From Excess Copyright:
Today’s ruling by the Federal Court of Canada in ME2 Productions, Inc. v. Doe, 2019 FC 214 is a reiteration and affirmation of the landmark ruling by Judge von Finckenstein in the first of these Canadian copyright “Doe” cases 14 years ago. That BMG decision, which was upheld by the Federal Court of Appeal, made it clear that the Court will require substantial, admissible, reliable affidavit evidence that can be cross-examined upon. Today’s ruling notes that “…the key evidence that is found in the Arheidt Declaration is hearsay which cannot be subject to cross-examination since it is simply an exhibit to the affidavits. This is exactly the type of evidence which was rejected in BMG, which remains good law.” In today’s ruling, Judge Pentney refers several times to the need for “the best available evidence.”
The Court in BMG was then and is now still rightly concerned that hearsay evidence creates the “risk that innocent persons might have their privacy invaded and be named as defendants where it is not warranted” and such evidence will not suffice if “no grounds are provided for accepting” it.
Link to the rest at Excess Copyright.
Following are excerpts from a brief filed in the case:
The lower level court had denied a motion brought by a number of corporations in the recording industry business. These plaintiffs had sought disclosure by certain ISPs of the identity of customers said to be guilty of copyright infringement by trading in music downloaded from the Internet. The plaintiffs could not identify these Internet users because they operated under pseudonyms related to software.
The plaintiffs said that each of these unidentified defendants had downloaded in excess of 1,000 songs onto home computers. It was said that the defendants utilized the KaZaA and iMesh file-sharing programs, which allowed them to share computer files with others connected to a peer-to-peer network. The defendants possessed software by which they could search the pool of shared files by title or artist and it was submitted that multiple transfers to other users could take place simultaneously from a user’s computer.
It was raised by all parties that Internet service provider (“ISP”) account-holders expect that their identities will be kept confidential.
. . . .
[U]nder PIPEDA, para. 7(3)(c), an ISP may disclose personal information if so required by court order.
. . . .
[In order to obtain such personal information, a plaintiff/applicant must show the following:]
- the applicant must establish a prima facie case against the unknown alleged wrongdoer;
- the person from whom discovery is sought must be more than an innocent bystander;
- that person must be the only practical source of information;
- that person must be reasonably compensated for expenses arising out of compliance with the discovery order; and
- the public interests in favour of disclosure must outweigh legitimate privacy concerns.
. . . .
The trial division judge denied the plaintiffs’ motion. In his reasons, Judge von Finckenstein stated that the plaintiffs had not made out a prima facie case.
. . . .
Neither the affidavits nor the cross-examination thereon provided clear evidence as to how the pseudonyms of the KaZaA or iMesh users were linked to the IP addresses identified by MediaSentry. While the affidavit indicated that the pseudonym (Geekboy@KaZaA) was identified as the IP address 24.84.179.98 and that, according to the American Registry for Internet Numbers’ public database, that address had been assigned to Shaw Communications (one of the ISPs from which disclosure is sought), no evidence explained how the pseudonym was linked to the IP address in the first place. Given these circumstances the court refused to order disclosure of the name of the account-holder of IP address 24.84.179.98 thereby exposing that person to litigation.
On the question of whether there was evidence that copyright had been infringed, the plaintiffs submit that the alleged infringers: installed the peer-to-peer application on their computers; copied files to “shared directories”; used ISP services to connect their computers to the Internet; ran the peer-to-peer application while on the Internet; and made files in the shared directories available for copying, transmission and distribution to any one of millions of users of the peer-to-peer service. It was argued that there was copyright infringement by this reproduction, authorization of reproduction and distribution of unauthorized copies of sound recordings. Further, there was the possession, for the purpose of distribution, of unauthorized copies which the infringers either knew or should have known were infringing.
The judge acknowledged that copyright law is a creature of statute and it does not assist the interpretive analysis to import tort concepts. Under s. 80(1) of the Copyright Act, R.S.C. 1985, c. C-42, the downloading of a song for a person’s private use does not amount to infringement. There was here no evidence that the alleged infringers either distributed or authorized the reproduction of sound recordings. Their action was to place personal copies into shared directories accessible by other computer users: the element of authorization is missing.
The judge stated that absent a positive act by the owner of the shared directory, such as sending copies or advertising the material’s availability for copying, there is no distribution.
. . . .
