a few times I've found no logs at all because they used too much disk space or some other misguided reason.

Not just on servers mind you, on desktops as well, hundreds of computers, newer models with large hard drives, nothing installed but XP and Office; one or two hundred GB free and they turn off windows built in logs to save space.

There's always two sides to a coin, no one can say for sure that any given ISP or even part of an ISP goes by the book, either the law or their own rules, so his ISP may keep logs or they may not; at the end of the day these networks are run by people and people don't always do things the right way, or even the logical way.

said by Apollo729 :

Ditto, but, I've seen the flip side too, more then a few times I've found no logs at all because they used too much disk space or some other misguided reason.

Not just on servers mind you, on desktops as well, hundreds of computers, newer models with large hard drives, nothing installed but XP and Office; one or two hundred GB free and they turn off windows built in logs to save space.

There's always two sides to a coin, no one can say for sure that any given ISP or even part of an ISP goes by the book, either the law or their own rules, so his ISP may keep logs or they may not; at the end of the day these networks are run by people and people don't always do things the right way, or even the logical way.

said by Nightfall :

I used to do contract work for an ISP and I can tell you they keep years of data on who gets what IP address. They aren't required by law to do so, but almost all major ISPs do it. In short, this won't work. :)

said by RangerTX :

once you win, you ask court to force the other side to pay your legal bill

said by roztaylor :

Related question: My AT&T (SBC Yahoo) DSL account is setup as DHCP (i.e. I don't own/have a fixed IP address). When I do an IPCONFIG, it shows 10 minutes as the lifetime of the IP address. I typically reboot my PC a couple times per week. Each time I reboot, I receive a new IP address.

So, does my ISP maintain a log that shows which customer has which IP address at which time & date? Does this mean that I probably won't ever get this kind of letter, if I were to do that kind of activity--or am I going to get someone else's letter because I have the IP address that they used to have when they did the downloading. (Similar to the telephone calls we receive, asking for the people who had our telephone number before we did.)

said by Morty :

Under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, ISPs must notify their customers if a copyright owner has claimed a customer with that ISPs IP address has downloaded portions of a copyright owned material, or they can be held legally liable. All ISPs will comply with this, because they do not want to get into lawsuits, and it is know that for the most part the RIAA etc, will not individually press most cases.

I've heard of people using their neighbor's connection for downloading copyrighted material...

said by eric87m :

If anyone can provide me with help on how to protect myself, and what steps I should take next, please let me know. Thanks.

said by exocet_cm :

I've heard of people using their neighbor's connection for downloading copyrighted material...

said by juris doctor :

But it cost those the beat them big bucks in legal fees.

said by Toadman :

Changing ISP's is the best thing you can do. I would of contacted comcrap already and told them where they could shove the letter, it isn't there business to police and if it is a "scare tactic" then they obviously don't consider you the customer 1, but someone else. Go with an ISP that won't report you or has a record of usually not reporting people. A small ISP would be perfect.

said by Rob916 :

I received one of those 3 years ago. I ignored it and kept on doing what I was going and never heard anything again. I've changed ISP's recently but never again heard from Comcast again.

said by Rob916 :

I received one of those 3 years ago. I ignored it and kept on doing what I was going and never heard anything again. I've changed ISP's recently but never again heard from Comcast again.

said by K Patterson :

And they did this for their own amusement or thinking that notifying the infringer would stop the infringement?

said by Apollo729 :

This isn't as bad as it sounds I think, w/o knowing what he downloaded we can't say it is the RIAA who would sue him, I think what is likely here is that someone ran a hacked client and gathered IP addresses and sent out mass Copyright Infringement letters.

said by Apollo729 :

Little if anything will come from this as there is no real tangible evidence to take to court, just a few bytes that said yes that file is here; this was /. awhile back under Your Rights Online.

said by Hydroshock :

Well they can slap "copyrighted" on anything these days. The way the U.S. Copyright laws work, everything is copyrighted the moment it is written and doesn't need to be filed or anything. (including things as simple as emails). Problem is proving it was yours first without filing it.