Anyone still torrent? | GTAMotorcycle.com

Anyone still torrent?

Xhumeka

Well-known member
If anyone still uses a bit torrent client, it's wise to pay attention to the new "trolls" out there trawling the 'net... For the longest time it seemed Canadians were pretty immune to copyright infringement penalties but times are a changing it seems.

For anyone interested, here is a very good thread to read/skim through:

http://forums.redflagdeals.com/got-served-paper-ip-trolls-bit-torrent-copyright-2182345/

Long story short, if you're not using a VPN or proxy watch out - people in Toronto are being served via registered mail (physical mail, not the notice-of-notice emails you may be used to receiving from your ISP) and are being scared into settling for $3000-$4000.

Hundreds if not thousands of "John or Jane Does" have been identified (but probably not yet served) for a bunch of movies and the "proving grounds" have begun.

Even some android box apps use bittorrent as their delivery method, so stay informed and watch out!
 
Interesting. Aird & Berlis is popping up in lots of recent requests for money. I wonder if they are expanding their business in this direction or if it is just a coincidence.

Demand letter. https://imgur.com/a/xonr9pv

I'm always entertained that they seem to pick the worst movies to bring action. They allege "signficant damages" on a terrible movie that I had never even hear of. It must be the industries new way to monetize stinkers. $15,000,000 budget, $4,000,000 box office take on this one. There is a high potential that these actions will generate a sizeable return (1 to 5%++ of box office from this batch alone based on my half assed review)
 
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yeah VPN is essential, and while I hate to do it
turn your up speed to zero
currently the laws we have in place prohibit offering to share - seeding
while DL is not illegal

Harper & Co were well on their way to tightening the noose on this
luckily he got a timeout first
 
Visiting private torrent sites for eons. But now I'm starting to think they're not as safe as one would think. Perhaps it's time to indeed setup a paid VPN.
 
Visiting private torrent sites for eons. But now I'm starting to think they're not as safe as one would think. Perhaps it's time to indeed setup a paid VPN.

I can't imagine it would be hard to infiltrate a private torrent site. Once they're in, they just log data like on the public sites. If they were having trouble getting in for free, I'm sure it wouldn't be hard to buy accounts (or referrals).
 
Anyone on Usenet?

I have PIA on the router, speed is the same. Works for me but I need to move my mom on something safer. I put her router on vpn and she had issues connecting to her workplace.
 
Two comments:

1- These are just scare letters that can be safely ignored. Details here.

2- Streaming (IE, Android boxes etc) is immune to this tactic (although they may still send you a scare letter anyways, although it's technically dramatically harder for them to track) as streaming (vs downloading) copyright content falls into a grey/safe area of the law. Details here.
 
These are just scare letters that can be safely ignored. Details here.

That article pertains to the notice-and-notice emails of yore, OP is talking about receiving addressed mail (i.e. they know who you are)
 
Two comments:

1- These are just scare letters that can be safely ignored. Details here.

These appear to be a step beyond the troll letters mentioned in that article. The article references scare letters that ISP's are forced to send. I don't think the content creators even know who those letters were sent to, they request they be sent to certain IP addresses and ISP's must comply.

In this case, it appears that the injured party (I use that term incredibly loosely as I can't see anyone actually buying this movie) has asked the courts to make ISP's give up names and addresses and the demand letters are coming directly from the injured parties lawyer to the defendants. If they don't file a defense in 30 days, their case advances through the court system. It appears that someone on RFD is attempting to group the defendants so they can all present the same defence.
 
These appear to be a step beyond the troll letters mentioned in that article. The article references scare letters that ISP's are forced to send. I don't think the content creators even know who those letters were sent to, they request they be sent to certain IP addresses and ISP's must comply.

That's what he's referring to. The current law does not provide an avenue for the copyright holders to get the actual information directly from the ISP's, the "notice and notice" system has the ISP's doing the dirty work without revealing any personal info to the copyright holder themselves.

Only once people respond to the letter (which is unwise) is your personal privacy blown.

Simply don't respond.
 
That's what he's referring to. The current law does not provide an avenue for the copyright holders to get the actual information directly from the ISP's, the "notice and notice" system has the ISP's doing the dirty work without revealing any personal info to the copyright holder themselves.

Only once people respond to the letter (which is unwise) is your personal privacy blown.

Simply don't respond.

Based on what is in RFD, this isn't that. This is Aird & Berlis sending certified letters direct to defendants some of whom have never received nor replied to previous correspondence regarding infringment.

From the court "Rogers to disclose within 30 days of this order names and addresses of as set out in Schedule 1 hereto". Schedule 1 is the entire list of unknown defendants.

From GC page on Notice and Notice. http://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/oca-bc.nsf/eng/ca02920.html
"Will my Internet service provider share my private information with a copyright owner who is alleging that I infringed copyright?
If ordered to do so by a court, the Internet service provider or host must release your subscriber information to the copyright owner as part of a copyright infringement lawsuit."

So it looks like they have moved on to step 2 as allowed in the legislation (possibly skipping step 1 of notice from ISP)
 
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That's what he's referring to. The current law does not provide an avenue for the copyright holders to get the actual information directly from the ISP's, the "notice and notice" system has the ISP's doing the dirty work without revealing any personal info to the copyright holder themselves.

Only once people respond to the letter (which is unwise) is your personal privacy blown.

Simply don't respond.

Most of the people who have been served in the mail simply ignored/deleted the original emails - you can't just stick your head in the sand anymore...
 
<Rant>

I work in Media and Entertainment stealing content is not a victim-less crime. Someone paid to make content and deserve a return on their money. If they don't get it they will stop investing and we'll all be watching re-runs of The Munsters.

