How do you get caught downloading music illegally?

If you are sharing a very large amount of music, a group of people (I believe a branch of the FBI) do nothing but sit at their computers all day, downloading music from other people, tracing the IP and Mac address (IP’s tell them what network, Mac tell them exactly which house, and which computers as it is “impossible” and illegal to change your computers Mac Address.) Then they come in, arrest you, fine you, sue you, then try to jail you.
They only care about people who are sharing enough music, videos, and now, video games to start their own store without paying for the market share of the aforementioned media.

@jtvoar, not so much impossible. Illegal? never heard of that… Where is that law?

I was told by my neighbor (former FBI) it was illegal according to most EULA, cause if you change the Mac, then there is no way for them to track what computers are doing what, when, and where. It’s like changing the serial of a firearm.
I don’t know if that is legit, but after seeing the many way the US deals with laws, I wouldn’t be surprised if every single person that looks at this thread is put on a black list and watched for the next 72 hours.

Downloading music is illegal because music is copyrighted and owned by someone, either the artist or the label on which they record. Downloading music without paying for it is stealing.

No one is exempt. This woman was sued by six labels, 24 songs each. Fine was $9,200 per song. http://www.azstarnet.com/sn/hourlyupdate/204647.php

I bet you anything those FBI agents only download songs they love while they’re trying to bust people….

You can change the hardware (MAC) address of your computer’s network adapter, but your ISP knows exactly which IP address is assigned to your location and the source and destination of any traffic you send.

If you’re getting the content from a web site that has the content on it, and the copyright holder or law enforcement can get hold of the transfer logs, they know who accessed what.

For true peer to peer (bittorrent) it’s a little harder. There’s no centralized database to seize, and there’s no exhaustive log of all the transfers made. Some copyright holders have been accused of setting up peer-to-peer seeds of their materials in order to catch file sharers (and if they’re doing it right, they’re not going to use an IP address that’s registered to them directly, so any blocking tools you might find won’t work because you won’t be able to tell the difference between them and anyone else with a generic cable modem or DSL IP address). The copyright holders can join the P2P network, search for their content, and make note of where they find it.

Otherwise, the ISP or the law enforcement agency has to monitor locations in the network, and they’ll only catch anyone whose traffic passes through that point—like watching cars go through an intersection. It’s a pain in the whatever, but it can and is done. Whenever you click “I agree” on an acceptable use policy for an internet service provider, you’re probably granting them permission to log this information and turn it over should they be compelled by law to release it. You have no expectation of privacy.

Copyright holders like to focus on schools because a lot of the sharing is done by students, and the schools have IT departments that can be convinced to help a little more easily than telecoms can be.

You can use encryption and anonymizers to obfuscate your traffic if you want.

Simple answer.
By downloading music illegally.

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@PnL
PeerGuardian2 is in no way an illegal program, it simply blocks your IP address and HTML to protect your privacy. I know many people who use this program who have never used a P2P program in their life.

@PnL may as well go delete every single torrent tread then huh? -_ -.

So if I download music but don’t share it, does that mean I have little or no chance of getting caught?

uber, you PM me the links and i’ll go at it. TEAM WORK :P

i will not take part in your evil modding ^_^

@aweav: Yeah, but then you’d just be a fat leech. :P
If you’re not willing to seed then you shouldn’t be leeching.

If you set up a wireless connection in your house, and leave the router open with DHCP activated but don’t forward the client port to the router, it stops right there.

No one can see the actual MAC address of the originating request except for the tracker, but that can be dealt with by using proxies.

uploading

Well Really, An FBI Branch tracks your Local connection IP, Which you can’t change or something of the sort. (This is not same as Reg. IP) And they arrest you until fines are paid, or something, Im not really a Braniac on this Illegal music stuff.

In my opinion, the Downloaders should not be in trouble, just the people who share it on their websites. Because many, many people have no idea downloading music is illegal, there is a nice FOX News topic from a couple years in titled [12 YEAR OLD SUED FOR ILLEGALLY DOWNLOADING MUSIC] You can google that

Also who knows, maybe FBI tricks you, FREE MP3’s HERE, maybe its a FBI hosted site to catch people. Downloading music is Legal in Canada, but it illegal to share in Canada as well.

If you avoid uploading songs, and avoid Top 40 Pop…. your odds of being caught are reduced probably by 95% or more.

Independent music is oftentimes better, and usually legal to download, everyone should search out great music and avoid Pop

@PnL Just so you know, torrenting is in itself legal. It’s a popular way to download large, legally-downloadable files like Linux.