have u thought (maybe u did) that going after people costs more to justice than letting them...

if u bring people to justice(who copies "illegally"DVD, music or whatever), the court (which has already lot to do with drug addict, junkies,...) will have to work day and night, 24 h a day...non stop...and who is going to pay? you???

it is easy to catch someone, I just have to go in a school, confiscate all hard disc or do a "perquisition" in you appart... am sure most of teenagers have music downloaded...

justice is after killers,not teenagers...

I would like to totally agree with you. However, reality tells us that the world is full of hypocrisy. I too agree that the really bad people are rapists, murderers, sex traders (child and adult), etc... It's funny that justice needs money so it goes after file uploaders. I personally think that they should continue to focus their attentions to more serious criminals like those that I mentioned. If the RIAA, MPAA, etc... have it their ways, it won't be long before a person who shares files serve longer jail time than murderers and rapists.

I don't think that in the US, jail time will ever be more than a token effort. They may try to make an example of some people but you will never see the majority sitting in jail or prison. It varies from state to state but thier is just no room in the jails for a whole new catagorie of criminals. As it is they are letting people out early because of severe overcrouding and building and staffing new jails is very expensive and people go apeshit when they try to raise taxes to pay for it. The US has already tried going nuts throwing people in jail (short term) for any little offence (minor drug offences like a guy caught smoking a joint etc). Considering the number of people file sharing, if they ever did mannage to arest and convict more than a token number, their would be no place to jail them, plain and simple.

So if this is the case, what must the people be doing who do get caught sharing music etc. All I know is that when I read of cases were people have been caught, they are people who have hundreds if not thousands of files online for people to download.

Pure chance and/or they were sharing tracks from albums that were still to be released.

I must reply to this.I use simple safeguards that help some.My settings in IE6 are not that secure and I surf alot.I have ZoneAlarm and AVG anti virus and of course Adaware and some others.All of this is simply to be used to get the crap off my system once it has gotten in.The ZoneAlarm is really effective at stopping the hacks or at least letting me know someone is hacking me.I've simply become skilled at getting rid of all the crap once I get it and I've had to re-install my OS only once in 3 years.I get better all the time.Maybe there is a better way but this is just so much more fun.

Well guys, what can I say, it seems I am one othose one in a million, I just received my, thanks god, let`s say WARNING from the government. If you are interested I can drop some of the lines here for you to have an idea:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

22 Oct 2007 15:31:09 GMT

Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad y Telecom.



RE: Unauthorized Distribution of the following copyrighted computer program(s):

Dear Sir/Madam:

The Business Software Alliance (BSA) has determined that the above connection, which appears to be using an Internet account under your control , is using a P2P network seen below to offer unlicensed copies of copyrighted computer programs published by the BSA's member companies.

Evidentiary Information:
Notice ID: 2352597
Asset: Adobe Creative Suite
Protocol: BitTorrent
IP Address: my ip address (my real one)
DNS:
File Name: TEU.KeyGens.Adobe.Creative.Suite.CS3[shared_by_Nyr-Evo_Team-EvoShare.Net].zip
File Size: 8427540
Timestamp: 21 Oct 2007 00:31:51 GMT
Last Seen Date: 21 Oct 2007 00:31:51 GMT
URL: http://www.sumotracker.com:80/announce
Username (if available):

after all this it said:

The above computer program(s) is/are being made available for copying, through downloading, at the above location without authorization from the copyright owner(s).

Based upon BSA's representation of the copyright owners in anti-piracy matters, we have a good faith belief that none of the materials or activities listed above have been authorized by the rightholders, their agents, or the law. BSA represents that the information in this notification is accurate and states, under penalty of perjury, that it is authorized to act in this matter on behalf of the copyright owners listed above.

We hereby give notice of these activities to you and request that you take expeditious action to remove or disable access to the materials described above, and thereby prevent the illegal reproduction and distribution of pirated software via your company's network. As you know, illegal on-line activities can result in 50 million people on the Internet accessing and downloading a copyrighted product worldwide without authorization - a highly damaging activity for the copyright holder.

