I got a copyright infringement notice from my ISP. Am I in trouble?
<p>I received an email from my ISP(Spectrum) saying that I received a copyright infringement notice. I read through the whole thing, but I don’t know what to do next. Am I in trouble, do I need to pay, or is it just a warning? This is my 1st notice.</p>

<p>Your ISP may have notified you of an allegation of copyright infringement – a &quot;DMCA take-down&quot; notice. This means that entity X sent them a legal notice claiming that certain content in the ISP's domain infringes X's copyright. The ISP (who has the records of who has what) then tells you about this, and they take down the material. If you believe that X is mistaken (e.g. if you believe that you do have the right to distribute the material) you can file a counter-claim. The form of the counter-claim is described in <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/512#g" rel="nofollow noreferrer">17 USC 512(g)(3)</a>.</p>
<p>DMCA takedown does two things. Primarily it gives the ISP the opportunity to not be sued for contributory
infringement, by taking down allegedly contributing material, once notified. Second, it gives you an opportunity to dispute the claim. If you dispute the claim, the ISP informs X of the dispute, waits 10-14 days, and then if X doesn't inform then that they are suing you, then will restore the material.</p>
<p>If you have infringed copyright, you can be sued, no matter how you respond – DMCA only protects the ISP, not the infringer. Your ISP has nothing to do with paying anything to anyone; watch for a letter from X's attorney which demands payment, and discuss it with your lawyer.</p>

<p>Copyright owners monitor BitTorrent. They either seed small parts of their own content (e.g. 5% of the file), or they try to download their own content and see who seeds to them.  They log the IP addresses of who tried to download, or who was seeding. (identifying seeders is much more potent, and <strong>Bittorrent clients seed by default</strong>).  If you don't understand all that, that's where you went wrong.</p>
<p>There's been a lot of awkward precedent (I don't necessarily mean <em>case law</em> precedent) on what to do about this situation. The media industry doesn't want to be suing millions of Americans but does want piracy to stop. The ISPs don't want to narc out their own customers but don't want piracy happening either.  One arrangement I commonly see is that <strong>the first time</strong>, the ISP refuses to tell the copyright holder who you are.  Instead, they send you a sternly worded letter saying &quot;make it stop, or else&quot;. <em>If it continues, the gloves come off and they either hand over your identity, and/or cancel your internet service and ban you for awhile</em>.</p>
<p>Read the letter <em>carefully</em> (hard do do in all the excitement,  I know) and see what it actually says.</p>
<p>If the letter is saying &quot;stop doing it or else&quot;, then stop doing it and do not answer the letter. Especially, do not contact the copyright holder. I wouldn't contact the ISP either.   If you still are filled with the urge to do <em><strong>something</strong></em>, then contact a local attorney who will be your representative. Never seek advice from an opponent's attorney.</p>

<h2>Three options</h2>
<h3>1 - It's a DMCA</h3>
<p>Some copyright holder contacted your ISP with an IP (and most likely a time stamp) and said something like: &quot;This connection at this time is uploading, offering, or downloading material we have copyrighted. Make it stop under DMCA.&quot; Of course much more elaborate. The ISP in turn looked up who had the IP at that time and sent you a letter &quot;Hey, stop what you do there, or you'll be in trouble.&quot;</p>
<h3>2 - It's also a Cease and Desist.</h3>
<p>The copyright holder might have sent the ISP a letter worded differently. Instead of (just) pointing to the DMCA, they might have said &quot;Make it stop under DMCA and tell them to keep it stopped, at which point we're even. If it persists or returns, we come back and demand the person's name to sue.&quot; In effect, they ask the ISP to deliver a Cease and Desist to the subscriber. That's not totally unheard of, as such can reduce the attorney costs for the copyright holder over many cases as the number of repeat infringers is lower.</p>
<h3>3 - Are <em>you</em> the infringer or is someone using your IP?</h3>
<p>There's a case where someone had an unsecured network and <em>someone</em> who was not the subscriber used the network to download and distribute stuff with a bit-torrent. The Bit-Torrent protocol is set up in a way that to download you <em>have</em> to upload parts you already have, so downloading with it automatically distributes the file.</p>
<p>In the case you are <strong>not</strong> using a torrent and are just the subscriber and are sued, there was a case where the subscriber was sued... and won, because the suing party could not prove that they were the infringing party. Yes, I am talking about <em>Cobbler v Gonzales</em> from the 9th Circuit (<a href="https://dlbjbjzgnk95t.cloudfront.net/1077000/1077264/17-35041.pdf" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Cobbler Nevada, LLC v. Thomas Gonzales, Case No. 17-35041 (9th Cir. Aug. 27, 2018)</a>). Sometimes, letters from the ISPs are worded in such a way as to tell you &quot;Goddangit, someone tried to subpoena your IP. Make your network secure and make sure that nobody uses your IP to infringe.&quot; <strong>However</strong> only if you are not the downloading/distributing party, you can point to this case.</p>

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