Unencrypted modems - beware

[timwilky]

There are a couple of issues.

The first being Logistep have not proven to anyone that they can accurately monitor/record torrent traffic. therefore it is their word only. They claim you have downloaded/uploaded a torrent containing copyright material. the client says they haven't it is simply their word against yours. Their monitoring system needs accreditation which at his point it does not have.

The second issue is that there should not have been a court order requiring BT to release details of the user of that IP address at the time when the allegation of breach of copyright was supposed to have happened. The disclosure order can only be made for allegations of criminal activity. Breach of copyright is not a criminal act.

Yes if the torrent contained child porn. then a disclosure order is quite valid. but not for "Adult Enterntainment"

[timwilky]

It is also worthwhile exploring this is a civil case and therefore they can ask for damages to the value of their loss, we do not allow punitive damages. therefore had the download actually happened the loss would be about £30 (guessing that is the price of a quality porn film, others may be able to advise a more accurate cost).

Therefore, they will use the nature of torrents to claim you were uploading it to others. They even suggest at times stupid amounts of upload that are impossible unless done over several days, and fail to recognise the throttling the user may have on any torrent tools if they have such tools. By claiming you are distributing the copyright material they are able to exaggerate the loss and increase the claimed damages.

They are now trying to scare people with reports of their successful court awards against so called P2P pirates. However, DL have only ever won undefended claims by default. there was a recent I think £16,000 award against on of these. Again it was by default.

Many who have had these letters seek legal advice, unfortunately the wisdom amongst the ignorant legal fraternity is that it is easier/cheaper to pay up than to defend. Ignorant in that they have no knowledge as to this scam and think it is a indignant copyright owner seeking redress against somebody who they allege has pirated their material. Not that it is the victim of a legal scam, that there is no proof, simply the weight of a name/address in mayfair of a group of slick lawyers using dubious practices

[yorkie_chris]

Are there any IP's who you can instruct to reply with "lolz" to anybody asking for name and address data to such an enquiry?

Originally Posted by yorkie_chris

Are there any IP's who you can instruct to reply with "lolz" to anybody asking for name and address data to such an enquiry?

Any company doing such would be in breach of the court order. About your only chance is to setup an account with false details. However, that would immediately invalidate T&C for the account itself.

[yorkie_chris]

And I presume any proxy you use would also be forced to give out your details (well, lead the trail to you anyway)?

Got to be a market for a secure torrent program

Originally Posted by yorkie_chris

And I presume any proxy you use would also be forced to give out your details (well, lead the trail to you anyway)?

Yup.

Originally Posted by yorkie_chris

Got to be a market for a secure torrent program

I'm currently writing something very similar.

[yorkie_chris]

Could you just find a dodgy proxy server not bound by english law?

Discovered something today that suprised me quite a bit and has some bearing on this case, particularly in the regard of "an IP address is in no way personally identifying".

I've been doing work for a very major highstreet retailer basically slapping in VPNs across DSL lines as failover backup to their leased line WAN links. We're using BT as the ISP for these lines, and every time BT flog a broadband line they end up shipping out a pre-configured router to the site; which we then discard and stick a proper Cisco router in. As such, this retailer now has a stack of pre-configured crappy BT routers, and somebody saw this stack and decided to give one to their mate. Mate then plugs this router in and... gets the IP address that was supposed to be assigned to the store (we've got static addresses but the dialer interface is setup for DHCP and the ISP just assign the same IP address every time). What this means is that the DSL username (that is, the username passed by PPP in setting up the DSL - which may or may not also be the username you use to access your webmail and other ISP services) is *not* tied to a telephone number - I always thought it was. Now I don't know the setup at the unknown mate's end is, surely his line must have been setup for DSL at some stage, and I would guess he's probably got BT as an ISP but the crucial thing is - on phoning BT on two seperate occasions they told us that the store was logged in, using the username assigned to the store and using the store IP address; it was only on the third attempt that they dug further and cross checked the telephone circuit using the DSL username. So if matey boy was downloading naughty things, in all likelihood a request to find his identity would result in the store being fingered and issued with proceedings by file sharing ambulance chasers.

Anyway, only relevance to Ed's case is another way of saying "an IP address does not personally identify an individual" but to the gathered geeks following this thread with interest, I've certainly learnt something today in that a DSL username is not tied to a telephone circuit. (now you all get to say "duh", we knew that like, forever, call yourself a geek?!)

[yorkie_chris]

You're on about geeks though, they wouldn't say:

"duh", we knew that like, forever, call yourself a geek?!)

They'd say "lolz n0000b"

Originally Posted by yorkie_chris

You're on about geeks though, they wouldn't say: They'd say "lolz n0000b"

Chuckle I shall duly consider myself "pwndd!!1!"