Home Broadband & Home Phone

[Pancake]

Could someone please let me have the run down on Peer2Peer sites and downloading from them please.

Can you or can't you?

[perksie Level 58: Overseer]

Peer to peer are mainly file sharing sites, and they're traffic managed according to which package you're on.

[Pancake]

Thank you.

Are you allowed to download from these sites?

[perksie Level 58: Overseer]

Yes you can dowload from any site that's available to you.

They get a bad press by hosting stuff which is copyright, and of course downloading these is illegal, without paying for the copyright.

[Pancake]

How does the downloader know what is copyrighted and what is not?

[perksie Level 58: Overseer]

No idea, I guess it's your responsibilty to find out, if the copyright holder comes after you ignorance may not be a defence.

Read here about an ongoing case:

http://community.o2.co.uk/t5/Off-topic/Golden-Eye-claims-going-out-to-O2-users/m-p/261157/message-ui...

[Pancake]

I know all about that ongoing case hence I really would like to know the ins and outs of this P2P situation.

It does seem like O2 are encouraging you to download from these sites but when it hits the fan they seem to go all ostrich.

[perksie Level 58: Overseer]

O2 don't do anything like that it's a free internet remember, but they can't stand behind you and monitor everything you do.

What a strange comment.

If you read the article O2 responded to a court order so they couldn't refuse.

You can learn a bit more here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peer-to-peer_file_sharing

[Oliver341]

The long and short of it is that copyright holders can and do monitor p2p networks to see what people are sharing. They also go after people sharing their content as perksie has said.

[Guest2]

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Pancake wrote:

It does seem like O2 are encouraging you to download from these sites

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Can you explain why you think that ?