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Do you pirate?

Techhie said:
Of course, this happened during a period when I was downloading ~100GB of material a week. :eek:
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Hardcore.
Techhie said:
Luckily for me, I know that their threats are all talk. If they were to actually shut off my service, I would be the first. They won't start doing that until forced by law.
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That's what I figured and also what I told my friend (hoping I wasn't bad advise). He never mentioned it again.

What I'd like to know is, how do they know what their customers are downloading? Sure, it's their service, but what, do they monitor everything? Do they only monitor accounts that use a ton of bandwidth? It's a scare tactic I know, but it sorta works. Cause people, including non cable customers, start wondering these things.
 
Techhie said:
Of course, this happened during a period when I was downloading ~100GB of material a week. :eek:
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:eek:
I doubt i download 100gb a year.

Time Warner wants you as a customer, so they arent going to cut off anyone's service. They'll send emails to sound tough, but they are in the business of making money.
 
RawBert said:
Hardcore.

That's what I figured and also what I told my friend (hoping I wasn't bad advise). He never mentioned it again.

What I'd like to know is, how do they know what their customers are downloading? Sure, it's their service, but what, do they monitor everything? Do they only monitor accounts that use a ton of bandwidth? It's a scare tactic I know, but it sorta works. Cause people, including non cable customers, start wondering these things.
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Yes, they are monitoring your traffic. It's just best to assume that any ISP is monitoring your traffic. What they do with it varies, but they probably are monitoring. Most of the monitoring/traffic shaping is done by protocol. They just find out which port/protocol is used in various apps and check for that. It's very easy to pull off.

And while they may not cut people off for excessive downloading, they can and have done bandwidth throttling for certain protocols. Comcast got busted for throttling bit torrent traffic. And since the courts ruled the FCC has no authority to punish ISPs for doing this, I am honestly surprised they haven't started it back up. And if this ACTA copyright treaty gets adopted, they can and will cut you off after three warning. And the cutoff is for life. Check out some of the details in the PCMag article.
 
steve2112 said:
Yes, they are monitoring your traffic. It's just best to assume that any ISP is monitoring your traffic. What they do with it varies, but they probably are monitoring. Most of the monitoring/traffic shaping is done by protocol. They just find out which port/protocol is used in various apps and check for that. It's very easy to pull off.
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They don't have the time to monitor ALL traffic with a magnifying glass. Most of these emails are sent in response to a C&D claim from a company about the torrent you're downloading, so the ISP gathers tracker info for a mass list of everyone involved.

ohaithar said:
100GB per week? What where you downloading?
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Anything that caught my eye. I've slowed since then, but it was nice while it lasted. I'm in high school, and I'd start a list of 10 or so before I left in the mornings. Repeat by day, and you have the boys at Cox HQ asking questions :rolleyes:
 
Techhie said:
They don't have the time to monitor ALL traffic with a magnifying glass. Most of these emails are sent in response to a C&D claim from a company about the torrent you're downloading, so the ISP gathers tracker info for a mass list of everyone involved.



Anything that caught my eye. I've slowed since then, but it was nice while it lasted. I'm in high school, and I'd start a list of 10 or so before I left in the mornings. Repeat by day, and you have the boys at Cox HQ asking questions :rolleyes:
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No, they don't have a person sitting there watching all traffic. But you can bet they do monitor every bit of it. We have automated traffic monitoring and shaping tools where I work. Like I said, it's very easy to set up automated traffic monitoring. That way, when they do get a notice from the RIAA/MPAA, it's pretty easy to track down the customer in question.

I've always found it amusing that people freak out about how much information Google knows about you. Your ISP knows everything about your internet habits. Like I said before, just assumed you are being monitored all the time online.
 
I've been known to torrent an album to check it out in whole first, but I'm typically very good at then buying it when I find I like it. How else is the artist going to make any money? They make very little on album sales anyway.

I have a list of albums I like and have yet to buy, but I intend on doing so. I mean, I won't go blow $500 all at once, but over time I'll catch up.
 
sometimes i download a couple songs but thats about it. one good way (i think better than downloading strait from torrents or limewire) is downloading youtube videos with the song on them and converting that video to mp3. thats what i used to do intill i started buying cds for less than a buck on amazon.
 
You know, lately I've been doing it less and less. I purchase ALL movies/TV Shows/Music Videos from iTunes and am picking up on the music.

They everyday -oh that's a cool song what is it- type thing I still use limewire... but I am slowly transitioning to a full-blown iTunes user.


