sandra wilson

Hi,
I read this forum alot and find it really informative. I wondered if anyone can help me with this. A couple of months ago, we signed up for a vpn to watch english telly. Paid 100$ for the year.Managed to set this up and everything was brilliant.
Most of our telly watching since then has been British, good picture etc.
This morning I got an e-mail from Telus, our internet supplier, it's quite long and goes on about copyright complaint. Telus goes on about our privacy and says it won't disclose our information to the complainant only if ordered by a court of law.
Telus seems to think we are unaware of this activity originating from our account, and says we may wish to enquire with others who have access to our account or change our password etc/ check for viruses etc.

They gave us an excerpt from the complaint"to help us identify the activity in question"

title: insidious 2011 blah,blah blah. then it mentions protocol: Bit Torrent.
Then it goes on to say that"distribution rights are being violated and file sharing should stop immediately". They also mentioned time and date, the time was said to be GMT, so we thought must be the telly thing.
Sorry, if I've rambled on, but I wanted to ask, Is this illegal? Can we get into trouble? Do we have to stop watching English telly?

We brought a seperate laptop used only for this connection, so it's also there ready to just switch over,and it's only used for this.
Sorry, If I sound niave on this, but I am.
Can the BBC send a detector van to a quiet road 40mins outside of Vancouver.

I just haven't found anything I enjoyed watching on Canadian TV, and have been enjoying BBC drama's.
Thank you.

JamesM

Obviously this vpn you signed up to is illegal so just stop using it before the matter goes any further. You have clearly been warned.

It's probably unlikely the BBC will be interested in clobbering you but you can be pretty damn sure Telus will come after you when the BBC start clobbering them.

iaink

Isnt it legal to download in canada, but ILLEGAL to help spread a torrent by uploading?

Not sure how these services operate, but some seeding seems likely?

Steve_

Doesn't actually sound like the two are connected to me, Bittorrent is a file-sharing program and you say you're using a VPN, which sounds like some sort of streaming proxy set up to me, not Bittorrent.

What happens is that there are programs out there you can put on to a torrent and collect all the IP addresses, then they go to the ISP and say "hey, this IP address has been used to illegally download the copyrighted content of our client x" then based on that information, i.e. IP address and time provided, the ISP backtracks, figures out you were using that IP address and fires off a letter. They might check to see if you had any torrent traffic going over the connection at that point.

First of all, unless the complainant is actually in Canada, there's little or no chance of them actually taking you to court, this sort of thing usually originates from the US and the awards procedure in Canada doesn't make it worth their time to pursue you.

Second of all, this is a bit torrent issue, not a VPN issue, so do you actually download stuff using a torrent client? If you don't then either Telus or the company coming after you has made a mistake, happens all the time because IP addresses are dynamically assigned so someone else could have been using it, not you.

If you're not downloading torrents, I would just write back and say, we don't use a torrent client, you've made a mistake, just so you have it on record.

Are you sure this is a VPN you're using and it's not some file-sharing program? Seems unlikely to me that someone setting up access to British TV would do it in such a way that your IP address is exposed publicly.

CanadaJimmy

Might want to check that your Wireless Router is secured with WPA and a strong password. I've known people who have had people log into their routers do a whole bunch of illegal stuff then gotten emails from Telus about file sharing.

JonboyE

Not sure about the legal question though I understood that downloading content is not illegal, it is uploading copyright material that is problematic.

No the BBC do not send detector vans to Vancouver. They would not be much use anyway if you are not receiving a UK signal over the air.

If you enjoy quality British programming there is quite a lot of it about but you do sometimes have to search for it. Your best bets are the two local public broadcasting services: Knowledge (BC PBS on channel 5 in Vancouver) and KCTS (Seattle PBS on channel 27 in Vancouver). Dropping down a bit CBC has Coronation Street and Joy TV (channel 10) has a lot of older British sit coms. If you have a digital box there is another channel (I think 115 but not sure) that shows Eastenders and other British shows.

There are some UK programs on Home and Garden TV and, of course, Gordon Ramsey seems to be on every ******* channel every ******* night. **** me.

However, if you are missing stuff like X Factor or Big Brother there are plenty of equally rubbish shows on the US feeds and CTV/Global. You'll just have to get used to them.

Alan2005

VPN's aren't illegal.
Downloading copyright material isn't illegal.
Uploading copyright material is illegal.

kimilseung

Insidious is a US movie, I doubt you watched it on UK TV. The complaint probably came from US rights holders.
Have you watch Insidious by any means?

Do you have kids? If you have not watched anything called Insidious, then I would suspect the kids, kiddie like torrents, and it is hard not to be an uploader with that technology; but also check your wreless passwords, as it could have been the neighbours.

sandra wilson

Thank you all for your quick replies. Still find this complicated to understand, we are set-up with banana.com/vpn. I don't know what a torrent is.
On our paperwork from banana there is an important note it says:
the use of p2p filesharing programs like bittorrent and emule are not allowed on our network. P2P websites,ports and protocols are blocked or throttled. Does anyone think, this sounds like our vpn thingy is okay, but this other stuff is illegal, and as far as I'm aware we are not doing/using this other stuff.
I'm so wanting to keep my English telly viewing,but don't want to get into trouble.
Thanks.

JamesM

http://www.banana-vpn.com/

nldfc

Looks to be like your home network has been breached - Someone is using your network to download movies with bittorent -

sandra wilson

I was ready to shut down my vpn and settle for the channels Johnboye had kindly recommended. Just b4 doing so, I spoke to my 17 yr old daughter. I said do you know the film "insidious". She said yea, my mates brother downloaded it about 2 weeks ago on his computer at his house.

I explained about the copyright complaint, and she said"oh what a coincidence, but him doing that and us getting the complaint had nothing to do with us. Just ignore the e-mail mum, Telus has made a mistake.So, more confused than ever, and this just might not have anything to do with my vpn after all. Although my teenage daughter is insistent that what her friends brother did, had absolutely nothing to do with us. I just find it a little strange......same film, same date frame....

CanadaJimmy

Sounds like what happened is they downloaded it at his house, then he brought the laptop over, leaving bittorrent running, and once on your network it was able to upload a fragment to the people who reported you to Telus. Remember, it's the uploading that gets you in trouble, and thats how bittorrent works, downloading it for you whilst uploading it to others.

Very unfortunate sequence of circumstances but I think it's a lesson learned. Change your Wifi password and add MAC address filters to the router to only allow the computers in your household to connect since obviously her friends can't be trusted to use your network responsibly.

kimilseung

Sounds spot on, matches up with everyone's stories.

Now what to do about it?
Send a letter back to Telus stating that a third party did it without consent, or just ignore it and tighten the security?

Geordie Lass

Hiya

I have no idea about the technical side of what you are talking about but if you miss British TV that much why not log into the websites like 4 on Demand and the bbc ones?

Could you do skyplayer over there?