70% of P2P Users Would Stop if Warned by ISP

Umpire writes "As the UK considers a three strikes policy to fight copyright infringement, a new survey reports that 70% of UK broadband users would stop using P2P if they received a warning from their ISP. 'Wiggin commissioned the 2008 Digital Entertainment Survey, which found that 70 percent of all people polled said they would stop illegally sharing files if their ISP notified them in some way that it had detected the practice. When broken down by age group, an unexpected trend emerges: teenagers are generally more likely to change their behavior than older Internet users.'"

Comments

But

[slapout]

P2P != illegal file sharing

Re:But

[nevali]

Notably posted the day that Trent Reznor releases a good chunk of an album on ThePirateBay (amusing in itself simply because of TPB's notoriety).

Re:Suggestive question

[dbolger]

I used to work for the abuse department of a major Irish ISP. We received hundreds of emails a day about our users allegedly breaching copyrights. Some were from studios, most were from outfits like Web Sherriff. Under the law at the time (now sure how it goes these days), we were under no obligation to follow up on these and had no inclination to either. The vast majority of the mail was from automated systems and we bulk deleted them without even reading them. The very occasional would be written by a human (or at least, would be a boilerplate mail with a human contact's name attached). These got a boilerplate reply in turn, telling them that we were not required by law to enforce their copyrights, and referring them to the police if they wanted to make a complaint. We would of course have handed over our logs had we been requested to by the police, but in the two years I worked there, we never were.

Re:Unlikely?

[houghi]

Nearly every ISP on the planet has terms of service, and almost all of them have provisions regarding the unauthorized distribution of copywritten material, child porn, hate speech, and so on.

However it is should not be up to the ISP to tel what is copywritten, what is hate speach or what is child porn. The only thing they can do when told about it (please let them not look actively for it) is to tell you that you MIGHT PROBABLY be doing something against the AUP, wich MIGHT if proven correct result in the ending of your contract.

This would indeed stop most people. However those that do not stop, can only be stopped if it goes to court.

In Belgium the court has basicaly said that if there is no money gained by the person distributing, they won't fllow up on it.

That means that the local MAFIAA can only tell the provider that somebody is downloading something. The provider can then tell the enduser and that is about where it stops. The provider is forbidden to give details to the MAFIAA. The MAFIAA can not contact the customer directly and they can not go to court to sue the customer.

So how can they enforce anything when they can not decide of what I am doing is illegal. Childporn is obviously something else. There the legal parties WILL bust your ass. The same with hate speech.

All that they can do is go to court and let THEM decide what will be done. The terms of service is mainly a protection for the provider that says: no matter what happens, it is all your fault and we can end servcie, no matter what.

Re:Unlikely?

[nomadic]

Just because something is stated in a ToS doesn't mean it's legally stated in a ToS.

"If you use our service to break the law, we'll disconnect you" is likely a valid, legally binding contract clause.

Re:Unlikely?

[SETIGuy]

Just because something is stated in a ToS doesn't mean it's legally stated in a ToS.

"If you use our service to break the law, we'll disconnect you" is likely a valid, legally binding contract clause. That may be what the clause says, but in the terms they actually use in practice are "If we suspect you have used our service to break the law or are told by an untrustworthy party that you have used our service to break the law, we'll disconnect you even if you have not used our service to break the law."

It's unlikely that that is a valid, legally binding contract clause.

Re:Unlikely?

[macdaddy357]

If they want high speed internet, most people have two ISPs to choose from: Their local phone company or local cable TV company. Get kicked off of both for violating TOS, and no high speed internet for you. A Duopoly can make you play by its rules or quit the game just like a monopoly.