GoldenEye international - nice little scam going!

[Mordac]

I remember Ben Dover and his poorer cousin Neil Down who was the Neil Diamond to Ben Dover's Tom Jones.

The Neil Down bloke was a season ticket holder at Highbury in the 90's. For a couple of years before I got my own, I frequently borrowed a ticket from a guy in literally the row behind him. It was quite funny, everyone knew who he was, but everyone left him alone because they dare not let on they were porn fans. I didn't have a clue who he was until someone told me...

[WTFH]

The Neil Down bloke was a season ticket holder at Highbury in the 90's. For a couple of years before I got my own, I frequently borrowed a ticket from a guy in literally the row behind him. It was quite funny, everyone knew who he was, but everyone left him alone because they dare not let on they were porn fans. I didn't have a clue who he was until someone told me...

By "someone" do you mean "my wife"?

[Mordac]

By "someone" do you mean "my wife"?

For the record, your Honour, I don't. It was actually someone who told me (and taught me) about the ITV digital hack, which is how I learned about the works of Mr Down and Mr Dover. Purely in the interests of research, M'Lud.

[psychocandy]

Hi,

I First got a letter from Sky saying my details have been forward to Golden eye in november 2015 for downloads and that I may get a letter from them.

Now today on the 6/12/16, I got a actually 3 letter from them all at once. They said the sent out a letter in 1/9/16 which I never received and so I could not replied too. The current letter dated 14/11/16 says I didn't respond to the orgiinal letter and have 28 day to reply back to them which is late, I have like 5 day to reply back to them now or they will issue court proceeding against me unless I reply or settle £500 before then.

The 3rd letter is a settlement form which says.

I need to pay up £500. it also states in addition.

'If it subsequently comes to light that further infringements have been committed by in the future, we reserve the right to pursue you seperately for any such infringements.

in addition to payment of £500, you also undertake as follows:
1. not to upload, download, nake availableor otherwise share: Film %^%b works and/or permit others to do the same using your internet connection, at any time in the future, either from your IP address as set out in our letter of 1/9/16 or any other; and

2. delete any copies of the works (and other intellectual property of Golden eye or Immoral Productions LLc) from your hard drive and /or operating system and/or any copies saved to disk (or media), other than those which where purchased by you from legitimate source: and

3. To kkep strictly secret and confidential the terms of this settlement agreement and any sum paid in accordance with these undertakings.

I look foward to receiving your cheque within 7 days. Please quote your reference no. etc or transfer to our bank account.Please sign'.'

Has any one received this kind of letter yet? and what have you done about it?

I will deny it, besides theres nothing on my hard drive.

What will happen? if I do not pay up?

I will contact the Citizen advice bureau and get some legal advice before replying to them.

Yes standard stuff. Exactly the same as others have had including me. They know that some people will crap themselves and pay up.

You do need to reply though apparently. I used a template letter for it that I got from somewhere.

I think I got three letters in the end. After each time I replied they moved onto next letter which I got a few days later.

Not heard anything for months now so they've given up I think.

They just follow a flowchart. Send 1st letter - if person replies sent them letter 2a. If they dont reply send letter 2b. etc. And final step is send letter 3 if no reply give up. Plenty of other easy targets to look at.

(BTW - get a seedbox for the future - much better).

[LondonManc]

Having a nose around it seems like Immoral Productions put out honey traps for people to download their movies and then capture their IPs. They make their money by pseudo copyright infringements. Considering their movies are sold as $1 per download, damages for breach of copyright would be minimal if any.

It is definite entrapment and I doubt that any UK solicitor would want to represent them.

Interesting doc
http://goldeneyeint.com/Tobias%20Fie...itness%201.pdf

I was thinking that there could simply be no case to answer, given that they were the ones doing what amounts to giving their films away for free?

[b0redom]

My understanding of the situation is that it's illegal to redistribute copyrighted material unless you hold the copyright holder's permission to do so. Presumably these guys had the rights to redistribute, but the bittorrent protocol works on a peer to peer basis, so when you download, you actually make it available for upload too. In order to facilitate that your client registers with a tracker. As they own the tracker, they can see who connected and therefore they have your IP address.

[LondonManc]

My understanding of the situation is that it's illegal to redistribute copyrighted material unless you hold the copyright holder's permission to do so. Presumably these guys had the rights to redistribute, but the bittorrent protocol works on a peer to peer basis, so when you download, you actually make it available for upload too. In order to facilitate that your client registers with a tracker. As they own the tracker, they can see who connected and therefore they have your IP address.

If the copyright holder has made it freely available by making both the file and the torrent available without a paygate, then it's now freeware, surely?

[b0redom]

The author of a book might make it freely available for download from their website, doesn't mean that you can necessarily download it and then give copies to all of your friends/random strangers you don't know on the Internet.

[Mordac]

If the copyright holder has made it freely available by making both the file and the torrent available without a paygate, then it's now freeware, surely?

Probably not. Remember when Apple "forced" all iphone users to get a free U2 track downloaded for them a couple of years ago? If you attempted to distribute it further on, you would have been descended upon by a plague of lawyers. The principles of "ownership" and "distribution" are fairly well defined legally, so when there is any doubt, you don't have the right to distribute anything to which you don't own the distribution rights.

[LondonManc]

Probably not. Remember when Apple "forced" all iphone users to get a free U2 track downloaded for them a couple of years ago? If you attempted to distribute it further on, you would have been descended upon by a plague of lawyers. The principles of "ownership" and "distribution" are fairly well defined legally, so when there is any doubt, you don't have the right to distribute anything to which you don't own the distribution rights.

Yes, it was a far better album than given credit. Then again, U2-bashing seems to have been in vogue since Bono disappeared up his own political 'arris.

Point about that was that you knew it was a perk of the iphone ownership.

I'll happily stick with the filthy world of entrapment being a nasty way of doing business and can't way to see which law firm fancies tarnishing its name by being party to what is tantamount to extortion with menaces.