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UK ISPs To Face Piracy Deadline

Posted by kdawson on from the opening-envelopes dept.

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."

40 of 287 comments (clear)

  1. If you live in the UK. by chriseyre2000 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Let your MP know what a bad idea this is: http://www.writetothem.com/

    1. Re:If you live in the UK. by somersault · · Score: 4, Funny

      Don't forget to include a couple of MP3s to sweeten the deal

      --
      which is totally what she said
    2. Re:If you live in the UK. by owlnation · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I can write to them, but since my MP is a member of the New Labour Regime, I'm far from convinced he is able to read.

    3. Re:If you live in the UK. by sm62704 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      It seems that your country and mine are in some sort of contest to see who can write the stupidest, citizen-hostile, corporate-friendly laws. And here I thought my (and I use the word "my" lightly here) country was the only one that was bought and paid for by the corporations.

      --
      mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
  2. You never know... by man_of_mr_e · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.

    Don't give them any ideas...

    --
    If you need web hosting, you could do worse than here
  3. More than 6 million I'm sure by CRCulver · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The claim is that there is "rampant piracy" in Britain with more than 6 million broadband users downloading files illegally every year.

    It's surely more than that. What is the total amount of people in the UK between 15 and 25, for example? Every person I know in the EU in that age bracket downloads most of the media they consume rather than buying authorized copies. P2P is mainstream. 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.

    1. Re:More than 6 million I'm sure by alexgieg · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.
      --
      Conservatism: (n.) love of the existing evils. Liberalism: (n.) desire to substitute new evils for the existing ones.
    2. Re:More than 6 million I'm sure by raddan · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

    3. Re:More than 6 million I'm sure by sm62704 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      That's what we said about the US marijuana laws back in the 1970s, when it seemed everybody was smoking it and those who didn't didn't care if you were (including the police but excepting the politicians).

      Now they have everyone convinced it's addictive (it's habit forming but not addictive), causes cancer (it doesn't, and in fact prevents cancer) and leads to harder drugs (it doesn't; the laws against it do).

      Instead of it being legal, now most employers drug-test everyone. There are now people addicted to crack who switched from marijuana when their employer started random drug testing; pot stays in your system a lot longer than cocaine.

      Rather than P2P being legalized, expect some nanny-state, anti-freedom, pro-corporation, anti-people asshat like Reagan to come down like a load of bricks on P2P who convinces everybody that P2P leads to cancer, terrorism, and global warming.

      Indies give their MP3s away. Share those, ignore the MAFIAA bands. Don't share their music, don't buy their downloads, don't buy their CDs, don't go to their concerts. They are the problem, and if you contribute in any way, whether monetarily or by sharing their music, you are part of the problem and not part of the solution.

      Just say "no."

      --
      mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
    4. Re:More than 6 million I'm sure by joss · · Score: 4, Funny

      > when the smoking ban was introduced there was hardly any protest

      Yeah, that was the shortest march ever.. "WHAT DO WE WANT ?" ... "puff puff cough splutter.. a rest"

      --
      http://rareformnewmedia.com/
  4. I Suddenly Feel Religious... by Wandering+Wombat · · Score: 5, Funny

    The ISPs died for my sins.

    --
    I like to place meaningful quotes in my sig, so people will know that I know what meaningful quotes are.
    1. Re:I Suddenly Feel Religious... by sumdumass · · Score: 5, Interesting

      If they acted like that, they might get a reprieve.

      what I mean is, if all ISPs in the UK staged a strike by cutting Internet access everywhere for two or three days and claim that would be the only possible way to ensure their customers aren't pirating anything, I am sure that the outrage would force another look at the law. And if they did this 2 different times, like once on Thursday Friday and Saturday, it could cause direct deposit information and payroll services to be interrupted. If they did this on again a week later on lets say Monday and Tuesday, there would be so much upset and confusion that those who think they wasn't effected will be.

  5. The solution is obvious by wiredog · · Score: 5, Insightful
    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?

    --

    Best Slashdot Co
    1. Re:The solution is obvious by zappepcs · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It't not what the government wants, it's what the **AA wants.

      This is one of those things that will come to a head very quickly and when the egg lands, it won't be on the faces of users or ISPs. It will be on the faces of those who enacted the law.

      The trouble, as we all know, is that there is no way to determine what is illegal and what is not. There will be far too many false positives, and far too many obviously innocent people will be caught by filters and such. It will go as far as MPs will let it go. Perhaps there is a manner in which people in the UK can force MPs to download LEGAL files to show them how easy it is to be caught, and perhaps demonstrate in real life how difficult it is to find the illegal stuff by asking them to PAY for additional filtering equipment/systems for businesses, schools, hospitals etc.