We appreciate your cooperation in this matter. Please advise us regarding what actions you take.

Please include the following Notice ID in any response you send:
197-2352597

Please respond indicating the actions you have taken to resolve this matter. The provided link has been assigned to this matter
and a link to the related subject.



So basically, look at the number, 50 million people doing the same is quite impossible to track them all, but, they track random files they choose and track all those who access/share those files. I`ve been looking inside the link that concerns my specific subject, and I cannot post it here, but basically they are asking my isp to fill up a form where says:
-that the user was localized, informed and found responsable
-that the user is not responsable cos is a public place
-that the user refuse he commited such an act
-that the user didn`t have an idea what is this all about

So, the first step is for the isp to inform you and fill up that form and monitor you to see if you continue in such a behavior and depending of what you downloaded/shared, how many times you did it and such, you could get busted or pushed to pay a fortune according to the ammount of money the software you shared cost.


Now I`m using the GHOSTSURFER, it just change my ip address but I cannot make it work with azureus yet, then I`m a little affraid to use it cos this is all too fresh. The anonymous proxies are so annoying, they might work but a lot of them are annonymous today and tomorrow transparent so you must check that every hour, and a lot of them as well, just don`t work with most of the places or with p2p.
I think that to use ghostsurfer with a anonymous proxy in lets say congo, if they have internet there, could work in the way that if someone contact the isp in congo requesting your ip tey may or may not give them your fake ghostsurfer ip and unless you did something really bad in the net they will leave it appart or send a notification to the wrong isp where the user will say I have no idea what are you talking about guys.

So if someone finds a better way, or if somebody can make azureus work with ghostsurfer please write it down here. In the meantime, no more p2p for me at least for now...

You cannot spoof your IP with bit torrent, it will not work. The tracker needs your IP address to work properly. You can use a proxy, but good luck finding one that doesn't suck.

The truth of the matter is that the RIAA and the MPAA do not look for people filesharing, they pay other companies to do it for them. There is a very infamous email log of one of these companies posted at the pirate bay. They seem to concentrate on technology in cycles. Right now they are moving from bit torrent to news groups. They only seem to concentrate on Movies and Music, especially the most popular downloads, usually the top couple hundred. Applications seem safe.

I have gotten some letters from my ISP(s) in the past. The easiest thing to do is to start by telling them it was not you. And that someone must have used your wireless internet connection. 9/10 times they will bitch at you, and tell you to secure it, and tell you not to DL any more copyrighted material. If you ignore them, or do not stop they will usually cut you off (third times a charm in most cases). You also have to look at what they are presenting to you. Some ISPs monitor .torrent downloads, and if your filename is on the magic list you get an email or call. Most people generally consider this caught, however if they cannot prove that you downloaded the entire file, you have nothing to worry about, just tell them you are sorry and won't do it again (or stick with the WIFI excuse). ALWAYS tell them you already deleted the file before they ask you.
Anyway Torrent files are where to get copyrighted material, not copyrighted material. DO NOT get cocky and tell them this, they have the means to verify if you downloaded the entire file. And if you are a dickhead about it your name WILL be sent to said companies above for further annoyances. I have DONE THIS personally with several douchebags yelling at ME for them downloading tons of music. I was trying to help them out by warning them before they got official problems.

Any yes, I have gotten letters about files I have downloaded from the same company that I worked for.

They (The comapnies employed by RI/MPAA) also seem to concentrate on sharing more than downloading. This does not apply to Bit torrent as it is a 2 way street. No software blocker is going to help you if they contact either your ISP, and request every person that downloaded a specific .torrent file (I have seen this alot), or make a bit torrent tracker give up thier logs. The trackers ability to know your IP address is fundamental to the system working.

