Virgin Media To Spy On & Threaten Downloaders

Mike writes "Virgin Media, the UK's largest cable-modem provider, has decided that it will spy on its users to protect record industry profits. Starting next week Virgin Media will send letters to thousands of households where they suspect music is either being downloaded or illegally shared. The campaign is a joint venture between Virgin Media and the British Phonographic Industry (BPI), which represents the major record labels. The BPI ultimately wants Internet companies to implement a 'three strikes and out' rule to warn and ultimately disconnect the estimated 6.5 million customers whose accounts are (supposedly) used for regular criminal activity. In other words, you download a few songs and they'll come along and cut off the one wire that delivers freedom of speech, freedom of the press and freedom of assembly."

Comments

Cut the one wire that delivers alternative content

[Odder]

How obvious can an anti-trust and privacy case be? You just know that the internet will become an RIAA only music store for those 6.5 million people.

People with wealth and power are doing this because they think they can and they must. The political opinions expressed outside of broadcast media will eliminated along with economic threats to the music industry. People who believe in justice and the rule of law are an economic threat too, so this is all the same animal and that's why media consolidation and broadcast itself suck. Society must prevent this and may be able to because so many stand to win as a few lose.

Hyperbole

[whisper_jeff]

In other words, you download a few songs and they'll come along and cut off the one wire that delivers freedom of speech, freedom of the press and freedom of assembly.

For those who are unclear on the definition of "hyperbole", please read the above quoted sentence.

Re:Hyperbole

[The Angry Mick]

Seriously. Here's the headline and teaser text from the same story as presented by ArsTechnica, which is painted in a vastly different light:

UK ISP bows to record industry, to send P2P warning letters:
British ISP Virgin Media has come to an agreement with the BPI, which represents the record industry, to warn filesharers on its network about the dangers of copyright infringement.

.

Re:Hyperbole

[sm62704]

For those who are unclear on the definition of "hyperbole", please read the above quoted sentence.

For those who are unclear on the definition of bullshit, please read the linked bullshit.

The summary is not, in fact, hyperbole. You should consult a dictionary. This is the 21st century. Today we use the internet as our medium of speech, press, and assembly. There is no exageration whatever when the GP says that the ISP owns the one wire that delivers those three freedoms to us.

There is no other way besides the internet to make my views known to more than a few people. Until the internet, freedom of the press was restricted to those with the money to buy a press. Your freedom of assembly was restricted to physicality.

Now that I and my fellow peons have freedom of the press, speech, and assembly, that the rich bastards who have owned knowedge, its dissimination, and indeed freedom itself have always had, they're scared shitless.

Well, not quite shitless, as the bullshit I'm responding to can attest. But drowning us normal people (peons) in bullshit is what the rich have always done. The ionternet gives US a shovel.

Re:Hyperbole

[blowdart]

And it, of course, shows a stunning lack of understanding of geography or other countries. The UK has no enshrined right to free speech, the right to assembly has been slowly curtailed since the 1980s, starting with laws to stop raves, and then to stop political demonstrations in certain areas (like outside parliament) and cutting off a personal internet account doesn't stop journalists reporting.

The three strikes "solution" is problematic however; because suddenly a corporation is policing something. And that is more worrying than anything else.

Re:Hyperbole

[Albanach]

Yes, The Register had a much more balanced article too: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/06/06/virgin_media_bpi_deal/.From that article, 'At this stage there will be no "three strikes" process; customers who continue to fileshare illegally will not be disconnected.'

Virgin are also quoted as saying it was unwilling to disconnect customers who don't stop accessing illegal music. A spokesman said: "It's a bit of a judgement call for us to be making threats of disconnection or account suspension. We weren't willing to do that. There are now so many lawful cheap and free music services out there that we believe an education campaign in partnership with the BPI is the best way forward."

Seems Virgin aren't quite being the bad guys the summary makes out.

Re:Hyperbole

[whisper_jeff]

There is no other way besides the internet to make my views known to more than a few people.

Sorry, but if you believe that, then you are out of touch. Or, to put it more directly - how do you think people exercised those freedoms before the internet? Somehow, hundreds of people throughout history managed to make their views known to more than a few people without the internet. So, I say again, hyperbole.

Re:Hyperbole

[evilandi]

Also for those who are unclear on the definition of "UK", note that it is not the USA. Ergo any comparison with USian freedoms is stark raving bonkers. We don't have freedom of speech or freedom of assembly here, they have never been enshrined as rights (freedom of the press, though, is enforced by the Press Complaints Authority with arms-length backing from Her Majesty's Government).

For example, it is illegal to wear a t-shirt with a politican slogan in the street outside Parliament.

Re:Hyperbole

[ubrgeek]

If only some countries had places where one could go to share their opinions with large groups ...

Re:Hyperbole

[Macthorpe]

It's hyperbole and bullshit because:-

a) Virgin aren't spying on their users - in fact, the BPI are taking people's IP addresses from BitTorrent swarms (freely available to anybody), matching them up to known Virgin media IP blocks (freely available to anybody) then sending those IPs to Virgin who mail the offending user. Virgin do not tell the BPI who you are or where you live because that would be an enormous breach of the DPA.

b) Your basic freedoms cannot be impinged upon by a company, only by governments. You can still go out into the street and shout your opinions to the rooftops if you want.

c) Downloading music for free is not a basic freedom.

d) Using the internet is not a basic freedom.

Where the summary got all that horsemanure about right to assembly, freedom of the press and freedom of speech, I have no idea - because it has no bearing or relevance to the topic at hand. At the very least you can point out that only one of those freedoms exists in the UK.

Another flamebait Slashdot summary successfully baits someone into ranting about something incidental to the real point. Kudos.

Re:Hyperbole

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah, hundreds of people, out of a total size of the human race of, iirc, 10 billion. Point made.

Re:Hyperbole

[somersault]

You mean like.. those people with access to printing presses? *rolls eyes* Do you have any idea how the world would have worked before TV and radio came along? To make your views known to a lot of people in the days before the printing press, you'd either have to write a friggin assload of spam letters (which in itself would cost a lot of money), or spend your whole life travelling the country orating to market crowds.. which is the only way a poor person could do it, and if what they were saying was controversial enough then they'd soon be locked up..

Re:Hyperbole

[D'Sphitz]

It's nice to know that cable internet is an inaliable right...

Re:Hyperbole

[internewt]

If only some countries had places where one could go to share their opinions with large groups ... You missed one.

Re:Hyperbole

[l-ascorbic]

The PCA doesn't enforce freedom of the press. Quite the contrary. It's a method by which the press self-regulates. It doesn't stop the govt placing restrictions on the press. It investigates complaints *against* the press, such as for invasion of privacy.

As for no enshrined rights: the Human Rights Act codifies a large number of them, including freedom of speech. As for the US Constitution: the Bill of Rights was strongly influenced by British common law, including the Magna Carta.

That said, this hasn't stopped the government trampling on a lot of these rights. Much of this is due to the fact that we don't have a Supreme Court (yet) so it's hard to enforce any of them.

Re:Hyperbole

[TheSpoom]

Weird. I was just reading the European Convention on Human Rights and it seems to say some things about Freedom of Expression and Freedom of Assembly.

Maybe I'm reading the wrong thing.

Re:Hyperbole

[Anonymous Coward]

Somehow, hundreds of people throughout history managed to make their views known to more than a few people without the internet There are billions of people on the planet. If mere hundreds made their voice heard before the internet, I believe you've proven the parent poster's point.

Re:Hyperbole

[PReDiToR]

I'm thinking of the "Life of Brian"

Brian: Please, please, please listen! I've got one or two things to say.
The Crowd: Tell us! Tell us both of them!
Brian: Look, you've got it all wrong! You don't NEED to follow ME, You don't NEED to follow ANYBODY! You've got to think for your selves! You're ALL individuals!
The Crowd: Yes! We're all individuals!
Brian: You're all different!
The Crowd: Yes, we ARE all different!
Man in crowd: I'm not...
The Crowd: Sch!

Re:Hyperbole

[mikael]

starting with laws to stop raves

Because the rave parties were being held out in disused barns in the countryside, through the night to the early morning, disturbing both farm workers and animals.

olitical demonstrations in certain areas (like outside parliament)

Because the MP's didn't want their work disturbed by the noise made by certain protestors - if they listened to the voted population in the first place, they wouldn't have protestors outside their offices in the first place.

Re:Hyperbole

[uglydog]

your ideas intrigue me. i'd like to subscribe to your e-zine.

Re:Hyperbole

[Narpak]

For those who are unclear on the definition of "hyperbole", please read the above quoted sentence. Or visit http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=hyperbole&x=0&y=0

Re:Hyperbole

[RiotingPacifist]

starting with laws to stop raves
Because the rave parties were being held out in disused barns in the countryside, through the night to the early morning, disturbing both farm workers and animals.
olitical demonstrations in certain areas (like outside parliament)
Because the MP's didn't want their work disturbed by the noise made by certain protestors - if they listened to the voted population in the first place, they wouldn't have protestors outside their offices in the first place. If your gatherd on private land you can be done for trespass, other than that if raves arnt doing anything illegal, the government has no right to interfere.

Re:Hyperbole

[RiotingPacifist]

Its ok SOCPA is sorting those little glitches out, normal service will be resumed shortly.

