Is the Government really cracking down on Downloading??
 

I don't know whether this topic belongs in this forum but it does have to do with media or should i say the dling of it. So please if this topic belongs somewhere else, any mod....put it there.

My question is simply as my title states: Is the government really cracking down on the copyrighted dl of materials.

I know its probably been brought up before and I even heard about it before as well, that the government puts out its own trackable dl's and whoever is unlucky enough to dl that file they get busted.

I never paid much attention to it but my friend who dls a lot is all of a sudden quite shaken when he discovere that several people in my little state of Hawaii have already been busted including a 10 year old girl! So that makes me wonder is it true? Have you guys been seeing this type of activity in your areas?

Also I mostly dl torrents, are torrents or direct dls more suseptible to this kind of tracking?

Unless you use an anonymous network, which both direct downloads and BitTorrent are not, anyone can see you downloading something. Heck, any BT client worth it's salt normally has a "peers" window that shows you all the connected peers and seeds on that torrent. If the government ran their own torrent, or more likely their own tracker, it would be very easy to tell it's you. Same thing with direct downloads.

Basically, when you download illegally, you are taking a risk. It's up to you in order to decide weither the reward justifies the risk you're taking.

My personal advice is to watch where you download. I will never, ever download a hot torrent off of a major, public bittorrent tracker like piratebay, mininova, torrentspy, etc. I stick to private trackers and usenet.

Can you even get in trouble for downloading? Can't you claim it was going to be a digital copy of material you already own? Uploading seems to be what really gets people in trouble.

Downloading is infact legal. The problem comes when you use BT, since the very nature of BT is that while downloading you are simutaneously uploading the same material back up to others. Uploading is illegal. As far as the personal copy rationalizing, I think they ruled on that somewhere down the line, the DMCA probably has a provision on it somewhere. I don't know any specifics though...

What is great about downloading in Canada is that no one gives a fuck. It's illegal to share, but nothing is written about downloading. So the US government can't bust me.

Not necessarily. In many cases, yes, but in some cases you can just leech away without uploading to any peers.

Plus with all the copy protection they put on CDs and DVDs, one could claim that the only way to obtain a personal copy to which they are entitled was to download.

I heard that the best way to avoid getting in real trouble is to set up an open, insecure wireless network in your house. I read two articles claiming that people who said they had this were quickly dismissed. The bottom line is that they can track your IP but an IP only points to the person paying for the ISP, not the person on your computer or internet connection in general. Even if your network is secure you could just as easily claim it was hacked.

except that copyright laws reach accros boarders.

Copyright does, copyright laws (i.e the illegality of spreading or acquiring copyrighted material) doesn't.

But then again if you don't upload to your peers, BitTorrent dies, that simple. The "Oh well copy protection sux" excuse won't work because... well you know... it's just not an argument. The judge would just say you could have decided not to legally/illegally obtain it if you didn't like copy protection.
Finally, I think your last idea may float. One could claim some random guy logged onto your network and started downloading using it all withought you knowing. That's still risky though, if they put a warrant on your computer to further investigate your claims and they catch you trying to delete any files since the warrant was made, you'd be in trouble for obstruction of justice.

I would say there are two ways to go about downloading. The first is to just take the risk. I'm sure statistics are in your favor of not getting caught. If you don't want to take that risk, then by all means find a really good private tracker. The only downside to that is, from my experiance, all the private trackers don't have nearly as many files or seeds as do public trackers.

Tricky! That question has been put in the back of my mind for the longest time, although once in a blue moon I wonder just how the government catches people, and whether or not it was just a case of the people downloading being careless, or arbitrarily random action by the government.

I don't worry about it too much because I still wonder why the government hasn't bothered to check up major sites and take massive action. By that I mean, the government could probably care less that you're stealing Japanese anime via fansubs, or that you can find just about any video in the world on Youtube. "Videogame music? What's that? Get out of my face, we're only bothering to catch people who download real music, aka. mainstream"

I could understand for movies and popular music, maybe, but I just can't picture them cracking down on foreign stuff you'd probably never see at your local Wal-Mart.

There is some validity to that I think. Obviously, anime like the kind you would download from sub groups that are generally unplayed in America is a very niche market. I would doubt the MPAA and the likes would honestly care if some guy is downloading the latest episode of Kokokug No De Shishi off a tracker. Nor would they care if you download the corresponding OST's. But if you try downloading say Greenday or something, yah the RIAA will take a bit more interest in you.

