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

[arkhan_jg]

There's no blank media tax in the UK as far as I'm aware, it's one of the few countries in the EU that doesn't have one.

Re:I pay a tax on blanks

[LiquidCoooled]

Shhhhhhhh its about the only thing we aren't taxed for.

Re:I pay a tax on blanks

[Pofy]

The other countries in EU that doesn't have any such tax or levy are Ireland, Malta, Cyprus and Luxembourg. On the other hand, in UK, Ireland and Malta there is really no allowance for private copies at all with the exception of things such as time shifting. Which means Luxembourg and Cyprus is about the only place in EU were you are both free to make various private copying and avoid paying such taxes or levys on media or equipments.

Here is a link to a document I found the information above, it holds quite a lot of information:

(Stakeholder Consultation on Copyright Levies in a Convergin World)
http://www.ec.europa.eu/internal_market/copyright/ docs/levy_reform/stakeholder_consultation_en.pdf

Re:I pay a tax on blanks

[Gerzel]

Exactly that's why we(the US) left.
Stamp Taxes
Sugar Taxes
Tea Taxes!

Bah you British.

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

[nogginthenog]

That's a stupidity tax.

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...

Re:I pay a tax on blanks

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

In the UK, even most of the "obvious" personal uses are infringing at present, though the majority of the population don't know this and do continue to do these things anyway. A review is underway that will hopefully result in fixing this particular legal daftness.

Re:I pay a tax on blanks

[footissimo]

Nah, washing machines, hoovers and kitchen sinks aren't exempt from VAT.

*runs away*

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

[grasshoppa]

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.

Grand stand much?

A private business has every right to refuse service to anyone, for any reason ( despite what the equal rights groups may tell you ).

This isn't a government organization exacting punitive measures against citizens on a private organizations say-so. This is one private org asking another to "punish" their customers.

Their paying customers. Which to me seems like a bad idea. But whatever.

Re:Not going to be a problem

[arkhan_jg]

A private business has every right to refuse service to anyone, for any reason ( despite what the equal rights groups may tell you ).

Under UK and EU law, you're entirely wrong. You cannot refuse service based on race, sex, age, disability and now I believe religion - based upon the Race Relations Act, Disability Discrimination Act and Equal Opportunities Act.

'Needing my internet fix' however, I believe doesn't fall under any protected class at this time.

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

[asuffield]

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

Under UK law, an employer CANNOT end your contract if they "don't like your work". They have to prove (before the unfair dismissal tribunal that is now almost inevitable) that you are incompetant, acting in bad faith, or that they have made a determined effort to explain why they don't like you and to get you to change your behaviour. The employee is free to leave, but the employer can't do anything without a good reason.

Short of willful destructive behaviour (calling the customer a faggot), genuine inability to perform the task (hired as a software developer but doesn't know how to write code), or continued disobedience (you were told in writing not to wear fishing waders to work but continued anyway), it's almost impossible to fire somebody.

UK companies very rarely fire people nowadays. Instead, they either engage in 'constructive downsizing' (where you fire x% of the least productive parts of your workforce to cut costs, but can't show favouritism), or they approach the problematic employee and offer them three months salary if they'll resign now and not come back. Most employees are willing to be paid off, especially since it guarantees them a decent reference (you can't give somebody a bad reference unless you fired them - more laws about that stuff).

UK law is often like this. It only recognises free contracts between equals. Two citizens are equals and can form any contract they like; a corporate entity and a citizen are probably not equals, the corporation is probably dictating the terms of the contract, so there are lengthly and complicated restrictions on what they can and cannot do, plus a truly immense quantity of case law about how that contract is to be interpreted.

I don't believe there is much precedent in the field of ISP AUPs, they're quite a recent invention that isn't quite the same as anything else. Courts could go either way on this, but it's entirely plausible under UK law that a court would reject a clause saying that the ISP could cancel the customer's account at whim. If this happened, and the customer can show actual damages as a result of their account being terminated (lost mail, websites offline, etc) then the court would almost certainly order the ISP to pay for it all. To the best of my knowledge there hasn't been a significant case like this yet, so this is rather speculative - but I don't think anybody in the UK legal industry would be particularly surprised by either outcome. Could go either way. IANAL, TINLA, etc.

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.

Re:Not going to be a problem

[FireFury03]

'Needing my internet fix' however, I believe doesn't fall under any protected class at this time.

You could probably start a religion requiring Internet access though :)

Re:Not going to be a problem

[irw]

Under UK law, an employer CANNOT end your contract if they "don't like your work".

Correct, but note that the Right not to be unfairly dismissed has a qualifying period, during which any dismissal is considered fair,

Employment Rights Act 1996 (two years) reduced to one year by Statutory Instrument 1999/1436 sections 2-4.

