when a certain very popular Democratic president did not like what a publicist called him and his policies, the great promoter of democracy and champion of the people not only prohibited his radio talk show but also had the Post Office stop distributing his printed publications. “Because he could”.
I wonder what stopped him from setting up his own distribution scheme in areas with highest concentrations of subscribers and invite the thugs to come and seize the papers by force if they so wished.
Anyway, that’s how American government can treat people without any semblance of legality whatsoever. It’s not a big stretch of imagination to expect that with such a “legit” reason to disconnect people’s internet as “our high-tech filter says you are an evil criminal, now try and prove us wrong” the government will have a field day messing with people they don’t like. And nowadays that’s a whole lot more people than back under Roosevelt.
Nobody here has said that it’s hard for them to catch you if you are illegally downloading copyrighted content through a public torrent. In fact, it’s ridiculously easy to be caught* since your IP address is right there out in the open for anybody to see. Based on your IP address, they know who your ISP is, and then they send a notice to your ISP letting them know that your IP is stealing their stuff. And your ISP knows exactly who you are based on that IP address, and they send you the warning.
*-Methods do exist to keep them from tracking you to your IP address, but I won’t mention them so as to not encourage thievery.
Get over it. They aren’t oppressing anybody’s freedom of speech, they’re trying to make it harder on the people too cheap to pay for music and movies. As has been mentioned, this is a vast improvement on how they had been going about things up till now.
P.S. And it has nothing to do with the government.
I have never actually checked my ISP mailbox (or even set it up as far as I know) in the six years I’ve lived here, but I guess I’ll give them a call and do that.
Let me follow up with another question, however. I do not torrent anything. What else could I do that could get me a warning? (Let’s assume for the moment that I am not letting anyone use my wifi for flaggable purposes, either.)
Effectively, there’s nothing else you would do to get a warning. There are other forms of P2P file sharing, but if you don’t use torrents, it’s not likely you use those. There are also streaming sites that stream illegal content, but even if you did use those, generally there would be no way for the content owners to get a hold of your IP address in order to report you to your ISP.
I wouldn’t worry about it. Even if you somehow blundered into transferring a file that you shouldn’t have, there are five or six warnings before they take any real action you need to worry about. (and 12 months of no warnings wipes your warning slate clean)
But it is important (even for other reasons) to secure your connection against others hijacking it. In that case, use a WPA encryption method on your wireless connection. DO NOT USE a WEP encrypted connection, they are ridiculously easy to circumvent. (I say this from hands on experience. For purely educational purposes only, of course.)