      There are lots of people that want to help filter out illegal content, unfortunately, they also want to get paid.

      Once you get buy-in on the government paying the costs for such systems, turn to appendix F and show them how these systems will be worked around in something like 24 hours of implementation.

      Or perhaps you can all chip in and buy them a whack-a-mole game for the parliamentary house restaurant?

      --
      Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
    2. Re:The solution is obvious by moderatorrater · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

  6. Escalation right around the corner... by TripMaster+Monkey · · Score: 5, Insightful
    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?
    --
    ____

    ~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey

    1. Re:Escalation right around the corner... by Scrameustache · · Score: 4, Insightful

      What if P2P users start encrypting their traffic? Then you make private encryption a criminal offense, easy.
      Big brother is watching you... you don't have anything to hide, do you?
      --

      You can't take the sky from me...

    2. Re:Escalation right around the corner... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

    3. Re:Escalation right around the corner... by garyok · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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?
      No, but the UK government might with the Regulatory Investigatory Powers Act (and Heaven help you if you're muslim and you start encrypting your traffic). What worries the ISPs is without that file-sharing then there's no real reason to have a sweet 20Mb/s connection and we might as well all downgrade to a bargain-basement 512kb/s connection as all we're going to be able to download is our emails and a few safe content-free BPI-approved websites. The ISPs are caught between a rock and a hard place - if they let filesharing happen they get fined and, if they don't, then they lose lucrative customers.

      What bothers me is that, at the moment, there's no legal way for me to download the content I want in the UK. I suppose I'm atypical in that I'd be happy to pay for TV I watch through iTunes (or a similar service), as long as it becomes available at the same time it's originally broadcast in the US. What cheeses me off is having to wait months before it's available in the UK, then only available to a particular broadcaster I can't receive (Sky), and then it's only after it's picked up by a terrestrial broadcaster and their season ends that it's released to DVD and I can pick it up and watch it according to my schedule. This is usually a year after it's originally broadcast! Sorry, but I'm not too hot on delayed gratification for the sake of someone else's out-dated business model.

      Good news is that the Beeb are catching on and starting to stick their latest programmes on iTunes, like Ashes to Ashes, but I don't just want their stuff. Who only watches one TV channel?

      The crux of the argument is that an industry is using legislation to a) protect their out-dated and increasingly irrelevant business model, and b) keep artists under their thumb so they can use them up and then discard them when the cash cow dries up. These BPI and BFI people are talentless vampires, sucking the life out of creative geniuses - don't protect them, eliminate them. And reward the content creators! Now they've got their pay deals sorted, for the love of FSM buy the content off the interweb or on DVD if you like it. If you've already downloaded it on the sly, think of it as pro-active timeshifting.

      --
      One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors - Plato
    4. Re:Escalation right around the corner... by maxwell+demon · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Well, that could easily be solved: Encryption is only allowed with certificates generated and signed by a government agency; ISPs then can get the private keys of their customers from the government and thus read the data streams, while the evil guys can't (because of course the key would never leak from the ISP).

      --
      The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
  7. So let it be by truthsearch · · Score: 3, Insightful

    6 million people is about 10% of the total population. Maybe if such a large portion of its citizens want to do something it shouldn't be illegal. If the government were obeying the will of the people this shouldn't even be an issue.

    --
    Developers: We can use your help.
  8. Government response by Chris+Mattern · · Score: 3, Funny

    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.


    In response, a government minister said, "What a great idea! We'll need to get going on that, too!"
  9. Unenforceable? by rHBa · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I've been wondering about this since the story broke last week, presumably someone will have to keep a definitive blacklist of banned users, otherwise you could just go to another ISP and sign up for another connection.

    This makes me wonder, will the address/telephone line be blacklisted or the individual user whose name the line was in?

    If the former, then it would suck if you just moved into a place that had been blacklisted. If the latter, what's to stop someone else in the household from signing up for another connection?

    I can imagine many student houses with 4 or more people living there, assuming it takes a few months to get noticed and sent you first warning, another couple to get your second and another couple of months to get cut off, you could then sign up again under another name and go for another round...

  10. Petition by IAmAI · · Score: 4, Informative

    You can also sign this petition: http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/openinternet/

    1. Re:Petition by sakdoctor · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

    2. Re:Petition by Cheesey · · Score: 3, Funny

      Quite right. I signed another one at about the same time as the ID cards one. This is what happened:
      Q. "Dear Prime Minister, please abolish all faith schools and prohibit the teaching of creationism and other religious mythology in all UK schools."
      A. "The Government remains committed to a diverse range of schools for parents to choose from, including schools with a religious character or "faith schools" as they are commonly known. Social divisions along religious lines are definitely a good thing and have certainly never caused any problems of any sort. Anyway we didn't read what you said, we don't care what your opinion is, because we are right."
      So I guess if you want to change things you just have to go out and vote. Ha ha, I split my own sides there.

