That's about the best you can do... :thumb:

:LOL:

I'm wondering how 2nd hand downloads will be affected.

Most of what I download has been ripped, encoded to mp3 and uploaded by someone else.

And I rarely download albums. I typically only download individual songs.

Despite this recent scare warning, it still boils down to the content owner(RIAA, MPAA, etc.) finding something copyrighted that's being shared, and recording all the IP addresses that are downloading from the source that they found.

So it doesn't matter if what you're downloading has been ripped into a different format. If the content owner finds it being shared online, and can prove that it's their material, and can see your IP address connected to it, then they can contact your ISP and say "The user with this IP at this date and time was downloading our copyrighted material, please do something about it."

The ISPs have, and have always had, the ability to see exactly what you're accessing online. Simply because they control your flow of information. Everything you do online, every bit of data, must pass through their hardware. So they do have a great deal of control. But the good thing is that ISPs still don't want to be the internet police. It takes up way to much of their resources, slows down their overall bandwidth by a lot, and pisses off or at least scares their existing paying customers. So no matter how the RIAA or MPAA lawyers claim that the ISPs are gonna start "going after" you, the ISPs themselves will still be reluctant to do anything without the copyright owners pestering and threatening them about it.

Peerblock is next to worthless these days. But there are things that still work effectively. As has been said, the safest method is Usenet groups, with SSL enabled. If you insist on torrenting, consider BTGuard. Click the link for more info.

Great points.

Piracy will always exist.
Might change forms, but ultimately people will always find a way to get their hands on copyrighted media (without paying for it).

I had assumed ISPs had agreed to do this with compensation from RIAA.

Wasn't a lot of this a result of the ISPs getting pissed at the rights holders? They were being subpoenaed for their customers' names in all of these legal cases, which pissed off the customers obviously but also gave them a ton of work.

So this was a compromise - stop suing all of our customers, especially first time offenders and people your going to look like assholes going after, and we'll proactively tell them they're doing illegal stuff. That's the way I remember it anyway.

Government is run by Coprorate America. It's really just protecting itself.

A point that is being missed that was mentions in the second article is a seedbox. if one must torrent, use a seedbox. p2p traffic goes to the box, then from the box to your computer in a normal download type of traffic. be smart and don't download 100's of gigs a month, and you should draw no flags.

Can't you just leave your wireless router without a password? If they come after you just say that your neighbor must be leeching off you? They can't prove it was me then.

They can if they find those files on your HDD.

How are they going to do that?

lol No...

There will definitely be alot of it going on where there is public wifi. In any case, I'm sure you're going to be held accountable for what comes through the wire plugged into your house, whether its secured or not.

Foolproof!

ROFL