Computers & Electronics

Got served paper from IP trolls for bit torrent copyright

  • Last Updated:
  • Mar 27th, 2024 2:22 pm
Deal Fanatic
User avatar
Nov 24, 2012
5909 posts
2223 upvotes
Space
Thanks for posting. 1200$ is still fairly significant
Jus2rich wrote: If the file sat on your computer and it was seeding to other users they get you on reproducing copywritten material. That’s what I understood when I got noticed. I sought three different lawyers before choosing one and settling.
Newbie
Jun 15, 2018
47 posts
15 upvotes
I've heard from some people at work that this is 100% real and their father who practiced law for 42 years confirmed it. One of the coworkers I guess got it, he had to show up to court and everything was pinned against him as far as I heard. He ended up paying about $3500 in damages. Scary as hell.
Deal Addict
Jul 3, 2017
3859 posts
2814 upvotes
Hmmm, newbies with few posts showing up now to say that this is absolutely real and scary, and that those accused should settle. Now if there were a law firm trying to scare people into settling...
Deal Expert
Jun 15, 2012
15662 posts
10440 upvotes
Southern Ontario
Exactly. “I’ve heard” and 3 posts. Better proof or it didn’t happen.
Deal Fanatic
User avatar
Mar 31, 2017
7057 posts
3368 upvotes
Exp315 wrote: Hmmm, newbies with few posts showing up now to say that this is absolutely real and scary, and that those accused should settle. Now if there were a law firm trying to scare people into settling...
heh ya I know. Looks fishy to me.
Newbie
Jun 16, 2018
1 posts
3 upvotes
So I’ve been closely monitoring this thread for a while and have contacted a few members here and there but never got a concrete answer about what’s next. I’m adding a few details that I’ve noticed is not mentioned in this thread for clarification.

First thing you do is you do not ignore the letter. This could be then used to file a default judgement against you if not filed a defence in 30 days and then you have no option to fight it. However, based on what I can tell after looking at the case file page, there seems to be no default judgement passed yet. I could be wrong about this though. Someone with more legal knowledge feel free to correct me.

Second, you need to file a statement of defence. What you can do is go to http://cas-cdc-www02.cas-satj.gc.ca/fca ... o=T-909-17

and take down the case number. Go to this post got-ser ... #p29296013 and listen to his advice. The actual statement can vary and you can add all specific statements. At this point, you would need to send that defence in and swear an affidavit saying that you’ve served the plaintiff with a statement of defence. Or you can get a process server for that. Once done, you can sit back and wait for their reply to the statement of defence which would again be a template of them saying yes, you did download it we have proof and further asking you to call them to discuss the next steps. At this point, as long as you stand your ground, you can call Aird. They will be informing you that they do intend to take you to court. Then they will ask you if you want to settle. They can go for 4k to 5k. If you accept thats fine, If not you can counter offer with your amount which could be 100-500-1000-2000 depending on how your conversation goes. I’ve already settled for a really low amount in another similar case and if you can talk them down, you can go lower. My advice is talk to them and try to settle as low as possible because if you’re even a tad bit afraid of what happens next and the stress of having an ongoing case against you, it will save you a lot of trouble. It does get complicated after this.

At this point, if you’ve settled you don’t need to worry except for maybe getting a VPN or just not download anything anymore ever because if this shit happens to you again, you best believe the amount will be a lot more than what it was in this case.

However, if you do proceed to go to trial, then you will be deciding upon dates to have a conference with a judge and the plaintiff discussing the next steps and the dates for those to be carried out. This involves the discovery process where they probably will ask for your laptop as “evidence”. In turn however, you can ask for their tracking software as evidence. This process is going to take a long time though so it could be a drag for them to stay involved and they may or may not proceed further. But you have to assume that this case is going all the way to the end and proceed accordingly. You may or may not need a lawyer to represent you based on your understanding of the case. Their fees are really really high so if you’ve reached this point, be prepared to loosen up your wallets. However, there is no precedence for such a case in Canada. I have yet to see an ongoing/closed case where the judge ordered a defendant to pay the full amount over to the Plaintiff based on IP address ownership. The entire idea is that you are responsible for anything that goes on in your account. Which honestly doesn’t make sense. How would you be responsible for something that you are not aware of? You bet these guys aren’t going after Starbucks or McDonalds if someone uses their internet to torrent a movie. But again, these guys are pros at this and have several ongoing cases of similar nature. Ken Clark, the lawyer involved in this, does have an IT background and used to be a sysadmin so I presume he knows about IPs as well and can presumably fight back anything related to the software. Anyone who is deep into this case, feel free to reach out to me as I may be able to help you out.
Deal Fanatic
User avatar
Mar 31, 2017
7057 posts
3368 upvotes
"taken care of" is an interesting phrase. It's what I would use if I wanted ppl to settle. Promise an end so long as you dole out the money.

