Alleged film scam

A previous posting here referred to another instance of this sort of thing, but the discussion wandered a bit.

A friend of a friend received a letter from Sky like this

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relating to the downloading of a film in April 2013.

The subsequent letter from the company behind this asks them to agree to pay "a sum of money as compensation to the claimant for the losses", and doesn't give any hint as to the sum to be claimed.

They are given 28 days to respond. I suspect it is no coincidence that it was sent out at the beginning of school summer holidays, and the friend was indeed on holiday when it arrived.

I am surprised that Sky has given out the name and address of the subscriber even if they have failed in their defence of the court order. If I had received the letter, I would have immediately asked Sky to provide me with their records relating to that IP address on the date in question. Would this be a good thing to suggest to this subscriber?

The film in question can be rented for the monthly Netflix subscription or free during the trial period.

No-one remembers downloading this film, and they are not aware of using torrents to download. They have checked their router and they believe it has the standard default password. An adjacent house is rented to students.

Any thoughts welcome on what else to think about and what to suggest they say, politely, in response.

Reply to
Bill
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It sounds as though basic defence wasn't implemented, and the students probably latched on to their WiFi and watched the film. If this is the case, the owner of the account owes Sky, and they had better beef up their security A.S.A.P. The chances of proving it was the students is small. They could try sending them a bill anyway. If the students found this so easy, they can do a lot more.

Reply to
Davey

"In the case of Arkell v. Pressdram (1971), the plaintiff was the subject o f an article relating to illicit payments, and the magazine (Private Eye) h ad ample evidence to back up the article.[26] Arkell's lawyers wrote a lett er which concluded: "His attitude to damages will be governed by the nature of your reply." The magazine responded: "We acknowledge your letter of 29t h April referring to Mr J. Arkell. We note that Mr Arkell's attitude to dam ages will be governed by the nature of our reply and would therefore be gra teful if you would inform us what his attitude to damages would be, were he to learn that the nature of our reply is as follows: f*ck off."

Hth

Jim K

Reply to
JimK

With you so far.

Err, no.

At least we agree on that. (These days, most ISPs ship each router with a unique password - and if you aren't using an ISP supplied router, you are probably clueful enough to change the default as soon as you get it.)

True. But Sky needs to prove (on the balance of probabilities) that it wasn't. Given sworn witness statements from the owner and other occupants, that is going to be hard.

If you can find them. The house may still be occupied by students, but probably not the same ones. Even if they could find the relevant students, I would advise them to respond with Arkell vs Pressdram.

Reply to
Martin Bonner

Snip.

Its probably a teenage son.

They aren't claiming they downloaded the film, they are claiming it was made available for others to download. Of course torrent clients do this if you let them. It is this that is illegal.

Maybe you could claim they were not authorised to use the computer to download anything and claim they were breaking the computer misuse act? They couldn't know it was there without them trying to download it.

Or you could just tell them you have no idea what they are talking about and to send you the evidence with an explanation as to what it means.

Or just ignore them which is what I would do, after all they can't prove you have ever seen the letter.

Reply to
dennis

Um, no. Relating to sharing a film.

Do they have a static IP address? I often wonder how they trace downloads/uploads done via accounts that don't have fixed IP addresses.

Tim

Reply to
Tim+

Why not? If a film was downloaded using the Sky service, then the account owner owes Sky for that download. Who downloaded it is of no consequence.

I have no love of Sky, but why is this not the case?

Reply to
Davey

Davey posted

Nope. He doesn't owe anybody unless it can be proved that he personally cause the movie to be distributed. Anyone who claims otherwise needs to cite case law, and they will find that a difficult task in the wake of the Davenport Lyons and related affairs.

The students have got nothing to do with it.

Reply to
Big Les Wade

Davey posted

Sky is just a bystander in this. They didn't supply the movie.

You have to explain why it *is* the case.

Reply to
Big Les Wade

Because it is not Sky who is trying to claim.

Reply to
Richard

They simply require the ISP to provide them with the subscribers details. All ISP's keep a log of IP addresses assigned when they are assigned.

Philip

Reply to
philipuk

And that all involved (unlike UK plod, who raided the wrong address based on an IP address) bear in mind any time zone offsets.

Reply to
Jethro_uk

In message , " snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com" writes

Wikipedia says

"United Kingdom

Like the rest of the EU the UK is subject to the European Union's Data Retention Directive. All telecommunications data in the UK is kept for a minimum of one year and a maximum of two years."

And the supposed making available of the film was well over 2 years ago.

Elsewhere, it seems that the European Court of Human Rights has declared this illegal.

The film is available on YouTube. The person involved has daughters, and doesn't necessarily accuse the students nearby of anything. I think the point is that no-one knows. It doesn't seem to have been a very memorable film.

Reply to
Bill

Exactly the wrong way around.

What offence are you suggesting the broadband account owner committed?

Reply to
Andrew Gabriel

Generally from the logs of DHCP servers, Radius servers, and the like which will have known the mapping at the time.

However, there was recently a case where an ISP supplied wrong info to the police, and the wrong people got their doors kicked in in the middle of the night and all their computer equipment removed to search for illegal images.

There seems to be a suggestion in this case that they used 2015 logs to identify the addresses used in 2013.

Reply to
Andrew Gabriel

We had a email from I think vivaldi claiming that one of our computers was sharing a film of theirs and that we should take steps to stop it. It was a research student using a torrent service, he was tracked down via his IP. Nothing else happened as far as I know the student was spoken to apparently and that was that. Well I assume he was stopped and some warning not to do it again issued.

Reply to
whisky-dave

With no recourse in law, don't forget. The police are not liable for their actions under an erroneously -but lawfully - issued search warrant.

Reply to
Jethro_uk

On 07 Aug 2015, Bill grunted:

Perhaps that's why they are attempting to reap some revenue for it now...

Reply to
Lobster

IIUC, it's the hosting of the film, not the downloading, that's at issue. As Tim+ tries to point out.

I've never understood why people host pirated files without protecting their anonymity.

Reply to
RJH

In a Fortean moment ... todays BBC

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Reply to
Jethro_uk

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