How do they catch these people? How do they scan their HD's and find out what they have on them?
I got a feeling it is only people who share who get caught. If you turn of sharing and only download, and have a good firewall, might a person be safe from outsiders looking at the contents of your HD?
If they hacked into a remote, non-internet shared hard drive, are they not liable for internet crimes? That is why I think they can only scan drives that are openly shared.
Anyone know any more about this? - PS I'm not advocating theft of intellectual property - just curious about the legality of what they are doing, just as much as the legality of taking music for free.
One article I read online stated that they are going after the companies with the servers. Example, a legal battle to shut down a website that provides a torrent search and maintains torrent files. As part of the legal maneuverings, they force the company to turn over the IP addresses of anyone who visits the website and downloads a torrent. Now they can identify individuals who are downloading, and come after them. I guess that's one way they are doing it.