Re:Hyperbole

[Narpak]

Sorry, but if you believe that, then you are out of touch. Or, to put it more directly - how do you think people exercised those freedoms before the internet? Somehow, hundreds of people throughout history managed to make their views known to more than a few people without the internet. So, I say again, hyperbole. Hundreds of people throughout history might have managed to make their views know; but I guarantee there is millions of people throughout history that had their views oppressed and censored. Internet does make it a lot easier to express your opinions and to find people that agree/disagree with which to have meaningful debate (and a quite a lot more to have blazing flame wars with).

Re:Hyperbole

[Anonymous Coward]

In other words, you download a few songs and they'll come along and cut off the one wire that delivers freedom of speech, freedom of the press and freedom of assembly. There's very little I detest more than severely-distorted rhetoric whose sole purpose is to demonize any opposing view and I seem to be hearing more and more of it (politicians, I'm looking primarily at you but journalists tend to do their fair share of it as well). While you may have a legitimate point, such distortions really turn me off! Can we say FUD? Anyone with a bit of sense knows that not everything is so black-and-white! Anyone with a modicum of respect would not make out the opponents to be an immoral, bumbling group of idiots.

Crap, now I detest myself...

Re:Hyperbole

[thtrgremlin]

You're right. Hundreds throughout history. Even if you or I don't read more than the opinions of a few hundred authors on the net, does that somehow mean you and I are reading all the same stuff? Doesn't that exactly prove the point you were arguing against?

And even if by hundreds, you really meant to say millions, where were the political voices against the McCarthy era, aside from those buried in Wellwood Cemetery?

The internet is a new and powerful means of communication that IS HAVING very similar political implications as the Printing Press when it was new. The range of information available for research on the net is astronomical compared to any time in history within a few decades, even in areas where good libraries have always been available. The people speaking out can, and are, have their voices heard without any geographical or temporal limits (copying no longer requires time like it did). That has never existed before like it does today. The net is the new Library of Alexandria, and what the founders of the Library of Congress only wish it could be. And the no talent content distribution cartel will fall as it will have no place, while artists and musicians will be free.

While P2P is still legal download and watch "Steal this Film: Part II" (1) for a quick historical perspective on the history of piracy going back to the 15th century, and "2008 Teaching and Learning with Technology Symposium"(2) for a historical perspective on literacy and culture.

(1)http://stealthisfilm.com/
(2)http://youtube.com/watch?v=bHBSNNYbyvg

Re:Hyperbole

[slysithesuperspy]

You obviously don't understand free speech if you think a private company is infringing on free speech if they cut you off their service. You can't shout "Fire" in someone else's cinema because you don't own it, no difference with cable. Having said that, it is the British Pornographic, I mean Phonographic, Industry that is curtailing free speech because it is trying to tell other people how to use their own property. If someone downloads a track on to a hard disk how in the world can the BPI claim to have authority over it, it is as preposterous as an author claiming to own part of your brain after you've read a book.

Re:Hyperbole

[thtrgremlin]

I'd argue further that such opportunities could only have existed for the poor as the poor live today, maybe, but not then. Even today, one wishing to dedicate their life to one political cause could stand on Capitol Hill voicing their opinion, taking spare change to feed themselves... meanwhile a well dressed and well to do lawyer will be arguing against you. Just because David LaMacchia was in the wrong for his actions (legally right, morally wrong) doesn't mean Jack Valenti won't burn in hell.

Re:Hyperbole

[A beautiful mind]

And it, of course, shows a stunning lack of understanding of geography or other countries. The UK has no enshrined right to free speech, the right to assembly has been slowly curtailed since the 1980s, starting with laws to stop raves, and then to stop political demonstrations in certain areas (like outside parliament) and cutting off a personal internet account doesn't stop journalists reporting.

I had written a long post which was eaten by a NVIDIA binary blob crash that brought down X.org. One of the best posts that I have written since I've been on slashdot. I've got no energy to rewrite it, however I'd still like to hilight a few things. Articles 10 & 11 of the European Convention of Human Rights guarantee you the freedoms you've mentioned above. These rights are enforced by The European Court of Human Rights, whose decisions are legally binding. Both were created in 1950 by the Council of Europe, of which the United Kingdom is a founding member. So your assertion that these rights are not enshrined, is false.

As to blocking protests in front of parliament, that looks like a violation of Article 11, but I haven't seen a case in front of the court about this (at least according to their online database. The Court can enforce your rights, but only if people bring these cases to the European Court. Sadly, I think simply not knowing is the biggest enemy of people's rights.

Re:Hyperbole

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

> We don't have freedom of speech

This is a very simplistic view. Just as with the US constitution, the fact that it's not written down doesn't mean that we don't have the right. In Britain the law isn't just determined by those bills that pass through parliament. It is also defined by precedents set by judges in earlier cases. The right of Britons to freedom of speech has been upheld time and again by British courts going back centuries. A judge can't simply overturn that. There is some wiggle room over when those rights can be suspended. In the US, the litmus test for whether or not free speech can be suspended is whether or not there is a "clear and present danger". But that test isn't codified in the Constitution, it arose because of a legal precedent set in a court case. So the situation in the US and UK are pretty similar in this regard.

Re:Hyperbole

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it's more likely they'll only go so far for the record industry till they actually start losing money. Then they'll fight them to the death.

Re:Hyperbole

[Kingrames]

It's actually a quote from Virgin themselves.

Right above, "All hail Satan...", I believe.

Re:Hyperbole

[VJ42]

Are the Mods on crack today?
As I type the above post is marked as troll, for no apparent reason.

Back on topic, I agree on all your points apart from "b)" A company can infringe my freedoms, if Virgin Media were to start selling my usage data to the BPI (as the summary insinuates) that would be a breech of my right to privacy. In fact this is even recognised by law, and I believe (IANAL) Virgin could be prosecuted under the data protection act, and probably article 8 of the Human rights act which states: Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence.

Re:Hyperbole

[Thyrteen]

Yeah, lots of those people who you read about today still lived in poverty back then, or were declared heretics / enemies of some entity. Most people who try to make a difference aren't liked much at first when they go about it :)

Re:Hyperbole

[Macthorpe]

Virgin aren't handing over any details, probably for the DPA reasons you pointed out. They've called the campaign a 'program of education', and that they're not comfortable shutting down or reporting suspected activities without concrete proof.

Moving off-topic again, yes, the mods are on crack. Check out the crapfest first post modded +5 insightful - apparently asking people not to illegally share files is now a violation of rights that don't even exist in the United Kingdom.

I'm actually despairing of this site now. Think it might be time for me to find somewhere that can actually take an unbiased position on things.

Re:Hyperbole

[Anonymous Coward]

At thousands of Pounds a pop, would you disconnect them?

Re:Hyperbole

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sorry to disappoint you, but not all of those billions of people are reading your blog.

Re:Hyperbole

[VJ42]

Moving off-topic again, yes, the mods are on crack. Check out the crapfest first post modded +5 insightful - apparently asking people not to illegally share files is now a violation of rights that don't even exist in the United Kingdom. The summary didn't help there, and how many /.ers RTFA? If we were to believe the summary, then there's every reason to be up in arms. Unfortunately "Big Media"(TM) don't have a very good track record in differentiating between illegal downloaders, and legal ones, so people are naturally going to over react to a story like this. Espicially given Virgin's customer service track record (They billed us twice for the same service, once as NTL, and once as Virgin, each call centre directed us to the other...). As soon as our contract with them runs out, we're switching.

Given their recent association with Phorm, they don't exactly get my vote of trust either. Indeed, if they ever roll out Phorm, I'll report them for a breach of the DPA and the HRA (checking the small print first, of course).

I'm actually despairing of this site now. Think it might be time for me to find somewhere that can actually take an unbiased position on things. If you read at -1 like me, it's not so bad. Indeed, most of the time good posts (regardless of "side") get modded up, or left alone. Besides, I don't come here for the stories, I come for the comments, and every issue generates a whole spectrum of ideas. I honestly can't think of anywhere on the internet more informed. If only the editors actually did some editing, this place would be almost perfect. I already find it good enough to pay for.

Re:Hyperbole

[mpe]

The three strikes "solution" is problematic however; because suddenly a corporation is policing something. And that is more worrying than anything else.

The actual issue here is that a third party (the BPI) wants to be able to tell ISPs who they can and can't have as customers. With all the risk being on behalf of the ISP. An ISP can be sued for breach of contract if they start cutting people off without good reason. Indeed for this to happen is more or less indiciative of there not being any actual evidence of wrongdoing in the first place, since if the BPI actually had evidence they could take court action themselves.

Re:Hyperbole

[mpe]

The internet is a new and powerful means of communication that IS HAVING very similar political implications as the Printing Press when it was new.

One thing to remember is that copyright was originally invented to control usage of the printing press.

The people speaking out can, and are, have their voices heard without any geographical or temporal limits (copying no longer requires time like it did).

There are a couple of other important differences with the printing press things only tended to be cheap if you wanted many copies of exactly the same thing, much the same also applied to audio and video recordings as well as broadcast media. Thus we ended up with record/movie/radio/TV companies following similar business models to those originally developed for books, newspapers, etc.
Where the Internet is different is that making copies is trivially cheap even on a one off basis and it makes little difference if the copy is being made 5 metres or 5 million metres away. There is no need to ship a physical piece of media and even the fastest method of shipping a piece of media (which people from a few hundred years ago would regard as very quick) is considerably slower than that which can be achieved using the Internet to send data.
The really interesting thing is that the separation of "content" from "media" hasn't suddenly happened. It's a process which has been ongoing for at least the last 30 years. Which is plenty of time for "established players" to come up with new ideas. Instead there has been lobbying for longer copyright terms (ignoring that once the average person is unlikely to live long enough for the term to expire then extending it is meaningless) and stronger penalties (ignoring that if you can put someone in debt for life it dosn't matter what they might still owe when they die).

