Smoke pt. 2

Money comes in – money goes out.

She is in the front passenger seat, working with the laptop. She is pushing money around. She uses several official bank accounts, some in shell company names, corresponding to PayPal accounts and Western Union, and she has another dozen prepaid mobile remittance systems in constant flux. Digital cash stored on a SIM card. Zeros and ones. In and out.

I’m in the back of the car waiting to hear her recommendation. Who is the next client?

Joan is in the driver’s seat sipping her McCafe latte.

RSS feeds updating, reporting the most recent verified Torrents and Usenet files.

My bit of code runs in the torrent client. My code pulls all the local ISP designations and dumps them into our database, recording the time and file being leeched. Tens of thousands of potential clients are listing therein, our little laptop, in our car, on Fern’s lap.

As money moves, so does information. It isn’t hard to find a tech support in any ISP with empty pockets.

Another bit of my coding is the macro we give to the techy at the ISP. Designed to gently push through any nanny net protocols the ISP has running, search the client database and generate a comprehensive report with the IP addresses we have collected.

Money in and money out. Mostly money in.

Our tech support guy will upload the report to our FTP server and all we have to do is import the file into our Access database, which automatically assimilates the information into the correct clients profile. Dozens at a time.

Telephone numbers, street address, email. All useful information in building a case, and… other things.

Internet usage statistics, prices, packages, quotas.

Most ISPs will keep your internet history for up to 90 days. That is every website, every comment on every forum, every email sent and received. It all goes through them. And it can end up here, in our car, in our laptop, on fern’s lap.

I am working on a more user friendly graphic interface for the database. But Fern says there is no rush, it works fine as it is.

This is not blackmail, this is litigation.

If you are in our database, you may receive a latter like this:

Dear Sir or Madam:

APL Group Inc. (that’s us) swears under penalty of perjury that it is authorized to act on behalf of Viacom International Inc., Atom Entertainment, Inc., Black Entertainment Television LLC, Comedy Partners, Country Music Television, ...Etc etc etc... one of which is the owner of exclusive rights alleged to be infringed herein. APL's search of the protocol listed below has detected infringements of exclusive copyright or trademark interests on your IP addresses as detailed in the below report.

yada yada yada

APL Group has a reasonable good faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained of in the below report is not authorized by the Rights Owners, their agents, or the law.

Blah blah blah

In complying with this notice you should not destroy or spoliate any evidence which may be relevant in a lawsuit relating to the infringement alleged herein, including the infringing files and all associated electronic documents and data relating.

*List of copyright infringements including dates and times*

Please contact the APL Group within 14 days. If after 14 days of non-compliance legal proceedings will be actioned against you. We urge you to take immediate action.