Uk Internet Users Getting Fined For Illegal Downloads

[Daffy D]

A piece on the UK television Watchdog program reports that a well respected London law firm is sending letters to Internet users demanding fees of up to 600pounds for downloading copyright material. The 18 page letters are so intimidating that some people have paid up even though they have not downloaded any file share programs. There was a married couple in their 70s that were accused of downloading hardcore porn.

Seems the companies instructing the solicitors to send the letters are getting the information from the users IP address but as an advisor on the program pointed out that in itself is not proof that a particular person had done the illegal download you have to analyze the hard drive.

They also demonstrated how easy it was to just drive around and tap into one of the many unsecured wireless connections and download whatever you want at someone else’s expense.

What I don’t understand is that every time I log on I get a different IP address, the first two set of numbers stay the same but the rest are always different so how could they pinpoint where I live?

Watchdog Article

[ronz28]

Just the latest of a series of Nigerian, U.K., younameit, internet scams. That's what the spam and delete buttons or for. If its snail mail then it goes in the circular file.

[bigphil30uk]

I.P. locator puts me in the middle of Hampshire while in fact I am about 250 miles north

[phaethon]

Your IP address is like a hire car, the company keeps records of who has it and when and if something illegal is done with it, the courts can access those records and the name and address of the person using it at the time.

Apparently a German company has developed software to track IPs from certain pirate sites back to the ISP. A court order (presumably) gets them the name and address of who was using that IP at that time and letters go out. The company makes great claims for the reliability of their software but others have voiced doubts.

The solicitors say that even if someone has used your (unsecure) wireless network to download, you have a duty of care to secure your network and thus are liable to pay restitution to the copyright owner which includes perceived damages for illegal copying, the hefty fees of the tracking company and the soilicitors. These are NOT fines but payments to make the possibility of being takebn to court go away.

[MKAsok]

Use Peer Guardian 2 to protect your IP from nosey governments and anti-P2P types when using P2P networks and force encryption from any BitTorrent client. Disclaimer: of course I fully realise you're only using P2P networks to share files that aren't subject to copyright laws, this is just to protect your privacy...

[astral]

Use Peer Guardian 2 to protect your IP from nosey governments and anti-P2P types when using P2P networks and force encryption from any BitTorrent client. Disclaimer: of course I fully realise you're only using P2P networks to share files that aren't subject to copyright laws, this is just to protect your privacy...

Please note that such hiding techniques are NOT legal in Thailand

and therefore should NOT be discussed in this forum

Having said that the whole area of solicitor's letter's is very worrying in this member's opinion.

[Daffy D]

Not wishing to break forum rules but curiosity got the better of me

If hiding your IP is illegal in Thailand how would anyone know?

[OxfordWill]

They can know only retrospectively having had other reasons to check your equipment (unless you dont know what youre doing and employ practices which suggest you are sometimes doing it and even still they need to have had a reason to be seeing your activity (hidden or otherwise) to begin with).

Edited December 20, 2008 by OxfordWill

[surface]

Use Peer Guardian 2 to protect your IP from nosey governments and anti-P2P types when using P2P networks and force encryption from any BitTorrent client. Disclaimer: of course I fully realise you're only using P2P networks to share files that aren't subject to copyright laws, this is just to protect your privacy...

Please note that such hiding techniques are NOT legal in Thailand

and therefore should NOT be discussed in this forum

Having said that the whole area of solicitor's letter's is very worrying in this member's opinion.

Are you sure about that? Peer Guardian simply denies connections to/from a list of IP addresses. I find it VERY hard to believe that this can be illegal. If that were the case, a lot of software that blocks malware, malicious web sites, ads, etc., would all be illegal. Heck, even creating bogus entry in my hosts file would be illegal!

[MKAsok]

Are you sure about that? Peer Guardian simply denies connections to/from a list of IP addresses. I find it VERY hard to believe that this can be illegal. If that were the case, a lot of software that blocks malware, malicious web sites, ads, etc., would all be illegal. Heck, even creating bogus entry in my hosts file would be illegal!

I agree. Maybe Astral was thinking about the use of proxy servers. Not the same thing. Anyway, Astral, please feel free to clarify, since this is quite an important point for those of us that live here...