UK Record Industry Sues 'Major Filesharers'

Joel Rowbottom writes "The British Phonographic Institute has warned that it is about to engage in a round of legal action against file-sharing users, following in the footsteps of the RIAA. Apparently they are 'safeguarding the future of music' - don't you just feel so secure and cuddly knowing that?" Their statement is available.

Comments

Now might be the time for ANts

[ControlFreal]

Now might be the time to move to an anonymous P2P network. ANts is a 3rd-generation multi-hop P2P network that uses both point-to-point and end-to-end encryption. A search for material doesn't give you a list of files and IP addresses, like in a normal P2P network, but a list of files and virtual addresses. Nobody knows what virtual addresses belong to which hosts; routing is learned by ant-colony optimization.

The network is small now, and it needs nodes. Go to the page here (Coralized) or download the webstart file directly from here (also Coralized).

Note that the network is now still very small. It might also take a good while to connect. Java 1.5 is required.

I feel secure and cuddly again... ;)

Re:Now might be the time for ANts

[Anonymous Coward]

I've tried ANTS two or three times in the last year, mildly impressed by the amount of bandwidth it consumed in a short time-frame.

There's another anonymous network that I have far more hope for, it's called I2P. The best way to describe it would be, 'the brother of freenet without the caching.' I've tried it a few times in the last two months and was extremely impressed with the progress they've been making. Setting up an 'eepsite' (website) was extremely easy and the installation was quick.

With freenet, authors would build a 'freesite' and insert it into the global freenet network. With I2P, the author runs a webserver, or irc server, or any number of other services and people access that content anonymously through the network. Very cool next-generation stuff.

The only hangup I have about I2P is the lack of a working I2P-DNS, which will probably be addressed in the future. Right now all host addresses are distributed through a hosts.txt, sort of like the early days of the internet before it grew too large.

I2P Home page.
I2P Faq.


R.T.L.

Re:Now might be the time for ANts

[Anonymous Coward]

"...Stupid socialists...."

While I'm not a Socialist, I think you shouldn't be too harsh on some of its ideas. Don't forget how many roads, bridges and damns we benefit from today were created during the great depression (when Capitalism failed) by government funded work programs.

Re:Now might be the time for ANts

[ultranova]

With freenet, authors would build a 'freesite' and insert it into the global freenet network. With I2P, the author runs a webserver, or irc server, or any number of other services and people access that content anonymously through the network. Very cool next-generation stuff.

A fatal weakness.

In Freenet, the node the content was ultimately found from need not (and propably doesn't) have anything to do with the node that originally inserted the content. The content has simply migrated there over time. Furthermore, even if that particular node goes down, the content can likely be found on several other nodes. And, since the act of requesting content makes more copies of it, it's pretty hopeless trying to remove the content - the only way to figure out who has the content is to request it, and that will cause more copies to appear faster than mushrooms in rain.

On the other hand, in I2P (based on the original posters description - I haven't actually reviewed the protocol myself), you simply send a request to a node. If the request succeeds, you can then kick in the door of the node operator and examine the node to figure out where it got the data from (just send the request from your original cancer node again). Continue this way untill you reach the origin of the data, and shut it down, and you've succesfully censored I2P (and broken the anonymity).

Re:Pornographic Institute..

[Anonymous Coward]

"Phonographic" starts with a P and ends with "graphic."

In much the same way that "Fire Truck" starts with 'F' and ends with 'uck'... or "Rex Hunt" ends with 'unt' and smells of fish (but you probably wouldn't know Rex Hunt (crazy fish kissing minor tv personality who does a fishing show) if you weren't Australian).

Re:According to Pete Waterman

[pibakic]

Actually, single sales are falling, it's album sales that are still on the rise;

"UK singles sales have more than halved since 1999, it says, when downloading took off. Sales of CD albums in the UK have bucked the global trend and continue to rise."

From the guardian's article about this

Re:Dammit

[pjt33]

Non-commercial copyright infringement is a civil offence, not a criminal one.

Re:It will be interesting...

