Depends on your particular country's laws on copyright. Where I am it was never something bothered about until our country signed a trade deal with the USA. After that some of USA's industries wanted to 'force' changes to our laws on copyright. Force changes to how our ISP's worked. Basically they wanted to throw USA's laws across here wanting to control everything. I'm not sure anything positive really came out of the USA trade deal for 'us'. I get the feeling we've been invaded by another country.

For us the USA trade agreements has not meant cheaper audio CD's, or cheaper cinema tickets, or cheaper DVD sales, or cheaper software. Just their blackmailing of our government in their typical 'slimey' dogmatic fashion. They are not much better than the mafia how they operate (MIAA, etc.)

Nice one there, Lord. Well first of all 'HeyLove', you might get fined but not arrested. Also, considering that 3500 people a year in the US and UK alone get fined for illegal file sharing, i would say "Put down Limewire, pick up on uTorrent". But that's me. I mean, what's stopping the authorities from getting a hold of you IP and fining you? Nothing. I like to think of it as a big game of 'Pick 'n Mix'. Random.

If you're worried about that, you should probably give i2phex a try:
- forum.i2p ~ View Forum - I2Phex

It's an anonymous version of Phex - people can't see your IP when you use it, and all connections are onion-encrypted (means, the people between you and another node can't find out what you send).

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I don't think you are being watched,as much as they like you to think you are .

I think the main thing is don't go crazy downloading a bunch of things in a short period of time. I had a co-worker who got an email from his ISP that he was using too much bandwith, and had better stop downloading or they would turn him in. Was enough to scare him, but if it was true it was nice they warned him.

Turning in for too much bandwidth?!

That's a new kind of scare tactic - did he pay for a flatrate? If yes, then his ISP is trying to wiggle out of a contract they made with him - and they use scare tactics.

"We know you do something illegal, but as long as we can reap more profit from it than our contract normally allows, we'll tolerate it."

Either they are furthering criminal activity by ignoring what they know, or they are threatening him without reason. Either way they are blackmailing him to keep him from using what he paid for - and that's simply illegal.

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Well with using Cox there was no flatrate, but somehow they traced usage to him. I agree it seems illegal to me to. They should have the obligation to turn someone in if they suspected illegal downloading. I know he did panic when oink got busted. He was so sure they were never going to go down. So I am sure that didn't help when Cox contacted him.

I don't know Cox, so I don't know how his contract goes. Does it say "you are allowed to download as much as you like"?

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mrbilliv & arne_bab

I don't know who this ISP called Cox is or what country they operate in but it seems to me that they have invoked their Fair Usage Policy (FUP).

Some years ago something similar happened to me, when I was a BT (British Telecom) dial-up customer, I believed I had unlimited download facilities until I was warned then cut off.

It seemed that mrbilliv's friend was downloading a lot stuff, this flagged up a warning in Cox's computers which then logged the IP address concerned. From there all Cox had to do was consult their records to see who that IP address was allocated to.

However, since most ordinary people do not have the money to take on their ISPs then the next best thing is for mrbilliv's friend (and anybody else in the same predicament) to take his custom elsewhere.

Since my run in with BT I have done everything possible NOT to ever become a BT customer again.



UK Bob