Innocent Grandmother Kicked Off The Net For Piracy
A 53 year-old grandmother was temporarily kicked off the Internet by her ISP after wrongful piracy allegations. Only when the press got involved was she cleared.
Cathi Paradiso, a customer of Qwest Communications has just been through a battle to clear her name.
The 53 year-old grandmother had her Internet account suspended after Hollywood studios accused her of multiple copyright infringements, including downloading ZombieLand, Harry Potter and even South Park.
Paradiso was told by Qwest that if she had one more accusation they would move from suspending her account to all-out termination, and even told her getting a new ISP would prove difficult with her record.
Desperate to prove her innocence, Paradiso wrote to the studios and begged them to find the person who really did download the movies.
Last week CNET got involved and this pushed Qwest to have a technician investigate the case. It turned out that Paradiso’s network had been compromised and someone else was to blame.
It seems that this accusation is the tip of a very large iceberg that will grow and grow in the months to come.
For the thousandth time, an IP address alone does not identify an infringer…
Lets spend time and effort curbing the spread of copyrighted data online so that all the real criminals can make money selling dvds on the street.
Let’s all start downloading content with insecure wifi networks in order to get more stories like this in the press.
Lolz…
Those Guys Are Like Starved Dogs n the Loose Trying To
Share Their Food By Ripping It With Their Teeth…
I Am Simply Disgusted…
I have used wep/wap security and on wifi someone has used my router still at my house I have reason to believe. I do not live where there is a good provider so switching or anything isn’t really an option. I have turned off the router for about a week so it won’t be broadcasting to see how much good that does.
[Shouting]
WILL THEY EVER LEARN???
[/Shouting]
@Briana you don’t have to change your isp. Plug an ethernet cable into the router and use a wired connection.
The granny should consider suing both QWest and Paradiso. And if MPAA were involved, them too.
As the amounts for infringement are very high and ridiculous, it’s only fair that when wrong they should pay an absurd amount in compensation. It’s the only way to keep them from bullying and blackmailing people into surrender. So 150.000 per song and now let’s translate that to a human. I think 5 million is a fair amount.
@ Briana: WEP-encryption was broken a long time ago, use WPA or WPA2 instead.
Disclaimer: XP needs to be updated to SP3 to work with WPA2, if I remember correctly.
[...] placing a band-aid on a gaping hole. It is the criminals law enforcement should be tracking, not grandma. “If you want to drive a car you have to have a license to say that you are capable of [...]
[...] placing a band-aid on a gaping hole. It is the criminals law enforcement should be tracking, not grandma. “If you want to drive a car you have to have a license to say that you are capable of driving a [...]
who cares about DVDs! who cares about Hollywood! who cares about movies! buy nothing, and the industry will collapse. the biggest movie is real life. so, why spend time with fiction?
“Let’s all start downloading content with insecure wifi networks in order to get more stories like this in the press.”
Doesn’t everybody already do this?