UK ISPs To Face Piracy Deadline

superbrose notes that despite lots of legal difficulties regarding Internet privacy, the UK government is going ahead with plans to punish ISPs for allowing their customers to download illegal music and films. The claim is that there is "rampant piracy" in Britain with more than 6 million broadband users downloading files illegally every year. "The government will on Friday tell internet service providers they will be hit with legal sanctions from April next year unless they take concrete steps to curb illegal downloads of music and films. Britain would be one of the first countries in the world to impose such sanctions. Service providers say what the government wants them to do would be like asking the Royal Mail to monitor the contents of every envelope posted."

Comments

The solution is obvious

[wiredog]

Block downloading of all music, films, and other content that might be illegal.

Yes, this is essentially a shutdown of the WWW in the UK. So? It's what the Gov wants, right?

Re:The solution is obvious

[moderatorrater]

Honestly, everything that we see on the internet is copyrighted. Everything. It's not the ISP's responsibility to make sure that the content that's being downloaded doesn't have a copyright, because everything has one when it's created. It's the responsibility of the person doing the distributing to make sure that they aren't distributing goods illegally. This is insanity and it needs to end.

Escalation right around the corner...

[TripMaster Monkey]

From TFA:

Service providers say what the government wants them to do would be like asking the Royal Mail to monitor the contents of every envelope posted.

It's going to get even worse. Imagine asking the Royal Mail to monitor the contents of every envelope posted, after half of the mail writers get tired of these draconian measures and start sending their messages in code.

What if P2P users start encrypting their traffic? The difficulties involved would be significant, but not insurmountable. Are the ISPs supposed to treat every user transmitting & receiving encrypted data as a criminal?

Re:Escalation right around the corner...

[Anonymous Coward]

I know you're joking/exaggerating, but it's worth pointing out that making encryption illegal would b impossible. It would, for instance, make it illegal to do any kind of secure online commerce or banking. It would basically destroy any company that relies on the Internet.

There are so many legitimate types of encrypted traffic (SSL, SSH, VPN, etc.) that they can't outlaw it. P2P programs can certainly go beyond mere encryption and specifically obfuscate the type of traffic, making it appear as another class (e.g. https) or even use steganography to hide the data in otherwise legitimate-looking data streams.

Re:More than 6 million I'm sure

[alexgieg]

If users could only group together for political power like some are starting to do in Sweden, the course of democracy might be able to break copyright law.

This won't happen, in any country, unless and until government sanctions against file sharing become prevalent enough to affect the majority of Internet users living there. Unfortunately, as long as it only affects one person in a million, no one except those interested in the subject itself will care.

On the other hand, this British law, if enacted, might become the fire that will trigger that reaction. Just wait and see the growth in the amount of people pissed by false positives, or just pissed, for things to start to change.

Re:More than 6 million I'm sure

[raddan]

Not only that, but, the UK has a total population of about 60 million people. So 10% of the population is engaging in piracy. Within the age bracket you mention, that's probably pretty much everybody. I have a feeling this is going to turn out like Prohibition did. Despite the fact that it gets banned, everybody still does it, the authorities are powerless to stop it, and in the end, the authorities who puts those laws in place get moved aside by those who want those laws repealed.

Extraordinary lack of procedural clarity

[Budenny]

It is extraordinary how little clarity there is about procedures. The industry tells your ISP they suspect illegal behaviour. What is the standard of proof? What's the process for deciding if the evidence is convincing? How is it to be challenged? Disclosed?

Then your ISP writes to you. You say the allegations are false and libellous. What happens next? Do you get to cross examine the industry spokesperson who made the allegations?

Then three strikes, they disconnect you. You sue them. Who is liable? Them? The industry body?

Its not so much iniquitous as unworkable in its present form. You basically cannot do this without all the expense of the courts, which is what they're trying to avoid.

Easy answer to this

[Borealis]

The easiest way to combat this is to then monitor the traffic of politicians and their families first. Obviously any piracy problem is most serious when practiced by a member of the parliament or their families, so careful monitoring of all communications from politicians is obviously a priority. After that, monitor traffic from anybody employed by the recording industry and their families. Then the families of the owners of all major industries. After that, ensure that no members of the police force are secretly pirating. If you get through that list without a repeal of the directive then you can monitor the rest of the populace, but I suspect that'll be a short lived initiative.

Re:Petition

[sakdoctor]

Every single on of those that I've signed has reached critical mass, causing me to receive a piece of government propaganda telling me why I'm wrong.

For example:

Me: "I don't want an ID card. Police states are not good"
Reply: "Dear terrorist, having an ID card is good. It will keep you safe"

I'm not going to sign this one because I already know what the reply will be.

When will they learn

[blhack]

To every lawmaker on the planet:

OUR COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE IS GREATER THAN YOUR OWN! We have got hordes of geeks working on ways to circumvent every single way you have ever conceived to censor what we do.
What happened with iTunes DRM? It got owned by qtfairuse.
What happened when you blocked bittorrent? We started encrypting it.
What happened when you blocked the port that bittorrent runs on? We started running it on a different port.
What happened when you throttled NNTP connections? We started using lots and lots of simultaneous connections, each of them throttled, but collectively adding up to our original speed.
What happened when you started blocking NNTP all together? We started running it over port 80 and disguising it as legitimate SSL traffic.
What happened when you started listening to our phone calls? We started using encrypted VOIP.

Every single time there has EVER been ANY attempt at stopping people from doing what they want it has only caused them to grow stronger. Don't challenge us to develop stronger encryption, because we will. Its like spraying a weed with weed killer, eventually you're just going to create stronger weeds.

What you are trying to do in the UK will absolutely fail. History has shown this. Non tech-savvy users will be alienated for a while, until we create yet ANOTHER work around for your idiotic bureaucratic attempt at pleasing your own appetite for money and power.

I cannot repeat enough that this WILL fail.

The community welcomes your attempt at censoring us. It will only present us with yet another challenge and cause the gap between our skills and your own to grow.

Re:6 MILLION!

[MBGMorden]

1. It's not theft. It's not even "basically the same thing". There are tons of people who believe that "intellectual property" is a laughable notion that somehow got twisted into law.

2. Any law that is violated by a sufficiently large percentage of it's population is an unjust law. Governments are supposed to be representative of the people. They have power because we as a whole agreed to let them have some power to enforce ideas that society as a whole sees as worthy of enforcing. If a law reaches a certain point where the majority of the country doesn't support it (say, Prohibition as an example), then it should be repealed.