Originally Posted by pollaxe
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A friend of mine got a threatening letter from his ISP not so long ago alleging he'd downloaded some X-Box game via P2P. He owns a PC and a PS3 and whilst I can't claim to know a great deal about his 'net habits he did say the last thing he'd downloaded was weeks before and it was an Ubuntu ISO. So I'm not at all convinced of the accuracy of some of this monitoring regardless of our viewpoints on rights and wrongs of the ISPs monitoring their users' behaviour anyway.
Even if exactly as outlined there, though, that's an argument against sloppy procedures, not the principle of booting repeat offenders off the net in the way that's proposed.
It's also worth commenting that that seems to have happened before this agreement was reached, so if it was already happening, it's hardly an objection to this proposal. It's an objection to sloppy procedures or high-handed ISPs.
And, as has been pointed out, it could have been someone using his link. Friend visiting, perhaps? Or depending on his age and situation, a brother or sister, son or daughter, etc. Or someone hijacking his wifi. In any of these situations, that he didn't download it (assuming he didn't, and from what you say, it seems unlikely .... though it's plausible he could have done it for someone else even though he doesn't have an XBox) doesn't necessarily mean it wasn't downloaded via his IP.
But the proposal to boot people off the net is for
repeat offenders. So, when someone gets a letter like that, they can :-
- write back pointing out they did NOT download this. Check the log data please.
- check their own firewall logs for intruders, and perhaps tighten settings
- beef up PC or network security and monitoring
- encrypt, or even temporarily close, their wifi.
..... and so on.