BPI Requests ISPs Suspend Suspected Filesharers

MartinJW writes "The British Phonographic Industry (BPI) has written to two of the UKs larger ISPs, Tiscali and Cable & Wireless, asking them to suspend the accounts of 59 users they have identified as 'illegal file sharers.' The BPI says they have 'unequivocal evidence' of IP addresses that were used to upload 'significant quantities' of music. Although the IP addresses were used to identify the ISPs involved, the providers are the only people able to identify the exact individuals responsible. This marks a significant change in the BPI's tactics; previously they have targeted individuals but it seems that they are now taking it one step further and requesting the ISPs take decisive action to uphold the terms in their own 'acceptable use policies.'"

Comments

I pay a tax on blanks

[DrSkwid]

so I will download the content I have paid to "pirate"

Re:I pay a tax on blanks

[kaiidth]

But legal copying by its very nature is untaxable - if you in your country have such a concept as fair use (we don't, though, in the UK), enabling you to legally copy then there is no justification to extract a levy for exercising that right. You paid for the original resource, so you already have the right to do with it whatever is legal in your country. Why donate further cash for no reason?

If it weren't for the fact that the government in the UK are utterly without capacity for rational thought, I would suspect that this is one of the reasons why they do not support the idea of taxing blank media. It isn't a very logical step to make.

Re:I pay a tax on blanks

[arkhan_jg]

Yes, that's a blank tax media. I thought of that one after posting, but I figured someone would leap in for me :)

It also applies to standalone audio CD duplication devices, as opposed to generic 'data' ones that you find in computers. Hasn't really been relevent for years though, as everyone just buys data CDs and burners, they're physically identical to the 'music specific' audio CDs. Haven't even seen an audio specific CD for ages.

However, there's no general blank-media tax on data CDs, DVDs, flash players, hard-drives etc etc. Only the tax on Audio CDs and DAT tapes, both of which are rather obsolete these days.

Re:I pay a tax on blanks

[Komarosu]

And don't forget the female essentials...

Not going to be a problem

[SmallFurryCreature]

Tiscali at least will fold like wet paper. They do not even have binary newsgroups because usenet is mostly used for piracy according to their helpdesk.

Tiscali heeft 1 nieuwsserver, namelijk news.tiscali.nl. Deze nieuwsserver geeft alleen tekst bestanden weer en ondersteunt dus geen binaries. Tiscali heeft hier bewust voor gekozen omdat binarie servers veelal gebruikt worden voor het illegaal downloaden van auteursrechtelijke bestanden. Tiscali stimuleert juist de legale verspreiding van auteursrechtelijke bestanden via tiscali.music en tiscali.video.

In dutch but I doubt it will be different for the english branch.

Sadly at the moment it ain't my choice to use them. It ain't my connection and for 1 year getting a second line installed is to expensive but I can't wait to get my xs4all account back.

Oh and did anyone else notice that if this happens then people are being punished without ever having seen a judge or even a police officer. No sworn in official will be involved just people from two companies. Welcome to the justice system of the 21st century.

Re:Not going to be a problem

[pimpimpim]

It's not about refusing a service, but about a breach of contract. If you are in breach with their Acceptable Use Policy, which will likely state that you should not spread illegal content, then they have all rights to end your contract, both the provider and the user agreed with this at the start of the contract.

An end of a contract happens all the time, you can end your contract with your employer if you don't like your work, the other way around, etc. etc. Therefore you shouldn't see this as a punishment, you won't get a criminal record, or have to get involved into the court system. Everybody wins! The worst that can happen is that you'd have to pay your remaining fees for the planned duration of the contract, but I'm not even sure if that will be the case.

Re:Not going to be a problem

[bitkari]

Parent makes an incredibly important point here in comparing water with the internet - it is, or at least soon will be, a vital utility for people living this century.

So much of our daily lives are being carried out online. The much-vaunted "digital divide" is something that governments are at pains to resolve, otherwise they will see a new social underclass evolve, and will lose general productivity amongst their population.

