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The Copyright Alert System: How the New "Six Strikes" Anti-Piracy Program Works. This is clearly aimed at people who don't realize downloading copyrighted material is illegal, but do those people exist? I have a hard time believing that people don't realize what they're doing. BitTorrent is pretty easy, but not THAT easy that you'd do it on accident. Or maybe it's more about pointing out that someone is watching you? Like, yes, you know you're downloading copyright material illegally, but you don't realize that someone else knows you're doing that.

I'm worried about there not being much of a recourse for wrongful accusations. I am wondering if it is more of ISP's trying to appease the MPAA and RIAA by saying, "Look, we are doing something! " Yeah, the fact that none of the ISPs have detailed their rules is a little weird. Supposedly, there will be "low income" options for people who can't afford $35 to fight the charges, but the whole thing is absolute crap. From this point on they can say "Well.. you were sent 6 notices over this period of time" etc. :)

Why You Should Start Using a VPN (and How to Choose the Best One for Your Needs) Geek to Live: Encrypt your web browsing session (with an SSH SOCKS proxy) Five Ways to Download Torrents Anonymously. Anomos. How to Secure and Encrypt Your Web Browsing on Public Networks (with Hamachi and Privoxy) A VPN tool like Hamachi's good for games, which usually don't support proxies, but for web browsing encryption, a SSH tunnel with AES256 encryption and public key authentication is superior, not only in terms of security, but in portability and "less bulky" software.

In order to configure a VPN connection, you need Administrator privileges on Windows computers, plus you have to install software. With a SSH connection, all you need is a SOCKS server+SSH client blend (which does not require administrator privileges, though some applications need them for various reasons. Putty does not.), then point your web browsers proxy settings to localhost, and Voila! Done. OpenSSH is the way to go for Mac/Linux users, and can be used on Windows, but it has to be through Cygwin (which I personally find extremely annoying to use/setup (cygwin)).