I would take 2 of you more seriously if you didn't join in the last 20 days. Interestingly enough both of them who joined very recently advocate settling. Hell if I settled for over $1k I WOULDNT be here advertising this. I would want to stay as far away from this memory as possible. Yet here this guy is saying he settled and he's happy he's short over $1k and keeps coming back in here for more.
Newbie
Jun 13, 2018
1 posts
1 upvote
Of course I was happy. When you have a number presented to you that you may be found liable for $50,000, or even 5,000$, it’s great to have settled for $500. One of the two is a few days work, the other is me losing my house. If you can’t see the joy in having Aird and berlis settle for $500, then you should give your head a shake. I’ve spoken on the phone with two other posters here, and you can give me a call as well if you like.

I guess I just didn’t have je same confidence you have that if I sat and waited for those thirty days I was given to find legal counsel went by, I would be found liable. I’m not sure if you have ever been involved in any other civil case, but this was a first for me. And I wasn’t even the one downloading anything... but the Internet was in my name, and I was convinced enough that that was enough grounds for me to be found culpable. The smartest thing to do is to “take care of” it, whether that means you want to take it to court or settling. Sitting around pretending it’s gonna go away on its own is irresponsible.
Deal Fanatic
User avatar
Mar 31, 2017
7057 posts
3368 upvotes
Jus2rich wrote: Of course I was happy. When you have a number presented to you that you may be found liable for $50,000, or even 5,000$, it’s great to have settled for $500. One of the two is a few days work, the other is me losing my house. If you can’t see the joy in having Aird and berlis settle for $500, then you should give your head a shake. I’ve spoken on the phone with two other posters here, and you can give me a call as well if you like.

I guess I just didn’t have je same confidence you have that if I sat and waited for those thirty days I was given to find legal counsel went by, I would be found liable. I’m not sure if you have ever been involved in any other civil case, but this was a first for me. And I wasn’t even the one downloading anything... but the Internet was in my name, and I was convinced enough that that was enough grounds for me to be found culpable. The smartest thing to do is to “take care of” it, whether that means you want to take it to court or settling. Sitting around pretending it’s gonna go away on its own is irresponsible.
Where u getting the $50k number from?
Newbie
User avatar
Apr 20, 2018
35 posts
13 upvotes
Woodstock
badOne wrote: Where u getting the $50k number from?
See the third image:
The letter is written to create a lot of fear and anxiety, although I doubt their claim that the maximum damage is $50k since according to Copyright act, the max damage is $5000
Deal Addict
User avatar
Aug 3, 2009
2294 posts
719 upvotes
Nova Scotia
I am making my way through this thread slowly. While I do, can anyone confirm whether they were served with a form of court order or notice allowing the claimant to serve via registered mail? I will review the federal court rules but most often service must be personal unless they can get an order for substituted service.

Edit : it appears the FC rules permit service by registered mail if you sign for it. See 129: http://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/regu ... ight-panel
Last edited by haliwood on Jun 17th, 2018 4:17 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Deal Fanatic
User avatar
Mar 31, 2017
7057 posts
3368 upvotes
To me whether it is 1200 or 1400 or 3000, it's still a high number. Since their model is never to go to court, why the hell are you even thinking of settling? They aren't going to court. If it gets to court and word gets out that the $5k promised by the government is bogus there will be new legislation that will compromise these troll lawyer's economic model.

I would roll the dice and force them to court instead of settling.

As for plantiff costs, there are a lot of ppl they are suing at the same time the cost of that is spread over that many ppl, and you can challenge them on the cost. It wont be you 100% of $150k. No chance of that.
Deal Fanatic
User avatar
Mar 28, 2005
8978 posts
2579 upvotes
Cornwall, Ontario
badOne wrote: To me whether it is 1200 or 1400 or 3000, it's still a high number. Since their model is never to go to court, why the hell are you even thinking of settling? They aren't going to court.
BCPerson claims at least one case did go to court:
I've heard from some people at work that this is 100% real and their father who practiced law for 42 years confirmed it. One of the coworkers I guess got it, he had to show up to court and everything was pinned against him as far as I heard. He ended up paying about $3500 in damages. Scary as hell.
I personally am not involved in any of this litigation, so I don't want to spend a lot of time investigating this - however, for those who are involved, I think it should be relatively easy through the internet to find out if any of these cases actually ended up in a Canadian court and what the outcome was.

