[SpookyZalost]

So I've always been a bit paranoid about internet privacy, after all while I don't do anything bad other than research and tinker, I don't want some corporation to gather my search habits and sell them to marketers so they can spam my mailbox with stuff I may not want.

However this is not the only form of cyber anti-privacy.

I recently came across a company that has been working for the various corps in the background since 1999 called Mark Monitor.
Mark Monitor claims to be hunting internet pirates but they've also sent tons of false cease and desist letters and are a big part of the whole elimination of net neutrality thing.

Even I've gotten a letter or two about P2P usage... I use torrents to Download patches and ISO's of linux distro's since it allows parallel file transmission to get them mroe quickly, nothing uncouth.

so I started looking into the people claiming I'm a scary internet pirate for downloading a freely available Operating system from a torrent on said OS's website.

and well I'm a bit shaken up about this company I've never heard of before.
while google isn't tied in with them they do own several large Internet domains hosting thousands of websites and use that to monitor what you search for in an effort to find targets to send warnings and threats to anyone doing anything that they or their partners deem disagreeable.

They also apparently monitor any and all P2P connections they can get their grubby hands on so they can backtrace them and get the ISP's to send threats.

it's a bit odd honestly, how can a company get away with what is essentially wiretapping (illegal in the US), so they can threaten honest to goodness people in their efforts to "stop internet pirates" by throwing out a massive net?

it's just weird.