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.

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

[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: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.

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.

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.

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.

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)?