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"

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

[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.

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)?