Re:Hyperbole

[Anonymous Coward]

whisper_jeff can lick my 'hyperboles'.

Re:Hyperbole

[mpe]

They've called the campaign a 'program of education', and that they're not comfortable shutting down or reporting suspected activities without concrete proof.

In which case presumably VM won't object to being educated that the BPI's actions are never going to provide "concrete proof". Indeed they could be about as accurate as random selection.

Re:Hyperbole

[mpe]

Unfortunately "Big Media"(TM) don't have a very good track record in differentiating between illegal downloaders, and legal ones, so people are naturally going to over react to a story like this.

Nor do the entities allegedly identifying "illegal downloaders", who have even managed to finger "non downloaders" even the occasional "couldn't download even if they wanted to"...
It really was bad timing for this news to come out so soon after the results of the University of Washington's study :)

Re:Hyperbole

[gerrysteele]

It is fair enough to break up the raves as most took place on private land as yous say. Though in the UK i understand that being on private land is not in and of itself trespass. The police would need to prove that the person intended to stay there for sometime or cause damage is how i think it works (and a rave would qualify on both parts). The parent's intent is correct, but there are far more insidious and common examples of the UK's loss of freedoms.

Re:Hyperbole

[thtrgremlin]

copyright was originally invented to control usage of the printing press. There were major copyright implications as a result of the printing press, though it may have been the first time that it became an international issue. Before the Statute of Anne, any public performance or copying of works required the permission of the King. Writing in Latin and public performances were the biggest copyright issues before the printing press by many hundreds of years.

Also, big media has argued over every new technology, and how it was going to be the death of creativity. Some adapted, many perished, and every time artists and consumers won overall. There is at this point I feel a drawl, but my hope is that big media can't beat progress or nature, and a government that tries to defy nature will ultimately perish as well.

Further, boxed media with respect to music has been short lived compared to the profitability of live concerts. I don't see a world where touring is required for making money in music as a terrible one. Wasn't a bad place 30 years ago.

Re:Hyperbole

[mikael]

The biggest problem with these raves was the amount of litter and other debris that was left behind both inside and outside the barns, and the damage done to the land due to the number of vehicles driving up to the fields.

Re:Hyperbole

[x2A]

"if raves arnt doing anything illegal, the government has no right to interfere"

I've never had any problems. Last one I can think of where the police turned up, we were on private property, so they couldn't enter without a warrent anyway. There were a few cars along one edge of the field, and during the day a police helicopter flew over for a bit to get a better view of what was going on... realised it was peaceful, did some mini air acrobatics, and flew off. If any fights kicked off, the police would've been there to break it up, so I actually felt safer.

I know people who have had "problems" with the police at parties, but only when they didn't have permission to be on the land they were on, which I have no sympathy for... if you're on someones land without their permission, they should have the right to get the police to kick you off!

Non-private land, such as in woods out in countryside, I've always found police to be totally reasonable. They turn up to check it out, we say "we'll be packed up and gone by 2pm", then at that time they come back to check we're honouring the agreement (we respectfully have our parties out of the way where the noise isn't going to bother people).

If they start getting too big, sometimes the police will block the roads leading to the party though. I guess there can be health/safety reasons behind this, and it's usually possible to park a little further away and get there on foot.

The laws give the police powers ("police have the power to break up parties of..."). It doesn't say they have to use them ("it is a criminal offence to have parties of...").

Sheesh

[alexborges]

Monopoly Leveraging Bi0tch3s From Outer Sussex

Its a monopoly from hell. Its like if Sony owned MaBell (and she still existed).

Virgin: youre just a bunch of oligopolistic freaking fucks.

Re:Sheesh

[nogginthenog]

AFAIK the Virgin companies are not linked, they just paid Richard Branson for the use of the name. Virgin Media is still NTL:Telewest under the hood...

Re:Sheesh

[Jumpin' Jon]

Virgin provide their customers with broadband, phone and TV down their "single cable", so they stand to lose a lot more than most ISPs when they tell their customers they no longer want their business.

Re:Sheesh

[Anonymous Coward]

And NTL:Telewest were originally just Telewest till NTL split off from them, grew bigger and bought them out which still amuses me.

For those unaware, those who are on a Virgin Media connection like myself also have to use their phone lines. VM are the only ISP that can use those lines. It costs somewhere in the region of £130 to switch lines to the BT so you can use other ISP's and that's a mighty sum of money for most. Essentally you get three choices: pony up the money (which is a fairly big chunk of change, be locked into VM's increasingly poor service or skip the internet altogether.

Re:Sheesh

[Gazzonyx]

I've heard of 'Telia' over on the other side of the pond (USian here), are they related to Telewest at all? I mean, is Telewest the distribution company for Telia's backbone, or are the similar beginning names just coincidence? I know in the US it's somewhat common for a parent and child company to have names that start off with the same three or four letters to denote ownership.

Kinky

[larpon]

007 Virgin

Re:Kinky

[BSAtHome]

And I read BPI as British Pornographic Industry. Well, looks like it is more on topic after all; Virgin, 007, pornography, all the same.

Re:Kinky

[alexborges]

I thought 007 WAS what the british took for pr0n!

Good for them...

[Bullfish]

my belief is that this tactic will work out equally as well as it has in the US and elsewhere. Now... the real issue for me is why do so many of these industry people believe that they can implement a stupid idea better than the last guy?

Re:Good for them...

[name*censored*]

I'm surprised it hasn't come up here yet, but in the USA, I believe that ISPs can't snoop on their users' traffic if they wish to maintain their "common carrier" status. Basically, it means that if they do start prosecuting for piracy, then they'll have to make damn sure that they get every single one, otherwise they're legally liable for letting that one slip. But IANAA(merican), so I'm not certain whether this is 100% accurate.

(On topic) I'm surprised ISPs would shoot themselves in the foot like this - at least that's the one advantage of Australia's omniscent pay-for-your-usage plans, the biggest pirates are also making the ISPs the most money so they're unlikely to act against them.

Re:Good for them...

[Penguinisto]

I dunno... this policy works out beautifully if someone you don't like online uses such an ISP, and you happen to know his or her usual IP addy.

1. Fake the victim's addy on eMule (change as the victim's IP changes to account for DHCP, etc)
2. go out of your way to get three C&D's issued from the media oligopoly against that IP
3. Profit!!!

(as a bonus, you get some free music and movies out of the deal, and if you really hate the person you don't like, you get to gleefully see them get slammed for copyright infringement).

And yes, I do believe that the MPAA/RIAA really are stupid enough to inadvertently help you out in such a manner. (see also MediaDefender, et al).

(note that the above is purely a hypothetical and not recommended at all. That said, I wouldn't be surprised at all to see someone do it. Given the laughable tech-illiteracy of the media types? You'd likely never get caught doing it if you tried).

/P

Re:Good for them...

[Anonymous Coward]

The same reason Napoleon, then Hitler thought invading Russia was a good idea.

Broadband access

[mrbah]

Well, that's one way to increase broadband access. Drive everyone to lease their own T1s instead of putting up with this kind of crap.

Re:Broadband access

[Slimee]

God, you know, there may have been a dab of sarcasm in that, but that's not a half bad idea. Bunch of people get together and all throw in the money to rent a T1...It'd be pricey, but nice to break away from the mainstream ISPs that are under constant harassment from record labels.

Re:Broadband access

[smackt4rd]

or just encrypt everything... :)

Re:Broadband access

[somersault]

So.. you want to spend a lot of money to break away from a system where you don't have to spend a lot of money to get music? Leasing your own line probably makes it easier to track you down too.

Re:Broadband access

[aslate]

I'm not quite sure how cable works over there, but Virgin Media provide some of the fastest connections in the area, currently they're touting 50MBit and 100MBit in trial areas in Kent / London. In comparison, the fastest non-cable ADSL connection is 24MBit (although our ISP doesn't care what we do with those 24MBits). Why bother leasing a T1 line instead?

Re:Broadband access

[zmollusc]

Pah. They traffic shape the crap out of your connection http://allyours.virginmedia.com/html/internet/traffic.html if you try to download more than 300Mb (good news for the likes of damn small linux)

Curiously, Virgin's traffic policy page uses 'music files' as a measure of capacity eg 'Even if a Broadband: Size L user has their speed temporarily traffic managed, they can still download over 5,500 music files per day.'

Re:Broadband access

[mikael]

50 MBit and 100MBit is the download speed, but the upload speed is only 64kbits. A T1-line is 192Knytes/second for both uploading and downloading.

Re:Broadband access

[RiotingPacifist]

pah try getting more than 26kb/s up with a ping under 1s.

Re:Broadband access

[jimicus]

Well, that's one way to increase broadband access. Drive everyone to lease their own T1s instead of putting up with this kind of crap. You haven't looked at the price of a leased line in the UK recently, have you?

(Hint: You can take the price of a residential broadband connection and multiply it by at least 10, probably 20 or 30).

Re:Broadband access

[mikael]

Is that for Virgin media or T1?

