Are you downloading songs, movies or TV shows?

Your Internet Service Provider knows your IP address and can send Copyright Infringement Notice to you soon. So, what should you do if you have just received a copyright infringement letter from your Internet Provider or government agency like RIAA, MPAA and other?

Here you can find the best tips:

Copyright Infringement letters should generally be ignored. If they can't confirm that you ever received the notice, they're even less likely to go after you.

If you have received a copyright infringement letter, don't respond to it, don't visit the website provided, ignore threats of lawsuits and settlement offers, and if you are actually distributing the material in question, stop immediately.

The best way to avoid such a notice is prevention and education. If you have a wireless router and it is not secured or password-protected, you need to lock it down immediately. If you run BitTorrent client or other sharing software, it is a great idea to check for material being offered for upload by the software and remove it.

RIAA, MPAA and other Government Agencies don’t have your email unless you give it to them by replying. They send a complaint to your ISP with ONLY your IP address and your ISP figures out who that IP belongs to, at what time and your ISP sends out an email accordingly (read more here - You Could Be Liable for $150k in Penalties Per Downloaded Song)



When you torrent, you and all of your peers connect to a tracker and share your IPs. Copyright holders (Sony, Time Warner and etc) connect to the tracker, and collect the list all connected IP addresses. Then they give the list of "copyright infringers" to each ISP and the ISP basically informs you that they know.

ISP literally sees all your internet traffic, so they might monitor your every move. Now, if copyright holder wants to nab you, all they have to do is either bribe/threaten ISP to reveal your internet traffic,. Then, after they have your IP and logs that prove you've downloaded copyrighted file, they can legally and openly request the rest of your data from ISP.

If you don't want to get any copyright infringement letters or even be known on the internet or have your ISP have access and records of every site you visit – ExtraTorrent recommends encoding and securing your connection with a VPN. The VPN (Virtual Private Network) is a service which routes all web traffic through a set of servers that hide your real IP from public view to ensure privacy and safety.