4 ms·
It's not quite the same (although they will throttle torrents frequently). Basically some firm gets hired by a media conglomerate to look at a torrent swarm fo
by soylentcola 11y ago
It's not quite the same (although they will throttle torrents frequently). Basically some firm gets hired by a media conglomerate to look at a torrent swarm for one of their shows or movies, and log the IP addresses that are sharing the data.
Then they look up the IPs, see that 123.456.78.90 was connected through a Comcast account. They send a big pile of requests to Comcast with all of the Comcast IPs and ask "hey, who had the IP 123.456.78.90 on January 14th, 2016 at 4:50pm?"
Not sure how often they actually bother suing actual users these days but either way, the ISP got the complaint and turns around and sends you a letter saying "hey, stop downloading tv shows and movies over torrents or we will have to cut off your service."
I'm sure the details of how this works change and are more complex but that's the essence. Even if you aren't sued, your ISP will cut you off if you keep torrenting stuff and generating complaints from rights holders.
- yulaow 11y agoThanks, that was the part I was missing. In my country ISPs cannot tell _anyone_ which user has a specific ip at a specific time, they need a order from a judge based on a police request.
- DarkLinkXXXX 11y agoUmm... mind telling me what country you're in?
- Abraln 11y agoIn the US it is not the ISPs "telling" the identity of the customer. They just forward the notices/warnings/thinly-veiled-threats to them. They don't let them know who the IP address is/was held by without a court order as far as I know.