Re:Broadband access

[znerk]

Leasing your own line probably makes it easier to track you down too. Whereas a (potentially) mobile, wireless connection would be much harder to track, and is simple to implement. Of course, a stationary base station is still required to tie it into the internet, but that doesn't even have to be yours. The more wireless saturates the urban environment, the better off we all are, from a "communications freedom" standpoint.

I'm a linux nub, and I was able to peel off a public wireless connection on my LAN, without giving it any access to my local network. iptables is extremely helpful.

Wireless networking: the new freedom to communicate.
Tell your friends, and help them set up secure internet access points.

Re:Broadband access

[znerk]

You haven't looked at the price of a leased line in the UK recently, have you?

(Hint: You can take the price of a residential broadband connection and multiply it by at least 10, probably 20 or 30). Not sure about the UK, but in the US, I can get broadband for $50/month, or I can get "business" broadband (same stuff, but without dropping my packets on ports 80, 110, etc. and supposedly more reliable) for about $300/month. So take your 10-30 times as expensive, and call it 6.

No, I haven't looked at the prices in the UK. I don't live there, and so have no reason to.

Re:Broadband access

[RiotingPacifist]

Virgin with their crappy throttling

Re:Broadband access

[aslate]

Hence i stick with Be (bethere.co.uk), 24MBit down, 1.3MBit up (can pay for 2.6 or so) for only £18/month and a static IP.

Plenty for BitTorrent!

markets and competition

[drDugan]

Good thing there are still some competition on who provides Internet service. I expect that this behavior would have the obvious effect that users will simply use different providers: providers that focus on their customers and not other business' interests.

Here in the San Francisco area, for example, there are locally owned ISP companies that have focused on high quality service and support and have grown and down well while providing DSL at faster speeds and lower cost than the larger providers.

Re:markets and competition

[Ang31us]

Dugan, you took the words right out of my mouth. The day my ISP cancels my account will be the day that I switch ISPs. Any ISP that does not want my $$$ is more than welcome to cut my line. What a bunch of MORONS!!!

Re:markets and competition

[Inda]

I gave Virgin £150 last month. That's a high month because I made a few non-free phone calls. Normally it's about £130.

• I have their 20mbit connection. Not used too much these days. 5gb a month, 2gb tonight, none for the remainder of the month.
• Cable TV with extra packages. Sky Sports for football. V+ downstairs. Spare box upstairs. Have paid for a couple of movies in the past "on demand". The daughter has also bought music on there before I set the PIN.
• Land line phone with package that makes the majority of calls free.
• Mobile phone that doesn't get used much.

I think you can safely say I'm a good customer. 15 years I've been with them now. Taken everything they've thrown. I was a happy customer until I found them limited bandwidth a couple of months back, Usenet hasn't worked in ages (not that it was much cop), impending Phorm...

BT and Sky are always asking for my money.

Re:markets and competition

[777a]

I really don't like virgin media for ethical reasons (stuff like this, Phorm, calling Net Neutrality 'bollocks'), but unfortunately their internet access is quite good.

Usenet hasn't worked in ages the old usenet access was news.blueyonder.co.uk, it only had a couple of days retention. A couple of months ago they changed to news.virginmedia.com, now with about a week retention.

If I was you I'd definitely phone them, you are paying way too much. I was a sweet customer of theirs for years, there prices on their website had come down considerably, but it'd never been reflected on my bill. Compare your current package with what they currently have on their website, then compare it to a similar package on Sky, phone them and threaten to leave. They'll price match.

shall we at least consider the alternatives?

[v1]

"...they'll come along and cut off the one wire that delivers freedom of speech, freedom of the press and freedom of assembly."

TFA makes it sound like the internet is the only way to exercise these liberties. I suppose blowing up the courthouse is also one way for me to exercise my voice but they seem to have made that one illegal. Shame on them!

Re:shall we at least consider the alternatives?

[R2.0]

For those who have never left their mother's basement, the internet IS the only way.

Of course, if a pasty geek in a basement screams "Oppression", does it really make a sound? Or, does anyone care?

freedom

[mark72005]

"Freedom of speech, freedom of the press and freedom of assembly"

Well, we're talking about the UK here, not the US.

Re:freedom

[xaxa]

So there's Freedom of Expression.

But that's from the Human Rights Act 1998, so it can probably be ignored :-(

That is what comes

[Chrisq]

From using a record company as your ISP. Anyone could have predicted that they would be tougher on illegal downloads than ISPs that are mainly communications companies.

Re:That is what comes

[dkf]

From using a record company as your ISP. They're almost completely unrelated companies; the only thing in common (apart from some shared shareholders) is the fact that they both license the "Virgin" trademark from the same third company.

Re:That is what comes

[Anonymous Coward]

What is a little odd is that Virgin just upgraded all their usenet servers.

There was a message posted to all the groups on the old news.ntlworld.com server about a month ago.

It said to change your newserver to news.virginmedia.com and that the new servers had longer retention on the binary groups amoung other things!

I changed over and the binary groups are much better now. alt.binaries.abandonware is not carried anymore though, so you can only get mostly illigal stuff. :(

The right hand giveth and the left hand taketh away.

I guess this is why people don't talk about usenet.

Re:That is what comes

[daliman]

Or at least, that's what they tell the tax department :)

Re:That is what comes

[RiotingPacifist]

actually if you need your broadband sorting you have to go down to your local virgin media centre to sort it out, so they are more related than that.

Re:That is what comes

[nogginthenog]

They are farming out their Usenet service to a US company. If you do a traceroute to news.virginmedia.com it ends up somewhere in hwng.net which seems to be based in Phoenix.

Alternative UK broadband suppliers?

[MjDelves]

Can anyone recommend a (good) UK broadband supplier that doesn't intrude on your privacy then?

Re:Alternative UK broadband suppliers?

[FluffyWithTeeth]

Can anyone recommend a (good) UK broadband supplier that doesn't intrude on your privacy then? With the way the competition laws work here, I could name you a few hundred. None of them, however, have access to Virgin's fibre network so its all going to be DSL. Depressingly though, with the state Virgin's network is in, ADSL2+ actually offers better average speed for a lot of people..

Re:Alternative UK broadband suppliers?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, try BE. Had no issues with them so far (6 months): my connection is reliable and, being paranoid, when I read their T&C, there was nothing unduly alarming. For a change.

Re:Alternative UK broadband suppliers?

[DavidWeight]

I've had very good experience with Be broadband, we've been (ab)using the 24mb unlimited service for a while now, and they don't seem to have any interest in throttling/traffic shaping. Although they aren't available from that many exchanges yet, and its DSL as opposed to the fibre from Virgin. Usual disclaimer, no connection with Be aside from satisfied customer

Re:Alternative UK broadband suppliers?

[TheRaven64]

There are a few, but they all require a BT phone line. For those of us who dispensed with landlines some years ago, Virgin is still the cheapest. BT line rental is £10.50 per year, which has to be added to the cost of any ADSL price to find out what you will actually end up paying.

Re:Alternative UK broadband suppliers?

[ZERO1ZERO]

10.50 GBP a year??? I think you have made a mistake... isn't it something along the lines of £50 - £100 'reconnection fee', plus about £10.50 a month? (i.e. £30-40 a quarter?)

Plus your ISP charge which will be £15-£40 a month depending on service.

Re:Alternative UK broadband suppliers?

[RiotingPacifist]

Be works out about the same but you dont end up with a sore arse.

Re:Alternative UK broadband suppliers?

[Laurence0]

To echo the sibling poster, I'm another one of Be's satisfied customers. I've been downloading plenty with BitTorrent and running an http server (and ssh and so forth) from my home connection with no issues at all. It's also only £18/month, which is pretty good! I'm getting about 15Mb/s down because of the distance from the exchange (most of a mile, I think) and 1Mb/s up. My only criticism of the service is that the Be Box wireless router they send has a habit of losing its DNS server every so often, but I've just made a copy of resolv.conf set up to use Be's DNS servers directly in my home dir, and I copy that to /etc/ when it fails (I'm using a laptop, so I want to use DHCP most of the time for when I'm elsewhere - the desktops do permanently use Be's servers).

Again, no connection other than being a satisfied customer.

They could be so much more...

[fractalrock]

"largest cable-modem provider"? Hey, I've got an idea...combine that w/ the largest DSL provider!
Then you would really have something...

over-reaching FUD

[damn_registrars]

Ordinarily I oppose just about anything that the RIAA and their cohorts do. However, when I see a line like

download a few songs and they'll come along and cut off the one wire that delivers freedom of speech, freedom of the press and freedom of assembly
And I'm no longer in support of the author of this article.

Really, how does the internet deliver freedom of assembly? And how does not having the internet really stop your ability to use freedom of assembly? I'm pretty sure assemblies have been held without the internet in the past.

And thats just to point out one absurdity in that sentence. There are plenty of good reasons to be angry about ISPs that want to shut off customers for various reasons - I don't think the author should have needed to make any up.

Re:over-reaching FUD

[BorgDrone]

Really, how does the internet deliver freedom of assembly? IRC, instant messaging, webforums,etc.

And how does not having the internet really stop your ability to use freedom of assembly? I'm pretty sure assemblies have been held without the internet in the past. Sure, it's still possible to 'assemble' offline, but the threshold is a lot higher. Furthermore, you're excluded from online 'assemblies'.