The Federal Court of Appeal in BMG Canada Inc. v. John Doe unanimously lifted the legal barriers, erected by the earlier decision of Justice von Finckenstein (the “Motion Judge”), to pursuing copyright infringement actions against on-line infringers of copyright works (“Internet Infringers”). There were four crucial elements to the Motion Judge’s decision. The Federal Court of Appeal dealt with these issues as follows:
- The Motion Judge made conclusions to the effect that Canada’s existing copyright law was insufficient to permit the recording industry to sue Internet Infringers for copyright infringement. The Federal Court of Appeal vacated these conclusions.
- The Motion Judge held that privacy rights enjoyed by Internet Infringers trumped the recording industry’s copyright interests. The Federal Court of Appeal reversed this finding.
- The threshold test applied by the Motion Judge before he would order an Internet service provider (“ISP”) to disclose the identity of an Internet Infringer was very high. The Federal Court of Appeal lowered the threshold.
- The Motions Judge found that certain key elements of the evidence on the motion before him were hearsay and therefore inadmissible. While the Federal Court of Appeal accepted that some of the evidence was hearsay, and thus dismissed the appeal, the court invited the recording industry to return to the court with improved evidence. Such an opportunity is rarely granted.
Link to the rest at Internet and E-Commerce Law in Canada
PG is not an expert on Canadian law. Since he hasn’t represented anyone in a litigation matter in a long time, he’s not completely up to date about US discovery practice either.
With those disclaimers, PG says Canadian law appears to be similar to US law in like matters.
In this case, a number of record companies were seeking to identify individuals who had posted a large number of songs on a pirate site from which those songs could be accessed by many more individuals who were interested in obtaining music without paying for it.
Those who were posting the songs used pseudonyms for understandable reasons.
The record companies wanted the Internet Service Providers granting internet connectivity to the individuals to use the IP addresses associated with pseudonyms on the pirate site to help the record companies track down the individuals who were deeply involved in music piracy of the companies’ intellectual property.
What’s an IP address?
From Wikipedia:
An Internet Protocol address (IP address) is a numerical label assigned to each device connected to a computer network that uses the Internet Protocol for communication.
An IP address serves two principal functions. It identifies the host, or more specifically its network interface, and it provides the location of the host in the network, and thus the capability of establishing a path to that host. Its role has been characterized as follows: “A name indicates what we seek. An address indicates where it is. A route indicates how to get there.” The header of each IP packet contains the IP address of the sending host, and that of the destination host.
Link to the rest at Wikipedia
While it’s far from a perfect analogy, an IP address on the internet is a little like a street address on the ground.
If I know that someone known as Geekboy@KaZaA lives at 123 Main Street, Internet Village, Canada, I know where to look for Geekboy@KaZaA. There’s a chance that Geekboy is still there or somewhere in the vicinity.
If I learn from the ISP that Geekboy has an account that names Little Jimmy Jones at 123 Main Street, Toronto, Canada as the owner of the account.
If the IP address points to the same area as the ISP account says is where Little Jimmy lives, I have a pretty good idea who to serve legal papers of some sort upon. Without the IP address, if Little Jimmy says, “I would never do that. Maybe someone else hacked my account,” I can’t make the connection between Geekboy and Little Jimmy.
For privacy reasons having nothing to do with pirated music, internet users won’t want to use the internet if their ISP gives out information to anyone who asks for it. In the US, the local Democrats might want to know who is visiting Donald Trump websites so they can picket that person’s house. Encyclopedia Britannica may want to know who visited its website but didn’t register so it can send a sales representative to the house. Someone who has joined an online group that discusses erectile dysfunction problems might not want large drug companies, etc., etc., etc.
According to the first brief the people concerned were using Kazaa and Imesh. These were older p2p file sharing applications which actually shared particular directories on a users computer. Users shared all files in those directories and were able to use the software to search the shared directories of all users. I’m not aware of whether these networks even exist any more, though I doubt they remain popular.
Kazaa! I remember that from college … ages upon ago 🙂 If those are still around I would be very surprised. I do remember tech magazines advising users not to anything they don’t want the public to access in the shared directory they use for Kazaa and Napster. I don’t remember Imesh. But then iTunes came along, and everyone I knew quit bothering with the file sharers.
Kazaa. Wow, that feels like “the Chalcolithic Age” in Internet Time. We’ve moved on to discovering writing and everything 🙂
I still like how the record companies in the past have gone after ‘thieves’ that didn’t even own a computer. And they’ve be caught claiming copy-write on something because it had the ‘name’ of a song (just how bad would a three minute song sound compressed to less than a meg? Hint very bad … 😉 )
What they should be more worried about is that I’ve got CDs (which are/were converted to MP3 and other formats for my own use) of what I like to listen to and nothing they’ve made of late has been worth me acquiring (by any means.)
