You can only make an example of someone if you have enough proof to make the conviction. Unless they can monitor all of the file names within a downloaded archive, they have no idea exactly what you're downloading, therefor they can't prove whether it's legal or not.
Then on top of that there's the other questions about why they were downloading whatever it was they were downloading. Reasonable doubt right there.

Now network integrity, I guess they could argue that. But of course that's the ISP's decision, not a court. They can restrict bandwidth if a user is downloading excessively; it's not really a legal matter. And since in this case it's cable, it should be Cable & Wireless suing Virgin for not allowing other users the bandwidth

Can't be bothered right now to do the research, but I'm betting that Virgin still has stakes in the recording industry and are working hand in glove with some some coke addled wonk from said industry.

Its also a useful time for them to be doing this, since it will detract attention from the fact Virgin has been caught lying through its teeth in its own advertising... though they'd probably say that their claimed maximum speeds were 'potential' rather than 'unobtainable'.

Scumbags...

Funny that, my ISP have just announced they are cutting their "free for all off peak" hours, from 11pm-6pm to 11pm-9am, coincidence?

I assume any court action will be in a civil court, rather than criminal?

Quote from danowat :

Funny that, my ISP have just announced they are cutting their "free for all off peak" hours, from 11pm-6pm to 11pm-9am, coincidence?

I assume any court action will be in a civil court, rather than criminal?

Not coincidence at all.

A lot of ISPs are now changing their terms/business models as it has become clear that the average internet usage for Joe Public has escalated in recent times.

Now with people using legal high bandwidth services such as 4OD, BBC iPlayer etc, they have found that when people try and use the 'unlimited' service they signed up to, that the ISPs network is getting swamped. In the olden days a few high usage customers (most likely not legal use) didn't really matter as their high usage was paid for by the many lower usage users who just checked their emails and did a bit of online shopping.

This is why the Tiscali bloke had a fit and said that the BBC and other content providers should fund ISP network upgrades. The BBC turned round and said that maybe it would be better if they published a list of ISPs that performance of the streaming content would suffer on...Tiscali didn't like that.

Quote from Ian.H :

What about gaming, FTP.. whatever.. nothing to worry about / consider. Simplified:


Bittorrent packets: ABC123AABB321
Gaming packets: A1B2C3D4E5F6


Hence the term 'deep packet'. They're not just looking at "this user is uploading.. he must be seeding illegal software"... they're looking at _what_ data you're sharing and going on that.



Regards,

Ian

But...what effect (if any) would using Protocol Encryption - which is an option in uTorrent - to "hide" the content of your uploads

Quote from danowat :

Funny that, my ISP have just announced they are cutting their "free for all off peak" hours, from 11pm-6pm to 11pm-9am, coincidence?

I assume any court action will be in a civil court, rather than criminal?

If the lawyers can prove that a bittorrent user has downloaded enough illegal music, games, other copyrighted files, they could attach a (probably random/outrageous) monetary value to each file. Added up the amount stolen could be be enough for a felony conviction.

They haven't sent letters to anyone who only downloads, they are being sent out to people who share the file, so they will have large upload usage, it has nothing to do with downloading

Its guess work though surely? What if someone makes a lot of original content and uploads that to file sharing or other sites and services, wouldn't they also have a high upload usage?

IMO its all guesswork, and I can't see how it's prosicutable in court.

I guess TBH if you're uploading legally, then you have nothing to worry about, just bin the letters. However catching people who are uploading rather than those downloading is at least more to the root of the problem. Of course it could be said that the root of the problem is the fact they charge £10 for a CD etc. DVDs are worse, I don't see how HD warrants a £7 increase over standard DVDs, pretty sure they probably cost <£1 more to produce.

Don't get me wrong though, I do not agree with ISPs tying to limit bandwidth as they haven't got the resources to provide it. Be Broadband FTW!

What's so hard to understand ?

Mr A.Numpty goes to TPB and leeches a torrent of The Cheeky Girls new album.

BPI also leeches the same torrent (possibly even provides the original one), joins the swarm, and notes down all the UK IP addresses also involved in this particular torrent.

Turning on encryption in your client doesn't help...all they need to do is enable it themselves and you will connect to them.

Anyone who uses p2p to download is also uploading...it's the nature of p2p.
Even if you limit your upload to zero, you are still offering the content and it would be nigh on impossible to prove you didn't send any.

And how do dynamic IP addresses fit into all this?

Quote from danowat :

And how do dynamic IP addresses fit into all this?

It means that they may have a number of different IPs for Mr A.Numpty rather than just one.
The ISP still knows who had which and at what time.

flymike91, in the UK I don't think copyright violation is a criminal matter at all. The DMCA does not matter over here one iota.

Quote from Jakg :

Just a few more steps before we end up with the RIAA in the UK...

We have. It's called the BPI (British Phonographic Industry, same shits as their american counterparts).

This evidence would probably be shaky and may or may not stand up in court if they were to try and prosecute, which I doubt they will do. The BPI said that they would like the ISPs to disconnect people but that will probably not happen unless BPI try to get the law changed.

Do the BPI try to get money from dead people? If not, then it's not as bad...