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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.'"
so I will download the content I have paid to "pirate"
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
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.
Remember kids, it's all fun and games until someone commits wholesale galactic genocide.
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.
Remember kids, it's all fun and games until someone commits wholesale galactic genocide.
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.
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.
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.
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.