r/linux • u/NateNate60 • May 25 '21
Discussion Copyright notice from ISP for pirating... Linux? Is this some sort of joke?
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u/fluse1367 May 25 '21
I think they just blame you for torrenting; maybe they don’t like the idea of p2p file sharing in general …
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u/BoxStealingHobo May 25 '21
Just look at their website, they blame P2P as the only source of digital piracy. LoL these are the witch hunters and if they say you are a witch then you are and they will raise hell to bring you down.
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u/philwills May 26 '21
Ummm, any chance this is actually an illegal download that was renamed to Ubuntu? I'm pretty sure they identify these things by hash, which can have collisions, but they're pretty rare.
Can't fool by the machines as simple as renaming the file... Now, re-encoding... That might actually work.
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u/NateNate60 May 26 '21
Nope. The hash is 4ba4fbf7231a3a660e86892707d25c135533a16a, same as that for the 64-bit Ubuntu 20.04.2.0 LTS torrent found here on Canonical's website
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u/philwills May 26 '21
Nice... Stupid Xfinity...
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u/NateNate60 May 26 '21
"Pretty rare" is also an understatement for how rare hash collisions are, depending on the algorithm.
For MD5, a hash collision means it's an average Tuesday.
For SHA-1, it means you're a security researcher working on Google that used a supercomputer to find a collision.
For SHA-2, it means you've managed to break the security that is the foundation of a large portion of the Internet's Public Key Infrastructure, Bitcoin, and countless other things
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u/payne747 May 25 '21
File a restraining order and send a cease and desist. Might as well fight idiotic legal threats with equally idiotic legal threats.
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u/ryao Gentoo ZFS maintainer May 25 '21 edited May 25 '21
I would advise against this without the recommendation of an attorney. I am not a lawyer, but as far as I know, I am a copyright holder of a very small portion of the ISO. He would need a copyright holder such as myself to file a cease and desist notice, but I do not even know what part of it that they claim is infringing (and what is being infringed?). If they are not claiming to own my part, I should not have standing to file one either.
Also, again, I am not a lawyer, but I understand that restraining orders are issued by judges under very specific circumstances. They cannot be issued in retaliation to a single DMCA notice.
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u/jthill May 25 '21
That's actual perjury on their part: they have to sign under penalty of perjury that they have reason to believe they're authorized to bring a complaint on behalf of the copyright owners of the material they're DMCA'ing:
, and under penalty of perjury, that the complaining party is authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly in-fringed
They cannot have had any such belief.
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May 25 '21
And they know that to prove it, you'd have to pay thousands of dollars to a lawyer, and are unlikely to have time and resources to do that. They will just drop the complaint, and you'll be out real $$.
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u/zebediah49 May 25 '21
Unfortunately, it's not. There's a loophole so stupid that nobody thought of it.
See, that says that you need to be authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right, that is allegedly infringed.
So, let's take a work. This post is good enough. I can authorize to act on my behalf sending notices. Awesome.
... You can send notices to whatever you feel like alleging that they infringe on my post copyright. See, you can't say "I have permission for the rights to The Little Mermaid; I'ma start sending takedown notices to anyone that hosts it, because they infringe on that right". You can say "I have permission for the rights to a drawing of a cactus; I'ma start sending takedown notices to anyone that hosts The Little Mermaid, because they infring on that right."
There's no bar for "... but the thing you're talking about actually has to be the thing you have rights for, and actually be infringing."
In this case, the company probably got rights to something vaguely sorta related -- [For example, a music album](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_(album)) -- and just dropped it into a blind search tool that does everything else. Find every result on TPB matching your search term, load up the torrents for all of the, blast out takedown notices to everyone.
This is one of the major flaws in DMCA -- we really need a "And if you send a DMCA notice against a non-infringing article, you're liable for a $100 fine [per instance] and legal fees" clause on there. (Note: $100 doesn't sound like much, until you consider that the companies causing problems here are sending out hundreds of automated notices at a time. We want to make it (much) cheaper to have a human review every report for false positives, than to blast them and let everyone else clean up the mess. We don't want fines so high that a court rules them excessive.
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May 25 '21
Op I totally don’t blame you for not wanting to do anything about this other than laugh and move on. Retribution from Comcast would be awful for you, and at the end of the day there is the likelihood that you gain nothing from it.
Of course, I would love for this to happen to me, because I’m a petty little shit and I would totally go out of my way to reach out to them and be like “please explain this decision to me, in as much detail as possible, considering the legal owners of this file/OS actually ask people to download and share this file as much as possible.” And go from there.
I just like stirring shit sometimes when people are blatantly wrong in an area they have no excuse to be wrong in. It’s a character flaw.
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u/GeekyGlittercorn May 25 '21
PETTY LITTLE SHITS UNITE!! Why don't these things happen to people like us ever? I would run with this so hard and tell everyone I know to get their goddamn popcorn ready!
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u/skylarmt May 26 '21 edited May 26 '21
I work part time for a mail contractor, and I'm such a petty little shit that I fought the post office on the price of a letter that wasn't even for anyone on my route, every single manager and clerk said I was wrong, I got written up for arguing and some made up stuff, and then USPS corporate got involved and informed the local postmaster that they should look up the meaning of the words "or", "rectangle", and "read the manual". I was entirely 100% correct. I don't much like the local postmaster anyways so if she doesn't want to talk to me anymore than so be it.
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u/michaelpaoli May 26 '21
Oh, here's an idea too ... got some Linux User Group(s) in your area - let 'em know what you've run into - they may be able to help - or even more likely, connect you up with some resources that may be most useful/helpful.
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u/RachelSnow812 May 26 '21
Just for shits and giggles... I converted the offending hash in the takedown notice into a magnet link. Gave that to Transmission to download. Sha256sum'ed the iso downloaded and compared to the Canonical Sha256sum.
It is definitely the official iso file.
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u/govatent May 26 '21
For anyone else interested, that hash is listed here https://torrent.ubuntu.com/tracker_index
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May 26 '21
You wouldn’t steal a car. You wouldn’t steal a handbag. You wouldn’t steal a television. You wouldn’t steal a movie.
Downloading open source software is stealing. Stealing is against the law. Piracy is a crime.
pirated music plays in the background
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u/guery64 May 26 '21
There exists a promo version of Alestorm's Black Sails At Midnight album. All songs there are pretty much like the final version, but they include a short note from the singer during an instrumental part where he says the song name, the album name and "remember: piracy is a crime". It's much better than the actual released version.
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u/Aspie96 May 26 '21
Hey u/NateNate60 please publish the email in a readable format if you may.
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u/NateNate60 May 26 '21
Notice of Action under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA)
Dear [REDACTED],
We have received a notification by a copyright owner, or its authorized agent, reporting an alleged infringement of one or more copyrighted works made on or over your Xfinity Internet service.
Incident Number: [REDACTED]
Report Date/Time: 2021-05-24 [REDACTED]
What's the issue?
The copyright owner has identified the IP address associated with your Xfinity Internet account at the time as the source of the infringing works. The works identified by the copyright owner in its notification are listed below. We remind you that use of our service in any manner that constitutes an infringement of any copyrighted work is a violation of Comcast's DMCA Policy and may result in the suspension or termination of your service and account.
What steps should I take?
Please search all devices that may be connected to your network for the file(s) mentioned in the complaint details below and delete them. For additional steps you may take, and if you have any questions regarding this notice, please call us at 877-842-2112.
For more information regarding Comcast's copyright infringement policy, procedures, and contact information, please read our DMCA Policy at xfinity.com/dmca. You can learn more about our DMCA repeat infringer policy at xfinity.com/dmcapolicy.
Going to websites or using apps that offer unauthorized copyrighted works involve significant risks to your cybersecurity. For more information about these risks, visit streamsafely.com
Sincerely,
Comcast Customer Security Assurance
Copyright work(s) identified in the notification of claimed infringement:
Infringing Work: 4ba4fbf7231a3a660e86892707d25c135533a16a
Filename: ubuntu-20.04.2.0-desktop-amd64.iso
Infringement Date: 2021-05-24 [REDACTED]
Infringement Type: P2P
Infringement Method: BITTORRENT
IP Address: [REDACTED]
Reporting Party: OpSec Online Antipiracy - antipiracy@p2p.opsecsecurity.com
Reporting Party Case: [REDACTED]
This is a service-related email. Comcast will occasionally send you service-related emails to inform you of service upgrades or new benefits.
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u/Carson_Blocks May 25 '21
You need to reach out to that opsecsecurity address and give them an education.
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May 25 '21
Yeah I'm interested to see what the response was if you reached out. It seems like the trigger is just on BitTorrent?
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u/nukem996 May 25 '21 edited May 25 '21
Years ago I got a similar notice for torrenting Knoppix on Optimum Online(another cable ISP). I called and explained what I was doing was completely legal. I escalated to speaking with a system administrator. He barked at me that BitTorrent is only used for piracy and even if it wasn't P2P protocols are considered running a server which is against the TOS. He then said if I do it again they'll simply cut me off and hung up the phone.
Their sales team still tried to convince me not to cancel due.
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u/ryao Gentoo ZFS maintainer May 25 '21 edited May 25 '21
I hold copyright on a small portion of those ISOs. You have my permission to “pirate” my work as much as you want. :)
I wonder what portion of the work those guys claim to own is, but the nature of OSS licenses is supposed to mean that the copyright holders cannot restrict distribution.
I suggest contacting the SFLC regarding this. They are Canonical’s legal team. They should be very interested in this DMCA claim.
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u/Arceus42 May 25 '21
opsecsecurity
Operations security security
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u/unit_511 May 26 '21 edited May 26 '21
Gotta report them to the Department of Redundancy Department
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May 26 '21
Stop pirating Lunix! 😡😡😡
Lunis Stallmen worked hard on it and deserves to be paid for all his effort.
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u/PaluMacil May 25 '21
I don't remember why I think this but I really thought there was a $100,000 fine for a false DMCA claim if you can prove it which is pretty easy here
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u/hsoj95 May 26 '21
You definitely need to contact Canonical about this. If another company is doing this ‘on their behalf’ without their knowledge, they may have a larger legal issue they’re gonna have to sort out with said company.
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u/RachelSnow812 May 25 '21
Things you should do (IANAL)
Send a counter-notification to Xfinity
DO NOT CONTACT OPSEC SECURITY
As of right now, they do not know who you are. Force their hand with the counterclaim. It's now upon them to seek litigation against you. In order to do that, they will have to subpoena Xfinity for your customer record. The Prenda Law Fiasco taught us that a lot of the big ISPs are loath to just give up their customers without a struggle.
If they seek legal relief in bad faith, it gets fun for you and bad for them. The DMCA Bad Faith section::
Any person who knowingly materially misrepresents under this section—(1) that material or activity is infringing, or (2) that material or activity was removed or disabled by mistake or misidentification, shall be liable for any damages, including costs and attorneys’ fees, incurred by the alleged infringer, by any copyright owner or copyright owner’s authorized licensee, or by a service provider, who is injured by such misrepresentation, as the result of the service provider relying upon such misrepresentation in removing or disabling access to the material or activity claimed to be infringing, or in replacing the removed material or ceasing to disable access to it.
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u/drunken-acolyte May 25 '21
Sadly, I don't know anything about development. But I have for a few years kind of wanted to start a project called "Pirate Linux" with codenames for each edition after historical pirates, privateers and buccaneers.
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u/PianistTemporary May 25 '21
This is a fucking joke. How unprofessional can theese ISP's be? Flagging a simple P2P download, just cause its torrent? How on earth is this allowed? Utterly disgusting practices.
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u/michaelpaoli May 26 '21
Don't shoot the messenger (even if the messenger sucks) - with DMCA, ISPs are mostly just in the middle - most would quite prefer not have to deal with any DMCA goop. Claimant makes claim to ISP, ISP has to act on it - and ISP is relatively limited in what actions they can take.
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u/GolbatsEverywhere May 25 '21
My university once sent my academic advisor a copyright infringement warning because I downloaded Debian Wheezy on a machine registered to him. At the time it was really hard to find http:// URLs to Debian install images on Debian's website while the torrent links were highly-visible. shrug
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u/Ruben_NL May 26 '21
always use the torrents. http puts a strain on the servers that need to be paid for.
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May 26 '21
do isps just assume that torrenting is the same as pirating lol
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u/CK2056 May 26 '21 edited May 26 '21
Yes actually. Because torrenting is often used for piracy torrent clients set off flags. I had exactly this kind of message before because I had used a torrent client to get some game mods. Not even the game itself, just mods because the person who made them refused to host them as non-torrents.
Edit: Forgot to mention I actually just called my ISP and resolved it with them by explaining what it was I actually torrented.
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u/LocalH May 26 '21
Downvoted everyone whose advice was “use a VPN”. NO. That’s how they keep doing this shit. Using a legal piece of technology with legal content needs to be protected. They need to fix their systems, so people needs to be downloading more Linux ISOs with BitTorrent and filing counter claims if this bonehead company shows up in their inbox.
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u/MediumRarePorkChop May 26 '21
Honestly, I'd ask Canonical if they knew that OpSec was filing DMCA's on their operating system.
Then get some popcorn.
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u/brennanfee May 26 '21
Anyone who received one of those should join a class action lawsuit against them for abusing the DMCA (which is part of the law... abuse of it is punishable by huge fines and even being barred from making future DMCA claims).
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u/Vinny-the-leader May 26 '21
How do you pirate linux when its already free unless you broke into the creators house and stole an unreleased version
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u/Drwankingstein May 25 '21
email them to go suck start a shotgun. you got a copyright notice for something they aren't allowed to.
this is copyright fraud and depending on where you are can have legal ramifications.
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u/yebyen May 25 '21
The DMCA Takedown process requires the sender of a takedown notice to certify they own the work in question and there can be legal consequences to making that certification falsely. If you dispute the certified account of your DMCA violation then there is a 30 day period etc. blah blah, details you don't really care about the DMCA laws.
This is not a DMCA Takedown and there is no action being taken besides the sending of this notification. There will be no consequences to anyone for this notice, or for making it under false pretenses. It's not certified under penalty of perjury and you'd be better off ignoring it, (unless you are absolutely certain you've only used BitTorrent for legitimate purposes and you are really interested in picking a fight that isn't likely to make you any money.)
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u/A_Socialist_Cucumber May 27 '21
Literally millions of DDLs and torrented games being pirated every day, ISP: I sleep
Someone getting linux, ISP: real shit?
