Unlimited usage for downloads...does it exist?

Izz

My son has learning difficulties, lives on benefits and has got into mountains of debt through downloading movies that he thought were free because he was paying for the internet. He has had bills of over £200 in a single month for downloading movies, and as they were unexpected, the direct debit bounced, a fee was added, he was cut off, and so it goes on. One of his problems is that he keeps everything secret until it gets completely out of control. He now has £3,000 of debt which we know we CAN sort out, but it will take a while.

We are now trying to extricate him from BT, Sky, Virgin and 3, as he signed up for each in turn after the previous one cut him off. Each offered him a special deal if he signed for a year or more, so he did.

He can't manage to regulate himself with a usage meter, or by making a note of what he has downloaded.

At the moment he's using a PAYG service which is perfect, but I estimate that it is costing him about £50 per month. I have seen reference to 'unlimited' usage internet for much less than this - but before I enter negotiations with suppliers, I'd like advice on whether his endless movie downloading would actually NOT be unlimited after all.

He still has contracts with 3, Sky and BT, and if one of them genuinely provides unlimited usage for a fixed price then I'll keep that contract and try to get him out of the others.

I know that 'streaming' uses fewer bytes than downloading (thanks to MSE), but he likes to download the movie so he can watch it again and again. Someone told me that repeat watching attracts a repeat fee, but as someone who only uses BBCiplayer, I don't understand!!! He also says that the site he uses charges less if he clicks off 'sharing' but then it sometimes won't let him get the movie. Can anyone decode this?

All advice will be very much appreciated!

Izz

illiterate_monkey

i dont understand much of ur iplayer story.

but yeh, sky does offers unlimited broadband for bout £15 a month at 16 megs

DatabaseError

can you say what sites he's using...are they legal sites?

A_Nice_Englishman

It sounds as if he could be using one of the peer to peer networks to share movies. This means he allows other users to get movies he has on his computer - and pays for the bandwidth used to do that as well as paying to download them in the first place.

These are usually illegal (due to copyright infringement) and this, as well as excessive usage, might be why he got disconnected from his previous ISPs.

How about getting him to sign up for some of the DVD rental companies such as Lovefilm?

456789

Sounds illegal to me....

Lovefilm would be much better for him

Izz

Thanks for the replies. It sounds to me like he's downloading illegally and other people are sharing at his expense.

I have tried to persuade him to sign up to LoveFilm, but he has recently found a source of £1 DVDs on the market - and the films are right up to date...yes, even I know that the source of these films is probably the very same website that has caused all the trouble, but nothing I can say or do will persuade him that it's wrong.

Izz

DatabaseError

much as I don't advocate what he's doing....
...at least buying from a market stall won't incur over usage charges from his ISP....and prevents the risk of a claim for thousands from the movie studios via their lawyers.