Re:Not going to be a problem

[sauron_of_mordor]

Hmm the BPI has my IP address, the ISP has my personal details. The ISP cannot provide my detail to the BPI due to the data protection act. How will the BPI *know* whether or not the ISP terminated my contract? If the ISP cannot inform the BPI in a reliable fashion that they did terminate a particular account (after all the IP changes and is dynamic), then why should the ISP bother to lose a customer? SoM

They'll give in, and they probably should...

[HMC CS Major]

ISPs have very strict AUPs, and will probably kill the cheap accounts rather than risk a lawsuit. Realistically speaking, if I were running an ISP, I'd do the same thing.

It's worth noting that the users may not be intentionally violating the (civil) law, it may just be open proxies or misconfigured P2P clients, in which case the accounts can be re-established later (after reasonable assurance that the problem's been 'fixed').

Re:Look on the bright side

[arkhan_jg]

The BPI have sued some people in the UK for copyright infringement, it's at the bottom of the FA.

"BPI has taken legal action in 139 filesharing cases. The four that have gone to court have produced verdicts in BPI's favour, while 111 individuals have settled out of court."

Remember, the RIAA and BPI are just the legal mouthpieces of the major international record labels. Anything they do, they do at the behest of:

        * Universal Music Group ($7 billion revenue), which includes A&M, Decca/London, Deutsche Grammophon, Geffen, Interscope, Island Def Jam, Motown, Philips, Rampagge, Universal, and others;
        * Sony BMG Music Entertainment ($5 billion), which includes: Arista, (American) Columbia, Epic, J, Jive, LaFace, Ravenous, RCA and others;
        * EMI Group ($4 billion), which includes Angel, Blue Note, Capitol, European Columbia, Elektrola, Odeon, Parlophone, Pathé Marconi, Positiva, Virgin and others;
        * Warner Music Group (a.k.a. WEA) ($2.5 billion), which includes Asylum, Atlantic, Elektra, Erato, Heiress, Reprise, Rhino, Rykodisc, Sire, Sub Pop (49% Warner ownership), and others.

Let this inform your music purchasing choices appropriately.

Re:Do they have court?

[arkhan_jg]

The way this works, the BPI is asking the ISP's to enforce their Acceptable Use Policies. Since the AUP's UK users agree to are pretty draconian in order to get internet access, the ISP has the right to terminate our accounts at any time based upon breach of them. Of course, the ISP's don't actually monitor the traffic as such, because then they might be expected to catch all of the dodgy traffic going across their wires.

So in effect, the BPI are doing the same thing that anti-spammers do; ask the ISP to enforce their existing contract terms with the user, and terminate it for 'abuse'.

Once the contract is terminated, then the ISP is done. No further action would be taken by the ISP, so the courts don't get involved. Of course, the customer could start a civil suit against the ISP for breach of contract (good luck with that!), or breach of EU data privacy laws if the ISP handed personally identfying info over the BPI without a court-order. Note, I'm not a solicitor, so the previous paragraph could be complete rubbish, but it's how I understand it.

The BPI are a trade organisation, like the RIAA; no government powers at all. They have to go to court to pursue civil cases, or ask the police to investigate criminal cases, just like everyone else. This however is just one company asking another to enforce their contract against a 3rd party, i.e. the users. No doubt the ISP's will jump through hoops to do it though, they've not got a great history of standing up for their users against accusations that may or may not be true.

I wonder . . .

[pembo13]

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

Re:I wonder . . .

[gbobeck]

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

I would venture a guess that they would make claims that the distinct lack of piracy is causing them to lose money. After making those initial claims, I bet they would start a campaign to sue people who purchase large ammounts of albums legally from their local music stores. Once they sue and ruin their most loyal customers, they will revert to their "piracy bad" statements and start the whole process over again.

Not correct

[aepervius]

In many EU country, you cannot refuse to serve somebody on ground of gender, disablities, religion or race, nationality (well I should say skin color since the concept of race for human is blatantly bunk). There are naturally a few exception (like where serving a disabled person where it would be impossible to ensure their security or would be contrary to the purpose of the service), but the law is quite clear on that point. And I think the anti segregation law are the same in the US (feel free to correct me on that one). So yes, *NO* private business offering a service to the public have a right to refuse service for those reason. No granted they can come up with anything else : financial reason for example, or that you have an obnoxious attitude degrading the quality of service to other client. But bottom line, your "for any reason (despite.... tell you)" is bunk.

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?

ISPs move away from that practice in Sweden

[peope]

Here in Sweden ISPs have warned and disconnected people accused of copyright infringement.
However in recent time people have been aware of the issue and some ISPs has gone against the practice.
Nowadays ISPs here are reluctant to be known as a party to disconnect you because of those reasons.
Customers simply move away from their services.

The most correct approach so far

[erroneus]

I'm really very sympathetic to the cause of file sharing. I only see the file-sharing-universe as the participant that I am. I don't do it all that much but I feel a bit grateful for those that share stuff... whether intentionally or not. (Hehehe... one of my favorite boredom-killing past times is to open a gnutella client and search for p*.jpg or *.doc or *.xls... you might be surprised as what people are stupid enough to share!)