So I and others no longer are on their radar, we’re not buying or streaming so they’re not going to be getting a cent.
They can’t die off soon enough.
Although, as PG has often mentioned, criminals are seldom geniuses, it doesn’t take a genius to connect through public WiFi when you don’t want to be traced. From public WiFi all that can be determined is that the connection was through the Starbucks on main street at 2p. Are you surprised that Pirate Roberts, the owner of the Silk Road criminal exchange, was arrested in a public library? It wasn’t because he is a book lover.
MAC (Medium Access Control) addresses are slightly more useful because they are supposed to be tied to a specific piece of hardware, but they can be obscured also. (Think virtual machine.) The TOR browser, a product of U.S. intelligence agencies, is a performance nightmare, but it easily further obscures where stuff comes from.
Truth is, network addresses lead only to the dumbest of the dumb. Not that there are not quite a few of those out there…
Let me throw in that I have strong passwords on my home WiFi, but not because I am afraid my neighbors will steal my bandwidth or snoop on my posts to TPV. I am more concerned that some criminal will use my WiFi address for nefarious deeds.
All that and you’re still not entirely safe …
There are several internet providers out there that part of your internet contract is free WiFi from any of the wireless internet they hand out for you to make connections (a friend of mine asked me to figure out why his internet was so slow and it was others using the ‘public’ side of his wireless gateway. When the provider wouldn’t disable it it went into a grounded metal box and I helped him configure a new wireless router. 😉 )
In my case Google Fibre gives you a separate modem and wireless router. As I don’t actually ‘need’ the extra speed, my older slower router’s plugged into the modem and theirs is still in the box.
For the content providers, who are the plaintiffs, they feel like they’re stuck in a loop.
a. Person wants to sue so they need evidence of who and what.
b. To get the what, they go online, find someone seeding, start a download and see their IP address clearly evident (or just ping them).
c. They apply to the ISP to see who was using the IP address at that precise time.
d. The ISP refuses for privacy reasons, so the content provider goes to court to get the info.
e. The court says you need the who and the what in order to file suit and to get the info you want. Go back to A.
There’s a legal specialist in Toronto, Michael Geist, who looks at internet, mobility, etc. and his blog is pretty dense at times, but pretty wide ranging for case law.
In Canada, if you are using a properly configured VPN, the content providers are pretty much screwed at that point. One of the ones that Canadians like is Private Internet Access and they don’t keep logs. Whereas previously it was:
Seeder IP –> ISP 1 –> ISP 2 –> Recipient IP
it is now:
Seeper IP –> ISP 1 –> VPN Proxy –> ISP 2 –> Recipient IP
If you are hacking in from ISP 2 (the way these guys did), all you see is the VPN proxy which has a huge pool of IPs going through it. They don’t keep their logs either. So accessing something through them is fruitless. However, not all VPNs are so ruthless — some say they don’t keep logs, but they’re often small outfits. When faced with evidence their users are pirating and trading, they often fold rather than fight in court (even though they’ll win, they can’t afford the fight).
In Canada, a case like above is unusual due to the likely outcome. Instead, what they do is send the equivalent of a take-down notice to your ISP that says “Hey, ISP 1, we noticed that IP address xxx was pirating on this date. Tell them to stop and offer to let them get in touch directly with us at the following address so we can sue them into the ground.” The requirement for awhile was that the ISP *had* to pass along those settlement offers; that’s now dead. The regulatory body saw it for what it was — people trolling to find people to sue with a low evidentiary base, trying to drum up the same tort suits that are plaguing the US.
Most of the ISPs say “Stop that or we’ll end your service”, and then ask you if you want to upgrade your GB to unlimited. I have not see ANYBODY say they were terminated.
A bigger issue in Canada is the KODI ADDONS site that was based in Montreal. The big media companies are merged with internet provision in Canada (don’t get us started on THAT issue) and they like to squash anything that looks like competition — they managed to use almost Gestapo-like tactics on the Montreal company and the owner, despite the fact they didn’t sell any addons nor host anything, they were just a linking site. For final court disposition, most of the experts said they’d likely win in appeals, but at court of first instance, the media Goliaths hit little David hard enough in the pocketbook they had no choice but to fold.
