Hmm, so my friend got a call from SBCGlobal DSL..

[Syringer]

And they told him to stop d/ling copyrighted material, or else they'd shut their connection down.

Anyone else get similar threats?

 

[HiTek21]

woah what the hell? They monitor what he downloads?

 

[beer]

Originally posted by: HiTek21
woah what the hell? They monitor what he downloads?

Inspecting the packet headers, you can determine the application. If its P2P traffic, they can say with reasonable certainty that it's copyrighted material.

 

[Ronstang]

If the ISPs want to take this approach pretty soon they won't have any customers to threaten.

 

[GoodToGo]

Most probably he was dling movies or music. Also it is possible he was dling from kazaa, morpheus etc which are being monitored by the RIAA.

 

[amdskip]

I thought they were mainly concerned with the uploading of the material.

 

[ViRGE]

SBC won't scare too many people off, only the biggest users; P2P is still the killer application that keeps people buying broadband.

 

[Syringer]

Do you guys think they can shut him off if he continues to d/l stuff?

 

[Jugernot]

Originally posted by: Ronstang
If the ISPs want to take this approach pretty soon they won't have any customers to threaten.

So, how would you access the internet if you didn't go through an ISP? If everyone quit paying their ISP for internet, no one would have a connection....

 

[Ylen13]

Originally posted by: Syringer
And they told him to stop d/ling copyrighted material, or else they'd shut their connection down.

Anyone else get similar threats?

have your friend tell them to shut him down and he will take his business to another provider,see what they say/do

 

[bjc112]

Originally posted by: amdskip
I thought they were mainly concerned with the uploading of the material.

That's what i thought, if you are not sharing files then you have nothing to worry about...

 

[GoodRevrnd]

They can shut him off regardless I imagine. Have him ask them why they believe he is downloading copyrighted material.
He's far better off with other carriers than SBC anyway. What state is he in? If SBC = CA then DSL Extreme or Speakeasy are both better choices.

 

[Soybomb]

Why is this always a mystery to people? It seems so obvious to me, but perhaps because I work at it I just think it is.

The ISP probably doesn't care what you're doing. It'd take too much time and resources to monitor their customers, and its a responsibility they don't want to have (sued because they didn't stop something, they want common carrier protection just like the phone companies have). But the RIAA/MPAA does go out and search p2p networks. They send a letter to the ISP with a date, time, ip address and offending material. Now the ISP has to take action and tells you to quit or they'll shut off your connection.

Once again just for good measure, its not the ISPs, they're only involved because of a complaint from the owners of the copyrighted materials.

$10 it was a movie.....MPAA is really agressive.

 

[Ronstang]

Originally posted by: Jugernot

Originally posted by: Ronstang
If the ISPs want to take this approach pretty soon they won't have any customers to threaten.

So, how would you access the internet if you didn't go through an ISP? If everyone quit paying their ISP for internet, no one would have a connection....

I'm talking broadband.....not internet as a whole. If people can't use their fast and $$$ connection without fear then there really is no need for more than dialup. Sure the forums are nice on cable but they really weren't a whole lot slower on dialup for me. I find it rather humorous that all the commercials I hear/see for cable/dsl always use downloading music as a tagline yet when you do it they threaten to cut off your service.....kind of ironic.

 

[dabuddha]

I wonder if they monitor downloads from newsgroups

 

[dmcowen674]

Interesting that the ISP is now Police, Judge, Jury and Executioner all in one fell swoop.

 

[Jzero]

Originally posted by: dmcowen674
Interesting that the ISP is now Police, Judge, Jury and Executioner all in one fell swoop.

The ISP is just the messenger.

 

[waylman]

Originally posted by: Jzero

Originally posted by: dmcowen674
Interesting that the ISP is now Police, Judge, Jury and Executioner all in one fell swoop.

The ISP is just the messenger.

exactly, your ISP does not monitor anything. It's the software companies. I have got lots of letters from Comcast requesting me to remove certain apps b/c Macromedia, Symantec etc. requested that they be removed. I have since wisened up and don't get these letters anymore.

 

[minendo]

Originally posted by: Ronstang
If people can't use their fast and $$$ connection without fear then there really is no need for more than dialup.

Online gaming, business, etc. I, for one, have broadband and do not use it to download items off of kazaa, morpheus, etc.

 

[TJN23]

Originally posted by: Ronstang

I find it rather humorous that all the commercials I hear/see for cable/dsl always use downloading music as a tagline yet when you do it they threaten to cut off your service.....kind of ironic.

agreed!

 

[GoingUp]

Originally posted by: TJN23

Originally posted by: Ronstang

I find it rather humorous that all the commercials I hear/see for cable/dsl always use downloading music as a tagline yet when you do it they threaten to cut off your service.....kind of ironic.

agreed!

 

[yukichigai]

Originally posted by: Soybomb
Why is this always a mystery to people? It seems so obvious to me, but perhaps because I work at it I just think it is.

The ISP probably doesn't care what you're doing. It'd take too much time and resources to monitor their customers, and its a responsibility they don't want to have (sued because they didn't stop something, they want common carrier protection just like the phone companies have). But the RIAA/MPAA does go out and search p2p networks. They send a letter to the ISP with a date, time, ip address and offending material. Now the ISP has to take action and tells you to quit or they'll shut off your connection.

Once again just for good measure, its not the ISPs, they're only involved because of a complaint from the owners of the copyrighted materials.

On that note if you're using Kazaa go out and get K++ 2.4.0 from www.kazaalite.tk. It has a feature enabled by default called "Block access from bad IPs (RIAA, etc.)". If you still get complaints I don't know what to say.

 

[tigerbait]

Originally posted by: dabuddha
I wonder if they monitor downloads from newsgroups

me too

 

[brtspears2]

Originally posted by: tigerbait

Originally posted by: dabuddha
I wonder if they monitor downloads from newsgroups

me too

I use the easynews.com web interface. When downloading, I always zip it up with their zipmanager, which changes the filename.

 

[BunLengthHotDog]

Newsgroups typically are not monitored, mostly due to the fact that they are often outsourced to Usenet Providers.

I work for an ISP (NOC), and can adamently say that we could care less what you are downloading, nor do we have the mechanisms in place to watch you. That being said, we CAN...but don't. Keep in mind though, as mentioned above, various other entities are watching...and will have the ISP contact their customer about the abuse. ISP's are more concerned with monitoring their network for outages etc, this keeps us all VERY busy.