</Rant>

That being said the company behind this is Rightscorp - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rightscorp - I guess they are trying to expand into Canada.

In the US, they generally try to collect a small amount of money, maybe $10 or $20, so its surprising to see claims of $3000 or $4000 in Canada, or did the Canadian $ sink that low... LOL.

If you receive something like this do not acknowledge it as it can be construed as an admission of guilt and it opens the door for them to keep dinging you on subsequent downloads.

I'm sure Canadian law is different than the US and I have no idea if the could force Rogers to turn over names if they won in court. Its an interesting balance against a content owners rights to pursue those who infringe on their IPR and a persons right to privacy
 
<Rant>

I work in Media and Entertainment stealing content is not a victim-less crime. Someone paid to make content and deserve a return on their money. If they don't get it they will stop investing and we'll all be watching re-runs of The Munsters.

</Rant>

That being said the company behind this is Rightscorp - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rightscorp - I guess they are trying to expand into Canada.

In the US, they generally try to collect a small amount of money, maybe $10 or $20, so its surprising to see claims of $3000 or $4000 in Canada, or did the Canadian $ sink that low... LOL.

If you receive something like this do not acknowledge it as it can be construed as an admission of guilt and it opens the door for them to keep dinging you on subsequent downloads.

I'm sure Canadian law is different than the US and I have no idea if the could force Rogers to turn over names if they won in court. Its an interesting balance against a content owners rights to pursue those who infringe on their IPR and a persons right to privacy

I understand content creators needing to be paid. That's very important. Unfortunately, most of these actions that I have seen are much closer to legal extortion than ensuring content creators are fairly compensated.

For a first offense on a stinker movie that no one buys anyway, something like 5-10 times the MSRP for the disc seems reasonable. If you continue to infringe (or if you were profiting from the initial offense), I have no problem with penalties escalating. Hell, if you were collecting the money instead of the creator, I have no problem with everything being seized as proceeds of crime.

Unfortunately, as with most things (income tax also comes to mind), the low hanging fruit is extorting four figure amounts from the masses instead of spending the time and effort to go after the people that have substantially benefited due to their fraud/theft.
 
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The generally reprehensible treatment of both content creators and content consumers by rightsholders makes it hard to feel bad about their terrible plight
 
I work for a large networking company that has a large video portfolio.

Rightscorp, among others, use some of our technology to monitor torrent and illegal streaming sites, but its primarily to identify the "seeders". There are other means that they use to combat this such as DMCA take down notices, blacklisting of offenders with ISP's, registrars, payment providers/processors, etc., but its getting more and more complex every day.

$4000 seems excessive. I didn't spend a lot of time looking at the links but would love to know where that number came from. Is that an individual payment, or $4000 split between x number of John Doe's?

In the US they tend to ask for around $10-20 per person/infringement, as that's typically around what you would pay to watch the movie in the theatre or buy the DVD/CD or Download. I think that's reasonable, as a consumer may think about getting a legitimate, higher quality version from iTunes

I agree that the rights holders should be allowed to make something. I think most peoples concept of a rights holder would be someone like Harvey Weinstein or at a higher level someone like Disney. Weinstein is a producer, sort of like a project manager. He raises the money and gets paid regardless, although I'm sure there is contingency there for high grossing movies. Studios will also fund movies through investment, generally money raised by the producer.

Many bodies that invest in movies are funds managed on behalf of the general population. For example the Teachers Pension fund in California is very active in this space. It may seem reckless as an investment but there are ways to mitigate risk. For example, no-one does a one movie deal. They do ten movie deals. That way if the get 2 hits and 8 bombs they still make money, although I would imagine of one of those movies was Black Panther or The Avengers you would be worrying about the other 9.

So it does affect real people and I don't begrudge, for example, a teacher retiring on a decent pension, god knows they had to put up with my kids.
 
$4000 seems excessive. I didn't spend a lot of time looking at the links but would love to know where that number came from. Is that an individual payment, or $4000 split between x number of John Doe's?

In the US they tend to ask for around $10-20 per person/infringement, as that's typically around what you would pay to watch the movie in the theatre or buy the DVD/CD or Download. I think that's reasonable, as a consumer may think about getting a legitimate, higher quality version from iTunes

$4000 per person is what many are settling at. Apparently one guy got them down to $500. The problem with $10 fines is the rightsholder would actually be losing even more money as A&B would want a crapton more than that. Hell, they are sending registered letters, the Canada Post bill would barely be covered.
 
Torrents are old-school. No real "techies" would ever use torrents. Even private trackers are slow to get new content, despite people using seedboxes.

Self proclaimed techies will all chime in here and say they use them...but these people aren't truly tech enthusiasts, rather mainstream prosumers.

Torrents are a simple method for the general public to obtain and share digital good with eachother...but most guys involved in "scene releases" actually don't use torrents.

If you really want to avoid torrents and get the same if not better content, much much faster, consider using a usenet provider. I'd recommend avoiding usenet providers in North America though as they are forced respond to DCMA takedown requests.

The best part of using usenet is its never peer to peer, no ratio, and your ISP can't throttle or track what you're downloading, and are delivered over SSL. You don't have to waste any upload bandwidth. If those reasons alone aren't enough, usenet will MAX out your internet download speed, in my case 1.1gbps (yes, my download speeds at my house exceed gigabit). You also can automate it and make custom PVR's or tie into home automation with free software such as sonarr for tv, radarr for movies, headphones for music, and even use jackett for backup torrents if you really want to automate torrents as a backup in Home Theatre PC type setups.
 
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