Re:over-reaching FUD

[bugnuts]

Aye, that line was idiotic. Did phones stop existing? Airwaves gone, too? Granted, this is the UK, so I have no idea if people are sequestered to their houses with only a cable modem, but somehow I doubt it....

The only wire that cuts off all those freedoms is your spinal column.

Re:over-reaching FUD

[damn_registrars]

Really, how does the internet deliver freedom of assembly? IRC, instant messaging, webforums,etc.

That is delivering ability of assembly. It is not delivering freedom of assembly.

And even if your ISP denies you internet access, you can still access the same online resources through other mechanisms - public libraries, coffee shops, maybe even (gasp!) other peoples' homes.

I don't see how the freedom of assembly is lost here.

Re:over-reaching FUD

[Floritard]

Really, how does the internet deliver freedom of assembly? The irony being, you've posted this question on a public forum.

Re:over-reaching FUD

[Kamineko]

It's a pretty fair statement.

> the one wire that delivers ... freedom of assembly

How can you download GAS when your internet's cut off?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Assembler

Re:over-reaching FUD

[Hijacked Public]

It isn't at all ironic if you understand the point the parent is making.

A right (what we're calling freedom in this case) is something you already have, it doesn't require anyone to give you anything. People who are too broke to buy an internet connection still have all of the listed rights. Government and corporations cannot give you rights, they can only take them away.

This seems like pedantic nitpicking but it is a critical thing to understand when talking about rights, and losing them. The sentence in question cheapens them by equating their existence with a live internet connection.

Re:over-reaching FUD

[Anonymous Coward]

You Slashdot geeks are really really out of touch. A tiny fraction of a percent of the population has *heard* of IRC, let alone uses it. The trendy online political movements get a lot of press coverage, but freedom of assembly is practically always still exercised by people meeting together in person.

Most people don't know or care about your geeky fringe subculture. Get used to it.

Re:over-reaching FUD

[damn_registrars]

It isn't at all ironic if you understand the point the parent is making.
Considering the way my original post was moderated, I would say that there isn't much understanding around here of my point. It began at +2, quickly rose to +5, then was hit with so many "overrated" moderations that it now is back to +2.

I'm starting to understand now why people are so angry about the "overrated, underrated" moderations. Especially considering they never seem to get evaluated in the meta-moderation process.

And yes, I'm aware that this post will likely end up "offtopic".

Re:over-reaching FUD

[MrWeelson]

This should work alongside Godwin's Law : "As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one." "As a /. discussion on P2P starts, the probability of a comparison involving free speech or freedom of assembly exceeds one." I cry bollocks (testicles/nuts to the USians ;-) ) to the OP. Andy

Re:over-reaching FUD

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but he hasn't changed out of his pyjamas yet.

It bears repeating time and again

[MikeRT]

Until intellectual property law is forced to conform to the same expectations that private property has, it will never have universal legitimacy in the culture the way that physical property has (except with thieves and Socialists; I repeat myself...)

A modest proposal:

1) Outlaw implied contracts. When I buy a movie, CD, program, etc., unless I sign something in writing, prior to the purchase, any "contract" should be null and void, and any effort to enforce it should be criminal activity.

2) Copyright infringement by sharing copyrighted data is treated as theft, with goods valued for the purpose of assessment under existing property laws at current market value. Copyright infringement by accident, like posting a single picture you weren't supposed to on your site is not a crime at all or at the worst gets you a slap on the wrist.

3) Copyright holders cannot restrict how any one copy of their work is used by buyers, except to make them respect the artificial scarcity of copyright law. Meaning, if I want to resell iPhones with jail-broken OSs and tons of apps, Apple cannot legally interfere with my customers' enjoyment of their iPhone and its OS anymore than Honda could interfere with my customers if I were selling modified racing civics (except to cut off their warranty).

Re:It bears repeating time and again

[Actually, I do RTFA]

3) Copyright holders cannot restrict how any one copy of their work is used by buyers, except to make them respect the artificial scarcity of copyright law.

I'm not sure I believe in this. The ability to create derivative works is not just to protect the value of the intellectual property. It is also to protect the integrity. Think about how horrible it would be if you could take classic films (like Star Wars), and add tons of CG effects, and resell them.

Re:It bears repeating time and again

[zotz]

Sorry,

Your number 2 is not going to fly...

Here is a counter proposal...

http://zotzbro.blogspot.com/2007/04/some-thoughts-on-copyright-offensive.html

all the best,

drew

Re:It bears repeating time and again

[scruffy]

Until intellectual property law is forced to conform to the same expectations that private property has, it will never have universal legitimacy in the culture the way that physical property has (except with thieves and Socialists; I repeat myself...) IP should not have the same expectations. Otherwise, we would still be paying the estate of Aristotle. We need keep it possible to build on the achievements of previous generations. This won't work if we have to pay fees to the many thousands (millions?) that have added their intellectual work to our technology and culture.

And I think you mean "real property" instead of "private property".

Re:It bears repeating time and again

[monxrtr]

Virgin ISP cannot "inspect" any packets of information except by copying the data into an anlysis program. Virgin will end up committing trillions of acts of copyright infringement by actively monitoring user data. So in essence Virgin is just throwing away the entirety of their corporate assets to their UK subscribers. If I lived in the UK and was a Virgin customer, I'd be contacting the lawyers and looking forward to retirement after selling off Virgin assets through the bankruptcy courts.

I assume Virgin is subject to the EU penalties for copyright infringement, and will be voluntarily disconnecting itself after the first three inspections that bring negative results, and are themselves copyright violation.

Let the immortal words be, "Sue the bastards!"

And if Virgin can inspect content for copyright violations without penalty then their customers certainly have the same right under the law to similarly download and inspect any files whatsoever, to ensure their copyrighted writings aren't be infringed, no matter the title of the files, no matter the size of the file.

Re:It bears repeating time and again

[Anonymous Coward]

Well they better send me an updated contract to sign or when they take me to court I will be mentioning unfair clauses and changes without notification.

I will also point out that they have to prove I was doing something wrong so I'll just keep a clean laptop lying about and ship the dirty one(s) off to a mates.

A interesting question that presents itself though is "What will virgin do when they have disconnected all of their customers???" Is this not a case of "cutting your nose off to spite your face?"

Re:It bears repeating time and again

[tlhIngan]

3) Copyright holders cannot restrict how any one copy of their work is used by buyers, except to make them respect the artificial scarcity of copyright law. Meaning, if I want to resell iPhones with jail-broken OSs and tons of apps, Apple cannot legally interfere with my customers' enjoyment of their iPhone and its OS anymore than Honda could interfere with my customers if I were selling modified racing civics (except to cut off their warranty).

Apple didn't do it. They released an update, they warned people not to update if they modded their phones. The update isn't mandatory - iTunes just says "There is an update for your iPhone [Install] [DOwnload Only] [Cancel]" and they even have a little checkbox that lets you disable it. It's like a modded Civic coming back to Honda for an ECU update, only to find that hey, the update breaks all the mods (and possibly disables the car).

The updates aren't forced, and Apple has no way to tell what can happen if you mod your iPhone and decide to upgrade - your mod may very well screw up the ability to update (as the "unlock code" did for the baseband processor (this written by the people who created all the iPhone hacks). And yes, Apple does void the warranty if you bring it in for service with mods.

Ironically, one of the things Apple did in a later update was manage to fix this.

Anyhow, is anyone really surprised by Virgin's move? They're a big conglomerate, like Sony, but this time, it looks like all the individual pieces are working together in their collective self-interest. Virgin Internet and Virgin Records (a music store at least), and there's probably a music label with Virgin's name on it, too.

Re:It bears repeating time and again

[MightyYar]

Think about how horrible it would be if you could take classic films (like Star Wars), and add tons of CG effects, and resell them. I would actually support this, so long as each copy were modified in-place. This wouldn't work well with a DVD (you would have to make a couple of copies). But you might have been able to add some effects to VHS. So long as there are no copies made, it's all good, right? You still have the right to sell the tape.

By the way, is there any indication that it is illegal to sell a jailbroken iPhone? That doesn't sound right. At least, people are selling them on eBay right now, and eBay is usually pretty responsive to copyright holders, right?

Re:It bears repeating time and again

[Actually, I do RTFA]

So long as there are no copies made, it's all good, right? You still have the right to sell the tape.

There was that editing firm in Utah that took all the sex/violence/profanity out. And they got shut down good.

Re:It bears repeating time and again

[MightyYar]

Nope, they are still at it! I think they have a law which specifically protects this kind of service.

The ones that closed were actually making copies of the discs and editing them, whereas clearplay does it on-player.

Re:It bears repeating time and again

[znerk]

Think about how horrible it would be if you could take classic films (like Star Wars), and add tons of CG effects, and resell them. You mean like Lucas Arts did? Yeah, that was horrible!

Re:It bears repeating time and again

[SenorCitizen]

Virgin Internet and Virgin Records (a music store at least), and there's probably a music label with Virgin's name on it, too.

There is, of course. Virgin Records the label is now owned by EMI.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgin_records

Re:It bears repeating time and again

[Actually, I do RTFA]

The ones that closed were actually making copies of the discs and editing them, whereas clearplay does it on-player.

I wasn't thinking of Clearplay, I was thinking of the other ones. Never knew clearplay existed. Pretty nifty idea, actually.

