British Clampdown on Illegal Downloads

[News Reader]

British Clampdown on Illegal Downloads
Britain's biggest Internet providers have signed an agreement with the country's recording industry to clamp down on illegal downloading. The ISPs will begin sending letters out to the biggest offenders, all 6.5 million of them, later this month.

Under the deal to get tough on the estimated 6.5 million Britons who have downloaded music and video illegally, letters will be sent to the most prolific offenders warning them that they have been detected.

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Publish Date: Thu, 24 Jul 2008 09:07:00 CDT
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[buzzmong]

Encryption tiem go!

[Dr. kitteny berk]

ISP that doesn't give a fuck FTW

[Baliame]

"Dear Pirate!

You have been detected!

Love, your ISP.

PS. Consider upgrading to our 32 mbps connection, be a nice uploader!"

[MORDETH LESTOK]

The ISPs will begin sending letters out to the biggest offenders, all 6.5 million of them, later this month.

Thats a lot of f'n stamps someone's gonna have to lick...

[spoodie]

Feargal Sharkey!? That's a blast from the past. Mr. Concave face himself.

Anyway, encrypted abusenet ftw.

[shot2bits]

isnt this in violation of the data protection act? i dont care whether that datas stolen in the first place or not

[buzzmong]

isnt this in violation of the data protection act? i dont care whether that datas stolen in the first place or not

I suspect it's not on a technicality, as they'll be packet scanning over their own network infrastructure, and that's just a "passive" method if you will, they're not actively hunting for the data patterns, but if they pick it up they'll investigate.

If however they decide to actively look at packets, it's dubious, as they're searching for illegal activity BUT they're not a government service (eg, The Police, MI5 etc..), it's just litteraly a business agreement between 2 commercial entities.

[shot2bits]

I suspect it's not on a technicality, as they'll be packet scanning over their own network infrastructure, and that's just a "passive" method if you will, they're not actively hunting for the data patterns, but if they pick it up they'll investigate.

If however they decide to actively look at packets, it's dubious, as they're searching for illegal activity BUT they're not a government service (eg, The Police, MI5 etc..), it's just litteraly a business agreement between 2 commercial entities.

i didnt think it would matter how they where searching for it, its more what they do with that data once they do find it. if they found out that someone had downloaded something illegally they shouldnt be able to actually tell anyone without getting that persons permision first unless they want a lawsuit. thats why i thought something like this hadn't happened already

[Fear]

Copyright infringement isn't criminal, it's civil, so even the police wouldn't be able to justify looking for this.

ISP that provides an IP connection, and nothing more, ftw.

[FatherJack]

Being an ISP is a difficult position, as we learned when connecting every student residence on campus - can you imagine the amount of stuff floating around on that network?

All we could do was block ports and shape traffic to try and keep the service usable for the poor sods desperately trying to look at web pages while viruses and file sharing was utterly rampant all around them. Any sort of packet sniffing or analysis would have made it totally unusable for everyone.

We couldn't and wouldn't take responsibility for what the users were downloading, other than to make them sign a disclaimer promising not to be naughty or on their own head be it.

It's unjust that actions have been taken against some ISPs in the past for their user's behaviour as it's seen as the easiest way to get stuff shut down, and now all ISPs are increasingly nervous about suffering the same.

At least the first notice you get will be a warning from your ISP, rather than a court date. The internet's there and police have used it and worked with ISPs in the past to track down criminal behaviour - if an ISP is faced with a choice to reveal their users to the recording industry or face the fines themselves, it's clear which path they will choose.

[Dog Pants]

I've been wondering lately if anti-piracy measures cost more than the lost revenue. I reckon if all piracy was completely eliminated it would only result in a small increase in sales.

[Dr. kitteny berk]

I've been wondering lately if anti-piracy measures cost more than the lost revenue. I reckon if all piracy was completely eliminated it would only result in a small increase in sales.

You're probably right.

Or if they just embraced the technology available, in the same way the bbc have (and to a degree, C4 and ITV)

Personally, I don't mind in-stream adverts too much if I'm watching a TV show, as long as they're not massively excessive, or I'd be happy to pay a reasonable sum for advert free streaming from some providers.

I'm also completely happy to pay for music, if it's available online and in decent quality, without DRM, and without having to install a fucking horrible app to buy it.


However, 128k DRM raped MP3s are not how to please me, or anyone with functional ears.

Oh, and get your fucking act together content providers, It's still faster for me to download some shows off abusenet, than to wait for them to appear on your streaming service, That's just fucking wrong.

[ProfHawking]

probably

I think something the record industry massively doesn't understand is that every song that people download is not necessarily one they may otherwise have been bought.

The movies people download wont necessarily be available on DVD or in the cinema.

The TV shows people download are nearly always not available otherwise.

[Grimmie]

Does this mean I need to upgrade to super-seekrit newzdemon account?

[Dr. kitteny berk]

Probably, but I imagine it's not super-essential just yet.

likely they'll go after torrent users first, because uploading is more naughty, usenet rarely gets much hassle, just because of minimal logging by providers, and because you're not uploading, which stops it being file sharing.

oh, and every cupcake and his mum uses torrents, so they're more likely to bother the ISPs (that and MAFIAA etc can easily snoop on torrents)

[fabyak]

I think a change to a newzdemon account could be in order, not that I do that much sweeping anyway (the missus is phenomenally good at English, but can have a bit of difficulty if people have a strong accent or talk softly, so subtitles FTW)

[Lateralus]

I recently cancelled my newssweepings since I've not actually used it for quite a while, but should probably look into the cheapest way to keep it alive for future reference.

[nunoncastors]

Torrent site with https + Encryption + SOCKS Proxy + TOR = Music industry still lagging behind the times?

[amblin]

.