# ISP sent me an email warning



## slaughter in the vatican (Nov 25, 2008)

Well, apparently they monitor certain things. I had downloaded a pirated version of Windows XP from a torrent, and received a warning from my isp.

Apparently if I do it again the account could be terminated. Not to justify my actions, but all I need are two more things--Visual Basic and Office. I need this for my school but there's no way I would spend over a $1,000 for all of this.

Has anybody else ever received a warning? Do you think I could get this from Usenet or IRC (not asking for specifics)? I haven't used those services in years but imagine my ISP would have a harder time tracing that then torrent activity. You can even do a direct file transfer using IRC.


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## Wirt (Jan 16, 2009)

I vaguely remember getting a warning from my isp for using too much bandwidth or something. I dont ever remember downloading anything crazy so it mightve been a virus and my computer was being used as a mirror, or whatever the technical term is (bot maybe).

I dont think they care about your copy of windows, thats more something windows will care about. the isp probably just cares about the actual downloading since i think it slows down their servers if you download too much. so if you just watch how much you download you should be ok

dont take my complete word for it though..


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## TorLin (Nov 14, 2006)

slaughter in the vatican said:


> Apparently if I do it again the account could be terminated. Not to justify my actions, but all I need are two more things--Visual Basic and Office. I need this for my school but there's no way I would spend over a $1,000 for all of this.
> 
> Has anybody else ever received a warning? Do you think I could get this from Usenet or IRC (not asking for specifics)? I haven't used those services in years but imagine my ISP would have a harder time tracing that then torrent activity. You can even do a direct file transfer using IRC.


wow i not received any warning about anything about this.

if you go to school, you should get discount for your software, i would check in to that.


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## rincewind (Sep 7, 2009)

Microsoft definitely offer cheap versions of their software for educational use. If you're at a college or university you may have access to something called MSDN Academic Alliance, which lets you get access to that type of software for free. Otherwise they should have standard student discounts available, but it's been a long time since I checked exactly what they offer.


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## Spangles Muldoon (Jan 5, 2005)

TorLin is correct that there are huge discounts for students from most major software manufacturers: Microsoft, Adobe, Corel and others. It's hard to understand why you would need to spend more than $1,000 for basic software, such as Windows, Visual Basic, and Office, when you pay student prices.

My entire livelihood is based on Microsoft technology, and I am deeply offended when someone acquires the software I create through illegitimate means.

If Microsoft pricing is prohibitive (and it shouldn't be if you are a student), then consider some excellent free alternatives. For example, various versions of Linux are an excellent substitute for Windows. Also, Sun's OpenOffice is an almost perfect clone of Microsoft Office, and it's free, and it works both in Linux and Windows.


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## rincewind (Sep 7, 2009)

Also, there are free "Express" editions of the Visual Studio family of tools - see here for the VB .NET package. They have limited functionality compared to the full versions but they might be enough for what you need to do.


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## tlgibson97 (Sep 24, 2009)

I read that the music companies fighting against piracy are now going to the ISP to shut down pirates instead of sueing the individual. I guess they werent getting their money from people. Makes sense though, if they can afford $250,000 judgement then thry could probably afford the music instead of steeling it. You could also argue that they wouldnt buy music anyways and just not listen to it if they couldnt get it for free.

I might assume that other companies have caught on and are doing the same thing.


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## TheCanadian1 (Sep 14, 2009)

For Office, download OpenOffice available from OpenOffice.org

It does all the same stuff, and more. Plus it's free.


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## Just Lurking (Feb 8, 2007)

I doubt your ISP is monitoring your downloading (the only thing they care about is bandwidth). The more likely scenario is the copyright owner of the torrent you were downloading pulled your IP address off the torrent website (they could've gotten it during your downloading/uploading), then contacted your ISP who in turn slapped you on the wrist. And yes, they will shut off access if you get caught too many times. You'll have a BIT of leeway seeing as you're their paying customer, but they will not appreciate being bothered by multiple complaining copyright owners.


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## Lisa (Jul 8, 2006)

As others have said above: OpenOffice.org


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## Overthere (Jun 4, 2009)

Just Lurking said:


> I doubt your ISP is monitoring your downloading (the only thing they care about is bandwidth). The more likely scenario is the copyright owner of the torrent you were downloading pulled your IP address off the torrent website (they could've gotten it during your downloading/uploading), then contacted your ISP who in turn slapped you on the wrist. And yes, they will shut off access if you get caught too many times. You'll have a BIT of leeway seeing as you're their paying customer, but they will not appreciate being bothered by multiple complaining copyright owners.


Never happened to me.

What he said really. It's doubtful they were looking at what your were downloading and is more likely the copyright owner / legal firm grassing you up to the ISP after connecting to you via the torrent.

One way you can thwart this happening is by installing Peer Gaurdian http://phoenixlabs.org/pg2/. This blocks torrent peers by IP address based on a number of massive lists of undesirable peers such as those above and many others. When you run it it's quite disturbing seeing which Companies it's blocked that are trying to connect to your torrents.

Watch out for running it while browsing the internet as it will also block out alot of websites for the same types of companies when connecting via HTTP


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## Overthere (Jun 4, 2009)

Also MS do allow students to get Visual Studio for free and Office at a highly discounted rate. Visual Studio (inc Visual Basic 2008) can be obtained for free through DreamSpark which is something to do with MS. Have a look here - don't know the full ins and outs of it all....

https://www.dreamspark.com/default.aspx


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## Narcissus (Aug 28, 2007)

ISPs receive thousands upon thousands of legal warnings from rights holders or companies they contract out to. Not just for software, but for digital content like music and movies. Especially movies, actually.

The companies the rights holders contract out to are the ones monitoring you. They'll have computers participating in P2P networks, which you may eventually try to download something from. They resolve your ISP from your IP address and send threatening legal emails to the ISP's abuse contact, requesting that they terminate your account/reveal your personal information/etc. The ISP's action depends on what their legal team has advised them to do in such a situation.

Whether you get caught again simply depends on where companies are looking for illegal activity. The threat to terminate your account could be hot air, but you can't really know that. Hence, O and/or student discounts, which are very steep and should bring the software you want well within budget.


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## Some Russian Guy (Mar 20, 2009)

I download everything from Russian torrent trackers...
RIAA and MPAA won't go there to sniff out ip addresses...
Firstly is because the registration is in Russian only...
And secondly, American masses naturally don't go on trackers that are situated in backward third world countries, to steal ****...
Of course RIAA & co knows this, therefore they don't bother catching anyone there...

it has every stuff that you can find on English torrent trackers, in English language: music, software, games, ****, even movies and some tv series (with dual audio tracks)...

some books in English too, mostly PC and other manuals


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## slaughter in the vatican (Nov 25, 2008)

Thanks for all the advice. I read the email again, and saw that it was the Business Software Alliance that reported me to my ISP. And I think it's just a hollow threat.

I think I got caught because it was a torrent and had Windows XP in the title. Funny thing is I didn't even use it.

Oh, and I actually prefer OpenOffice...great software. What sucks with school is that for some things we have to use a specific version of Excel. OpenOffice Calc is better in my opinion, it's just some things are different and I just need Excel to do my homework, but I found a CD I had of Office with a valid key.

I dual boot Ubuntu linux and WindowsXP and can use some open source software for Visual Basic and I also have the Studio Express version or whatever it's called from Micro$oft.


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