Re:It bears repeating time and again

[Anonymous Coward]

1) Outlaw implied contracts. Although I like the idea, there is no connection between copyrighted music and an implied contract. If the obligations and powers arising from copyright is defined by law of the state, it becomes an explicit contract that binds everyone belonging to the jurisdiction of that particular state. To say the opposite equals saying that theft or murder is okay as long as there is no explicit contract between the thief and the victim that would compel them to act otherwise (actually there is a contract -- the law of the state).

So outlawing implied contracts will not help anyone as long as copyright is enforced as a law the state. The only way around is to throw out laws about copyright and replace them with private explicit contracts -- in order to remove the power of state from the equation. The record industry guys are just using the machinery of the state to enforce their mega-contract to all buyers of copyrighted content.

Re:It bears repeating time and again

[nasch]

Why would you want to treat intellectual and real property the same, when they're not the same? Making laws that pretend something is other than what it is will almost certainly have bad consequences, even if we can't foresee exactly what those might be. IP law in the US needs reform, but this isn't it.

Re:It bears repeating time and again

[nasch]

My sarcasm meter is twitching, but I'm not sure. Are you serious? What would be so horrible about that? We can choose which movies/TV shows/books to watch/read, so as long as nobody claims their work is created by someone else, I don't see the problem. Unless you're worried about people not bothering to find out who's responsible for the content they're getting. IMO such consumers deserve what they get. Why protect laziness?

Re:It bears repeating time and again

[mooterSkooter]

"Think about how horrible it would be if you could take classic films (like Star Wars), and add tons of CG effects, and resell them"

...yeaah but you wouldn't have to watch it would you? Some 'home-made' version may actually add something.

Re:Cut the one wire that delivers alternative cont

[Anonymous Coward]

To be fair, what "justice" is can be defined quite differently over the years.

The argument for not punishing file sharing is somewhat analogous (with a few less relevant differences) to people walking into vinyl stores some decades ago, and using a piece of custom equipment to duplicate vinyls onto their own blank platters, at a cheaper price, without paying, and then leaving. Would this have been considered "justice" at the time? I doubt it. What are the differences? Not many relevant ones, cluttering up the store would be one (though what is the argument for storeowners arbitrarily deciding who can and who can't come into their store?), while the majority would simply be difference of distribution channel.

While I download things occasionally, I acknowledge that it's against the law, and would not whine if I was caught. There's plenty of "repressiveness" around - for example, I would like to modify GPL code and sell it, including my change, but in that case, ownership seems to be extremely important and "rightly" be met with extreme retributiveness. A lot of what is said, like "anti-trust" here, is plain crap as well, illogical idiocy that people leverage as an argument just because it sounds good. As a consequence, I think none of the crowd are very sympathetic people at all.

Totally Cheddar

[lymond01]

In other words, you download a few songs and they'll come along and cut off the one wire that delivers freedom of speech, freedom of the press and freedom of assembly.

I don't mean to be critical, but isn't this just a touch over the top? I don't like the idea of people tracking downloads and cutting of Internet connections any more than you, but for the moment, downloading is still illegal. If someone managed to catch you and charge you $10,000 per song (or whatever the going rate is...I think it's rationed on the same scale as gas prices) or throw you in prison for repeat offenses, would that be any better than losing your ISP?

We need to convince the world that the recording industry is trying to bill us for not buying horseshoes even though we're driving cars. They've said it themselves: they made a mistake by not having download services sooner, and now they've lost a generation of kids who think music grows on the web for free. Let them charge the band for the original recording of the song, the videos, take a share of concert revenue for the advertising work, etc. But taking a percentage of money every time the song is played or recorded elsewhere, in the age of perfect digital copies, is archaic at best.

But don't make me want to go buy duct tape and plastic sheeting because I'm breaking the current copyright laws.

Re:Totally Cheddar

[JasterBobaMereel]

The problem is that if they monitor *what* I am uploading then they are responsible for it

Downloading is NOT illegal, uploading is (this is why they always word it as "making available")

If they monitor traffic they cannot tell if I am uploading legally or illegally
If they monitor types of traffic they cannot tell if I am uploading legally or illegally
Only if the monitor the content can they tell if what I am uploading is legal or illegal at which point they become partly responsible for it...

Let Virgin Fly?

[myspace-cn]

I supported Let Virgin Fly. I don't support letting them fly on this. Get the fuck off our fucking communications devices. YOU HAVE NO BUSINESS THERE!

I am a Virgin Media subscriber

[tezza]

I think Mike the submitter is really overdoing it with his rhetoric.

"the one wire that delivers freedom of speech, freedom of the press and freedom of assembly"
--- Mike, take an antacid and calm down. You'll save yourself a stroke.

*Why could you not legally download the songs?
* If they wanted to disconnect you, could they not just find some other trumped up reason to do so?
* There is plenty of alternate choice for broadband in places where Virgin Media is commonly available

Let's wait to see just how often this gets used before it becomes an issue.

I get throttled all the time after a few DivX downloads, and the solution is to download in non-peak times.

I'm sure slashdot will be informed once the letters actually start being posted.

Re:I am a Virgin Media subscriber

[dwandy]

Why could you not legally download the songs?

Why do you assume guilt? it's not like their methods are infallible.

Re:I am a Virgin Media subscriber

[tezza]

"it's not like their methods are infallible."

I agree with you that the detection algorithms may be heavy on false positives. But it will help your case if you as an end user have 99% legal purchases to demonstrate as evidence.

As I said, let's wait and see how this pans out. If you're really worried, switch ISP now.

Surely people are at much greater danger of some knob planting kiddie-pr0n on your computer, than someone planting illegal downloads.

Re:I am a Virgin Media subscriber

[Anonymous Coward]

by tezza: I get throttled all the time after a few DivX downloads, and the solution is to download in non-peak times.

My solution is to download constantly, so what if it's half speed for 5 hours, it's still 5 hours worth of grabbing stuff.

Re:I am a Virgin Media subscriber

[MrSteveSD]

I get throttled all the time after a few DivX downloads, and the solution is to download in non-peak times.

I'm with Virgin Media too. Their aggressive throttling really does suck. It's completely out of touch with modern internet usage.

Troll and flamebait in the same post!

[postbigbang]

Ummmm, tasty Monday! Couldn't the poster have thrown in a few more choice nuggets as kerosene? Maybe like Geo Bush approves and applauded Virgin, or maybe Sr Richard Branson needed the money??

So, will this be a P2P dragnet?

[oldspewey]

From TFA:

If you use peer-to-peer applications to copy or distribute copyrighted material such as music, films and software, and do so without paying royalties, you are almost certainly infringing the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

I think the real question here is how Virgin intends to "catch" subscribers. Will any form of P2P traffic result in a letter? TFA, while full of feel-good rhetoric about damages to our vibrant economy, is scant on details in this regard.

Re:So, will this be a P2P dragnet?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ars Technica says the BPI will be identifying the infringers, not Virgin. (So the submitter's use of the word 'spying' is a bit misguided.)

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080606-uk-isp-bows-to-record-industry-to-send-p2p-warning-letters.html

Re:So, will this be a P2P dragnet?

[FluffyWithTeeth]

Almost certainly it's harvested IPs from specific bittorrent files and gnutella clients etc. Virgin simply don't have the money to be doing packet inspection, they don't have the hardware. All the crap they've been doing lately is just to get in the news in the hopes of either getting some investors or a buyer. As it stands, the company and it's cable network seems set to collapse in a year or two, they're just bleeding money.

Phew!

[Tx]

At first, I read "British Pornographic Industry", and I was seriously worried! But its only the music, so I think I'm safe.

Re:Phew!

[Anonymous Coward]

What about the background music in those porno's? You might not be as safe as you think.

Re:Phew!

[MarkVVV]

Should i be worried that i read it as PORNOGRAPHIC too? :p

Re:Phew!

[Anonymous Coward]

Ditto. It must be the article that starts off with "Virgin"

6.5 million

[truthsearch]

6.5 million customers whose accounts are (supposedly) used for regular criminal activity When that large a proportion of the population is breaking a law, should the law itself be put into question? Basically, if a society doesn't consider something to be objectionable, shouldn't it be legal? That should be a natural consequence of democracy.

Re:6.5 million

[dss18565]

When that large a proportion of the population is breaking a law, should the law itself be put into question? Basically, if a society doesn't consider something to be objectionable, shouldn't it be legal? The problem I see with this argument is that if it is aplied to this situation then it will e aplied to other situations. Such as illegal drugs. Alot more then 6 million people use drugs in almost any nation, and by your argument dangerous substances would become legal.

Re:6.5 million

[truthsearch]

by your argument dangerous substances would become legal. And they should. If that large a population wants to take drugs, let them. We're supposedly living in free societies. But we're not. Drugs should be a public health issue, not a legal one. Educate the public instead of putting them in jail. People should be allowed to ingest whatever they choose. That's what the majority wants.

Re:6.5 million

[znerk]

by your argument dangerous substances would become legal. And they should. If that large a population wants to take drugs, let them. We're supposedly living in free societies. Indeed. As a matter of fact, California law states that one can be prescribed THC, in any form. The federal government sees it differently, although it's a states' rights issue... Lots of people are a bit upset that the feds busted them for filling their legal (and legally acquired) prescriptions.

What it comes down to is money. 1% of the populace controls 99% of the wealth, and so us peons are starting to chafe at the power distribution. A little wealth redistribution might help with that, but for some reason, none of the people who have all that money want to give any of it up.