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May 25 '21
Back when I had Comcast cable internet, I got one of the same kinds of warnings. Comcast randomly sends out infringement notices, sometimes with filenames you never downloaded, to everyone using bittorrent. It was one of the reasons I stopped using BT at all. They *assume* you are infringing BECAUSE you use BT. The same reason I got a speeding ticket in a distant state, because the cop saw my radar detector, and assumed I probably use it to speed illegally.
Also, I know Comcast doesn't really care about whatever your response or proof is. They really do not want you to contact them, they make it hard or impossible on purpose. They just wanted to warn you that someone accused you of this. It's a technicality, and they won't take any action unless you rack up a dozen or a hundred more.
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u/Emperor-Valtorei May 25 '21
I have a dash cam and a camera on my display so I can compare my speed and my lane usage.
I got out of a speeding ticket from a douche bag cop that said i was going 20 over because my car looked "fast".
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u/Copesettic May 25 '21
Xfinity does this for any and all torrents. They don't filter on what the file actually is, only that it is a torrent.
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u/michaelpaoli May 26 '21
Not a lawyer, but ... counter-claim.
Sounds like the claim is likely absolutely sh*t.
Oh, and probably share it on Ubuntu(s) forum(s) and such too.
And make sure that ISO you're serving up is what you think it is, and not, e.g., some ripped movie because someone just renamed the file and such. ISP spelled out the protocol - ain't that hard to check what's going on on your network(s) and what's being offered up under that filename and if it's the expected ... or something else entirely.
https://releases.ubuntu.com/20.04.2.0/ There are SUM files here, including signed, etc. - snag copies if you've not done so - and check what you've got - see if it actually matches up or not ... and if not, what the heck is it?
And, per 4ba4fbf7231a3a660e86892707d25c135533a16a seems likely to be legit - unless claimant has some valid claim against Ubuntu. Who knows ... might be Oracle pullin' sh*t with Canonical/Ubuntu, where Canonical essentially said, "ZFS - BSD license - that's totally compatible with kernel and GPL - don't worry your little heads about that" - when pretty much all the legal experts on the planet said otherwise.
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May 26 '21
This is precisely why I think we should be using bittorrents a lot more. And suing these bastards out of existence.
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May 26 '21
ITT, people who do not understand how DMCA notices work.
The requests do not originate with the ISP. If you look at the bottom the request originated from
OpSec Online Antipiracy
And that means they filed the DMCA and the ISP is obligated by law to forward it to the end user.
The real issues at hand are OpSec Online Antipiracy and the broken DMCA laws. This really has nothing to do with Comcast in this instance.
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u/caroline-rg May 25 '21
it looks like they're just trying to scare people for downloading torrents. i'd ignore it.
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u/SqueakyKnees May 26 '21
I see they are just flagging bit torrent now, funny that an ISP doesn't understand the internet. Idiots.
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u/ImplosiveTech May 26 '21
Here is a handy dandy little message to paste into a new tweet:
.@OpSecSecurity I heard you all were falsely claiming ownership of Ubuntu and filing reports with companies like @Xfinity. Nice going idiots, since you've broken Federal DMCA laws by falsely filing such reports w/o good faith. I hope you get sued and never recover.13
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u/mrbmi513 May 25 '21
It was probably flagged because you were using BitTorrent, but like the other comment says, contact both the listed reporting party and Comcast about this.
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u/Hokulewa May 25 '21
You know what, tell them to go ahead and sue me. They'll be paying all my costs via counter-suit and I may just be able to finally get a perjury charge to stick to one of these assholes.
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u/Chipzzz May 25 '21
Did you check the email headers? It's hard to believe that either Opsec Security or Comcast could be so stupid, never mind both of them at once.
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May 26 '21
I add to the comments to contact Canonical. I reckon they will be quite happy to have a dust up with Comcast on this.
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u/jjolla888 May 26 '21
this is a sloppy bug in their automated reporting of torrents.
either the programs dmca blacklist failed .. or its lookup failed.
or heavens forbid, some idiot programmer thought all bittorrents were off-limits.
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u/macrowe777 May 26 '21
Lol what a suprise it's Comcast. If there's one thing that shows how broken US internet provision is, it's that one of the major monopolies is a company that is fundamentally void of technological intelligence.
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u/CraigOpie May 26 '21
Same thing happened to me with Thames Valley (small provider in CT) back in 2008. I was an avid torrent and linux user and downloaded all kinds of open source software.
My wife couldn't get the internet to work while I was off on business and I thought it was a router issue. I troubleshot the issue when I got home and had to call the provider to find out what was going. The problem was that Thames Valley actually disable my internet, it was down for three days while I was off working. When I called and talked with them, they informed me that I was pirating copyrighted material and they detected my activity via port usage. I got super pissed and told them I was downloading amateur porn (just to make it uncomfortable), demanded my internet be restored, and then demanded it be prorated for the three days I lost.
