Ah well geez thank you! Ever since this whole thing started up I make it a habit to read copyright law, test cases, etc. As of this date - as far as I know - no one knows how they are doing it exactly - althought there has been much speculation. As speculation has a tendency to turn into paranoia - some of it has been amusing. Like people blocking their lan ips through peer guardian, and thence having mass anxiety sweep over entire message boards, as people ping themselves over and over again, and think it is the **aa hammering their firewalls. Or like the bloke here who thinks that the **aa is after him, because of the odd tag on the Tomb Raider games he is trying to download - that's not the them by the way. That's the BSA - Bussiness Software Alliance - and while I have no idea of they have IP "traps" - its concievable they do have something - as I have seen some evidence of this in Cease and Desists that people have recieved.
Some of the techniques are a bit dodgy, no doubt, because they play games with privacy issues in the US. This mainly centers around the nature of the subpoenas being swapped around - subpoena's are NOT something to be toyed with! In many cases - the **aa is skipping the step involved in getting a judge to "review" the subpoena before it is issued, and going strictly off "good faith" (both of these elements have to be in place before a subpoena gets issued).
What this means is that they "see" a file that "appears" to be a source of infringement - document it, and use this as evidence to issue a subpoena. As the method for gathering the evidence for the subpoena is not disclosed (to my knowlege), and a judge is not consulted in determining whether the "infringement" has met the test to issue a subpoena, many of these are nothing but shams to force isp's to turn over information.
This is not ALL subpoenas - but MANY of them. This is why people like Bay Area ISP are refusing to disclose information - because if they do, and it turns out that it is NOT what it was purported to be, they can be sued BY YOU.
So see, this is all a bit dodgy to begin with legally. One case, where this did happen, is that an old man apparently had wedding videos in his share file with the name of "usher" on them. This is one of many cases you can read about at EFF, and is the reason why now some lawmakers are getting involved in this.
Plus - remember - the DMCA is a TREATY honored by many different countries - your country may have its own views on "fair use" as defined by the DMCA. Also - the ISP's are plenty pissed off about the way its being interpreted in the US, because when the ISPs gathered together to help write the DMCA - they never agreed to patrol their subscription base (users) - only the content on their servers (web Pages). Specifically this is section 512 (h) of the DMCA - and is the chief reason why ISP's are now suing the **aa. Isp's are simply not setup to monitor their system logs for copyright infringement - illegal activity such as kiddy porn providers, yes, people accessing Kazaa - no.
At any rate - no one, according to the terms of the DMCA, is allowed to just turn over your information. They MUST give you a chance to respond to their query as to whether you are downloading infringing material BEFORE they give the **A anything at all.
Oh bloody hell I know too much about this nonsense - but there you go.
And bless you Jpaul for sharing your files so the US might leech of it.
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