Re:6.5 million

[Anonymous Coward]

Which is the reason why they should be legalized. The "war on drugs" is a catastrophic failure. Instead of it being a money sink, it could instead turn into a money source for the gov. That's prime material to be taxed.

Because no one will sneakernet songs

[Maxo-Texas]

This is literally the "Whackamole" of modern business.

They just do not get it.

People do not have $10,000 to load up an IPOD with content.

People will spend to the level they can/feel is ethical and then take the rest.

If they can't get it off the internet, they'll do it face to face in sneaker nets.
Or they'll encrypt/mangle the packets.
Or things we havn't even imagined yet.

Re:Because no one will sneakernet songs

[oldspewey]

Within 5km of where I live, there are several malls (one huge one, several smaller ones) and countless other small stores located in strip plazas, where pirated CDs and DVDs are available by the thousands if not millions. Six new-release DVDs for $10? No problem. Hollywood? Bollywood? Euro art films? East Asian cinema? No problem. CDs and DVDs filled with mp3 music? No problem.

This activity has been going on for years and years without pause despite various "crackdown" efforts I read about in the news. It is so utterly brazen that if I had one shred of sympathy for the **AA I would probably find it galling. But instead I find it funny, and strangely reassuring, to to see such rampant and unstoppable piracy on display in the real world.

Re:Because no one will sneakernet songs

[zotz]

Haha,

someone can't spot a joke... Even when there is a ~;-) there as a hint...

all the best,

drew

Re:Because no one will sneakernet songs

[Maxo-Texas]

Such a thin line between sarcastic irony and being modded flamebait.

Ah well.. perhaps next time!

Re:Because no one will sneakernet songs

[zotz]

Indeed, where are the meta moderators when you need them hey?

all the best,

drew

Re:Because no one will sneakernet songs

[zmollusc]

Is my tinfoil hat on too tightly? The thought crosses my mind that it is the music/film industry selling all these 'pirated' discs so that they avoid paying percentages/taxes etc.

What's wrong with this?

[diehard2]

I realize this will be an unpopular opinion on slashdot... However, the fact is these people are stealing. There is no justification for downloading "free" music. Its not free, its just convenient. I don't get the difference between downloading with P2P and seeing a sidewalk sale and walking off with CDs. Three warnings and cutting off internet access seems to be reasonable. I think the US companies are a bit draconian with lawsuits, however a misdemeanor similar to shoplifting with a small fine would be warranted if someone is doing this. Seriously, if you want unlimited music, sign up for Rhapsody. Its not that expensive.

Re:What's wrong with this?

[jedidiah]

There are plenty of justifications for downloading music.

1) The work should be in the public domain.

This came up in the RIAA case where they won the $200K judgement.
They tried to win sympathy with the jury by playing some moldy oldie
that rightfully should have gone into the public domain by now but
hasn't.

Re:What's wrong with this?

[Mprx]

Stealing: I take the CD, the owner no longer has the CD.
Copying: I copy the data, now we both have the data.

Copying != theft. Copyright as originally intended "to promote the progress of science and useful arts" is arguably beneficial to society, but copyright as currently implemented mostly benefits the rich elite. With lower barriers to entry for both authorship and distribution the optimal copyright term is now shorter than the original term, but it has instead been increased to be effectively endless. It is no surprise people do not respect such an obviously broken law.

Re:What's wrong with this?

[91degrees]

Stealing? I'll return their property then. What's their email address?

Re:What's wrong with this?

[lusiphur69]

"Seriously, if you want unlimited music, sign up for Rhapsody. Its not that expensive."

Ad. Mod parent spam.

As said before, copying is not stealing - I have deprived noone of their property. Your analogy fails the smell test, as it always does.

Re:What's wrong with this?

[zotz]

"I don't get the difference between downloading with P2P and seeing a sidewalk sale and walking off with CDs"

Do you see the difference between singing a song on a street corner with a hat on the ground and seeing a sidewalk sale and walking off with CDs?

And to be honest, here at least, I think the penalties for being in posession of a knock off CD or DVD are way more harsh than for stealing the same from a store.

all the best,

drew

Re:What's wrong with this?

[Coraon]

Rhapsody huh, one problem. All the music I listen to comes from artists not listed in their catalog. I am tired of people calling me a thief when I: 1. cannot order the music I want to listen to into the country through any available means (all the record/cd stores around me wont order it in) 2. Its not for sale on their website and 3rd parties online wont ship to me. 3. I have tried Rhapsody and Itunes and a few others, there is only one source I've managed to find the music I like on, and thats p2p pirate sources. If your going to spam us with a product saying we should all goto it then perhaps it should be able to meet the needs of a citizen of the world and not what *IAA shoves down my throat. P.S. I do support the artists I listen to, I sent the pagan bank in the UK some money directly and told them of my plight trying to get their music in Canada, the band leaders exact words were "Download away, we are just glad someone is listening."

Re:What's wrong with this?

[diehard2]

What, I could have said Yahoo. Its not spam if i mention a business. I also like Yahoo! and Google. Perhaps you could mod this spam too. So, by your analogy, if you copy a windows XP cd, that is not stealing either? Now, I know lots of people do it, however that doesn't make it right.

Re:What's wrong with this?

[diehard2]

I'll reply again, its not spam to mention a business. I also like Google and Yahoo. I could have just as easily said Yahoo. I also find it hard to believe that your musical tastes are so obscure that you cannot find the music you want anywhere or get someone to order it for you. Where are you working, the South Pole?

Re:What's wrong with this?

[Sciros]

Distributing music / downloading music (infringing on copyright) is not theft, it's copyright infringement. Unless you want to change the legal definition of these words, and you're welcome to try and do so, what you say is INCORRECT.

They have very different consequences on all parties involved, and they carry far, far different penalties by law.

People with wholly inaccurate views on this matter, views skewed by media corporations -- people such as yourself -- are a big part of the problem when it comes to moving forward from the fiasco that online media distribution is becoming.

Re:What's wrong with this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Copyright as originally intended "to promote the progress of science and useful arts"

Copyright was originally intended as a censorship tool. The Statute of Anne made it into an economic tool. The USA Constitution made it into a social progress tool. The USA Constitution is far from the original intentions of copyright, and irrelevant when talking about UK copyright law, which is centuries older than the USA.

Re:What's wrong with this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Copying: I copy the data, now we both have the data. Call it what it is; Sharing. Sharing is caring.

Re:What's wrong with this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Stealing: I take the CD, the owner no longer has the CD. Copying: I copy the data, now we both have the data.

Copying != theft.

So, stealing the CD deprives the true owner of his or her CD. We can agree upon that.

Copyright is a grant to an author of the following (17 USC 106) exclusive rights:

(1) to reproduce the copyrighted work in copies or phonorecords;
(2) to prepare derivative works based upon the copyrighted work;
(3) to distribute copies or phonorecords of the copyrighted work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending;
(4) in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and motion pictures and other audiovisual works, to perform the copyrighted work publicly;
(5) in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and pictorial, graphic, or sculptural works, including the individual images of a motion picture or other audiovisual work, to display the copyrighted work publicly; and
(6) in the case of sound recordings, to perform the copyrighted work publicly by means of a digital audio transmission.

Infringement of a copyright deprives the author of one of those exclusive rights. It is certainly not larceny, burglary or robbery. Webster's definition of theft 1b is an unlawful taking (as by embezzlement or burglary) of property. Copyright is a property right held by the author of the work. Those rights are exclusive, and depriving the author of that exclusive right can, in some sense, be called theft.

In any case, this obsession with the term "copyright infringement" vs "theft" only detracts from the real point of all of this -- the penalties for copyright infringement are excessive given the impact of the crime.

Of course, you'll neither be guilty of copyright infringement or theft if you simply don't make illegal copies. Sure, occasionally, you may do it on accident, or make a fair use. Those should be treated appropriately. What I'm saying is if you get a good part of your music and video library from p2p, you should first work to change the law, then copy legally. If you choose to violate the law, that's your choice, but at least admit to it.

Re:What's wrong with this?

[ZERO1ZERO]

However, the fact is these people are stealing. There is no justification for downloading "free" music. Its not free, its just convenient.

It's not stealing. It is not stealing! The music isn't free either, unless one doesn't pay for their PC / internet access, and storage space.

I don't get the difference between downloading with P2P and seeing a sidewalk sale and walking off with CDs.

Well think about it a bit more then? the difference being that one is copyright infringment (i.e. COPYING) and the other is stealing (which also deprives the owner of the actual physical object, the CD)

Three warnings and cutting off internet access seems to be reasonable.

Only if the aim is to lose as many customers as possible. (ISP customers)

Seriously, if you want unlimited music, sign up for Rhapsody. Its not that expensive. Well I already have unlimited music, and I don't have to pay for it. It's called usenet / TPB / mininova.. So why would I pay when I could get it for free?

It's digital bits, it's a COPY of data, who cares? So I should be fined and jailed for dragging an icon from one place on my desktop to another, creating a copy in the process? It's totally ridiculous.

Re:What's wrong with this?

[Anonymous Coward]

as an independent label owner and a music producer which mainly works with smaller releases and whatnot i strongly disagree with the sentiment that copyright mostly benefits the rich elite.

im not rich, nor elite and know many many more like myself whom copyright does indeed protect.

Re:What's wrong with this?

[cdrguru]

Sorry, but the current definition of spam is "It is if I say it is."

If someone calls an email spam, then it is spam. Period. And that definition is accepted by most of the block lists.

