this post was submitted on 07 Aug 2023
911 points (97.2% liked)
Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ
54716 readers
212 users here now
⚓ Dedicated to the discussion of digital piracy, including ethical problems and legal advancements.
Rules • Full Version
1. Posts must be related to the discussion of digital piracy
2. Don't request invites, trade, sell, or self-promote
3. Don't request or link to specific pirated titles, including DMs
4. Don't submit low-quality posts, be entitled, or harass others
Loot, Pillage, & Plunder
📜 c/Piracy Wiki (Community Edition):
💰 Please help cover server costs.
Ko-fi | Liberapay |
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
sounds like pure intimidation to me.
1/ one could have "never received this letter"
2/ one could decide not to pay, and then what? will they go to court? based on what evidence?
3/ if it ever goes to court, "i don't know, i wasnt even home that day" should always work no?
i don't understand while in some countries (actually only one that i know of, Germany) people seem to be terrified by this lawyer's spam...
Oh no it isn't. Walldorf Frommer is well known to send "Unterlassungerklärungen" which you have to answer. It will go to court if you do not work against this. You normally need your own lawyer to defuse what they send you.
Also, if you are in court, there is the concept of "Störerhaftung" which is a wet dream for everyone suing you for copyright infringement. They will have your IP and the time, thus your address. Now you either have to name someone who did do it, or if you can't you will automatically be liable.
This isn't any intimidation, it is one company using the laws in place here to fuck you majorly over. There are a lot of stories about this and if you seed on any public tracker you WILL get a letter.
How effective are VPNs at preventing this? I've heard it recommended the most as a counter measure.
VPN's solve this problem completely. This law firm looks at the IP's of seeders and if they are german they request the personal details from the respective ISP.
If it's an IP of a (reputable) VPN they don't achieve anything and if it's not a german IP they can't do anything anyway.
They mostly go for the easy targets since that's their easy business.
This is the way. qBittorrent even has an interface option. You can set that to your VPN and it's basically a killswitch. I've still got mullvads killswitch option enabled on top of it tho. It just cuts your internet connection, if you ever drop the connection to their servers.
Oh right. Binding to the VPN network interface is really important.
It gives peace of mind. One time I noticed the VPN was off and qBit still ran and I didn't bind to the interface. Luckily it was fine.
VPN's solve this problem completely. This law firm looks at the IP's of seeders and if they are german they request the personal details from the respective ISP.
If it's an IP of a (reputable) VPN they don't achieve anything and if it's not a german IP they can't do anything anyway.
They mostly go for the easy targets since that's their easy business.