A letter to the Gaytorrent community
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At the request of a site user, he wants his story shared with the rest of the community:
Well, where do I start? .. One night I was bored and I decided to steal some content from FraternityX and share it with the community here. Turns out this was a mistake and I'm going to pay for it.. Here's how it all went down.
I bought a membership and used a screen capturing app to record the videos which was tedious to say the least I stole a total of 4 videos and on the forth video I noticed some water marking with my IP address which of course is traced back to me very easily as that's the same IP i used to create the membership and browse the site's content. So I was busted at that point and I was really just hoping that no trolls would notice. This assumption was wrong the following business day I received an email from someone at online-buddies.com who I decided to start talking with immediately knowing full well I did something I shouldn't have. Sadly, I admitted to stealing the content in hopes that honesty and cooperation would help the situation. It didn't. At least not immediately. They wanted me to pay $16,000 USD in damages. There were some back and forth conversations, along with a formal letter that was sent to my home address. I then started to talking with some lawyers and realized that online-buddies would have a very difficult time taking me to court, as it would cost them much more money to actually sue me. So, I made online-buddies an offer which was significantly less then the original demanded amount. As part of the deal, online-buddies insisted that I share my story on the forums.
This company definitely tried to scare me. They were very aggressive, and due to my lack of legal knowledge, I was scared briefly .. If this ever happens to you consult a lawyer immediately even if its just to ask a quick question on justanswers.com. I ended up having to speak with lawyers in the US and Canada both of which said that online-buddies would have to spend a lot of money trying to sue me and that it simply wouldn't be profitable for them to take me to court. That being said I still feel obligated to cover some of the damages, hence my very low offer being made and eventually accepted due to the fact that I wasn't profiting off of this content in anyway.
In summary don't steal from FraternityX if you have a membership with them. They'll hunt you down through their invisible watermarking .. scare you .. and try to get as much money as they can from you. After all, this an exceptionally profitable business model in the USA. If you are caught, admit nothing unless you're an honest guy like myself.
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I think the story is bollocks. You don't write "I decided to steal" and there's more like that. The letter reads strange and is overconstructed. I don't believe a word.
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dont know. i don't think this is fake. it is hard to word your thoughts when you are under stress. Hope everything will be back on course for this guy very soon. Let this be a reminder we should be cautious all the time.
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It's not fake –- I've followed the whole thing from the side lines with this member. This is exactly the type of thing trolls do. All the details are consistent with what others report elsewhere on the internet.
Remember, he was coerced to make a statement. I agreed to post it so he can finish addressing his situation; and because I think it's good information for all users. I think he went further to express his full experience for the benefit of the other users on the site. Kudos for doing so.
It's a good reminder to the torrent community that multi-level precautions are a good idea when sharing.
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The last thing that I expected is the insinuation that I am a troll, I am not that kind of person at all. I detest trolls.
In the message I stated nothing more (nor less) than my personal opinion. I agree the tone is somewhat outspoken but that's me. If I firmly believe something, I firmly write this down.
Reading the letter it was immediately in the first sentence that I thougt, huh?
When you make a big mistake, and you know you are wrong, and you decide to write a letter from the heart with an advice to others, the first thing you do is to state the truth in how you felt when explaining how you got to the point you made the mistake.
His opening sentence is: "One night I was bored and I decided to steal some content from FraternityX".
Even if you know beforehand you are stealing or in hindsight are told you have been stealing (something I don't believe in with regards to internet but thats another story) you simply don't write like what he wrote.
I would have written something like: "For my own private pleasure I decided to rip some video's from the FraternityX website. I enjoyed them so much that I decided to share them with others, what a mistake that was", etcetera.The final sentence is also very strange: "If you are caught, admit nothing unless you're an honest guy like myself."
What I read into it is that he freely admitted everything. I always thought that Americans "took the fifth" in an effort not to incriminate themselves. So is he a masochist or a moron?
Acme
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maybe as a part of the deal he was forced to use those words. After all this is a letter the company ask him to write. They wanna make sure all of us note they consider those practices as stealing from them. However the guy did a good job at putting how he felt regarding the whole situation there along with what (presumably) he was asked to state, so IMVHO he isn't either a masochist nor a moron, but a guy with not many options.
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No one insinuated you were a troll Acme –-- my comment ("This is exactly the type of thing trolls do.") was not referring to you ---- I was referencing that trolls put individuals through the very things that he was explaining. My intent was to add credibility to the story he was sharing.
