Sören3d ago
Kim Crawley (she/her) 😷🍉

What should I do if Gen AI is being used to falsely accuse me of torrenting something?

I have never been interested in anything George R. R. Martin related, and yet I'm being accused of torrenting House of the Dragon. 🙄🙄

I need advice from people knowledgeable about digital forensics and law. Please share.

"
Rally has received a notice that the IP address that was assigned to you or is currently assigned to you has been involved in unauthorized use of copyright contents.
Attached is the complaint received by the Rally abuse department. It appears that this complaint is ultimately intended for you or someone using an IP that is assigned to you. However, please remember that when utilizing service provided by Rally, you are required to comply with our Acceptable Use Policy, and a violation of that policy may be considered a violation of the terms of your customer agreement with us.

All Canadian Internet Service Providers are required by law to forward all copyright infringement notices they receive to their clients. This is an allegation of unauthorized use of material such as downloading games, movies or music.

• If you receive a notice of alleged infringement, it is because a copyright owner has identified your Internet address as being involved in an activity that allegedly infringes their copyright.
• Receiving a notice does not necessarily mean that you have in fact infringed copyright or that you will be sued for copyright infringement.
• The Notice and Notice regime does not impose any obligations on a subscriber who receives a notice, and it does not require the subscriber to contact the copyright owner or the intermediary.
• The information provided by the copyright owner should help you understand the details of the alleged infringement.
• An objective of the Notice and Notice regime is to discourage online infringement on the part of Internet subscribers and to raise awareness in instances where Internet subscribers' accounts are being used for such purposes by others.
• U.S. copyright fines and penalties do not apply in Canada.

Mar 24 at 7:41pmWeb
Show threadmaya_b 🇨🇦3d ago

@crowgirl

well first they need to provide specifics, and those need to be easily verifiable.

the last line of the notice is the interesting one. While Canada has agreed DCMA treaty, it's never actually been ratified into law - so there's a bit of a gap.

so it's up to your ISP to do anything - and if they're passing along a notification, well good them for they, they're required to - but they're on shaky ground trying to do anything else to your account.

Canada has always been a separate and distinct region when it comes to copyright for any media format, which are subject to Canadian law only.

Show threadmaya_b 🇨🇦3d ago

@crowgirl

as an aside, in the early 2000's all the pirated TV shows were recorded off of Canadian broadcast tv.

Battlestar Galactica was an interesting case study - the producers loved the internet downloads because people way outside their cable distribution deal ended up buying loads of merch and box sets of the show - basically making it massively profitable through unofficial distribution.

Iron Maiden's world tours were all because people in markets they had never been promoted in got a hold of their music - otherwise they never would have toured those parts of the world

Show threadBrian Vastag3d ago
@maya_b @crowgirl I interviewed the producer of the Canadian drama "ReGenesis" and when I told her that US folks were accessing it via piracy she at first hated it and then later called me back and decided she liked that more people were getting a chance to see it. It did eventually come to the US via a syndication deal.
Show threadCrimperman 🏳️‍🌈3d ago
@crowgirl IANAL etc. but, unless you have a static IP, won't they need to prove you were assigned that IP address at the appropriate time(s)?
Show threadRichard Johnson3d ago

@crowgirl

I was abuse desk at a USA natl lab (an FFRDC) for decades when DMCA came in. I worked w/ org's counsel on copyright policy & responses.

Only 1 of over 1,000 DMCA takedown demands was for real activity.

Shady crooked/incompetent DMCA takedown industry reported "sharing" by unallocated IPs, printers, etc. Flow logs said no such activity had occurred (except for the 1 inc when it very much had 😬).

Counsel sent cease and desist letters to most egregious repeat DMCA false offenders.

Show threadRichard Johnson3d ago

@crowgirl

Usual modes were...

Crooked DMCA industry: they were trying to shake us & our staff down for a vig they called a "settlement".

Incompetent DMCA industry: they picked up chaffed false peer listings on torrents and acted as if such were real.

If your ISP has forwarded to you a vig offer/demand from DMCA crooks, it might be time to get a more competent ISP who knows those are almost always scams.

Show threadRichard Johnson3d ago

@crowgirl

If you have a dynamic IP...

If your ISP has failed to do time correlation with your use (vs prior or later customers' use) of the involved IP address against the reporter's sharing time window, then it might be worth reminding them that IP assignment is dynamic when you ask them to be more precise.

If there is no time window reported, then your ISP should probably be binning the defective DMCA industry reports rather than bothering you with them.

Show threadGreen Roc Thoughts3d ago
@crowgirl Reads like a scam. Also, AI can come up with false positives, like in the Angela Libbs case. Ignore the threat, consider it a scam, would be my choice.
Show threadCatherine is not complacent2d ago
@crowgirl this is, in my opinion, a scam. Unfortunately the “IP did bad things” is the 2026 version of “you have a bench warrant”. Lies.
Show threadmuddle2d ago
@crowgirl Chances are that you're stuck behind a Carrier-Grade NAT, which means that many people share the same IP address and you've been misidentified.
The other option is that it's just a scam/shakedown.
In either case, the burden of proof should be on the person accusing you of something. Send them a "fuck off" letter and see how things go.
Show threadKim Crawley (she/her) 😷🍉1d ago

@muddle

Thank you. ❤️

Show threadInfinity2d ago

@crowgirl I once got a similar notice from my ISP about an episode of a TV show I’d never watched, and it included a timestamp of when the download occurred.

With the timestamp it was easy to figure out it was when a friend was visiting for a few days.

Maybe it was a guest?

Show threadKim Crawley (she/her) 😷🍉1d ago
@infinity No. No one visits here.