> You generally can't set a client to 0B/s

It depends on client, it is possible in e.g. transmission

> I'm not sure a good¹ lawyer on the other side would let you get away with claiming

Fortunately that’s not how courts work.

I’m not familiar with the case, but it’s possible setting a 1 byte per second limit showed intent to not distribute.

It’s also possible that setting a 1 byte per second limit showed they were aware what they were doing was illegal.

Intent matters. I can well imagine a judge saying something like this:

While I am satisfied it has been proven you are aware that by torrenting said files, distribution also occurred. However, I am also satisfied it has been proven that by setting a 1 byte per minute upload limit, you had taken those steps you could to limit uploads in an effort to prevent the prohibited activity. Other evidence presented to the court demonstrates you are regularly employed, that your finances are generally in order, and you have not received payment for the meagre distribution that occurred as a consequence of your behaviour.

It is my opinion that the case brough by the prosecution does not rise to the level of requiring a sentence, nor even a conviction.

You're free to go.

> Intent matters

I agree with you intent matters, and I agree with you that setting the upload limit to 1 byte per second shows intent, I just disagree about what intent it shows.

You'd still be conspiring with others to violate copyright.

That would be a hard sell in court, the prosecution would have to prove at least that you have personally communicated with the other persons seeding a specific file.

If multiple people get caught speeding on the highway, are they conspiring with each other to violate law? Probably not, unless they were racing.

Organized seeding could be passable as criminal conspiracy, but a single person — nah.

In the context of a book, that could still be seeding a book every few hours..

1 byte per second would give you a couple of pages every few hours. So probably not.

I byte pee second translates to a little over 3KB/hr. Depends on the book.

It's 3600 bytes/hr. 60seconds per minute and 60minutes per hour. 60*60*1byte. Not to be condescending but the math here really isn't hard.

Further, compression makes this all substantially more complicated, i imagine you could compress flat text down to extreme levels using a hashtable and leveraging book specifics (lack of Unicode characters, etc).

Either way, the argument is moot, most torrent clients set a minimum upload rate of 1-5kb/s.

One page is like 2K. It would need to be an incredibly short book.

Or you would just need to be patient.

It isn't worth my time or risk to test it myself, but if you disable seeding will Warner Media still send a notice to your ISP? If you set your client to 0B/s I assume it's still broadcasting hashes. I suppose if you disable that function entirely in your client there would be nothing to see.

I guess some people may be worried about actual fines, but I would assume the biggest risk to most people is getting blocked by your ISP, which in many cases requires less than the legal standard for proof of copyright infringement.

The contractors whose job is collecting lists of people downloading films generally make sure to download at least a viewable clip of the film direct from your client so it could be shown in court. "Yes, your honor, here is the evidence we retrieved direct from the defendant".

Sure, but AIUI they generally are not leading with a lawsuit, they're sending a cease and desist notice to your ISP, which doesn't require that kind of proof. Operators like Comcast won't require that to drop you - in fact they may give you a warning for simply downloading torrents at all, even if they are literally, actually, Linux ISOs.

Evidence is generally collected for every detected violation in case it ends up in court.

That's not how it works.

You're sent a cease and desist letter with a prewritten cease and desist contract that includes confession of guilt and the obligation to pay a contractual fine, plus additional fines for future breaches.

So in reality the point of the letters is to scare you into signing and paying a fee. Actually collecting evidence is irrelevant, because the lawyer's goal isn't to go to court. That's expensive and he may lose!

The lawyers goal is primarily to stop you from pirating, and then also get lucky enough to win a small lottery payout along the way.

Send a million letters and one thousand pay? You'll be an overnight millionaire.

Also a way to get yourself in jail: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prenda_Law

It's an interesting case.

Most commonly used clients won't let you turn off seeding, but you can indeed limit the upstream to a really low value. You can also, at the same time, seed a ton of different things, preferably quite large, to saturate your upload and make it statistically improbable to fully send a copy of any single file.

Now, based on my feeling and cases I've seen in my country I'd say that the judge would make a claim that the sheer fact of making these files available is enough.

Moreover, there were rulings stating that even if you don't have the whole torrent on your disk, but only few fragments you are already in violation.

For me, it make sense, as when a company gets caught red handed they are judged based on the inventory of stolen programs they have, not an actual usage of them.

Lastly, here in an european country, consuming pirated media (books, movies, music, etc.) is not a crime. However there are plenty of caveats:

- you can't share it, so torrenting, as mentioned, might be illegal; getting a copy of a movie on a hard drive from a friend only puts him in jepardy

- it has to be personal use, so watching it alone or with your wife is ok, but playing stolen music in a club is not; commercial use is strictly forbiden ("commercial" as in "commercial licence", so usage in context of a company, so facebook case here is strictly in violation)

- it has to be a media that's already been published somewhere (cinema, television, streaming service); pirating leaks and prereleases is strictly forbiden

- pirating software is whole different animal, since now it's not a copyright, but a breach of licence agreement

You can think about it as owning a tiny portion of "soft drugs" (like marijuana), which is legal in some countries. Selling is not.

> pirating software is whole different animal, since now it's not a copyright, but a breach of licence agreement

How can that be true? There is no way for me a breach a license agreement without being party to the agreement.

It's can't be true. It's nonsense.

License is an agreement that grants you rights that would otherwise be prevented by copyright or other laws.

You can violate a copyright, or a license agreement, or both, or neither.

I haven't really seen this point made elsewhere, but as I understand one of the more salient features of bittorrent is that peers are actively sharing the portions of a file they have downloaded. "Seeding" only refers to those who have the entire file and continue to share it, but all peers who are downloading the file are generally sharing the pieces of it they have while the rest downloads.

They could throttle their upload bandwidth, but if they were doing that to the extent that they could plausibly argue they hadn't distributed any of the content, I think they would have said so, and I think it would be a stronger argument than using lingo to merely suggest it (especially when the lingo doesn't imply what they say it does).

transmission-cli -u 0 <url>

This. It can be easily done in the GUIs as well (Don't ask how I know).

I don't know where GP got the idea that you can't set a client to 0B/s. All the clients I am aware of support setting the seeding rate.

Booooooo don't leech without seeding. Share a little at minimal risk