In a similar vein, there are a couple of companies offering basic cable packages through the internet in Canada — VMedia, Zazeen, etc. But in order to use them, you (a) have to have them provide your internet and (b) you have to use a decoder box (like old pay-TV movie stations). If either company tries to go direct, i.e. anybody can sign up, the big media companies (Bell, Rogers, etc.) hit them with a lawsuit claiming they’re now doing the equivalent of “broadcasting” — the small companies can’t fight them off, so even the threat of a lawsuit shuts them down and back into having a separate decoder box, which limits market share too.
There’s a lot wrong in Canada with our techno laws, but users generally seem to think blocking these “fishing” expeditions are one thing we got right…
PolyWogg
So, no equivalent to Sling, or PlayStation Vue, or anything like that?
Any next-day TV service like Hulu?
Almost nothing. Some people DO use a few of them, but (almost?) ALL of them require you to do a bit of dipsy-doodle with a gift card or a US credit card. In some of the larger “border cities” like Windsor, Niagara Falls, Vancouver, etc., there is a market for people who basically “sell” US subscriptions…I don’t know much about it, but I understand it is like cost + 5% or something like that, or some that do it for cost based on having bought bulk gift cards at CostCo/Sam’s Club like warehousers. I looked into it for Hulu and got nowhere.
We have ancillary sites like Crave TV, a few others, for TV shows but almost all of them are older series, not first run and even if they are, they’re not current (several weeks behind). We got Amazon Prime Video added to our Prime accounts about 18 months ago or so, but it doesn’t have the full US Prime offerings. Netflix Canada is decent, but also doesn’t have full US offerings.
I don’t know if we can subscribe to any of the new all access ones like CBS.
Some of our Cdn affiliates put the shows online on their website, and most are free viewing, but not all — for some, you can have next day or up to a week later viewing, but only if you are a base subscriber to cable already.
Because we’re a small market (35 million) next to the huge market (335 million), there is a great deal of “cultural” angst about protecting Canada’s cultural identity. Some of that is pure french Canada, but only about 60%, the rest is natural concerns. Same issues as places like China, smaller nations around the world, fearing they’ll be dwarfed by US output. So there are Canadian content rules in place that basically protect the domestic market, and broadcasting regulations that enforce it. It has gone on for a long time, including back when satellite dishes were king, and people were buying US dishes (which were illegal in Canada) and paying with US post office boxes. It’s not likely to change anytime soon unless a politician wants to do one term, change it, and get voted out. Cultural stuff is almost the third rail of Canadian politics. In the meantime, we have some of the tightest monopolies in the world, and international reports out the wazoo that say our internet, cable and mobility charges are amongst the highest in the world. But every time the regulators look at it, the big media companies cry a river about Cdn content and the infrastructure costs of serving a national network for 36 million people including a lot of very remote areas. Kind of like the flyover states in the US, but our regs require at least a good faith effort to serve everyone.
I went with VMedia as an internet-based cable supplier as the lowest cost provider ($25 vs. $45 for equivalent, and I used to have more packages up around the $100 mark), ditched my landline in favour of a VOIP line ($3.80 vs. $50), switched internet to after-market provider ($50 vs. $85), and recently upgraded my cell service ($180 for two phones and a tablet plus 20GB of data vs. $160 with only 8GB of data). Best price on cellular in Canada for my area is one of the Quebec regional companies, $60 / month with 12GB vs. $80-$130 with the major providers. I dumped about $150 out of my monthly bills by moving away from the big media providers…they’re not cheap, but they are generally reliable AND convenient as heck.
If I could work out an easy billing system that wasn’t “risky”, I would switch to something like Hulu in a heartbeat and use my VPN to make it think I was in Arizona or something. Netflix US has done a bunch of work, as has Hulu, in the US to block a lot of those cross-border VPNs, sometimes using codes embedded in the web pages that read your “local information” from your browser. I used to be able to “fake” my way on to the NBC / CBS / ABC prime websites for their free offerings on the website, now it tells me that it knows I’m not eligible for regional streaming, even when my VPN is running as US based. Some more dipsy-doodling can get you around that, but it’s an endless battle apparently.
Every year, there are a few Cdn pundits who go through the range of offerings and do an update as to “what’s available” compared to the options and cost in the US, and everytime, it says: US options blah blah blah, Cdn options n/a.
P.
I find Canadian “cultural angst”, as you put it, amusing, considering just how much of the most popular content on this side is filmed in Canada or is wholly Canadian to start with. I could list dozens, starting with the majority of the HALLMARK catalogs. Which means the single fastest growing channels on and off cable. (They have their own streaming service along with three cable channels.)