One can see, then, that if industry groups such as the BPI are able to remove someone from being online now, this could set a dangerous precedent for the future that would see large companies [or their representatives] being able to control who is or who is not online with out any legal oversight whatsoever.

I wonder . . .

[pembo13]

What these kind of organisations would say if pirating were to totally dissappear and they still kept "losing" money.

Going after the offenders

[xav_jones]

Everytime a story appears about the music or movie industry coming up with some draconian method[1] for protecting their copyright (illegal to even own circumvention devices, DRM, DMCA, etc etc) -- wherein it appears as though they assume all people are criminals unless they happen to have been proven innocent -- I usually think, 'Why don't they go after the offenders and leave the rest of us be?'

Now, in this case, they do appear to be going after the offenders and so good luck to them. I believe they do have a right to protect their copyright but I don't believe it should be at the expense of everyone, just those who are offending.

[1] Which (as a side "benefit") means you often cannot use your own legally purchased media in legally/morally accepted ways.

ISPs are not going to like this

[ravenspear]

Even though most ISP AUPs prohibit illegal music downloading, most broadband providers know that illicit downloading is one of the primary allures of their service and that a significant portion of their customer base engages in it. Some even advertise the ease of it (albeit circumspectly) in their advertising. If they project the image that they actually enforce their AUPs that may drive customers to competing providers that are more willing to overlook such behavior.

Re:optical delusion ?

[KinkyClown]

I had the same delusion. Or is it just plain wishing?

Well the problem is simple

[SmallFurryCreature]

If you can't use an ISP to "pirate" then why should you use it? At least in holland several ISP's have advertised with "download music/movies/games at high speed" while they had no service to offer these products in a "legal" manner. So where they advertising piracy?

Perhaps in the same way that a fast car ad advertises speeding. What after all is the point of a fast car when you can only drive as fast as everyone else?

ISP's might realize that there intrests are not the interests of the copyright holders. Same as xerox interests are not the interests of book publishers. If xerox made their copiers incapable of copying copyrighted works they might possibly find their entire market share collapsing faster then you can say "cheap chinese clones".

It reminds me a bit of those pay sex phone lines. Nobody likes them, banks hate doing business with porn companies. The phone company hates them because they are a hassle but both the banks and the phone company love the money they bring in. As long as you keep your company "clean" enough to touch they are happy to help you peddle smut.

Same with ISP's, while they would love to be just email and light web browwsing comapnies the momey is in p2p and porn. Nobody is going to need 24/7 super adsl to check their email.

Why shouldn't ISPs turn a blind eye?

[IAmAI]

In the article, it quotes Peter Jamieson, BPI chairman:

"We have said for months that it is unacceptable for ISPs to turn a blind eye to industrial-scale copyright infringement."

Is it really in the interest of ISPs to not turn a blind eye? As I see it, it is potentially against their interest: First of all, ISPs are barely, if it all, affected music piracy. In fact they may even benefit from 'pirates' choosing to use their service because they, for example, don't block P2P ports (although on the flipside, the increased bandwidth usage of P2P may be to their detriment). If I recall correctly, Tiscali attempted to set up a music store of some kind, which was thwarted, presumably by the music industry, so ISPs can't get in the way of effects of piracy, even if they wanted to! I'm fairly confident that piracy having a direct negative impact on the business is not a reason for why it is disallowed in their EULAs (legal requirement, minimisation of legal action against them are probably more likely reasons).

So even if ISPs kindly decided to be altruistic towards their fellow big business, the BPI, and help root out big-time pirates, they would have to go to all the trouble of trawling through all of its paying customer's activity, invading their privacy, handing them in as criminals and then loosing their custom. That seems like a great deal to give up for no gain!

Re:C&W (Bulldog) and Tiscali

[grim4593]

2GB a month? What shit is that? I use more than that a month just surfing the web. Hell, even free fileservers let you have more bandwidth a month that that :P

checks or abuses?

[Tom]

There's one major issue here: How does the ISP know the names or numbers it gets are "guilty" in any sense? Who checks what these lobby groups send you? Who verifies that they indeed shared copyrighted material and not something that's perfectly legal to share (say, a Linux .iso)?