Sure, I would have put it in different words as well, particularly if I were taking pre-incident precautions in my communications. But if everything is after the fact and a company is insisting this or that be communicated as part of a deal to put something to rest, that doesn't leave him with many options as stated by ninjapow.
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wow that's a nice heads up if it is all true!
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Obviously FratX wants to convey an aura of doom and gloom if anyone shares material obtained from their site. But, it is exactly that. . . a scare tactic, which is the public impression they want to convey and disseminate through whatever mediums they can. Thus, their wanting this particular user to settle his situation by helping them to disseminate this information.
They know they can't sue all the individuals that make a decision to share material with others. It would be totally cost prohibitive. But most torrent users don't know the ins and outs of troll manipulations and propaganda lies, so they work to intimidate. They will try to extort money from you and threatening to embarrass you by making your name public. There are plenty of resources, however, for users to become informed through information available on the internet. Main thing is NEVER to talk to them without FIRST becoming informed. Key resources include:
**My interest in posting his letter is to convey the use of watermarking that invisibly etches identifying information into video when either downloading or recording material from some websites. If you download a copy, it will interject a picture or coding with your membership number to a particular site; somewhere within the video file. It may be one location or many locations. If you record from an embedded video player on a site, this watermark is still introjected into the video stream with your membership number. That way, if a particular member decides to share their download or recording, their membership number is forever linked to it. If it ends up on a public sharing site, the website can download it, then use their decoder that will find and identify the etched membership number, which of course can then be linked to whatever personal information was used to open a membership on that particular website. An IP address is not necessary to identify members any longer. Some forms of watermarking even persists when a download or recording is transcoded into another video format. **
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Thanks Riddler for the links, and for the explanation. All of us, as a sharing comunity, should be aware of all those practices. there's no use in pretend none of this is happening.
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Thanks for clearing that up Riddler, much appreciated,
maybe as a part of the deal he was forced to use those words. After all this is a letter the company ask him to write. They wanna make sure all of us note they consider those practices as stealing from them.
If true it's nothing else than blackmail and this will cost them at the moment they pick the wrong one.
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If true it's nothing else than blackmail and this will cost them at the moment they pick the wrong one.
I agree this was nothing but some black mail practice, but think at the moment the guy felt they got him by the balls, hence he admitting what he did.
you cant think clearly when you are in fear. -
Here is another good example of these invisible watermarks –-- even with photographs!! Membership site users BEWARE!!! (if you use real personal information, a non-VPN IP address and name-registered credit card)
Gay Porn Site Sues User, Outs Him in the Process
April 28, 2014 - (re-tox.com)Subscribe to a gay porn site? Your private information isn’t safe. In fact, it could end up in public records. Name, address, even the site you’re subscribed to.
At least, that’s what happened to one poor guy in Pennsylvania.
We won’t name him because that just feels wrong, but the photographer behind FITYOUNGMEN.com had no problem calling out one of his users in public court records, filing a lawsuit against the man for allegedly downloading images off the website and cross-posting them on Tumblr and Flickr.
Zone 8 Media — a London-based gay erotica company helmed by photographer Nick Baker — filed the lawsuit for copyright infringement, alleging the defendant-who-shall-not-be-named stole 200 or more photos and then cross-posted them on his private social media accounts.
Baker claims each photo contains an invisible watermark that allowed him to trace the images back to this particular user, and rather than settle the issue privately — or even just forgetting about the whole thing — Baker filed suit. It is now public record.
We don’t need to point out why this was a dangerous PR move for Baker (who wants to subscribe to a porn website where a private information leak is even possible?) but it raises an interesting question: does the punishment fit the crime?
Within the realm of porn — especially gay porn — it feels as though the need for privacy among consumers ought to be greater. What if the user’s in the closet? What if he’s married with a family? Is it worth destroying his life over a bunch of photos? Had this user stolen images from some boring political blog and cross-posted them, his privacy would obviously be less of a concern.
A lawsuit like this sets a scary precedent and is sure to drive consumers away from pay sites.
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I uploaded one torrent that was taken down afterwards because of the DMCA or owner-claiming-copyright things…
was kinda afraid of this invisible watermark might lead him to me....I guess everyone has to stay very low profile? in order to minimize any chances of us being found by the one who can initiates legal actions T.T :cry2:
