Virgin to pass on details of porn downloading customers
 

Linky @TorrentFreak

Worth noting that anyone who ignored their demands in the past were not taken to court, although no one can suggest ignoring the letters for legal reasons.

Re: Virgin to pass on details of porn downloading customers
 

Well spank my monkey and call me Ethel, I didn't see that coming 😃 :)

Re: Virgin to pass on details of porn downloading customers
 

Details of 800 subscribers to Virgin or 800 subscribers to the porn sites?

Also this specifically mentions a court order, not just the standard letter-sending practices, which do not require a court order...

Re: Virgin to pass on details of porn downloading customers
 

So they have asked Virgin Media for members who are torrent freak members who have been downloading the torrents?

Re: Virgin to pass on details of porn downloading customers
 

Virgin Media has to give out the names and addresses of 800 of it's customers because the court has said they must.

Previously the Porn companies involved only had an IP address which they were unable to identify anyone by, except for what ISP they used. So they took VM to court to get their customers detail, so they knew who had the infringing IP at the time of the so called porn downloading offence.

Should have been obvious from the article tbh.

---------- Post added at 14:14 ---------- Previous post was at 14:12 ----------

No, Torrentfreak is just a news site. One would assume the porn was downloaded via torrents, which is where they saw the VM customers IP address to begin with.

Re: Virgin to pass on details of porn downloading customers
 

The internet is for porn

Re: Virgin to pass on details of porn downloading customers
 

Good luck to them. The IP address may identify the subscriber of the account, but it does not identify the person who downloaded anything.

Re: Virgin to pass on details of porn downloading customers
 

Kushan, around the time of the letters being sent out from VM stating they are breaching copyright a friend of mine who is no longer alive received a letter stating he had downloaded hardcore adult material and the guy was 87 years old and had a laptop to keep in touch with family in London and was also an active member of a group who would put pressure on the local councils to get things done such as repairs to roads and so on.

Turned out his son who was apparently "a computer expert" fitted the wireless router for him and only used WPA security with a password that was 4 letters long.

When i logged into the router there were 5 devices connected to his connection and his laptop was turned off.

Like last time i think unless they get evidence in the way of confiscating computer equipment and looking at the material on the drives which would probably require some sort of court order, by that time the guilty party could have changed the hard drive and hidden the other one etc.

Re: Virgin to pass on details of porn downloading customers
 

Or died, like your friend did.

Re: Virgin to pass on details of porn downloading customers
 

Bet you now that all of these ip's will be from public trackers. When will people learn you never use public trackers and instead only use private trackers. Best option is to make sure your also using a VPN so that the company working for the blood sucking lawyers cannot get your ip in the first place.

Re: Virgin to pass on details of porn downloading customers
 

Another option is, of course, to not download the stuff via torrents in the first place but use legitimate distribution mechanisms.

That's pretty effective too :)

Re: Virgin to pass on details of porn downloading customers
 

You mean newsgroups, right?

Re: Virgin to pass on details of porn downloading customers
 

Hah!

I have no idea why people would be wanting to download porn via any illegitimate method when there's more than enough free streaming sites online to bust nuts over or to get yourself and the significant other warmed up.

Usenet has become increasingly centralised as the demands of running it go ever higher and with the advent of DCMA takedowns is becoming less and less valuable. Ultra-high bandwidth binary Usenet is probably living on borrowed time and people really need to be aware that their EU hosted services will be in strife should the EU sign the TTIP with the USA.

Can't say I'll be sorry to see it go.

Re: Virgin to pass on details of porn downloading customers
 

I have only ever downloaded 2 torrents in all the time i have been on the internet.

A friend introduced me to linux so i downloaded redhat and didn't like it so i downloaded ubuntu instead and got on much better. Infact its still on my old PC i don't use now.

My son and his boyfriend i also know does not download from newsgroups, torrents or peer to peer because my sons boyfriends dad was caught and had a large fine and computer equipment confiscated.

Re: Virgin to pass on details of porn downloading customers
 

Quality... not many of those 'free' sites are equipped with decent 1080p or even 4K recording equipment :p:

Re: Virgin to pass on details of porn downloading customers
 

I agree it's on borrowed time. If you use them correctly, it's easy to find content that hasn't been taken down but it takes a fair bit of investment (Time and money) to do this.
It seems to be shifting towards streaming via torrents anyway, via the likes of popcorn time which has a built in VPN. Not entirely sure how they manage to run that all but I imagine they'll start charging at some point and in that instance you may as well just pay for netflix.

Re: Virgin to pass on details of porn downloading customers
 

UHD porn just isn't nice. There is being able to see too much. :sick:

480p is just fine, slightly soft focus.

---------- Post added at 17:40 ---------- Previous post was at 17:39 ----------

VPNs are awesome. Saves the powers that be a ton of work having to monitor in many different places when they can just grab from endpoints.

Re: Virgin to pass on details of porn downloading customers
 

Grab what, though? ;)

Re: Virgin to pass on details of porn downloading customers
 

Raw data streams.

If they're clever they can even de-anonimise the VPN users.

