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 K Patterson :

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

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 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 exocet_cm :

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

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

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.

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 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 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.