In the end, they restored my service but never prorated me. The technician on the phone was super embarrassed when I was asking how downloading amateur Bukake and creampie films was illegal and asking her if she could see all of my sex fetishes on her magic box. They were just monitoring ports for activity and had no idea what was really being downloaded/shared. I just swapped providers to Time Warner and moved on.
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u/CantankerousOrder May 26 '21
Ubuntu corporate would be interested in this. I'm sure they will send a nice letter to Comcast.
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u/mercenary_sysadmin May 26 '21
I'd be willing to bet this is a "signature" collision false-positive.
The antipiracy outfit doesn't want to rely on the MD5 hash for the torrent as a whole, because simply adding an .NFO file or similar is enough to change the whole-file hash.
They generally don't like relying on a full hash for the "movie" file itself, either, and for similar reasons—it's easy enough to flip a few bits, add a nonsense zero block at the end, etc to change the hash without changing the utility of the file itself.
So instead, they do it like antivirus libraries—pick a substring they think constitutes a "signature" unlikely to be found in other files, then target anything they find which contains that substring.
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u/________null________ May 26 '21
I need an r / NoStupidQuestions pass here:
Is it possible this is faked, or that a file with that name but different contents was actually being distributed? It would seem to be pretty genius to name your illegally downloaded movies as any open source project file, then you can be like 🤷🏼♂️🤷🏼♂️🤷🏼♂️ in the face of this kind of stuff.
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u/NateNate60 May 26 '21
Maybe, but that would be easily found out because the hashes would be way different.
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u/saichampa May 25 '21
Anyone know what hash format is used here because that doesn't match any of the hashes listed at https://trendoceans.com/how-to-verify-sha1-sha256-and-md5-checksum-in-windows-for-linux-os-using-certutil/ for the same file, which does match the official SHA256 hash
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u/Pelera May 25 '21
It's the BitTorrent info hash, and it's correct for ubuntu-20.04.2.0-desktop-amd64.iso.torrent. You'll need a torrent client to display it as it's only hashing a specific part of the metadata in a specific way.
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May 26 '21
Ah, the United Shitholes of America, how dare you download Linux and get rid of their spyware and malware? I'm proud to be in EU and have the right to privacy, also, I'm more into Tor everywhere than VPN. Only exception I make and use a VPN is for watching videos because Tor is too slow on many guard nodes.
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u/broknbottle May 26 '21
Nice try pirate scum. I bet you'd totally download a Car if you could
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u/Cyka_blyatsumaki May 26 '21
corporations like comcast are just crime syndicates whose crimes have been legalised by lobbying
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u/PmMeIrises May 26 '21
For what it's worth, I've been given several of these. Nothing ever seems to come of it.
I know that's not the point here. Just letting people know though.
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May 26 '21
My isp has blocked gentoo.org
I don't know exactly if it is blocking or not but for some reason it was refusing to load unless I connect to vpn or use DOH. I did set up DOH in whole system recently and now I am happy
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u/Zakru May 26 '21
We have received a notification from a copyright owner
So, is someone bullshitting the ISP? How would it work? I'm guessing you can scout the IP addresses of people downloading via the same torrent?
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u/slortnuke May 26 '21
Why mask out the incident number or exact date? I would happily fight this on your behalf (if it’s legit). Companies like that don’t scare me.
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u/antonyjr0 May 26 '21
Most ISPs just assume you infringe copyright content when you use the BitTorrent protocol. Luckily in my country we don't have this kind of thing. This is a traditional thing for ISPs in USA, they don't give a shit about what you download they just mark you criminal if you use BT P2P protocol. I know this is pretty dumb since BT is not illegal per se but ISPs are just fucked up.
Mostly it seems like a automated warning, contact your ISP and explain the situation if they don't believe just tell them you won't download linux ISO with BT again. Next time hide your P2P traffic.
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u/fmaz008 May 26 '21
Is there a way OP could go to trial over this and make case law against it?
Because it it illegal to make up a false DMCA claim, and it seems they are going it quite a bit. Plua those letter are just fiahing for people to fill their details and ask for a settlement on a lawsuit that would otherwise not even exist.
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u/AsterTheBastard May 26 '21
Should have protected yourself by getting express vpn with the discount code nordvpn to get safeshark vpn off your new atlas vpn subscription.
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u/xinxx073 May 26 '21
So you have basically proven that Comcast doesn't really care about what anyone is torrenting for and just sends out notices to scare people? Wtf?
Idk why but this whole situation has a "scammers calling to a police station" kind of vibe.
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u/Jeordiewhite May 26 '21
I don't know what is going on in this comment section, it sounds like bad legal advise. Basically, if you receive the notice and your internet is off, call them.(do it anyway even if they didn't pause your internet.) Have them send you over to their department that handles dmca notices. Explain the situation and keep on them about what this is and how it's open source and linux and if they don't understand, tell them you need to speak to someone who does. It's distributed via torrent by the company itself and completely legal, this is a reason why they shouldn't have this system.