Encryption is an okay route to go, infact it is a good way to increase download speeds as most ISP monitor and limit Bit torrent traffic because it is in upwards of 40%+ of all internet traffic. If they do not have advanced packet analyzers they propably will not be able to throttle it. Some ISPs look for tons of incoming/outgoing 4mb file chunks. If you go over a certain amount you will be throttled.

The very limited amount of Filesharing cases in comparison to the total number of people sharing copyrighted content reflects on the applications that block certain IP ranges. There is no proof that it works, and as far as I am concerned, the only thing it will stop is another Bit torrent user who is looking to log IPs (peer to peer) for specific files (which is how they get your name, and then in turn bother your ISP). No matter what you do they will always be able to get your IP from the tracker. Unless said tracer is in a country that does not have copyright laws, and if you are no longer downloading said file. Or if you use a Proxy that they can not obtain the logs from (this is harder than you think).

Companies are trying to make up what they call lost profit, by bothering people that wouldn't have bought thier junk anyway. I think that they should increase the products appeal by making it BETTER. If I download anything and I really like, I will buy it.

the thing about this is, P2P is very complicated to monitor, if we're talking small scale then it's much easier, but they're trying to monitor the net, so that's not a simple task. The trend now a day is they uses bait to fish people. What they do is they would release the file themselves to get people in the pool and monitor those files only. Makes it easier to track/watch/catch, so the key here is a reliable source, this is why people always want to be in a pivate group, much safer and chances of them unleashing tracking files on you is much less. Peersgardian does eliminate some of the IP range, but it's quite annoying.

I recommend using newgroups, it's harder to track and downloads are much faster, up to your max download speed. Altbinz is a freeware leecher and NewsLeecher is a popular one.

If you do use torrents, use private trackers, forced encryption with no exceptions, and PeerGuardian - the IP blocklist is updated on Mon, Wed, and Fri. Do not use uTorrent above 1.6.1 or BitTorrent, they are partners with the MPAA.

thanks for the information

hey our parents basically pirated music but nothing ever happened to them. was known as FM stereo and a tape deck. how many people took music that way and never bought the albums? dont recall the music industries and artists going belly up back then and a lot more people had those capabilities then compared to who has a pc with net access today imho.

Yeah...
Don't use 'em.

Semp has made some good points. Once you're off public trackers, you will have greatly reduced your visibility to those who wish to incriminate you. Use SSH where possible when browsing. If your ISP monitors .torrent extension downloads, some trackers allow you to download as .zip. If possible, use trackers that encrypt the user IP database. uTorrent has sold out, so only use 1.6.1 or boycott it altogether and use another client such as Deluge or KTorrent. I would however not force encryption, but only enable it for those unfortunately enough to be stuck with Comcast. Forcing encryption reduces the number of peers you connect to and does not offer significant protection.

If you have the money, purchase a dedicated box for file sharing then transfer the files to your own computer using SFTP, or FTP with auth TLS. Of course, bear in mind the information you use when signing up for the service. This may be necessary if your ISP throttles BitTorrent traffic by deep packet inspection.

Finally, do not succumb to their tactics of FUD.

I'd just like to say: Don't leech off of your own internet connection!
There are so many wifi connections out there. Just drive around a block or go to a known hotspot.

Also, it's not just how you download but what you download. If I DL an old game that would have cost me 5 bucks to buy thats much different than downloading a hot program like adobe creative suite.

well i think you have a point. BUT to me the main difference between a "FM Radio" and a "MP3" is the MP3's "quality" is far better sounding vs a FM Radio signal.... so that could have been some of the reason they never said much about it.

p.s. dont get me wrong i aint defending the RIAA in anyway as i think there quite shady and should be shutdown etc etc.... cause i read to many stories of them screwing over people that where sometimes innocent etc etc etc

(MP3's "quality" is far better sounding vs a FM Radio signal.... so that could have been some of the reason they never said much about it).


lol ok so i guess everyone that posts music can just drop their bit rates down to about 64 kbps and all will be well.

Might be worth a shot . . . most folks probably couldn't tell the difference.