Not paying for music, movies, TV shows on the internet?

[POSTON WIDEHEAD]

This was just on our local news. Use to be if you were caught downloading movies, music and other stuff without paying for it, you would have a high dollar fine imposed on you.

Not anymore.  8) Ah......but don't dance yet!  ???

Now they will track you.....it's not hard to do, using your I.P. Address. If you are tracked downloading FREE movies and music, you will be sent a warning letter. The letter will be sent to the person whose name is on the internet account. Disregarding this warning will result in your internet access being turned off. It makes know difference how your provider is.....No Service.

[Bibbyman]

We've found a lot of old movies on YouTube and have subscribed to a number of channels.  Most are obviously public domain while others I wouldn't think would be.   Now I've noticed some channels blocked and some movies removed. 

[POSTON WIDEHEAD]

Me too Bib. I've watched some old cowboys on You Tube....but we're not down loading when we do. I still watch some oldies on YT.....but the news I think was warning of downloading stuff and saving it to our computers without paying.

[SwampDonkey]

You actually are D/L if your watching a video online, it's just not stored after it's watched. But there are inline downloaders that actually save the file. I doubt anyone on the other end would know, but maybe. An IP isn't that easy to track if it's dynamic. I've always looked at mine and it translates to Edmundston. There are many miles between here and there. ;) But anyone on a  network has a MAC address and that is a whole lot easier to pin point. It's like a serial #, unique to your network adapter. So you registered your computer for the warranty, so your ID is on file.

[POSTON WIDEHEAD]

Whoops I have to disagree. If you watch a movie on You Tube......I don't think you are downloading it. 

[Jeff]

You actually are downloading youtube videos to temp files. That is how you watch them if your connection can't stream.

[POSTON WIDEHEAD]

I stand corrected on my guess. I didn't think I would be downloading a You Tube video because it opens and plays in a blink of an eye.

[Jeff]

You can see it in effect by watching a video then stop your internet. You can hit the play button on the youtube video and it will play again even without a connection.

[slider]

For music we subscribe to spotify.9.99 a month and no more scratched cd's.Most albums are on there,make your on play list and here just what you like.

[clearcut]

It's called the Copyright Alert System (CAS) or more commonly 6 strikes. Copyright holders send a notice alleging Person to Person (P2P) copyright infringement to an Internet Service Provider (ISP). The ISP informs the alleged infringer of the notice. ISPs will give 5 or 6 warnings before throttling internet speed or redirecting all internet service to copyright re-education site.

It will cost you $35 if you want to appeal a wrongful notice.

Copyright holders can and will sue you for the value of their intellectual property if you are illegally sharing content. This agreement just makes it easier for the copyright holders to contact you through your ISP when they think your IP address has been used to share their material. Otherwise they have to get a court order and subpoena the ISPs records. Lately some courts have been deciding that an IP address alone is not sufficient to obtain a subpoena to identify a user. IP addresses change, can be spoofed, or shared knowingly or unwittingly.

Legal services such as YouTube, Netflix, Spotify, and others are not affected by this. They have permission from the copyright holders to serve these files whether they are downloaded or streamed. Sometimes those permissions are temporary or were posted without the proper permission, so movies may disappear from YouTube.

Mostly people using Bittorrent to share copyrighted materials are at risk.

If you are concerned about your ISP tracking your online activity - legal or not - investigate using a Virtual Private Network (VPN) to shield your activity.