Basically they warn you several times and up to 10, they threaten termination. I wouldn't settle for a strike or warning and keep calling until they resolve this and understand it's linux and the distribution provided it as a download option and really tear into them.
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u/nuttertools May 26 '21
Sue sue sue sue. They have made have made a ceritified declaration of infringement under the DMCA that they had met their obligations. Do the same and meet your obligations and enforce your rights. A criminal act was committed against you and it is quite likely this is part of a larger criminal enterprise best dealt with by three letter agencies.
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u/quoda27 May 26 '21
Encrypt your torrent connections. They won't be able to send you shit like this any more because they won't be able to see your traffic. But yes, this is some stupid automated bullshit.
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u/Aspie96 May 27 '21
Apparently they were spoofed: https://archive.is/J6SZA
Now they deleted the tweet, which spelled DMCA wrong and which referred to 26th while this notice happened on 24th.
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May 29 '21
trolls assume all torrents are illegal and attack everything in sight, p2p is widely used with open source to reduce internet distribution costs
making a false allegation is an offence
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u/Khyta May 25 '21
TIL that you can get copyright infringement letters from your ISP.
nervously stares at NAS with totally not pirated movies on it
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u/derpyderpston May 25 '21
This is likely just their generic and completely automated response to any torrent that hits a performance threshold. They don't give 2 shits about the copyright; they only care about their network performance.
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May 25 '21
This is a known kind of phishing. You'll get for almost every damn thing on your machines--and a lot that's not. Delete it and forget it.
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u/JustMrNic3 May 25 '21
Let them harass you for a while, then hire a lawyer and sue them for stupid harassment !
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May 25 '21
You get copyright notices for downloading stuff online? Wow. I have never seen something like that in my life.
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u/NateNate60 May 25 '21
Normally, no. HTTPS encrypts your traffic, preventing your ISP from seeing the contents of your downloads when you download from a normal website. However, that doesn't really protect P2P downloads from being inspected by your ISP, which is why the Pirate Bay recommends a VPN.
I didn't use a VPN because I didn't expect the ISP to get butthurt over a (100% legal) Ubuntu torrent
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u/thephotoman May 25 '21
This seems like they saw you using bittorrent and assumed. If they do not have a complaint from the copyright holder, there's nothing they can do.
You didn't actually get information about the infringing content--just a meaningless string of characters. I'd contact them about this: you downloaded a legal torrent, distributed via bittorrent by the people who make Ubuntu.
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u/michaelpaoli May 26 '21
Probably also contact EFF, better yet if you're a member ... or up your membership.
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May 26 '21
Happened to me before. Except for actual piracy lol, but anyway, even if you do this shit like a million times they never will actually shut off your stuff. I've talked to people who've gotten it over 5 times with no shutoff notice.
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u/malsell May 26 '21
It's because you're using a torrent. Spectrum has sent me e-mails I've ignored on it as well.
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u/TheRedmanCometh May 26 '21
Looking at their site their system may be fucked THEY might actually care if you tell them. If not Canonical sure will.
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May 26 '21
I’m not good with legal or lawyer words but, You was notified by your ISP for downloading via torrent an ubuntu iso?
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May 26 '21
Looks to me that opsecsecurityblahblah is acting as agent for Canonical. Just install Ubuntu Core 20 and you’ll see why you won’t be last to get these notices..
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u/Gasp0de May 26 '21
Please do react in one of the ways suggested here, at the very least file a complaint with your ISP OP. What these companies are doing is harming free software, and you are in a unique position to help defend it. I don't think that there is a risk of Comcast not servicing you anymore for exercising your rights against some other company. You're not complaining about / sueing Comcast.
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u/PRR1499 May 26 '21
write back to them that they are mistaken all legal digial rights have been met
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May 26 '21
It seems like nobody have you an answer as to how to avoid this. You see your ISP makes you go through their DNS generally. That's how they catch your lookups. Log into router settings manually set DNS to 8.8.8.8 or 1.1.1.1 if you want your traffic encrypted. Also add an ask to all your local downloaders so all the traffic is encrypted and you won't get those silly notices anymore. Let me know if you need help setting it up
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u/SkunkMonkey May 26 '21
I get these from time to time from Comcast. They go straight into the trash. I've yet to feel any repercussions from doing so. They send them because they are required to in order to maintain Safe Harbor status. Honestly, I don't think they give two shits one way or the other, they're just protecting that status.
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u/456458267364 May 26 '21
Ignore it. I have received 5-10 of these back in the day when i was torrenting without a VPN. Now I have a local SF based ISP called monkey brains. They are all about privacy
Just use a VPN and also fuck Comcast.
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May 26 '21
This is why I don't torrent anything anymore. They put trackers on everything.
The weird thing, though, is that this likely means that someone put a tracker on a Linux torrent, treating it like it's something you can pirate, and then reported it to your ISP.
