Cease! Desist!

[KillerGremlin]

So, I got a cease and desist notice courtesy of the DMCA (riaa) sent to my university. My university wasn't kind enough to forward it to me, but they let me know that I need to watch myself.

The whole cease and desist notice is very threatening, but I guess that's the point.

Anyway, cool shoes. 10 years of using the Internet as a means of discovering new music, and I've finally been flagged. I guess it's the inherent risk of downloading, but I don't feel bad. I've discovered all sorts of wealths of music, and I've purchased my fair share of albums. Especially from bands that work hard and don't get the acclaim they deserve.

I don't blog or anything, but yeah. I guess this an attempt to get some discussion on the current situation of the industry. I'm pretty up to date on my stuff, but right now I'm just kicking back and seeing what happens.

[GameMaster]

So, will you be halting all your downloading for a while? You know, laying low?

Cause they'll probably be monitoring you for a while. WHich must be an unsettling feeling. Knowing everywhere you visit on the internet is possibly being actively logged by a person(s).

I'm surprised your university was so soft on you. Usually they make you sign documents and stuff when you first enroll at a school, and I thought the consequences were pretty tough if you get caught, like suspension or something.

Sorry to hear about your sour twist of fate, man.

[KillerGremlin]

The university doesn't seem overly concerned. They have an obligation to cooperate with the industry because the industry is run by the government, and the government funds the university; so, if the RIAA shows up with a subpoena the university will happily hand over all the information, aka my name and stuff. As it stands now, it's just a warning. We shall see if they follow up on it.

I plan to lay low, I guess. Apparently they sent out like 50 notices this week, so it looks like they're really beefing up these cease and desist notices.

[thatmariolover]

May I ask, do you use Peerguardian and/or SafePeer?

[Bond]

I could be wrong, but I believe the RIAA specifically goes after universities.

My rule is to never download at university, but home is okay.

[Jason1]

Ive got a few questions for you, Gremelin. First, what school do you go to? Second, roughly how much were you downloading? Im sure that might be hard to estimate, but try to come up with roughly.

[manasecret]

I got one of those five or six years ago, my first year at Tulane university. Except instead of receiving a letter, they shut off my room's internet. Then they simply waited until I called to ask what was wrong with my connection to tell me about it. My roommate wasn't happy.

It happened to lots of people. This was back when Kazaa was the P2P program to use. The stupidest part, though, was that the letter specifically pointed out a halflife executable file that I happened to have in my share folder, which was nothing more than an officially downloaded update from the valve website that anyone could have gotten off the internet!

That clued me into the fact that they didn't care that I was downloading stuff (or didn't know what I was downloading), only that I was sharing stuff. So I stopped sharing stuff, but I went along and kept downloading.

[KillerGremlin]

May I ask, do you use Peerguardian and/or SafePeer?

Brace yourself for this: as it stands, Vista only supports PeerGuardian 2, RC1. And I only became aware of this fact the other day. Yes, I do run PeerGuardian, I've had it on my XP machine for as long as I can remember, but I don't have it on Vista. As far as SafePeer, I've never used it. Isn't it a plugin for Azureus? I have always used uTorrent, so maybe that is why it has never come up.

I've heard that PeerGuardian isn't that helpful, but I've always felt better knowing that I have it. It seems to block a lot of "suspect" traffic, so I've always felt a lot better with it installed, but nothing can block 100% of the bad stuff.

But what's really helpful...and this is going to transition nicely into Jason's question:

Second, roughly how much were you downloading? Im sure that might be hard to estimate, but try to come up with roughly.

I download a decent amount of music, maybe a couple albums a week. A lot of the stuff I torrent is mainstream stuff, because it's easy to find. Once you start to look for more obscure music, public trackers become less and less useful. I've found that blogspots are great sources for underground rap and metal. Usually they'll link to a rapidshare link. The only "private" torrent site I use is Demonoid, and they seem to be running a pretty smoothe site. Anyway, I don't think it matters how much you download. I think it's more of what you download. All the people that I know who have been busted have been busted downloading some current, super mainstream album, from a public tracker on a big website like mininova. I was on btjunkie. I'm sure if I downloaded a lot from a private website with strict uploading guidelines, like OINK used to be, that I would have pretty much nothing to worry about.

Ive got a few questions for you, Gremelin. First, what school do you go to?

UIC; University of Illinois at Chicago.

That clued me into the fact that they didn't care that I was downloading stuff (or didn't know what I was downloading), only that I was sharing stuff. So I stopped sharing stuff, but I went along and kept downloading.

I miss the Kazaa days, because back then you could nuke all outbound traffic. It's a little bit harder to not upload when you use torrents. I'm with Bond, it seems like torrenting at the University is just a bad plan. But hindsight is 20/20. My home ISP isn't quite as compliant with the DMCA, because they'd rather respect their customers than fold. There are all sorts of politics on the subject of the governments, colleges, and the DMCA.

As for college, I might check out newsgroups, which appears to be the future of filesharing.

Also, I feel pretty confident/safe when I use rapidshare and all those other hosting websites. But who knows.

[KillerGremlin]

I could be wrong, but I believe the RIAA specifically goes after universities.

This is true. For a few reasons.

#1. The government funds a lot of these Universities. The Universities have been told by the government that if they don't comply with the RIAA/MPAA they will lose funding. In the end, it's still all about money.

#2. At least at my University, there is a nifty login method which makes it a lot easier to put an IP Address and a person together. It really removes a lot of the ambiguity that one could argue in court otherwise.

#3. Some of the more noble Internet Service Providers have spoken out against the DMCA's methods. They have made it clear that they will do everything within their power to protect the privacy of their customers. In the end, it's a lot more work to bust a single person at their home (low yield) than bust 50 kids at a college.

You do the math. 50 x 3500 (hypothetical cost of settling with the RIAA if they actively pursue a subpoena).

That's 175,000 in the bank for just sending a couple letters out to some college kids.

Now, this is all going to change, I promise you. With recent controversy (like, none of this "damage" money is actually going to the artists) I expect to see some serious limitations imposed on the DMCA. But we shall see.

[BreakABone]

I got two of these during my tenure in college.

Basically told the school wouldn't go it again and got on my merry ways.

I find IRC also helps as it seems harder to track in my experience. Could just be wrong.

[Jason1]

Interesting, I had no idea it was this widespread at universities. Im glad I live off campus!

[-alpha-]

Hmm, I live on campus and download extreme amounts, my internet has been shut down many times this semester on the simple basis that I've downloaded past (waaaaaaaaaay past) the allowed limit. However I've never recieved anything like this. I mean when I'm downloading about 70+ GB a week, I really don't a uni administrator thought I was using for acadamic purposes.

[BlueFire]

Last year in the spring semester, I still lived on campus and one day I got an e-mail forwarded to me by the IT department of my school. The e-mail was a cease and desist from HBO for supposedly downloading the TV show "Entourage".

The only thing was... well, I never downloaded the show (in fact, at that time I had no idea the TV show existed). I called the IT director and he was sympathetic and said he would help me. Then, the following day he called me and had a complete change of attitude, saying the show had to have existed once on my hard drive. I said no but he didn't care; I had to electronically sign a form that said I did download the show and I won't download illegally anymore.. I was pretty steamed.

Oh well, at least I leave off campus now. Downloading really isn't an issue now :p

[Jonbo298]

In my entire time of internet's, I have yet to get a DMCA letter. Granted, I usually avoid shady uploaders on sites like PirateBay or whatnot, but I'm surprised I've gone this long without one so far since I've done quite a bit of downloadin's