Most private trackers force their users to seed at least as much as they download or they can get banned, none of that download and run BS. Plus from what I've seen there are many more dead (and underseeded) torrents out in the public arena as opposed to private trackers. Most private peers actually care about share ratio.

And about downloading of foreign material: unless the country of it's origin tells the US to crack down, it'll never happen. The US only protects it's intellectual property, it doesn't give a rat's ass about prtotecting the rights (or revenue) of some pop band from Korea.

Very great discussion here guys, and I can see a lot of points being fired back and forth.

I do generally dl things that are not licenced by the US yet. But for dling whole anime series and such that are licenced I do that rarely. And for my music I think most of the stuff I get cannot be found in a lot of places because even though the lyrics are in english they are usually some european band.

But as for movies and such I didn't dl much back then but I have started to and according to your points it seems I should really cut that down.

Does anyone go to tokyotosho ? I dl a hell of a lot of stuff from there.

And what about site like rapidshare and mega upload??? what kind of sites are they considered to be?

Damn, I mostly download stuff I own on CD already or at least planning to buy shortly. I don't even upload as much as I used to and mostly when I do, it's anime and VGM, OOP or music that hasn't been released...

That said, all of this talk of cracking down wouldn't surprise me. The US government always does what big business tells them to do it seems and has to be pushed to lookout for the small guy. Sheesh, it'd be nice for once if they would focus on something important, the border would be a nice start. :rolleyes:

Oh well, just be content to know that as we of the younger generation start making up the Government more and more, less of this crap with happen. Unless, they completely drop the ball before then!

Can somebody inform me about FTP security? I know there is SSL, but how easy is it for a third party to monitor an FTP connection?

I don't think the government gives a damn about most of the stuff I download, since 90% of it is from Japan. There was this one time when I got an email forwarded from my ISP about a game I downloaded. I won't say what game it was but at the time it was a popular new release from an American company. The person who sent the complaint to my ISP was probably a random fanboy and not an actual person who worked for the company that made the game. He threatened to 'take legal action' against me and my ISP. Anyway, all my ISP did was tell me to remove the materials (stop seeding) or my account would be disabled. To be honest that was the first time I ever felt 'caught' so I was scared shitless, I stoped seeding and deleted the game from my PC altogather, yet I had already backed it up on a CD.. Afterwards I called my ISP to tell them I had 'removed' the materials and asked if I was ok, so I was. Later on I reinstalled the game on my PC just to try it out, turns out the game fracking sucked. -_-

Bottom line, unless you're a big time downloader who shares copyrighted material constantly, I don't think the government really gives a damn. But thats just me.

It's possible, but it'd be an illegal method of aquiring evidense. The organization would need a warrent to intercept the transmission, with SSL involved it'd definitely involve hacking. Upon which the interloper would be subject to more serious punishment than the copyright infringing parties.

So? Not really your problem. Honestly if I go to download something and there are fifty seeds and next to no peers, I don't feel bad hitting-and-running. I feel no reason to seed that which is already adequately seeded, especially on a public tracker.

I'm no expert on the law but last I checked you can download something you own if you treat it as a digital copy. It doesn't make any sense that you can legally own it but it's illegal to obtain it unless you make it for yourself.

They would have to prove you, yourself, were downloading/uploading illegal files. Again, playing dumb seems to be key here. There's no way they could prove you downloaded the files yourself. They'd have to accuse you of allowing other people to download files illegally with you knowing they were downloading files illegally. I don't see any way they would easily prove this. Someone would have to testify against you, saying they were told by you that they could download illegal files (which would just implicate them as a criminal, what) or that they heard you tell someone else that that person could illegaly download files (what kind of dickhead would do that?) What are the odds, really.

As far as I know there's no law saying you have to secure your computer or your wireless network. Although maybe at some point that could become a law; but if anyone went to that lengths they might as well say, "you have to lock up your DVDs and CDs because people might make copies of them; you're liable if they obtain them and copy them." Just wouldn't make sense in the long run.

Its great that this whole discussion pooped up form a question, but I think we are getting off topic here

My main question is are you people seeing an INCREASE in people being charged with downloading of copyrighted material.