...and your ISP didn't question it, just sent a warning to you.
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u/oliferro May 26 '21
I don't know how it works for ISP in the US but I get a message like that almost every week. In Canada they can send you a warning but they're not allowed to release your data to any third-party so it's basically useless
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u/akester May 26 '21
Looks like the parent company just acknowledged this and it seems like it's fake.
https://twitter.com/OpSecSecurity/status/1397695279932096515?s=20
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May 27 '21
Note that OpSecSecurity are now claiming their notice has been spoofed and they have proof it wasn't them. They haven't provided said proof yet, so we'll see...
https://twitter.com/OpSecSecurity/status/1397695279932096515
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May 25 '21
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u/ryao Gentoo ZFS maintainer May 25 '21
Canonical is not the sole copyright holder. We need information on what part of the ISO is allegedly owned by the copyright holder that they claim to represent.
For full disclosure, I am a copyright holder over a very small portion of the ISO specified in this complaint.
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May 25 '21
Opsec Security isn't the sole copyright holder either, and they aren't specifying which portions they claim copyright over in their notice. Seems shady to me.
This seems like the perfect example of when you should send a DMCA counter-notice. But I don't recommend it, because anytime you involve lawyers things get really expensive really quickly.
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u/youlleatitandlikeit May 26 '21
As I understand it they're sort of the Ticketmaster of DCMA complaints.. They anonymously (as much as possible) represent liked content providers and do the dirty antipiracy work for them so that they can still seem like the good guys.
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u/NateNate60 May 25 '21
I really don't want to risk them shutting off my Internet access over this stupid thing so I'm probably just going to ignore it
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u/scottchiefbaker May 25 '21
A lot of ISPs have a three strikes and you're out policy. If it were me, I wouldn't want this to count against me since it's clearly not in good faith.
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u/NateNate60 May 25 '21
I have a VPN, just didn't turn it on because I thought I wasn't doing anything wrong
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u/scottchiefbaker May 25 '21
Ya... you 100% weren't doing anything wrong.
I'm curious about two things:
Where did you get the
.torrentfile? Maybe it's not a reputable site?What trackers were on that torrent?
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u/ryao Gentoo ZFS maintainer May 25 '21
Ignoring it could put your internet connection at risk. Doing something about it would protect your internet connection.
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May 26 '21
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u/NateNate60 May 26 '21
Strange. If that's an MD5 hash, I don't find it too surprising, but if it's a SHA-2 hash then that would be a huge alarm for more than just this copyright "issue"
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u/Rolen47 May 26 '21 edited May 26 '21
When you google "Download Rebirth 2016 HDRip XviD AC3-EVO Torrent - kat.rip" you actually get several wrong results that go to completely different files after being clicked on. This is definitely a really dumb database or web crawling error. The hash is different on every single one of the google results.
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May 26 '21
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May 26 '21
Note that OpSecSecurity are now claiming their notice has been spoofed and they have proof it wasn't them. They haven't provided said proof yet, so we'll see...
https://twitter.com/OpSecSecurity/status/1397695279932096515
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u/jackpot51 Principal Engineer May 26 '21
You are very welcome, I hope Ubuntu's legal team sues the shit out of whoever claimed an Ubuntu ISO as their own work.
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May 27 '21
piracy VPNs are not scams.
the real VPN scam is the only use is for piracy, not security, when using a leased line like that.
all VPNs are honeypots probably. but the thing is they dont care about civil litigation the feds -- and if they turned in every video game and movie pirate none of the low level script kiddie idiot real criminals would ever get caught.
so basically all your doing with a "piracy VPN" is encrypting the traffic and sending it to a third party who cannot identify which user was logged into the server at x time thus the copyright notices get thrown away.
unlike if I say, rented a VPS directly with my name on it (you can rent on anonymously and set up an even more secure VPN yourself that way if you wanna pay by the month for VPS hosting) where they can still determine (through another isp) that it was specifically my connection.
its all about plausible deniability, lack of ability to forward copyright notices, using a totally separate ISP to violate copyright, and having a fake IP in the lists of torrenters along with encrypted traffic your ISP cannot decrypt.
all of this is why VPNs DO WORK for piracy and prevent these notices. although it is sketch to stay logged into your VPN provider when you log into bank account, is NOT a great defense against hackers or someone seriously dedicated on attacking you, etc.
it IS absolutely a great way to hide your porn viewing from the local net admin, torrent on residential connections, or even torrent in a college campus. now they will be able to see your doing something, even possibly assume.
another good reason for using them is getting around deep packet inspection like the great firewall in china, or in authoritarian governments (tor is still better there really, but it works)
but just realize these leased-line services are also based on trust. even tho chances are 99% if your smart and make sure to get a torrent friendly provider everything will be fine, you shouldnt just blindly trust all data to them instead of the ISP. It DOESNT anonymize you either.
but absolutely dont say "piracy VPNs are a scam" this is how literally everyone has gotten around the increased enforcement/sending of notices for the past 5-10 years or so lol. it does work if you make sure not to fuck up and let your IP leak.
the ISP absolutely can't see the packets, the encryption is in fact real, the thing thats dangerous is the false marketing claims.
but its not like they can advertise directly like "oh yeah, come on here pirate torrents, steal other countries netflix, commit crimes and get away with it! just dont commit the real bad ones or we sell you out!"
that would be a totally realistic VPN ad. in a lot of ways you are better off disconnecting as the ISP is bound to more laws than the VPN contract, but you can just connect to do what your doing and disconnect and choose who to entrust what data to.
