Mediacom Copyright Infringement Notice

motorCYcle

Active Member
Jun 18, 2008
415
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28
Ames, Iowa
Got a letter in the mail today...Basically says that we stole Clash of the Titans off the internet. Now, no one in our house downloads music/movies/games or anything like that, but it was very scary to see something like that in the mail. Besides the fact that we don't illegally download things, we were actually at school, work, and my conference track meet until very late that night. I started to think that maybe it was someone sitting in our driveway using our wireless (which IMHO is VERY unlikely, as we do not live by a very large town and no one drives down our road), but then I searched it on google and found there were some other cases similar to ours. Has anyone else had this happen to them? If so, what did you do? Thanks in advance for any help!:confused:

Btw, here is part of the letter if you want to read it.

COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT NOTICE


Mediacom has received a notice that you or someone using your account for the Mediacom Online high-speed internet service has posted, transmitted, or shared with others certain copyrighted material without the permission of the owner, thereby engaging in copyright infringement. A copy of this notice is attached.

Infringement Details
Name of Work: CLASH OF THE TITANS
IP Address: (not the same as our current one, but from what I understand, they change occasionally??)
Date: MAY-10-2010
Reporting Agency: WARNER BROS. VERIFIED NOTI

If the complaint is true, this behavior violates the terms of your Customer and User Agreement and our Acceptable Use Policy for the Mediacom Online service. You received copies of the Customer and User Agreement and our Acceptable Use Policy at the time your use of the Mediacom Online service began, and copies can also be reviewed online at www.mymediacom.tv/user policies.

Please keep in mind that you are responsible for violations by all persons using your account. According to the Mediacom Acceptable Use Policy: www.help.mymediacomonline.com/help/read/publisher 01/2002-11-22.01

"If you are a subscriber to the service, you are responsiblefor any misuse of the service by anyone using it through your account, even if a friend, family member, guest, or other person commited the innappropriate activity with access to your account. A violation of these policies by someone using the service through you or your account will be considered a violation by you, whether or not with your knowledge or consent"

Having received this notice, Mediacom is required by law to act expeditiously to remove or disable access to the files or other materials specified in the notice. Accordingly, we require that you immediately remove or disable access to all files and materials specified in the notice, as well as any others that you may be posting, transmitting or sharing (on a "peer-to-peer" basis or otherwise) without the permission of the copyright owner. If you do not do so within the next twenty-four hours, or if at any time we receive an additional complaint that your account is being used to infringe any copyright with regard to these or other files or materials, Mediacom will exercise all of our rights and remedies, including and without limitation, suspending or permanently terminating your use of the Mediacom Online service. Copyright infringement may also subject the infringer to liability to the copyright owner for as much as $250,000 for each infringement. Violation of copyright law is also a federal crime if done willfully with intent to profit.
... it continues on about DMCA counter-notification details, and we called Mediacom; they basically said you have to email them about it. We emailed them and said that we don't have that IP, and they said it changes, we email back and say that we weren't even home, no reply yet.
 

ianoconnor

Well-Known Member
SuperFanatic
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Nov 11, 2007
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Well, the first thing I'd do is to get your wireless router password protected.
 

3TrueFans

Just a Happily Married Man
Sep 10, 2009
63,054
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Ames
Yeah I got a nastygram from HBO through Mediacom for downloading Entourage, I just stopped doing it. Scared the **** out of me at first though.

Do you have a wireless router? Someone could connect to it, even if you believe it's "secured" and download whatever they please. And IP addresses can and do change with Mediacom, they are Dynamic IPs as opposed to Static.

Do you have kids? I'd blame them first.
 

Gorm

With any luck we will be there by Tuesday.
Jul 6, 2010
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Cedar Rapids, IA
Its interesting that that they don't mention anything about downloading the movies...only hosting them. So is Mediacom in favor of downloading...but not uploading. :biglaugh:
 

jbhtexas

Well-Known Member
Oct 20, 2006
14,316
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Arlington, TX
Does your router/firewall have a logging function? If it does, it might have some basic logging enabled and you might be able to see what was going on then. It's been almost two months, so even if it was doing some logging, the logs may have been cleared by now, but it doesn't hurt to check.

If somebody did hack your router, it would make sense that they might try it when they knew you weren't home.
 

Darko

Member
Jul 21, 2009
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Its interesting that that they don't mention anything about downloading the movies...only hosting them. So is Mediacom in favor of downloading...but not uploading. :biglaugh:


It's actually not illegal to receive copyrighted material. It's illegal to distribute it.
 

motorCYcle

Active Member
Jun 18, 2008
415
57
28
Ames, Iowa
Only one thing to do, given the movie downloaded. Release the Kraken.

Unfortunately, I haven't seen the movie, so I don't exactly understand the reference, but I can assume.

Yeah I got a nastygram from HBO through Mediacom for downloading Entourage, I just stopped doing it. Scared the **** out of me at first though.

Do you have a wireless router? Someone could connect to it, even if you believe it's "secured" and download whatever they please. And IP addresses can and do change with Mediacom, they are Dynamic IPs as opposed to Static.

Do you have kids? I'd blame them first.

1. Like I said, we do, but it is very unlikely, though I suppose not impossible.

2. Here is the problem...I am the kid and this is what my mother did to me. At that time I was the only one home (others were at college). And as I said earlier, we were gone alllll day. Conference Track meets take a long time and actually take up your whole night when it is an hour's drive away.
 

IcSyU

Well-Known Member
Nov 27, 2007
28,264
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The more disturbing thing to me is that someone can evidently monitor your activities that closely.
Your ISP can track everything your computer does on the internet. You have to go through a door somewhere to get to the internet, they can see it.
 

cyclonedave25

Well-Known Member
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Jul 10, 2007
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It's actually not illegal to receive copyrighted material. It's illegal to distribute it.
That's what I thought, too. Its ok to download, but you just can't share the files. If nobody shared, nobody can download.
Am I right, or am I missing something on this...
 

linkshero

Active Member
May 22, 2008
918
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Ames
I think by law, MC has to notify people, but they don't have to pursue anything. I was at an ISU orientation this summer and at the IT meeting, they said there were over 8,000 cases of copyright infringement through ISU IP addresses last school year. They said they had to make an agreement to reduce them, and as an incoming student, ISU has the right to monitor.......
 

Mr Janny

Welcome to the Office of Secret Intelligence
Staff member
Bookie
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Mar 27, 2006
42,570
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The more disturbing thing to me is that someone can evidently monitor your activities that closely.

If it's just a matter of tracking what IP address a file was uploaded to, that's not terribly invasive.
 

3TrueFans

Just a Happily Married Man
Sep 10, 2009
63,054
61,484
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Ames
If it's just a matter of tracking what IP address a file was uploaded to, that's not terribly invasive.
Well that and hidden built in web cams in all new computers and microphones in every leased modem. Get that tin foil ready Cyclonepride! :wink:
 

IcSyU

Well-Known Member
Nov 27, 2007
28,264
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That's what I thought, too. Its ok to download, but you just can't share the files. If nobody shared, nobody can download.
Am I right, or am I missing something on this...
Wrong. This is why it's technically illegal for you to make "backup" copies of DVDs.
I think by law, MC has to notify people, but they don't have to pursue anything. I was at an ISU orientation this summer and at the IT meeting, they said there were over 8,000 cases of copyright infringement through ISU IP addresses last school year. They said they had to make an agreement to reduce them, and as an incoming student, ISU has the right to monitor.......
A ton of kids get caught every year. We had a kid on our floor in 07-08 who paid $6,000 in fines instead of going to court and seeing $80,000+ in fines.
 

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