I don't think there's any real way of knowing for mattar of fact. If they are, they aren't publicising it. If the public reports of litigation are any indication, they are infact cutting back on the amount of cases being brought forth. That's not really a reliable source though, since obviously you can't report on every case going on at the time, and the media will instead only focus on select few cases, until that is the whole topic loses the medias interest and they stop reporting on it.

I think if anything, people are just getting a cease-and-desist letter most of the time anymore. Really, I got one from a label, stopped sharing their in print albums and nothing came out of it. Probably helped that I somewhat knew the person sending the letter, through my old website, but still... :D

Seriously though, all these law suites only make the RIAA and the like (Not to mention the labels that support them) look worse than they already do to their customer base and people in general. Must be, considering that low CD sales has much less to do with piracy than they will admit. Studies that prove so or not, notwithstanding.

In short, I am assuming all the bad PR has them going after the major pirates, pirating actual physical copies. The rest of the downloading sort of leech either hear nothing about it or are privately asked to stop. Trust me, most who get such a letter don't want to take them on, so, in most cases that should be enough. Not some letter demanding thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars from some kid. Comes off as being a bully and a greedy bastard much the same way people see the oil companies.

Oh well, that might be why we are hearing less about this now, not good PR! In fact, the only crackdown I have heard was a huge international piracy ring. Otherwise, the RIAA and their lawyers are out there by themselves, acting as a self-imposed piracy police force. Thing is, they keep trying to get the laws changed to take away our established rights. So, the government isn't completely sitting on the sidelines either way. I guess that's what throwing billions of dollars at the problem gets the RIAA, what they want!

It's not like anyone whether they try or not will end the download craze of today's Internet. If anything, they'll get it to work in their favor. Too bad it's taken this long to even get to this point however, assuming it's not just a lull in their greediness. Now, if only they would stop screwing us over in regards to Copy-Protection... :rolleyes:

I would be interested to know this, too. Not for personal information, as I have no intention of downloading music (except for vg soundtracks, maybe) but I am interested to see how downloading affects CD sales, etc.

I'll need to Google for a source, but unlike the industry wants you to believe it actually helps sales more than it hurts it. In fact, if anything it's their pricing that has caused decreased sales. Funny, it's also what has increased piracy... ;)

Don't get me started on the actual quality of today's music though, since it's not price alone as to why people are moving to downloading. :rolleyes:

Basically, I don't worry about it, no matter how many downloaded or copied songs, games, movies, et cetera I do or do not have. If the government wants to search my house for stuff, they'll need a warrant, and for a warrant, they'll need probable cause, and they can only get that if they are already taking the time and effort to poke around into what I'm doing on the net - which would be illegal unless they had a warrant for THAT, too.

All-in-all, I'm not worried. Sure, I've heard the horror stories, but I can almost guarantee half are made up, and the other half? Heck, there's like, what, 15 of them? 15 out of how many billions of people. Odds are in my favor. If I ever wanted to do stuff like this. *innocent look*

How does the government track the illegal downloading? And what happens when they catch somebody? Just wondering.

I don't know. If it's illegal, it's illegal. It really is stealing, and it makes sense that the government should crack down on people.

I think the only time they would even notice you is if you did huge downloads, and they wouldn't care unless you sold or rented the stuff. They have bigger things to worry about then some music or movies that are being pirated.

I have the feeling it's the RIAA and their cronies that are trying to do such tracking. Which, from what I gather is illegal as well. Must suck to be them... :D

Seriously though, they put out fake releases and take note of the IP addresses. Otherwise, I'd have no idea. I recall them trying to sue the ISPs to get them to divulge such info, don't know if that got them anywhere though. Again, it must suck to be them...

:biggrin:

My Thoughts on This
 

Yeah, I must say there certainly is an increased in downloading today. Sure, the government might be occassionally nabbing a few people here and there to 'show' the huge recording companies something but I think it is partially the recording companies' fault. Most of the time, the price just doesn't match the quality of the CD. Too many of today's CDs are over-priced. I think they've been selling those CDs way above cost for too long a time... If only those corporate monolithes could just cut down on their avarice then perhaps, we'll start seeing many more people actually downloading and buying the media material.

You should only be concerned if you're downloading some very popular stuff. They can't catch you unless you take their bait. In large cities, the ISPs sometimes put your upload speed on par with dialup, to keep you from sharing. It's best to know who you're downloading from. If the guy doesn't have a lot of files, and it's a popular song, don't download it. If it's a guy with a substantial amount of files, it's likely safe, because I doubt some government fag is going to waste his time downloading 20 GB of music just to catch a few teenagers.

