[BigRock]

The OP article is dated mid-March. I just saw this a few weeks ago. The person who posted it usually knows his stuff, but I can't speak to the accuracy of it all.

after all of the initial july 12th hooplah ended, it was pointed out that nobody actually said anything was going to happen on july 12. then in may reports came out that the summer in general was wildly optimistic and nothing's happening until at least the end of the year.

if you haven't already heard about it, the big implemention is the "six strikes" policy. but if you already download things, odds are good are that nothing's going to change for you.

the onus is still upon the companies being infringed to contact isps and alert them to their content being shared. or more specifically, those companies will hire an outside firm to do it for them. but when this was first talked about over a year ago, there were wild reports about isps installing software that would recognize copyrighted content regardless of where it was being downloaded from. um, no. someone still has to catch you.

the company catches your ip downloading their content, they contact your isp. your isp contacts you and lets you know. that's strike one. strikes two and three are the same, except after strike three you have to confirm to your isp that you received the notice.

after the third strike you run the risk of some form of punishment by your isp, like having your account throttled or temporarily disconnected. but your account isn't going to be cancelled, that's been clear since day one. why would the isp cancel your service? They want to make money. they have no reason to shut you off unless the riaa/mpaa starts suing the isps themselves. after six strikes, you won't even get notices anymore.

but continued strikes can open you up to the possibility of the content providers asking your isp for your information so they can sue you. no small potatos, but this has already been going on for years anyway.

like i said, this probably isn't going to change anything for you. if you're still living in 2003 and you download from public trackers with nothing but peer guardian to protect you, it's amazing you haven't been bombarded with legal letters already. if you fit this description, you will have to adapt.

just be smart. get on private trackers. by no means is that foolproof since people collecting ips can join private trackers too, but it's a lot safer than a public tracker. and if you're a heavy torrent user, you're a fool not to have a seedbox or vpn at this point.

i've stuck to private trackers with a vpn for years now, and on account of moving i've had 3 different isps since 2010, two of which are notorious for sending legal letters. but i've never gotten a single notification from anyone and i download games, software, movies, music, porn, and everything else you could think of.

incidentally, this effort is entirely focused on bittorrent. this will only increase the amount of content being uploaded to the free download places like rapidshare, and what was supposed to be a big wipeout of those sites after megaupload went down has come to a screeching hault. so if this scares you away from bt, focus your downloading on those sites for a while.

and it goes without saying that bittorrent will be replaced by new technology in the next year or two anyway, rendering a lot of this meaningless.