Illegal downloading can also constitute a criminal offence if the downloader distributes the material. Infringement of piracy and bootlegging laws can lead to hefty fines and even imprisonment if someone is caught making copies for the purpose of selling or hiring them to others. The worst cases may be sent to the Crown Court, which has the power to impose an unlimited fine and up to 10 years' imprisonment. Those downloaders who can show that all their music and films copied from the internet are only for personal use will escape the full weight of the criminal law.
But that does not mean personal use downloading is legal. Taking a song or film without paying for it is a breach of copyright. The real issue here is detection and the steps the industries are taking to enforce their members' rights. In a recent development, the British Phonographic Industry has started working with big internet service providers such as Virgin. Stern letters have been sent which issue threats of disconnection if the file sharing is not discontinued. The BPI has even threatened file-sharers with a court appearance.
But as ever with rapid internet developments, it is America which is leading the way in copyright prosecution. Repeat offenders can be imprisoned for up to six years. Bob May, a British PR, found out the hard way how seriously record companies are taking the issue.
While copying an unreleased album for work, he accidently left a file-sharing site open on his computer. It was only a few minutes before he realised his mistake but in that time a track had already been downloaded.
He called every day for a week and insisted on meeting," May explains. We resolved it, but they said if it happened again, they'd use the full force of the law. But can the iron-fist approach really stop us doing a little bit of illicit downloading? The mind-boggling scope of what is freely available on the internet has brought temptation into the home. Many of us have got used to not paying for our music and films and there is a discernible cultural resistance to making us pay for something that has been has been free for years.
The internet has turned us into a nation of freeloaders. When record companies try to tell us we are no better than shoplifters, we don't believe them. You wouldn't go into a record shop and run off with a bag of CDs, the executives complain. The frequency of copyright holders suing torrenters for copyright infringement peaked in the late s. Copyright pirates were sued for wildly disproportionate amounts of money, and most settled out of court.
These public scare tactics shone poorly on the recording and movie industries because they were portrayed as petty millionaires bullying poor college students. Direct lawsuits are much less common these days, but the campaign against torrenters is far from over. Now the job of going after individual copyright pirates has been outsourced to a growing number of small businesses known as copyright trolls.
These companies locate torrenters who illegally download copyrighted content through their real IP addresses. They then approach the copyright owners and sign a deal that lets them take legal action on their behalf. Others are hired directly by Hollywood production companies to sniff out pirates. With legal leverage and a list of names, the copyright trolls then go after torrenters via mail, email, or even by going door to door and handing out settlement letters.
These letters are not legally binding documents or injunctions. Copyright trolls use intimidation, fear, and shame to make torrenters pay without ever going to court. The most common way to receive a settlement letter is through your internet provider. A copyright troll will go through the court system to subpoena your ISP and force it to email customers with a legal threat and hand over personal details.
According to US law, an IP address is not a person. Your case could be dismissed before the date that your ISP is set to reveal your personal details to the troll. If you respond and identify yourself, that gives the troll a more direct means of targeting you.
This is a game of probability for copyright trolls. If they send out 1, threatening emails and 50 people reply, they only need a handful to actually cough up money to make it worth their time. If things escalate and you decide to take action, lawyer up. Depending on your ISP, it may take actions against you on its own behalf. That could mean throttling your internet connection or threatening to hand over personal details to a copyright troll.
Why does your ISP even care? Because torrenting takes up a lot of bandwidth, and that bandwidth costs ISPs money. On top of that, an ISP could be receiving kickbacks from content owners and their associates. However, if you insist on torrenting, take the time to protect your online privacy and keep copyright trolls at bay. The best way to torrent safely is by using a VPN. A VPN accomplishes two things: first, it re-routes all your internet traffic through a server in a location of your choosing, which changes your real IP address to one used by hundreds or thousands of other people assuming your VPN uses shared IP addresses, which most do.
This adds a significant layer of anonymity and makes it much more difficult for anyone to track you. Second, a VPN encrypts all your torrent traffic before it leaves your computer. That means your ISP cannot monitor your internet activity, nor can anyone else. Not all VPNs tolerate torrenting. You can check out our list of the best VPNs for torrenting here , which are services with fast download speeds and a focus on online privacy, security and anonymity like NordVPN , Surfshark , and ExpressVPN among others.
