Anyone got in trouble for piracy?

[PBC]

I've remarked for quite awhile how I stopped paying for most things a long time ago. I was running an emulation and roms distrubuting site for awhile off of angelfire/virtualave/geocities/.....free websites and I never got messages...but that was before n64 emulation was solid and the industry hadn't really been cracking down yet. When napster was in its glory I used the hell out of that...then switched to morpheous...limewire...bearshare...took a stab at all those guys. Never a letter. Remember downloading a CAM version of south park movie...was about half a gig ....so far all of this is over 56k modems. At this time I was also discovering new download queing programs so i was downloading 311 bootlegs off of websites all night, every night. No letters.....but I lived in a rural part of maine, I doubt my ISP gave a hoot. These days I don't download so much music, I NEVER got into torrenting (which is how most people get caught in my opinion) and I stream all the movies that I want to watch from websites like nabolister. The only illegal downloads I do these days are of DS back-ups.

Only time I know of someone getting caught is a friend I had on Long Island (near NYC). He torrented a movie which had not even been released in theaters and got a letter from his ISP. He may have been sharing the movie as well....I was one of those people who never had their files shared.

Honestly I still buy things that I like. I own movies, Cds and games. I just own alot less of the shitty ones because now I have access to them before I can buy them.


My parents have kinda known about my piracy....considering I sit them down to see movies which they know are still in the theaters. As long as its something they wanted to see they end up not caring =P Or if I download an album for from. Or if I'm amusing my neice and nephew with the latest NDS games...then they don't mind.

 

[WeaponXxX]

Weapon XXX got his house raided by the fucking feds (there was a topic on it).

Yea the feds didn't raid my house FOR piracy however they did confiscate all of my pirated goods as they saw it as contraband. As of yet I am not in trouble for the piracy ... they will probably just destroy all my discs my lawyer says. I also got a C&D for a public distro I once ran but that was nothing major....not like having 5 armed federal agents come in your house while your wearing nothing but long johns lol.

 

[sirAnger]

I used to host roms on the IRC site, until I got a simple C&D. I stopped, and haven't heard anything since.

 

[pimpyT]

got an e-mail from my isp once about downloading something from a public torrent site, that was a while back, since only using private sites and the like, i haven't received a mail since.

i'm quite paranoid though and think i'll get another email saying the same thing again. it was specific in what i downloaded at what time etc etc. I just wrote back to my isp and told them it won't happen again, haven't had an email since

I had the same thing here in the States. It made me so paranoid to see that they knew exactly what file and exactly what time. Ironically, it was for an HBO special I wasn't really that into.

 

[amptor]

Weapon XXX got his house raided by the fucking feds (there was a topic on it).

Yea the feds didn't raid my house FOR piracy however they did confiscate all of my pirated goods as they saw it as contraband. As of yet I am not in trouble for the piracy ... they will probably just destroy all my discs my lawyer says. I also got a C&D for a public distro I once ran but that was nothing major....not like having 5 armed federal agents come in your house while your wearing nothing but long johns lol.

how? i didn't see you doing anything, you seem more underground than most people. shit I almost got in trouble for bringing a copy of office 2003 to work but the dipshit that found the cd gave it back to me. so I threw it out. nobody bothers me with that shit any more because it doesn't matter, everyone has access to it on the internet.

but now it's like being out of stuff for so long gives me a lot more freedom and I don't gotta worry about these things. I mainly like to tinker with hardware now and do other things.

 

[Defiance]

Yeah about 2 months ago I got in trouble for downloading Twilight Princess. Cable company sent an email saying they would shut down my internet if I did not delete it! I think (hope) it is because I forgot to turn on encryption when downloading that one, because I usually keep encryption on in uTorrent when downloading something...

I am still too afraid to download anything to this date... But I will make sure encryption is enabled and I will also use PeerGuardian.

 

[Hitto]

Using peerguardian, tor, or any other kinda cloaking device is even worse, it raises the heat. A quick phone call to your isp and you'll see how anonymous you really were.

Just try not to be their biggest target. And keep it OFFLINE.

 

[superrob]

I never had one single warning or word.

 

[Defiance]

PeerGuardian protects unwanted IPs. I do not see how can "raise the heat."

 

[CockroachMan]

Never had any problem.. but ISPs over here don't really care about it, at least not for now

The brazilian police is concerned about pirate cds and dvds being sold on the streets, saw a lot of people being arrested for it.. but I've never heard about anything happening to people downloading stuff..

My mom buys a lot of pirated movies on the street.. I tell her to stop doing that, since she can get a lot better stuff for free downloading it, and that way, at least no one is getting profit from it

Edit: Actually, I saw this thread just today.. before reading it, I had no idea that in other countries, people got warned by ISPs for downloading illegal stuff.. I think the number of people who does this kind of thing over here is still very limited, broadband started to get cheaper not long time ago, I know very few people that have a connection higher than 1Mbps and a lot of people still use dial-up.

 

[Twiffles]

I never did, but last year when I was visiting my cousin in America he got a letter mail from the government to stop illegally downloading movies.

 

[Mangofett]

I never have, it seems my ISP even encourages piracy as it doesn't throttle BT and gives free unlimited Usenet for the high-speed package

 

[HyoImowano]

I've never gotten any kind of warning or anything. A guy who works at my local EB actually helped me mod my old XBox, granted they're trying like hell to get rid of XBox games now, but I've also had people who work there ask me about DS Flashcarts and PSP Modding.

 

[ojsinnerz.]

After about 5 years, nothing yet.

 

[FireEmblemGuy]

Over the past 3 years my family has literally downloaded thousands of movies, TV shows, music, e-books, and games illegally over dial-up. However, due to the fact that dial-up ISPs don't really monitor anything, neither of the ones we've had during that time period has ever done anything.

 

[fischju]

I only use private sites, plus PG2, never have gotten a letter, email, anything.

 

[xcalibur]

Over the past 3 years my family has literally downloaded thousands of movies, TV shows, music, e-books, and games illegally over dial-up. However, due to the fact that dial-up ISPs don't really monitor anything, neither of the ones we've had during that time period has ever done anything.

Wait, what?
If you were downloading over dial-up, I don't think its THAT much of a loss to them...

 

[FireEmblemGuy]

It's slow as hell, but we manage.

And that's my point, I don't get caught because they don't care.

 

[blue99]

Never got any warnings downloading stuff from public or private torrents here in Canada. Also never got in trouble by my parents.

 

[Bob Evil]

Years ago ... and I do mean years ... about 12 or so ... I used to have a good sideline, selling copies of things ... all kinds of things ... and you'd be amazed at how many people who bought from me were cops.

And, they were happy to pay what everyone else was paying, too.

I knew a guy who was selling games and movies on the markets over here, whilst on the dole, and some cops pulled him over one day, for working and signing on ... they told him they wanted free movies and games, and he'd hear no more about it.