Sued by Medicom.

[ulmont]

Do we have any lawyers here?

Plenty. But no good ones though.

You can't afford me. 

Indeed, no one can afford to employ a bad lawyer.   

A hit! A palpable hit!

[Grey Fox]

According to a New York Judge, an IP address is not enough to identify & then sue someone.

http://torrentfreak.com/judge-an-ip-address-doesnt-identify-a-person-120503/

If I was your father, I wouldn't call them.

If we don't call them, they'll simply shut off service.  Mediacom is internet company.

Oh, and I would definitely most positively throw my brother under a bus.  I would denounce him before Troikas, Star Chambers and inquisitions.  Should my brother die in a bus accident, I'll likely be the prime suspect when the police find out about my well rehearsed bus throwing maneuvers.

Unfortunately my Dad isn't good at dealing with this stuff and they want to talk to him. I was talking to him about this earlier tonight.

"If worst comes to worst I'll tell them to just take our house".

"Dad, that's the most sound bargaining strategy".

"I think it would be an excellent one!"

"No, it really isn't it.  Don't tell them that".

You need a new ISP anyway, this one is untrust worthy.

[Razgovory]

I live in a one horse town.

[garbon]

Punch your brother in the dick.

[Razgovory]

I am getting nowhere near his dick.  He's probably carrying some kind of disease.

[OttoVonBismarck]

Most ISPs have adopted a "warning" system. Basically, a copyright holder monitoring some torrent catches up a huge batch of IP addresses involved in the distribution of protected works. It gets this batch of IP addresses and determines what ISP they are from. They then inform the ISP that their network is being used to distribute copyrighted works.

What most ISPs then do is either cut your internet service off immediately or they threaten to through a letter (which is what happened to you.) In the cases where they cut you off immediately, they tend to be fairly clever in how they do it. Basically when you try to browse to any website you'll be redirected to a DMCA warning notice from your ISP. This notice has a button you can click that basically is you agreeing you were wrong to do what you were doing, and you won't do it again. Once you click the button there are no further consequences and your internet access is no longer restricted. Some ISPs maintain a "three-strikes" system (they do this on their own initiative, it has nothing to do with DMCA requirements) and will shut down your service for a lengthy period (6+ months) if you have more than three violations in a year or something like this.

That's basically all that happens nowadays, there are still some rights holders pursuing this sort of activity and some ISPs are willing to slap their customers on the hand (some ignore the rights holders for various reasons.)

What used to happen, and what you were probably worried about is the old RIAA/MPAA "mass lawsuit" model which is mostly no longer existent. Under the old model, their software would catalog tons of IP addresses associated with infringement, then identify the ISP the IP address belongs to, and then they would start lawsuits against the customers associated with that IP address. There were a few courts that allowed them to file thousands and thousands of suits all as one, with thousands of un-named defendants only identified via IP address. Once the case made it a bit through the court system, the rights holder group would start generating subpoenas, which could be used to legally force the ISPs to take the IP address and timestamp information and resolve that into a subscriber's name. At that point they then send out basically their "legal blackmail" letters, where they identify what infringing material was downloaded and explain you will face massive civil penalties if you do not give them $1,000-5,500 dollars right now. Due to the courts involved allowing them to name thousands of defendants in one set of papers, the marginal cost of each letter was a very small amount in legal fees so it made sense.

But over the years this method got harder and harder and also became very unpopular and was backed off on for a combination of practical and publicity reasons. For one, the courts that before were just happy to let them name thousands of defendants in one case, ended up saying "you need to start filing these cases one by one against individuals, there is no justification for grouping all the defendants in one case." That immediately means instead of thousands of defendants and thousands of subpoenas generated from a single filing fee and paperwork you instead have to do legwork and pay fees for each case. It also means substantially more lawyer hours to process a single case. These entities never wanted to actually go to trial on this stuff, the most famous file-sharing case that did make it to verdict was basically an extremely recalcitrant defendant out to make a point and the RIAA was unable to back down without undermining its overall initiative (even though they won, most likely they would have preferred not to have litigated in the first place.)

But yeah, I was like 99% sure you weren't being sued before I read the thread--that just doesn't really happen any longer.

[garbon]

I am getting nowhere near his dick.  He's probably carrying some kind of disease.

That travels through clothing?

[DGuller]

I am getting nowhere near his dick.  He's probably carrying some kind of disease.

That travels through clothing?

Wait, you're supposed to punch a dick through clothing?

[Jacob]

Do a few google searches on copyright trolls and trolling and see if If anything pops up that might be relevant.  I'd definitely swing by the Electronic Frontier Foundation as well, we're I you - https://www.eff.org/

[Admiral Yi]

Look at that Raz.  Biscuit being all friendly and helpful. 

[Razgovory]

Which one is Biscuit?  Otto?  Yeah, he's an alright guy.

[Martinus]

Fuck them. Corporate drones. Firebomb their headquarters and then think what to do next.

[OttoVonBismarck]

Look at that Raz.  Biscuit being all friendly and helpful. 

100% informed by my daily browsing of Ars Technica, for some reason they wrote a ton of articles about all that stuff as it was going on.

[Razgovory]

Fuck them. Corporate drones. Firebomb their headquarters and then think what to do next.

I have family members who would agree with your methods, but I don't think this is sound legal advice.

[Ed Anger]

Fuck them. Corporate drones. Firebomb their headquarters and then think what to do next.

I have family members who would agree with your methods, but I don't think this is sound legal advice.

Good though for the polish national sport, Jew burning.