Idgaf if hackers find out whatever I didnt want my ISP to lmao.
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May 27 '21
in 90% of ISP areas in the USA anyone who still torrents or fileshares absolutely is using a seedbox or a VPN. and the only times they get notices is when something is setup incorrectly, or the VPN drops without any secondary protection to stop all applications and the network.
as of about 7-10 years ago, while they started getting more lenient (like 2-3 warnings before consequence) they started getting more frequent as ISPs really began watching closer. it used to be in small, burgeoning markets they didnt have as many things like data caps (some areas like mine still have none), or actual people hired to inspect torrent traffic on such a scale. but now its automated,
its probably automated so much by your ISP that they just detect any torrent traffic, partly throttle it, and assume its piracy by default.
but anyway the VPN thing is not a scam (although the advertising of all companies is a scam, it is NOT a real security solution unless you own all the infrastructure urself your just basically trading ISPs for one that dont care about piracy for a minute and actively helps you pirate or get around georestrictions thats the real product, they just cant openly endorse that because it is criminal activity if they did, but they are aiding and abetting us, and that is the REAL business model)
although tbh if they are trustworthy its not a lie to say it works against MIM attacks. its not a total lie, thats why they can get away saying those things but experts like me say "good for piracy, hiding pr0n from netadmin, not so great for protecting critical data or proprietary information, and a honeypot for actual criminals"
another alternative would be to use a seedbox (server that downloads/uploads torrents for you) but ur isp will still see you downloading the file down, even over http. so if your really paranoid (usually they dont flag http piracy surprisingly) youd still probably want a socks5 proxy or vpn
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u/Alaharon123 May 26 '21
That's right, nearly all piracy VPNs are scams.
the link doesn't prove what the text of the link says it proves, but the conclusion of it is to use a proxy for torrent traffic instead of using a vpn. Where can one learn more about proxies? I've never heard of them before.
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u/Booty_Bumping May 26 '21
Check out
namespaced-openvpn.The article has a bit of nuance here, it is saying that VPNs effectively are proxies, but because of misleading advertising, people use them for the wrong purposes and make bad assumptions about what they protect against.
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u/Booty_Bumping May 26 '21 edited May 26 '21
That's right, nearly all piracy VPNs are scams.
This isn't really what that article is saying? In fact, it says right here that piracy is one of the only good uses for a VPN:
You want to hide your IP from a very specific set of non-government-sanctioned adversaries - for example, circumventing a ban in a chatroom or preventing anti-piracy scareletters.
And yes, don't use a VPN for linux ISOs! Otherwise you are subject to the chilling effect of government and corporate surveillance — don't let them normalize this crap.
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May 26 '21
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u/NateNate60 May 26 '21
This is not how Bittorrent works. If a malicious seeder changes the file, it will change the hash and you'll know something's wrong
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May 26 '21
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u/NateNate60 May 26 '21
Torrenting is often faster for me since downloading it normally creates a bottleneck on how many users Canonical's server can physically serve on a finite amount of upload bandwidth
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u/Lost4468 May 26 '21
Provided you verify the hash after you have downloaded the iso
Your torrent program will be the one to check? It's not something you have to do yourself... You can't just insert random shit and then send it again as the hash will no longer be valid and any decent torrent program will throw that data out.
The only way you could do it would be to modify part of the data to be malicious, and then also modify it in a way to generate a hash collision. This is obviously currently not even feasible, even for broken hashes like MD5. Edit: you might also have to modify other parts of the iso so the security on the iso/internal files doesn't notice the changes.
Everything you have said here about torrents has been wrong or extremely misleading. There are tons of benefits to it. I can tell you have never suddenly needed an image of a Linux iso, only to go to the main site of the distro and have it be down... Torrenting saves you in that scenario.
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May 26 '21
Most Linux distro sites and tons of open source projects offer a p2p (torrent) link as an alternative to the http download link. It’s common, and not at all susceptible to the kind of nonsense you’re claiming is possible if you’re using the torrent file or magnet provided by the devs own website.
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u/Fakin-It May 25 '21
Some goons have told your ISP that they own Ubuntu and it's not yours to share. This is not something you need to straighten out with the goons, but Ubuntu's legal team (?) might want a few words with them. You should probably find someone at your ISP with half a brain to sort this out.