You should also use the right P2P software, and it does not start with an "L".

Heh.

Lets talk about the high-speed internet ISP's. Surely, the ISP must see a marginal difference between your not-pirating high-speed user and your pirating high-speed user, right? And between any users who are uploading a heavy amount of data on a weekly basis, and vice versa. Every high-speed user isn't making full use of their bandwidth, is that an okay assumption?

So, the ISP's know that someone has been running an FTP server based on the sheer amount of media-related data they've uploaded from one port (for example.) Why don't ISPs co-operate with the RIAA or anti-piracy groups? Does Comcast just not agree with anti-piracy? Do Comcast or other ISPs just see it as a thing that they can let slide in this time and age?

And are the ISPs responsible to conceal our pirate doings?

I think the answer is yes to all the yes/no questions. But I'm not sure.

I do think it is good advice to say that to avoid piracy, just download in places more private, and download less mainstream media. Because of what concern the RIAA has shown in public so far lets that assumption go.

Didn't The Patriot Act change all of that?

Why would any ISPs want to do that? It's not exactly in their best interest to do so.

I mean, it's not like we're talking about childpornography or anything here. Filesharing is a two-bit crime at best.

^But it does make sense, I mean I downloaded more than 100GB in the past 2 months... it's easily detectable... so what's the deal with ISPs anywayz?


Got a dumb question...

I use demonoid and blackcats-games... are those considered private or public trackers... also can you guys recommend me some "private trackers"... no idea was usenet is but I'll look into that (since I dun want you guys to explain something from scratch ^^)

If they did get wind of your questionable activites and reported you to some anti-piracy guys (assuming this is all well and legal in Canada), the immediate result for them would be one lost customer. And after word got out that the ISP in question reports its customers, they would stand to loose countless more. This is why "It's not exactly in their best interest to do so".

Ah, that makes sense. But it could be a scenario in the future, when Comcast has all the money they need. As if they don't already. And when piracy is proven to be bringing down creative groups.

The thing is... that is what I think... but, since the city I live in has ONE cable internet provider... so I doubt one customer or a few being screwed over would make a big deal since it's the only cable company... but then again what I do know about economics and politics <.<

With copyright law doesn't it only say "It is illegal to distribute / copy this movie..." it never actually says anything about obtaining them.

As for private trackers, couldn't these have been set up by government? Or is that entrapment or something?

I've seen some suspicous users on dc++, they have all of the movies you can think of and when you download from them their downloads run at around 4mb/s (that's the actual download rate), I have a feeling they may have alot more honeypots setup than we think.

But then again, hundreds of thousands of people download from these every day, so are they going to arrest every user? Unless as has been said they just look out for the mass uploaders.

For ISP's noticing you are downloading say 100gb a week, I don't think they'd notice really, it's not as if you're overusing your download limit or anything, they just set you at say 1mb/s and then leave you to it. The only way I can see an investigation even starting on someone is word of mouth that someone is selling say, illegal DVD's, then the police obtaining one from the seller and then they have solid evidence to get as warrant and prosecute them.

The worst I've seen is people receiving warning letters from their ISP's / movie companies to stop and delete whatever they have within 24 hours.

There are far too many people downloading far too many things for the government to pursue them. Even Microsoft, RIAA, and stuff are going for the actual Pirates, who mass-rip copyrighted materials and put them on the internet. It simply costs too much to hunt down each and every illegal downloader, because unlike physical thieves, someone can 'steal' as many copies of something, without it 'running out'. Also, most people who illegally download things wouldn't buy it if they couldn't get it free, so even the 'virtual loss' sustained by the companies are very low. The only thing that pays off for these companies is busting groups of people who pirate and sell copyrighted material, and the occasional person who uploads vast numbers of copyrighted material on the internet.

It also seems to pay off for them to go after little 10 year old kids... :rolleyes:

I can kind of understand why the RIAA and the like go after people that download. If you don't protect your copyright you can lose it IIRC. Really, I think it's understandable and justified in part. However, it's just really slimy going only after those that can't fight back and after fair use of such copyrighted works. Bunch of tools at the RIAA if you ask me! Seems they are afraid to go after those that have the money and power to give them a good licking.

Like any business will ever have enough money... ;)