Your politicians are doing you no favors.
The way the wind is blowing broadcast and cable packaging will be withering away, probably sooner than non-decorative pbooks.
Cable cutting and on-demand are booming and the content creators are all rushing to control their own distribution. And in the process they are gaining bigger budgets and returns, which is leading to better production values.
In protecting your cable monopolies your government is hurting your content creators and the people they employ. To little long term benefit as the emerging model is that the American producers that can’t reach you directly (CBS and DCUNIVERSE among others, Disney-plus most likely) simply license the content to Netflix so you get it later and at a higher price.
It helps keep the prices on their own services lower.
I also wonder about all that American stuff produced in Canada. Is that Canadian content? Or is it Canadian stuff broadcast in the US?
If we can’t tell where it was produced by watching the show, and have to wait until the show ends to see if the location is Vancouver, is that what they want to protect? Does that count to meet some quota?
Same issues as places like China, smaller nations around the world, fearing they’ll be dwarfed by US output.
Do you know why anyone is worried about this? I grew up watching Canadian TV shows. CBC-Windsor 9 was part of my over-the-air channel line up, along with NBC, ABC, etc. Didn’t need any special equipment to see it. In fact, my cousin and I were watching CBC the night Princess Diana died; the news interrupted a movie to tell us about it.
I once confused a colleague who grew up in Brooklyn, because I referenced a show that had been on TV-O (I’d thought it had been PBS). It was the “Polka Dot Door,” and I had commented that something we had to do was as dull as watching the grownups play with Marigold. For those of you who didn’t see that show, Marigold is a doll. As it turns out, grownups are terrible at playing with dolls. Made me fear growing up 😉
To this day my parents still include Canadian shows in their lineup. Sometimes it’s Murdoch Mysteries, but lately it’s a show with Kristin Kreuk as a lawyer/detective. They’re intrigued that “Street Legal” is being rebooted; back in the day that show was part of must-see-TV for them. Dad binge-watched “Republic of Doyle” on Netflix. I’m sensing a theme here …
I’ve yet to have a cultural “wait, what?” moment when I watch a Canadian show. I get those with telenovelas, but Canadian shows don’t give me cultural whiplash. The British ones just require me to do minor translations, e.g., “biscuits” are cookies, that sort of thing. I can’t think of anything the Anglophone Canadians might say that requires “translating” (“toque” doesn’t count). Also, Canadians understand terms I would use that some Americans wouldn’t: do you boost a car, or give it a jump? I could go either way, but some Americans think the first is just theft. Canadians know better, at least the ones in Ontario do.
Are your ministers really assuming that few would watch Canadian TV or movies if other products were widely available? Have they ever polled people on both sides of bordertowns? I dunno, I just think the shows are more competitive than it seems they’re given credit for.
Jamie — it’s funny, I was reading your comment and was nodding as you crapped on a bunch of the stupid CBC shows that your parents watch, and then went, “Huh?” when you concluded they were competitive and would survive.
Felix — I get your argument, same as Jamie’s, but I have the same response to both.
First, I don’t defend the policy, I just understand the argument. I personally couldn’t care less about the shows most of the time. Outside of some local content for Rick Mercer, This Hour Has 22 Minutes, etc., there is not much I care about. I did watch Republic of Doyle, not quite as bad as the typical one (some EPs were still unwatchable though) just because I liked the setting and there was a decent comedic element at times.
Second, the focus is not really in most cases on Cdn content so much as ensuring there is a domestic economy that is based on control and creation, not just rental or pay as you go filming in Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal.
Third, there is some reality that in most cases, without a subsidy, those shows wouldn’t exist. There would be no domestic industry to give a lot of the creators a start in the biz, so to speak, as most production companies will just drag what they need North with them if they can’t find it local. Vancouver is booming, even with just DC properties!
However, when it comes to commercial quality for production, an easy comparison are the three “Cold Case” series. Cold Case in the US ran for 7 seasons, decent crew, very bright squad room, lighting and tone very upbeat in the present vs. softer tones in flashback, etc. Pretty high quality production overall, with bright young female lead to snag a younger demographic.
“Cold Squad”, the Canadian version, also ran 7 seasons, mostly old white people, all serious, history problems, cases run out of a basement, etc. A very different “tone” and way less commercially viable. But subsidized heavily with Cdn content rules, and a much lower budget. Not even in the same league as the US version.
