Copyright infringement notice on STR wifi

[Yitzchok Carmen]

Hello everyone,

I have recieved a copyright infringement violation notice from Spectrum/ Charter for a cabin that I have in the smokies as a vacation rental. Says that there was a movie that was downloaded illegally and that as the account holder I am responsible. Also says that if they receive more complaints my service can be suspended.

Obviously I personally have nothing to do with this . I dont see how I can control this. A VPN etc wont help when every guest has their own laptop/ phone. Whats the solution here? Basically how does anyone offering public wifi deal with people who are almost certainly eventually going to do something wrong with the internet? Not offering wifi/ TV is obviously not an option on a vacation rental...

Any tips would be greatly appreciated!

[Jeff Willis]

As part of my real life, I am the CIO of a technology and hosting company and we are also an ISP. Spectrum may have been notified by the representative of the copyright holder. There are companies hired to police the internet for illegal copies of films and other copyrighted material. These companies will serve a subpoena on the ISP of the company that hosts the site and get the IP's/dates/times of people who downloaded the material.  In your case, the IP ca,e back to Spectrum who will determine who had that IP at that date/time, and apparently, it was your cable box, thus your responsibility

Tracing internet activity is very basic. Every time you go to any site you leave a fingerprint that leads back to you.

I am sure the letter was just a warning and asked you to be more careful, but be glad the letter was from Spectrum and not the company that enforces infringement. They are ruthless and usually demand a substantial payment in lieu of a civil complaint.

How do people that offer public wifi deal with it? Easy, it is called a firewall with application filtering capabilities. Something like this https://www.sonicwall.com/products/remote-access/remote-access-appliances/

You can block any access to those downloads sites,  control access, force your users to log on only after accepting a T&C, etc.