Got sued for downloading?

[coppercox]

Post a copy of the infrigment letter here since most of the time it tells you what tracker you were using to grab the file when they caught you and give everyone a heads up.

The letter is a bit long so i took just the pertinent details out to post here:

Infringement Detail:

Tracker IP: 208.65.60.159
Tracker Port: 80
Tracker URL: http://tracker2.bt-chat.com/announce?info_hash=

Infringing Work: Deadwood - Season 3 Episode 9
Filepath: +-mininova.org-+ Deadwood.S03E09.HDTV.XviD-LOL.[eztv].torrent
Filename: Deadwood.S03E09.HDTV.XviD-LOL.avi First Found: xxxx 2006 xxxx EDT ) Last Found: xxxxx 2006 xxxxx EDT ()
Filesize: 358,468k
IP Address: xxxxxxxxx
IP Port: xxxxx
Network: BTPeers
Protocol: BitTorrent

[Broken]

You don't get sued for downloading.
You get sued for distribution of copywrited material, sharing.

.....you're playing with words: downloading copyrighted material will get ya sued....downloading a picture of your cat will not....most readers of this post know what is meant

No, it ment what I wrote.

The DMCA of 98', the laws that are used to sue p2p users was originally written to address content hosted of websites. You have to remember that back then p2p wasn't a major concern to anyone. It only mentions 'distribution' of copywrited material, not the actual 'downloading'.

Downloading copywrited material off the internet is a legal grey area. No law says you can't, but then again it could be claimed that it is a natural extention of existing laws.

The one thing I can say with absolute certainty is that no one has ever been sued for downloading. Every law suit ever filed by 'the copywrite holders' has be aimed at the distrubtion side of the law. No one wants to step into the grey area and lose a big case and set a new legal precedent.

[truetejas]

Whoa, time out. Isohunt, mininova, torrentspy , PB etc. are not trackers. They are just torrent indexing sites, and the torrent you get from them tells your client where the tracker is that will connect you to the swarm. You can determine the tracker by opening the torrent, or looking at the tracker identification in your bt client.

Anyone can get the same torrent as you and then connect to a public tracker. As you commented, your ip is visible if they connect to the same swarm as the one you are in. By participating in the swarm you are uploading, and it is the uploading (distributing) of copyrighted material that is a violation.

[j0hn]

Whoa, time out. Isohunt, mininova, torrentspy , PB etc. are not trackers. They are just torrent indexing sites, and the torrent you get from them tells your client where the tracker is that will connect you to the swarm. You can determine the tracker by opening the torrent, or looking at the tracker identification in your bt client.

Anyone can get the same torrent as you and then connect to a public tracker. As you commented, your ip is visible if they connect to the same swarm as the one you are in. By participating in the swarm you are uploading, and it is the uploading (distributing) of copyrighted material that is a violation.

wrong
mininova and thepiratebay are not indexing sites. they both have their own trackers. isohunt and torrentspy are indexing sites though.

[truetejas]

[QUOTE=j0hn;1425036]

mininova and thepiratebay are not indexing sites. they both have their own trackers. isohunt and torrentspy are indexing sites though.

I shouldn't have included PB because nobody mentioned it in the thread, but the point is that the origin of the torrent has nothing to do with your ip being discovered if the system is not closed, and an open index site can send you to any tracker for the file.

BTW, all files indexed on mininova are not on their tracker; they index torrents for other trackers. You can end up anywhere with one of their torrents.

[coppercox]

The one thing I can say with absolute certainty is that no one has ever been sued for downloading. Every law suit ever filed by 'the copywrite holders' has be aimed at the distrubtion side of the law. No one wants to step into the grey area and lose a big case and set a new legal precedent.

I cannot believe that.... am I just not correctly reading the stories in the media about people downloading songs and getting sued? Or is it that they are also "distributing" the songs once downloaded that is getting them sued? My understanding of what you wrote is as follows: As long as I only download a copyrighted song, movie, etc. and don't upload (distribute) it then I have nothing to worry about??? I cannot fathom this to be true.... I am not convinced so help me understand this further.

Hmmm... i seem to remember using Edonkey for a movie download several months ago and receiving an infringement notice for it. I am positive that I was not sharing or uploading it to anyone else.

[coppercox]

Did some reading on the RIAA's website for what is prohibited concerning copyrighted material. Here is what I read: On the federal level, titles 17 and 18 of the U.S. Code protect copyright owners from the unauthorized reproduction, adaptation or distribution of sound recordings, as well as certain digital performances to the public.

I think downloading copyrighted material qualifies as reproduction (the downloaded file is being reproduced on another computer).

[harrycary]

I was tagged twice by HBO. Once when using a public tracker and once when using a private tracker. It doesn't matter which a bittorrent user uses.
Any employee of HBO can go to their own home, use their own PC, join a site and utilize its' "private" trackers for gathering IPs of users distributing copyrighted material. I believe it's impossible for all nefarious IPs to be blocked by the various software utilities available.
Just put the foot on the other shoe. I know, as a net-savvy user, I could easily join many different sites that offer private bittorrent trackers.

It's naive to think that any of you know more about downloading, bittorrent, and the available sites then the people that do this sort of thing for a living.
Face the facts, at this point it's mainly a cat-and-mouse game between users and the industry.

And did you notice the word I used above? "distributing"
It's illegal to distribute copyrighted material.
There is certainly a gray area about the term "downloading" I believe.
In fact, my letters from HBO always demanded that the user at IP xxx.xxx.xxx
was uploading/distributing their copyrighted material and made no mention about downloading.
Oddly enough, the last time I was tagged, using bittorrent, I stopped my client purposely when finished downloading and only had a share ratio of around .352. I hadn't even uploaded the complete file!

Anyways, I'm getting my HBO content from IRC in the mean time.

my .02¢

[gamer4eva]

Anyways, I'm getting my HBO content from IRC in the mean time.

my .02¢

What content would be included in the HBO section.

[coppercox]

And did you notice the word I used above? "distributing"
It's illegal to distribute copyrighted material.
There is certainly a gray area about the term "downloading" I believe.
In fact, my letters from HBO always demanded that the user at IP xxx.xxx.xxx
was uploading/distributing their copyrighted material and made no mention about downloading.

I read my email again and found that it did avoid using the word download....the only instance was: offer for download (distribute?)....maybe it is easier to get around the fair rights clause in the DMCA....since you may (if i understand this correctly) make a copy legally in certain instances.

Naive? Not I...Paranoid..yes! For every action p2p users make there is a reaction by the people who sue....Their budget is huge and they can hire the best programmers, hackers, techs to find what they need....I am not naive to even believe i2p, waste, ants, or any other so-called anonymous networks are safe...the reaction to those just hasn't come around yet.