It's just SO easy to click "Buy" and have the song and album artwork, with correct titling in a matter of seconds than use limewire (or torrents, which I've never used anyhow).
 
porn.. a lot!!

I have a massive amount of porno videos I have downloaded from the internet. I also love looking at camel toe pictures, I guess it is my fetish. I just never felt comfortable going into a video store to get my fix of porno. I even have a partition on my computer dedicated to porno video and porno pictures. It is an awesome setup and I do not in the least feel guilty for downloading porno for my own gratification. I "use" these videos every weekend to rub one or two out nightly. It keeps me empty so I can please my wife nightly during the week. It keeps my sex life active and healthy. It is a win win situation for me. Hope this helps other people..I love my porno!!!
:eek::D
 
@heywoodja

Wow. ^ Classy.

I mean, we all look at porn, but you just make yourself look like trash.
 
yeah

yeah, music doesn't most people? $1.69 is just too much for music. But if i really like a song i will buy it off itunes but mostly from lime wire.

Movies, no i don't. I generally buy the dvd physically or watch it on box office. The quality is sketchy at best from torrents.

As for tv i don't see it is wrong to download of the internet. the shows are already on tv for anyone to see. its silly to have to pay a bomb for a tv show on itunes when its on public viewing tv. That said most of my tv torrents are shows from america not stuff i could record here.

i dont have anything against pirating music/tv shows/movies but I don't think i would ever download software though.
 
Hellhammer said:
You can try to justify your actions but it is still stealing.
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It may well be illegal but I'm pretty certain it is not stealing.

I found an interesting article this morning about all the technologies that the recording studios and movie studios have declared as being pirates. Makes for a good laugh at how ridiculous the whole thing is.

You know in twenty years time the internet will be as commercialised as Blu-rays and DVDs are now.

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20...ahy-hatch-would-have-banned-in-the-past.shtml
 
iMJustAGuy said:
You know, lately I've been doing it less and less. I purchase ALL movies/TV Shows/Music Videos from iTunes and am picking up on the music.
[...]
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I'd never download music / movies from iTunes. The music quality is worse than on CD / pirated FLACs, and it comes with DRM. I find the whole concept of DRM wrong and I'm not going to support a store that revolves around it.
 
(marc) said:
I'd never download music / movies from iTunes. The music quality is worse than on CD / pirated FLACs, and it comes with DRM. I find the whole concept of DRM wrong and I'm not going to support a store that revolves around it.
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iTunes music does not come with DRM. It must be well over a year, probably more like two since they got rid of that.

Plus most people can't tell the difference between 256k AAC and CD audio quality music in a double blind test.
 
Cromulent said:
iTunes music does not come with DRM. It must be well over a year, probably more like two since they got rid of that.

Plus most people can't tell the difference between 256k AAC and CD audio quality music in a double blind test.
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Oh - this shows I haven't downloaded musics from iTunes in a long time. Do movies come without DRM as well?
 
NoSmokingBandit said:
Time Warner wants you as a customer, so they arent going to cut off anyone's service. They'll send emails to sound tough, but they are in the business of making money.
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There comes a point of when law of diminishing returns kicks in. If it was my server running at capacity and have a list of low bandwidth people wanting in, I'd boot the top 5 bandwidth hog in order to sign up 500 more low bandwidth users. Sound business. 500 customers @ $15 a month is worth more than 5 customers @ $150 a month, if the stress on the service is the same.
 
I have a buddy that downloads movies from usenet, and claims to do about 10GB/day or so. He has one of those encrypted Giganews accounts. Anyway, I keep thinking Time Warner is gonna cut him off at some point, but it hasn't happened yet. I'd imagine 300GB/month would raise eyebrows.
 
Don't Pirate.....

However, I see that even non-pirates will pirate because of the Government. Recently they told us "you don't own the software (I think only digital) you bought with your own money". I thought you owned something after buying it.


People will start thinking "then what's the point in paying if I don't own it?"
 
WiiMarioHacker said:
Don't Pirate.....

However, I see that even non-pirates will pirate because of the Government. Recently they told us "you don't own the software (I think only digital) you bought with your own money". I thought you owned something after buying it.


People will start thinking "then what's the point in paying if I don't own it?"
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I think the way it's always worked with software is that you're buying a licence to install one copy on one computer. Even if you've paid for a physical DVD of the installer, it's effectively just a receptacle that contains the data and you've paid for what it contains. Of course, lose your DVD and they'll change their tune pretty quick I imagine.
 
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