As a rule, if I really want something, I buy it. I would like to assume (and from what I hear it's generally true) that when people fully appreciate something or functionally use it, they buy it. That goes for software, music, movies... whatever... okay, I admit I don't buy porn... but anyway.

But if ever there was a "correct" approach to their handling, this would be it. Their [the clients'] anonymity is preserved. They don't get a criminal record. They don't pay thousands to defend themselves. They don't settle for large amounts of money. And in my guess, the worst they might initially get is an interruption of service as a warning and probably resume connectivity (after turning off sharing) shortly thereafter and lives go generally unharmed.

It's not that bad really.

Re:The most correct approach so far

[scum-e-bag]

Hehehe... one of my favorite boredom-killing past times is to open a gnutella client and search for p*.jpg or *.doc or *.xls... you might be surprised as what people are stupid enough to share!

Thanks! You've just entertained me for an evening.

I hope they give a little time before disconnect

[brunos]

About 4 years ago, I was working in quite a large company that had many online shops all over the world. We had two connections to BT. One day they did not work anymore, we checked the equipment, all was OK, we phoned BT and they said that we had payd in time and that there was no problem at all. This basically took a lot of our servers down, and we lost a lot of money. The next day, whe phoned BT again and asked what had happened, and they told us that someone had posted a file to a newsgroup, and therefore they disconnected us. (The file in question was a BSD package). So a stupid employee at these companies can really do some damage without a proper legal procedures.

Is this only in the US?

[dteichman2]

In the US, our ISPs aren't supposed to filter or block anything, at all. It's what allows them to stay neutral parties. Does the UK have anything similar?

Re:Look on the bright side

[MadMoses]

Here's an easy way to figure out if an album is a release...

from a BPI label:
BPI Radar

from a RIAA label:
RIAA Radar

I haven't used the BPI one yet, but I use RIAAradar all the time. My advice, for what it's worth, is to support the independant labels by buying their stuff. On the other hand, if you want a physical copy of a RIAA/BPI album, consider buying it used.

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!

Unequivocal?

[Kaemaril]

"We are providing unequivocal evidence of copyright infringement via their services"

I'd like to see that evidence. The article suggests it's IP addresses associated with uploads. At worst it's simply the IP address and at best surely it could only be a list of IP addresses and what they uploaded - i.e, IP address xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx uploaded (file) on (date and time) to (server).

Is that enough to be 'unequivocal'? And if so, since the article also suggests they're only after those who upload a lot ('It was unacceptable for ISPs to turn a "blind eye to industrial-scale copyright infringement", said BPI chairman Peter Jamieson.') why aren't they going after these guys for damages in court instead of going the easy route of simply shutting them off? After all, it's likely they'll simply go to another ISP ...

Re:Unequivocal?

[Pofy]

>And if so, since the article also suggests they're only after those who upload a lot....

Which makes one wonder how they know someone has uploaded "a lot".

Re:Unequivocal?

[Tim C]

Which makes one wonder how they know someone has uploaded "a lot".

Well, you could simply download a lot from them, making a note of their IP address. Any IP that uploads more than X to you, you go after.

Yes, a lot of them will be dynamic IPs, in which case the ISP can simply reply to that effect and that's the end of it. However, a lot of people have static IP addresses - I've had one for about 5 years now at no extra cost, and a lot of ISPs hand them out either by default or on request, often for free.

Short of breaking down doors and confiscating PCs, there's not a lot they can do. The law gives them the right to protect their copyrights, you can hardly blame them for trying to do so. At least they're not just blanket suing people (at the moment...)

Re:damn dyslexia

[RsG]

Either way, they're still whores...

I respectfully disagree. It is my understanding that whores provide a pleasurable service for money. Lawyers and record company executives, on the other hand, do the opposite - and then charge you for the priveledge.

Please don't impinge on the good name of whores :-)

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)?

Pot - Kettle - Black

[DrStrangeLug]

Wasn't the BPI found guilty back in 2002 of defrauding the artists they represent by not passing on the royalties ? If we could find some artists who think they're getting ripped off then it's a safe bet that some of the financial dealings are done over the BPI's internet connection so thats grounds for having their connection terminated. It's unacceptable for an ISP to turn a blind eye to corperate corruption and lawbreaking by their customers.

Re:I hope they give a little time before disconnec

[brunos]

I am not sure what happened next, knowing the boss I guess he got some kind of compensation. The problem was that for a while no one in my company or at BT knew what was going on: panic everywhere. The only other time that something as bad happened was when I worked at the ministry of employment (in Egypt) with a microsoft stack which had a licensing cap on the maximum number of connections. Microsoft then gave us access to a great website with all their software that we could use without any license restrictions ... There were some really nice programs in there that I never saw on sale anywhere. Bill Gates himself came to visit, and got the Egyptian goverment to standardize on microsoft produts :-(

Proxies?

[The MAZZTer]

It'd be funny if it was one user using 59 proxies.