Up till now, in this thread, the assumption was that none of these cases ever went to court.
And btw - $3500 in damages seems rather excessive for a first time offender when the allowed range of penalties is $100 to $5000.-
Deal Fanatic
User avatar
Mar 31, 2017
7057 posts
3368 upvotes
Check out that guy's nickname "jusr2rich". Want to guess who this guy really is? Certainly not the guy getting sued as he claims. Probably represents the plaintiff. None of the things these 2 guys say passes the smell test.
Deal Fanatic
User avatar
Mar 28, 2005
8978 posts
2579 upvotes
Cornwall, Ontario
Jus2rich wrote: I had a lawyer tell me he needed to hire a specialist to test their software they used to find my MAC address. And just that was gonna cost over a grand.
This doesn't seem to make any sense.
Is the suggestion now that one needs the MAC address of the device allegedly doing the uploading for the copyright infringement to stick?

To obtain the MAC address of a device from the internet, one has to establish an incoming connection, typically by pinging the IP address and then, once the response to the ping has been received, send the apr command -a
That will return the MAC address right next to the IP address.
The only problem is that if the firewall is set up in stealth mode, which mine is and I hope everyone elses as well, one can ping that IP address all day long and one will never get a response.
So one never gets to the point where one can actually retrieve the MAC address.

I just double checked that on my computer, ShieldsUP! shows all my ports in stealth mode and numerous pings from the network brought no response which is what I expected.

From the discussions in this thread up until now I thought all that was required to persue the alleged copyright infringers was the IP address and the time stamp, but if it also requires identifying the MAC address of the device in question - that adds another level of complexity for the plaintiff.
Deal Fanatic
User avatar
Mar 31, 2017
7057 posts
3368 upvotes
let's go over this again - you claim your lawyers, from several firms told you it might go as high as $50k if it heads to court, is that what you were told.
Deal Fanatic
User avatar
Mar 31, 2017
7057 posts
3368 upvotes
I have never read of any infringement case where they resolved the IP then traced it to a mac address. It just isn't done. Once they have your IP then they attempt to get the user behind the IP address. Mac addresses never come into the equation.
Deal Fanatic
User avatar
Mar 28, 2005
8978 posts
2579 upvotes
Cornwall, Ontario
The MAC address is simply a unique hardware identifier for each piece of hardware than can access the network.
It's fixed wheras the IP address is assigned and can change over time.

So if the software used to determine illegal uploads or downloads has actually determined the MAC address of the device doing the infringement, they can use that to determine which specific computer was actually responsible for the upload/download.

And if you don't have a firewall activated, I would suggest you activate it asap and preferably in stealth mode.
Without a firewall active you are leaving yourself wide open for attacks by hackers - they just scan IP addresses until they find one with no firewall active and then find their way into your computer.
Deal Fanatic
User avatar
Mar 28, 2005
8978 posts
2579 upvotes
Cornwall, Ontario
Jus2rich wrote: Online I read the highest it could go was 5000. What I said previously is that even if you get a maximum penalty of 5000$, plus your legal fees, you’ll be in the thousands, which is what the lawyers all said to me. That this would end up costing me in the THOUSANDS. Except for the lawyer I went with, who told me in her experience it would be much less.
The $5000.- maximum limit is actually spelled out in the legislation - however it would only apply in severe, repeat cases.

As to your last statement which I bolded.
It says that the lawyer that you went with had experience in this type of litigation - sounds as if she had taken this type of litigation through the court system.
Can you find out which case or cases?
There have to be details about that available and I'm sure people who are affected by this would love to find out how these cases played out, what info the plaintiff had to provide and what had to be proven and what the defense approach was.
Deal Addict
User avatar
Nov 25, 2009
3172 posts
2243 upvotes
Winnipeg
Kind of related but for the first time in 10+ years got a copyright notice from MTS :rolleyes:

VPN time i guess.

Top

Thread Information

There is currently 1 user viewing this thread. (0 members and 1 guest)