There was a third one, can’t think of the name of it, in the UK with similar theme. Not the docu series Cold Case Files, this was a medium one in between Cold Squad and Cold Case for quality, budget and tone. Again, heavily subsidized domestically with (I think) BBC.
Anyway, there are lots of people who like those shows because the villain of the week, or guest star of the week, frequently shows up years later in bigger roles, having got their start in the subsidized smaller shows. I’ve been bingeing Cold Case lately and even in the first 1.5 seasons, I’ve spotted actors who when I check their bios, it was one of their first big roles and I only bother to look because they are main roles on shows like Grimm, etc. But the argument basically goes the same way — we ensure there’s a domestic industry so we can compete on the bigger stage later, and ensure we tell our own stories rather than be swallowed by the melting pot.
I don’t really buy the argument, but I get their point to an extent. On the other hand, we have produced some TRULY dreadful shows, even worse than the Marigold scenes. But, like you said, SOMEBODY watches them. I am a HUGE series watcher, and every September, I watch almost every new series premiere out there and review/predict (like fantasy football for couch potatoes). I almost NEVER watch any Cdn series.
However, when I am appointed Emperor, things will be different…!
PolyWogg
Heh, as well you should be confused: I only crapped on “The Polka Dot Door,” whose theme song is irritatingly stuck in my head just now. The series was excruciating (as you seem to agree), and I think I only watched it while waiting for “Fraggle Rock” to come on (or some other series like that).
I myself don’t watch the particular shows my parents watch, but that’s because I don’t watch network TV in general these days. Can’t comment on the quality, so take my observations as “neutral.” If I can’t stream it, it’s dead to me; I refuse to care about scheduled TV. But my larger point was that my folks could be watching an American program at any given moment, but are actively choosing Canadian programs, too. And British ones. Dad grew up on British TV, and therefore, so did I (via PBS).
I think the most watched TV storyline from my childhood came from a Canadian show, “DeGrassi High”: Spike had a baby, which she kept, and she remained in school. The adults were watching that one, too. I can’t think of any teen-oriented American show that had such a storyline in those days.
I had no idea there were so many iterations of “Cold Case Files.” I have cheerfully watched none of them, but I take your point about production values. It never occurred to me any of the shows were subsidized. Again, it doesn’t seem as if they really need to be. I’ll take your word for it, though. Good to have an “inside” view.
I wish you success on your emperor ambitions. Though I tend to think of “emperor” as a position one grabs for oneself, by Crom, rather than being appointed to it 😉
Oops, I overstepped in my wording. I shouldn’t say the individual shows were subsidized — it is more that CBC is subsidized, the production companies get huge grants, they have access to investment loans, etc. But without those subsidies, most of the shows weren’t financially viable enough to rely solely on advertising revenue to stay viable.
Don’t get me started on the mandatory funds that outsiders have to contribute to in order to support “local industry” in Canada…it’s rent-seeking behaviour of the worst kind, and I’m often surprised it is WTO-approved, but WTO has exemptions for cultural enterprises exactly for those reasons I guess.
P.
I also use a VPN for anything that is in the least privacy-related. NordVPN makes it very easy to do so.
I went with CyberGhost VPN, and just leave it turned on all the time. Computers and phone. I don’t even notice it. However, for some bill paying sites, it doesn’t work. But not many.
What matters more, IP addresses are assigned temporarily by the ISP to whoever happens to be logged into the network. If, for instance, your WiFi router goes down and has to be reset, you might be assigned a different IP address when you come back online. It can be tricky to discover just who was using a particular IP address at a particular time.
It’s even tricker when WiFi is involved. The IP address only refers to the router itself, and individual computers using that router are assigned temporary addresses in a private network. Was that you downloading those gigabytes of pirated Bactrian camel porn, or cousin Griselda? There may be no way of telling after the fact.
Might not even be anyone you know, if your router isn’t properly secured. Happened to me once (never again, after dire promises were made to idiot son that reset it to default to get his cell phone on the net).
>Might not even be anyone you know, if your router isn’t properly secured.
Almost the same exact thing here. Our wifi was acting very slow, and as a first step I rebooted it. And immediately heard a scream from the house next door!
In my area, if you have Comcast internet you also automatically have an Xfinity account. By default, Comcast customers that have a wireless router are also offering up xfinity.com wifi, that anyone nearby can log into with their xfinity account. It has been very convenient for me when I’m out and about.
It’s turned off on my router though. 🙂
It’s good to live out on a defunct farm where you can’t even see your nearest neighbors, and the only people driving by are headed to the cemetery.