[Ed_Moyse]

Really? Is it not covered by this:

Section 28A: Making of temporary copies.

Copyright in a literary work, other than a computer program or a database, or in a dramatic, musical or artistic work, the typographical arrangement of a published edition, a sound recording or a film, is not infringed by the making of a temporary copy which is transient or incidental, which is an integral and essential part of a technological process and the sole purpose of which is to enable -

(a) a transmission of the work in a network between third parties by an intermediary; or

(b) a lawful use of the work;

and which has no independent economic significance.

(taken from here

It's the list of comments which bothers me

[dunstan]

If the BPI are going to sue people who are illegally copying copyright material that's one thing. But the attributable comments on the end of the press release makes me want to throw:

"... all that many of those musicians and songwriters are trying to do, is to make the world the rest of us live in, a much more valuable, much brighter place." Feargal Sharkey

No, Feargal, if all you were trying to do was make the world a brighter place then you wouldn't mind people copying your music. I try to make the world a brighter place by making music, the difference between us is that I'm not trying to make money at it. What you're trying to do is make the world a brighter place and make yourself money - absolutely fine, but there's a difference.

"Record companies are the biggest investors in new music in the UK ..." Martin Mills, Chairman, Beggars Group

No, the people who invest time and money in learning to make music are the biggest investors. What the record companies "invest" in is recorded music which you can buy in shops. I hate the way they talk as if the entirety of music is the stuff you buy in shops, it's so dismissive of the people who invest in being able to make music.

"Piracy is theft - pure and simple ... I hope it will stop in their tracks the habitual offender who uploads to make a quick buck out of other people's talent." Arts Minister, Estelle Morris

Remember, this is a government minister who shold know better: firstly, the obligatory comments about misuse of the terms "piracy" and "theft". Secondly, does anyone make money out of participating in a P2P network?

"The serial uploaders who post thousands of music files free of charge onto the Internet are stealing this product in exactly the same way as a shoplifter in a Music store. Theft on this scale cannot be allowed to continue unchecked." Steve Knott, Managing Director, HMV Europe, and Chairman, British Association of Record Dealers

No they're not. A shoplifter in a Music store is committing property theft while a serial [?] uploader is committing copyright infringement.

"The internet has changed all our lives. It is revolutionising the way music is consumed. What it doesn't change are the fundamentals of the concept of intellectual property. Unauthorised filesharing is against the law. After several years of seeing it eat into our livelihoods, we reluctantly and finally have to resort to the law to protect our business." Tony Wadsworth, Chairman & CEO, EMI Recorded Music UK & Ireland

This one is much closer to reality (except the use of the term "Intellectual Property" in place of "copyright law").

"There is a worrying lack of understanding of the value and meaning and intellectual property. We need to move very swiftly from a climate of ignorance to one in which people understand that illegal uploading is fundamentally no different from shoplifting." Jeremy Lascelles, Chief Executive, Chrysalis Music

Surely the "worrying lack of understanding" is someone so close to the issue not recognising the difference between property theft and copyright infringement.

Re:It will be interesting...

[a24061]

The only reason for copyrights and patents is to promote the public good. They are privileges---not rights---granted by the state for the benefit of the public.

In the USA, the Constitution explicitly states this. Elsewhere, it was originally based on the same principle. There's a good review of this in dspeyer's /. journal.

Re:BitTorrent an "unauthorised filesharing network

[Smuttley]

Hmm. I was under the impression that the main use for BitTorrent is to share the load of software downloads. Given that (as far as I know) there is no way to search for a file over BitTorrent (other than finding the appropriate tracker), using it as a Napster-alike would be both impractical and somewhat masochistic.

I think you'll be surprised:
http://www.suprnova.org/

Though if you wish to keep your image of bittorrent as the pure virgin of p2p then I wouldn't follow the link ;)

like MUTE

[hermi]

see here: MUTE filesharing project

its working like this: you as a node only know your neighbours, and what they want, but you can't see wheather they or somebody else wants this package and they simly work as a hop.