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ISPs Dragged Into Swedish File Sharing Battle

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the sinking-worm-on-a-hook-feeling dept.

paulraps writes "Swedish internet service providers may soon be required by law to take greater responsibility for unlawful file-sharing. Although rejecting the ludicrous idea of an overarching broadband fee which would be shared out among copyright holders, a government report published on Monday called for internet providers to be 'bound to contribute to bringing all copyright infringement to an end'. Under the proposal, copyright holders whose material is being shared illegally would be entitled to compensation from ISPs which did not ban users. Needless to say, the country's ISPs are not happy."

16 of 120 comments (clear)

  1. Isn't this akin to... by Antony-Kyre · · Score: 4, Insightful

    making roads take more responsibility for drunk drivers?

  2. End copyright infringement ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    >>> 'bound to contribute to bringing all copyright infringement to an end'.

    Does this mean they can donate to organisations that want to end copyright altogether ?

  3. Uh oh... by revengebomber · · Score: 3, Interesting

    the ludicrous idea of an overarching broadband fee which would be shared out among copyright holders, Next week on Slashdot: US government passes new legislation...
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    1. Re:Uh oh... by hedwards · · Score: 4, Informative

      The equivalent has been done, and it doesn't bring relief from the media corporations. Canada for instance has a surcharge on blank CDs that goes to the media trade groups. From what I can tell very little of it goes to pay the artists, and pretty much none goes to the independent labels.

      I can't imagine that it would go better here, where the government and courts are even more beholden to the interests of the media conglomerates.

    2. Re:Uh oh... by Jugalator · · Score: 4, Informative

      Canada for instance has a surcharge on blank CDs that goes to the media trade groups.

      Sweden actually has the same kind of organization ( http://www.copyswede.se/default.asp?ML=10622 )... I think it even applies to hard drives!

      That's also a pretty crappy idea, because what happens...? Well, since we became members of the EU, making online orders from outside the country became much cheaper, and I can just order 50 DVD-R's in bulk from Denmark for a cheaper price than in Sweden due to these fees, even including the shipping charges. All they're really achieving with these leives is risking making Swedish businesses lose profits due to these uncertain reports of how much the piracy even impact sales. I guess the fallacy being that Sweden is alone in the world, and they can do whatever they wish without impact to the economy. :-p

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      Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
  4. Make telephone companies responsible then... by bartman31415 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Seems rather absurd way to deal with the problem to me. Why not make telephone companies responsible for policing wire fraud crimes then?!

    1. Re:Make telephone companies responsible then... by Jugalator · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Agreed, and two more things... There's probably more to it too...

      1. How are they even going to successfully monitor their activity and avoid getting busted for it? I would not be a happy ISP CEO if I actually tried stopping this, much to my customers' fury, and still got busted, which will most likely happen if they just look at the customers. There's always some group of people doing illegal activities on their network.

      2. If successful (which I doubt this even can be) -- won't their customers just risk opting for a cheaper, lower bandwidth offer? The ISP's risk losing tremendous amounts of revenue. In extension, ISP's could then try to raise the fees, but that could make Sweden regress its Internet presence and have a harder time convincing users of adopting high bandwidth services like Internet TV. I don't really think I'd like to see that sort of progress. I think that piracy is helping out a lot in increasing high bandwidth demand, and that can indirectly benefit other, more clean, service providers.

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      Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
  5. That's making legitimate internet users pay by jafoc · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Making ISPs more "responsible" means increasing their costs, which can only result in higher prices for internet services that all of their customers will have to pay, including those who (e.g. out of respect for the law) would never engage in non-authorized "file sharing".

  6. language by micktaggart · · Score: 3, Insightful

    So if ISPs will contribute one closed user account per year in order to bring copyright infringement to an end, will them overlords be happy? Why is it always that government reports do not use operational definitions. At one time in the report, the author talks about blocking "the subscriptions of people who use the internet to share copyright-protected material on a large scale." What does that mean, large scale? One song? Thousands of songs? One MB? Thousand MB? If you as author of a report talk about copyright infringement being a problem, without providing metrics, your report basically says nothing.

  7. Oh, I feel instantly safe! by Opportunist · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Now that we'll soon see the post office being held liable for every mail bomb delivered.

    Hey, why not? It's exactly the same. They mustn't look what's inside and are liable for it.

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  8. Belgian isp lost similar lawsuit by matsuva · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Here in Belgium Scarlet telecom has recently lost a lawsuit issued by the belgian RIAA (SABAM). The judge has ruled that the ISP should ban P2P traffic, needless to say Scarlet has appealed against this bs decision. All other Belgian ISP's have received a letter treathening to sue them too if the don't cut off P2P traffic.
    I'm sorry for my poor knowledge of English and i am currently fortifying my house out of fear for the grammar nazi's.

  9. ssh remote login will stop working by jafoc · · Score: 3, Insightful
    The judge has ruled that the ISP should ban P2P traffic [...]. All other Belgian ISP's have received a letter treathening to sue them too if the don't cut off P2P traffic.

    This is very dangerous for freedom on the 'net. The only way to "ban P2P traffic" effectively is to ban all traffic that can not be verified to be something else.

    This means for example that ISPs would have to restrict ssh remote login to hosts on a whitelist.

  10. The perfect temporary solution: by Spy+der+Mann · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Encryption, my friends. Govt can't censor what they can't read. And personally I believe it's ridiculous to equate a downloaded file to a lost sale - many of them wouldn't be sales, anyway. (Also check my manifesto for a more revolutionary opinion)

  11. Is not e-mail basicly peer to peer? by arthurpaliden · · Score: 3, Insightful

    If so then all email must, by law be shut down. Now there is a solution to spam.

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    Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
  12. Re:Obvious by ScrewMaster · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Oh yeah, they are just "indexing" the material not actually doing anything like making it available or anything. Right.

    Yes, exactly right. That is all they are doing: they don't host the offending files. If you want to control what they are indexing, well, now you're talking censorship to one degree or another. In some countries that would be fine, in others it will run into trouble. Google is an index, and it points to a lot of content that many would find objectionable: at what point do you decide to tell Google, "Sorry, you can't index this stuff." That's already happening in places like China, and frankly I don't want to see it happen here.

    You decide which is worse: copyright infringement or the loss of the greatest medium for communication ever invented. Because that's where this is going.

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    The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
  13. And if people are compelled to pay? by severoon · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I think this is a fantastic idea. They should be very careful to spell out the terms, but provided that it's not an exhorbitant amount per person (say, 5 cents per month), think about the flip side of that deal: for say 5 cents per person per month (or whatever nominal fee they work out), copyright holders are paid. That means that all people are free to copy as much music as they want. No more need for sites like pirate bay to operate in the shadows.

    I mean, surely the copyright holders don't want to be paid and give nothing in return at all. Right? Guys? ...guys?

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    but have you considered the following argument: shut up.