Re: Virgin to pass on details of porn downloading customers
 

Yup - people forget one of the aspects of traffic analysis is knowing which traffic needs to be analysed....;)

Re: Virgin to pass on details of porn downloading customers
 

Then make sure you use a decent provider? I doubt the copyright trolls are going to go to such extreme lengths. Anyone beyond that with the resources to do such interception isn't likely to be after your porn habits.

Re: Virgin to pass on details of porn downloading customers
 

Well 3D then, often looks fairly blurry and lower resolution than actually recorded just due to your eyes fuzzing up but you get the extra depth that makes you 'feel like you're really there'

---------- Post added at 12:57 ---------- Previous post was at 12:57 ----------

Indeed, they're after Silk Road and the likes

Re: Virgin to pass on details of porn downloading customers
 

Wasn't copyright trolls I was thinking of. If they were to start intercepting in that manner they'd be on their way to jail fairly rapidly.

Re: Virgin to pass on details of porn downloading customers
 

I sure hope so =\

Re: Virgin to pass on details of porn downloading customers
 

You'd have thought after the NSA got caught unconstitutionally wiretapping they'd be on their way to jail too but nah, they get a free pass. And the copyright troll media companies abusing the legal system seemed to get a free pass too, as long as money as being passed to the right people.

Re: Virgin to pass on details of porn downloading customers
 

Well they are still liable.

It up to you too make sure your equipment is secure.

If your not secure and somebody downloads illegal stuff you can go down for it.

Re: Virgin to pass on details of porn downloading customers
 

Ah yes, the good old backwards and archaic British legal system that holds pub owners, bus companies, and coffee shops liable for what every passer by on the street does on their wifi.

Re: Virgin to pass on details of porn downloading customers
 

Has that actually been proven yet, in an actual court of law in the UK?

Re: Virgin to pass on details of porn downloading customers
 

You don't need to 'prove' what's clearly stated in law...

Re: Virgin to pass on details of porn downloading customers
 

What's "clearly" stated? Nowhere in the law does it state that the bill payer is liable for the actions of someone using their connection. An IP address is not a person. It's illegal to pirate stuff, sure, but that does not mean that an IP address caught in a torrent is proof of the bill payer being the pirate. To my knowledge, this has never been the case and no court has convicted the bill payer purely on an IP address alone.

That doesn't stop these companies sending threatening letters hoping for out of court settlements, but again to my knowledge, nobody that has ever challenged them has ever been found guilty in court. Tell them to go away and they will, because the legal ground is extremely shaky.

Re: Virgin to pass on details of porn downloading customers
 

Is this like the Davenport Lyons fiasco?

Re: Virgin to pass on details of porn downloading customers
 

Probably not far off. Be interesting to see what they do with the information from Virgin, if anything.

Re: Virgin to pass on details of porn downloading customers
 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_sh...United_Kingdom
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital...al_measures.29

Re: Virgin to pass on details of porn downloading customers
 

Nothing in either link says the bill payer is liable for copyright infringement. They may be notified, they may have their connection slowed or disconnected but nothing there says anything about unequivocally being liable. By all means quote the part that I must be missing.

Re: Virgin to pass on details of porn downloading customers
 

If it is then one would hope it goes the same why, down the plug hole.

Re: Virgin to pass on details of porn downloading customers
 

Ridiculous that they can punt this way..All it needs is for someone to really get the hump and meet them in court.Case dismissed especially if it's some grey haired old granny..;)

Re: Virgin to pass on details of porn downloading customers
 

So they are liable to being punished for it but not liable to err... what?. Logic goes where?

Regardless:

Re: Virgin to pass on details of porn downloading customers
 

Honest question here, how can you have allowed some one if they have hacked your wifi overnight ?

Re: Virgin to pass on details of porn downloading customers
 

What, and sat outside on your step amusing themselves? ;)

Re: Virgin to pass on details of porn downloading customers
 

Or next door ;)

Re: Virgin to pass on details of porn downloading customers
 

In this instance, "liable" is a legal term and specifically refers to their legal liability.

This is the crux of the matter, they may be the owner of the connection that infringed copyright but that alone does not make you (legally) liable for what someone does on it. The bill you're quoting from focuses on educating the owner, to ensure that they're aware that the infringement is taking place - not so that they can be taken to court. As others have pointed out, leaving your wireless unsecured or having someone break in (say via a widely reported flaw in WPS...) shouldn't mean you are (again, legally) liable for what they've done. If someone steals your car, you aren't responsible for them running over an old lady, but you will be notified that it was involved in an accident. See?

The logic is fine, it's your misunderstanding of what being legally liable actually means.



I find it highly amusing that you're quoting this, yet that text does not actually appear in either wikipedia link you supplied. I had to google it and, of course, it's from the Digital Economy bill itself. However, unsurprisingly you've cut and paste only part of the story. "This Section" refers to section 12A, which is titled "Obligation to notify subscribers of copyright infringement reports".
Again, nothing there states that they are legally liable, they are simply being notified that infringement has taken place according to a copyright holder.

I'm going to pre-empt the next thing you'll quote:

This is really the bit that matters, as it applies to the topic post. However note that the bill is only in relation to the ISP supplying details to the copyright holder, it in no way specifies who is actually (Once more: legally) liable for the infringement that took place. They still have to prove that the owner is responsible in court and to my knowledge, this hasn't been tested properly in the UK yet.