| reply to MooJohn
Re: Accusation = Guilt? Shouldn't that be "Accusation == Guilt?" or "Accusation != Guilt."?
Under the DMCA, Service providers need to have an AUP which provides for termination of service to any subscriber who has been FOUND to be a repeat offender. As a service provider, I take that to mean that:
A) The subscriber has been found guilty of copyright infringement by a court of law on more then one occasion.
or
B) We have determined on more then one occasion that the subscriber in question has in fact been distributing the IP of others, outside of fair use, without the permission of the copyright holder.
On receipt of a proper DCMA notice we do the following.
1) Determine if the IP address in question is an IP assigned to one of our systems.
A) This has never been the case.
2) Check to make sure the notice is digitally signed and in fact comes from an entity that has permission to issue DCMA notices for the work in question.
3) Determine if the IP in question is in a block which is reserved for customer use.
A) This is almost always the case.
4) Determine if the IP in question was in use at the time of the alleged infringement.
A) You would be amazed at the frequency of DCMA notices we get for IP addresses that were not in use at the time of claimed infringement. It appears to me that notices are frequently generated because the IP address is listed on a tracker.
B) If the IP in question was not in use at the time stated, we stop any internal investigation as it is just a waste of our time. The second time that we get such a notice from an entity, we automatically fall back to case B for all notices from the same entity.
5) If the IP address in question was in use, we check the given md5 and make sure it matches the named work.
6) We check traffic logs for the subscriber in question to see if it would have been possible for them to be transferring copies of the work in question. We also look at the current number of connections, type of connections etc
7) If WE believe that the customer in fact was distributing the work in question, we send them an email with a copy of the allegation and ask that, in the case that they are in fact distributing the work in question, they stop doing so and refrain from doing so in the future. We also point them to our AUP.
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