      --
      >north
      You're an immobile computer, remember?
  11. Extraordinary lack of procedural clarity by Budenny · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  12. Easy answer to this by Borealis · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    --
    Unbreakable toys can be used to break other toys.
  13. All UK ISPs should shut down for a day! by erroneus · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Just a single day! I think they'll get the message that they shouldn't try pushing stupid laws on them after that.

  14. When will they learn by blhack · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    --
    NewslilySocial News. No lolcats allowed.
  15. Re:6 MILLION! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    The claim is that there is "rampant piracy" in Britain with more than 6 million broadband users downloading files illegally every year.

    6 million?? This sounds like a job for . . . da - da da da . . . Hitler!!
  16. Re:6 MILLION! by digitig · · Score: 3, Funny

    The point is that that there are only about 2 million broadband subscribers in the UK http://www.liquidzope.com/abc/2/4currentusage/currentstatebbd/view, so 6 million using it for illegal downloads effectively means everybody with broadband access (excluding libraries, etc, where you can't usually plug your iPod in to take the download away with you). So the government is saying that all broadband users are using it for illegal downloads; clearly the answer is to make broadband illegal!

    --
    Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
  17. Re:6 MILLION! by MBGMorden · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    --
    "People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
  18. Re:6 MILLION! by Shakrai · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Any law that is violated by a sufficiently large percentage of it's population is an unjust law. 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.

    I don't even think it should require a "majority". If a statistically significant number of people are routinely flaunting the law then we should probably examine that law and find out whether or not it's just.

    I won't argue in favor of limitless copyright infringement (even the Founding Fathers recognized the value of limited IP protection and included it in the Constitution), but off the top of my head I could mention marijuana prohibition as a policy that should probably be examined.

    --
    I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
    We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
  19. The outcome of this will be... by QJimbo · · Score: 4, Insightful

    1. Piracy will still exist, just obfuscated and encrypted more.

    2. ISPs will be more expensive, as Internet service providers will have to relay the costs of scanning all the packets onto their customers.

    So basically, this has failed before it has even begun as far as I'm concerned. As per usual for this government, it doesn't benefit the population in any way.

  20. Where does the government's authority come from? by cuantar · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If a significant percentage of the population regularly does something that happens to be illegal, perhaps it's the law that needs to be re-examined, not its implementation.

    --
    Legalize it.
  21. Re:6 MILLION! by cizoozic · · Score: 3, Interesting

    It's said that 50% of drivers break urban speed limits. 20% to 65% of employees admit to various degrees of theft at work. Sounds like it's time to change those laws too? Note that neither of those tend to result in $millions when the person gets caught, and that both of them can result in direct harm to others, physically or financially. If a speeding ticket (not even reckless driving) cost you 7+ figures, or a multimillion dollar fine was assessed for every metal clicky pen stolen, people would be all over those laws as well. That's why MOST people are using the language of "changing" the laws rather than "abolishing" them.

    Yes there are a few that use the terms "imaginary property" and the like, but I think most people simply recognize that the current situation only stays in place because a few people with very deep pockets would like their ideal distribution method to work forever.
  22. Sweden's Pirate Party by Russ+Nelson · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Sweden's Pirate Party points out that the only way to give the "content" industry the protection it needs is to control all speech. Thus, file copying must be permitted not to protect a few thieves, but to protect everyone's freedom of speech.

    In other words: Your need to make money isn't going to infringe our freedom of speech.

    Figure out a different way to make money.

    --
    Don't piss off The Angry Economist
  23. Re:6 MILLION! by Computershack · · Score: 3, Informative

    The stupid moron who posted the figure of 2 million was using an article from May 2003 FFS. BT alone have over 4 million subscribers.

    --
    I only please one person per day. Today is not your day. Tomorrow isn't looking good either. - Scott Adams
  24. Re:6 MILLION! by TapeCutter · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Yep, that's why the punishment for speeding often varies with the degree of mania. Example...

    1-5km over the limit - nobody cares. 5+km over, a speed camera will get upset - $50 fine, 1 demerit point. 15+km over, a cop gets upset - $150 fine, 2 demerit points. 30+km over, a judge gets upset - $500 fine, licence torn up.

    --
    And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.