We recommend a VPN over Tor for a couple reasons. First, Tor is slow, and usually best for simple browsing and other low-bandwidth activity. Another popular app among torrenters is Peerblock. Peerblock is a desktop firewall with a regularly updated blacklist of IP addresses. These IP addresses belong to entities that try to track your activity online, especially on peer-to-peer networks. Unfortunately, the blacklist is only updated once upon installation.
After that, users must pay to keep them updated. Instead of torrenting, another alternative is Usenet. Usenet downloads are much, much faster; often as fast as your ISP can handle. Usenet is more private as well. Some even throw in VPNs for good measure. Torrents, on the other hand, require that you share at least some identifying information to connect to the tracker and peers.
Usenet providers make files available for a certain number of days. How many depends on the provider, but the standard is 1, days after the original posting. Until that time is up, users have full access to that file. Torrents only stay up as long as people seed the file. Trackers can be private or public, and the former usually requires an invitation from an existing member.
Anyone can just go to their respective websites and search without logging in or requiring any sort of authentication. Likewise, anyone can upload files for others to download. These uploads are not moderated, so users must judge whether a download is safe and accurate based on comments and the reputation of the uploader.
Private trackers are more exclusive both in terms of who can upload and who can download within a group. They vary wildly in terms of content and quality, but many members of private trackers attest that they have higher quality files, faster downloads, longer retention, and an overall more consistent and safe experience.
The law views private trackers the same as public trackers. Internet piracy is piracy whether you do it in public or within a private group. Many people have moved away from downloading entire files through BitTorrent and opt instead to stream video content either on their web browsers or through customized programs like Kodi.
However, this depends largely on your country. In India, a court ruled that it is absolutely not illegal. Those who upload the videos without compensating or asking permission from the copyright holder do so illegally. But streaming transmits a video directly from a website to your device, with no third parties involved.
The website could be logging IP addresses or other information about its users, which it could then hand over to law enforcement or a copyright troll. Your ISP could monitor your activity and see that you are watching pirated content. These are risks that can be mitigated by connecting to a reputable VPN. When it comes to security, streaming video carries just as many risks as torrenting.
Websites that stream pirated content tend to be chock full of intrusive ads, malware, and phishing threats. Kodi users are subject to man-in-the-middle MITM attacks and other threats from the add-ons they download. As a rule of thumb, avoid downloading movies that were released on DVD and Blu-Ray in the past 60 days, especially big-hit blockbusters.
Copyright holders will put most of their anti-piracy resources into going after torrenters of new releases to minimize the financial damage. Files with seeders less than that may or may not complete or will take a ridiculously long time to download. Another way to increase the number of seeders is to update torrent trackers.
These are the servers that help uTorrent client find extra peers. With more peers, a torrent download speed can be increased. Torrent trackers do this by publicly announcing the IP address of all peers sharing the file. Maybe you could try without your firewall enabled temporarily and ensure nothing like Peerblock or similar is running either as a test to eliminate as the cause.
Check your ports are forwarded in uTorrent, there should be a green tick in the bottom right hand corner of the uTorrent window to confirm this. There are many reasons your Internet connection might appear slow. It could be a problem with your modem or router, Wi-Fi signal, signal strength on your cable line, devices on your network saturating your bandwidth, or even a slow DNS server.
These troubleshooting steps will help you pin down the cause. To search for torrent files you can continue to use your favorite torrent sites. As a plus though, uTorrent Web has its own search box which can redirect users to Google search results. In terms of speed, uTorrent Web is every bit as fast as uTorrent Classic.
It is, therefore, more secure than uTorrent. Begin typing your search term above and press enter to search. Press ESC to cancel. Skip to content Home What happens if you are caught downloading illegally? Ben Davis May 23, What happens if you are caught downloading illegally? Why is downloading music illegally good? Should illegal downloading music be legal? Is downloading a movie Illegal? What happens if you get caught Torrenting? What happens if you get caught Torrenting in India?
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