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Comment by rpledge | Hacker News Reader

You mean IP addresses of people downloading torrents? It's peer to peer man, if I start to DL the torrent I'll make a connection to you (assuming you set up your client to accept) and I'll see that you're sharing the data.

The "hacked wireless modem" (the term by the way makes me assume you're not hardcore) defence is good, but they don't care about that. By the time you hire a lawyer and get your shit together they'll have met their goal: stopping you from pirating their IP.

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I doubt they'll take it to trial unless it was a particularly egregious violation. The idea with these is to settle out of court for a few thousand bucks, which is pure profit for these guys. They are like debt collectors. They threaten but have no teeth when it comes down to it. Lawyers cost money for them too.

Frankly I'm not so sure I would settle or even hire a lawyer if I were to face a situation like this. First, I have no assets. I guess they could garnish my wages. Isn't bankruptcy for this. I can get sued for a trillion dollars and it wouldn't matter. Am I being naive?

I think you're being naive, not that they can extract money from you, but that you value your time so little. Imagine the pain in the ass a lawsuit would be.

I know this is part of the strategy of "Big Media", but the real solution is for the content producers to self publish (since the middle man takes too much of a cut and isn't providing the value they used to (i.e. trucking your CD to the store))

However, this doesn't justify that the content producer doesn't get paid if you pirate shit. In the long run I expect prices to drip and content producers to increase profits, but that's still a few years away.

I used to think like this also. Then I was in a car accident. The lawsuit lasted 1.5 years. 99.999% of that time was just spent waiting. The actual work that I had to do during that time was like 2 hours. Mainly one for the deposition. If you go to the judge you expose your case to the judge, it takes about an hour. Of course, this is from the point of view that says you have nothing to loose. Although, I know what you mean. I rather avoid it if I can.

That's not their goal - USCG is in it for the money.

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