I'd say the current sentiments are that mentioning anything to do with a commercial enterprise is spam.

Re:What's wrong with this?

[shark72]

"But copyright as currently implemented mostly benefits the rich elite."

I lost you on that one. I use the copyright law (in the forms of the GPL, CC and the more old-fashioned kind) to protect my software. I'm hardly rich or elite. And there are millions of people just like me.

You might be thinking of the sense of Microsoft or Oracle, since Bill Gates are incredibly wealthy. But keep in mind that both companies have thousands of people on the payroll... most of whom are firmly in the middle class. And there are plenty of software companies, big or small, where the most highly paid employees aren't so rich.

When you watch MTV Cribs it's easy to get the impression that everybody who earns their keep as an artist is doing well. But the reality is that the vast majority of musicians, as well as novelists, poets, sculptors and myriad other artists barely scrape by. Copyright law protects them all.

Re:What's wrong with this?

[shark72]

Well, the parent is correct. Rhapsody is 14 clams a month and I can listen to pretty much anything I want, when I want, as long as I want. In the rare case that I want something forever, I buy the track in DRM-free MP3 form on Amazon. Pandora is also great, and legal. I like it so much that I pay them the 36 bucks a year to get it on my Squeezebox. I don't have the slightest need to do anything illegal to get my music.

Re:What's wrong with this?

[maypull]

Stealing: I take the CD, the owner no longer has the CD.
Copying: I copy the data, now we both have the data. I don't know about the US, but in the UK you're absolutely right. IANAL, but I was a police officer, and here in the UK the legal definition of theft is

To dishonestly appropriate with the intention to permanently deprive Clearly there is no intention (or indeed possibility) of permanent deprivation, and the applicability of "appropriation" in this context is suspect too.

This bandying around of the word theft and the annoying faux-hip "CoPyRiGhT is StEaLiNg!!!11!!" things you get at the beginning of DVDs make me bristle every time.

Re:What's wrong with this?

[A beautiful mind]

Copyright as originally intended "to promote the progress of science and useful arts" is arguably beneficial to society

Copyright, if it worked as it is theoretically supposed to would be somewhat beneficial to society. The problem is that it seems that noone has shown that copyright is a viable theory of economy/sociology.

Re:What's wrong with this?

[shark72]

Interesting. I consider myself to be a bit of a musical detective...what are some of the bands whose work you had trouble finding legally, thus forcing you to pirate? You mentioned The Pagan Bank... do I have that name right?

Re:What's wrong with this?

[Coraon]

sorry should have read the pagan band, the bands name is incubus succubus.

Re:What's wrong with this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Those rights are exclusive, and depriving the author of that exclusive right can, in some sense, be called theft.

No it can't. You didn't take the exclusive rights from the author. Think about it. By making an illegal copy, does that mean you now have those exclusive rights? Of course not. So you didn't take them from him, so you didn't steal them.

Here's an idea: instead of twisting yourself into contortions trying to find a way in which copyright infringement could conceivably be called theft, how about you simply acknowledge the fact that they are different offences with different consequences and different names? Is that really so difficult? Why are you so insistent that they be called the same thing?

Re:What's wrong with this?

[Anonymous Coward]

wrong.

stealing is the wrongful taking of something that does not belong to you.

If I make a copy of your social security number and financial information, I'm sure you would call that theft.

Re:What's wrong with this?

[Mprx]

The copying of the numbers is not theft, the use of those numbers to steal money is theft.

it'll be a step too far for most ISPs as well

[thermian]

Cut off over 6 million paying customers?

No way that's ever going to happen. No industry in its right mind would destroy itself to satisfy the needs of another.

Re:it'll be a step too far for most ISPs as well

[Sockatume]

Actually booting off pirates would be in Virgin's best interests. They're the only people who actually try to use the bandwidth they've paid for. By removing those, they can continue to sell 2MBit connections to email users. Given how much they've whinged about video on demand showing up their shitty infrastructure, I suspect all ISPs to move this way.

Re:it'll be a step too far for most ISPs as well

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless of course it IS the same industry and one method of income is more profitable than the other.

Re:it'll be a step too far for most ISPs as well

[Anonymous Coward]

6 million? Come on. The habitual copyright-infringing filesharers are a tiny minority of Internet users. Any ISP could cut theirs off and come out ahead financially.

joker

[Anonymous Coward]

"three strikes and out"

Aircrack let you download song three time the number of neighbor you have.

Virgin are a disgrace - Vote with your feet!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm unlucky enough to be a Virgin ADSL customer at the moment, they already cap their 'unlimited' service and shape torrents down to 1K/Sec anyway. I'll be leaving their terrible service soon and I urge everyone else to do the same.

Re:Virgin are a disgrace - Vote with your feet!

[malkavian]

Interestingly, I'm a subscriber to Virgin Cable.. And they throttle the connection down to approximately 100k download, and 8-10k upload during peak times if you've been 'very naughty' (i.e. running downloadx that've grabbed a few hundred meg in the last day). Peak times are between about 8pm and midnight. After that, it opens right up again.
Currently, I have the torrents start at about 1am, and stop at 5pm, and nobody bats an eyelid.
I don't download music (mainly TV episodes when I've missed one on the TV, Linux ISOs, Open Source software like Open Office etc.), and the day that they turn round and tell me I'm being naughty downloading torrents is the day I turn round and tell them they're being nosy, and that to avoid nosy people, I'm going to take my money to a less objectionable provider that treats me with a little more respect.
It'll be sad to lose the email addresses, but hey, I can just email everyone and let them know the new ones..
Hopefully they're a little more clued in than to push this too far. They're having enough trouble fighting Sky services without having people jump ship from their ISP, taking their cable TV and phone revenues with them to the direct competitor. Should that drain really start to happen, I can see them telling the BPI, at the highest level, exactly where they can put their deal.
If they don't, it may become a great textbook example of what happens when you let a greedy cartel without any of your interests at heart make your business decisions for you.

Re:Virgin are a disgrace - Vote with your feet!

[gbloon]

I have Virgin ADSL and they are a lot more disgraceful than that. From 3pm until the next 1am I am lucky to get d/l speed better than 10k on bt or ed2k. Sometimes it's even slower than dialup -- I can barely even get my email and dns keeps timing out when I try to use www. I get so frustrated with it I want to scream. 1am until 3pm it works OK. I would vote with my feet in a heartbeat, except that I cannot afford to be even 1 day without email, and if I try to switch I just know I will end up with no service for days or weeks just like last time. And I cannot even find any info on their stupid web site about how to cancel. No email address, not even a phone number, except one for technical (non-)support on a premium rate line, of course...

Virgin this...

[hyades1]

The wonderful thing about huge, sprawling conglomerates like Virgin is that there's no shortage of ways to hit back at them when they pull this kind of bullshit.

Do you have a Virgin cell phone? Pound it to slag and mail it back to the bastards, along with a letter explaining why you won't be needing their services anymore. Tell your travel agent that you won't accept a flight on any Virgin plane, and drop them a line telling them about it. Show up at good old Sir Richard's next publicity stunt with appropriately humorous and offensive signs.

The beauty of it is that if enough people act, the pressure doesn't have to be kept up for long to have a real effect on the bottom line. How long would it take before losses in other areas overtake any possible gain from Virgin's Nazi-esque assault on free speech?

Re:Virgin this...

[jez9999]

I keep getting junk mail in the post to come to Virgin because of their 'blazing fast' internet speeds and cool cable TV. I stick with Be Unlimited, and Sky. I am happy. :-)

I do use Virgin Mobile for my mobile phone, though, because of its simple PAYG tariff. Maybe I'll reconsider that one...

Re:Virgin this...

[MasterOfMagic]

Virgin's Nazi-esque You were winning up until here. Now you have lost.
Seriously, brutally repressing people, murdering them by the millions, starting wars of aggression with your neighbors, and wreaking havoc and destruction all over the world is the same as disconnecting somebody because they are suspected of violating copyright? Wow, talk about loss of perspective.

I agree with the rest of your points: Virgin shouldn't do this (though they're servicing the UK, so it's legal, and even if they were doing this in the US, they're not acting as an agent of the state so this would likely pass Constitutional muster), people should switch providers, and they should send a message to the company by canceling all of their services and writing letters explaining why they're canceling their service.

Re:Virgin this...

[Anonymous Coward]

But then you have got Sky (Sat TV), BT (Phone - its their copper), an ISP over BT to deal with and an other mobile phone company.

The UK (and EU) has excellent mobile competition (IHMO) so thats good.

Now you might find a nice ISP to deal with, but thats no good with crappy BT copper that doesnt work well. (I live in a village 5km from Cambridge - The supposed IT R&D centre of the UK)

And don't get me started with Sky....

Don't get me wrong, Virgin are just as bad. The fastest my 20Mb Virgin connection has ever gone is 12Mb, and its normally chugs along at about 8Mb and at peak times I get 6Mb if I'm lucky.(Except when I download from the Virgin mirror, hosted on the Virgin network that ALWAYS runs at 20Mb - And the mirror doesnt hold much anyway)

And then the Virgin+ STB is, well, erm, buggy and thats being kind.

So at the end of the day in the UK, you have the following choices :-
a) crap
b) crap

Re:Virgin this...

[hyades1]

I suppose you believe the Nazis started by murdering millions? That they laid out their plans to the people who initially elected them? It's about the mindset, not the ability of those who hold it to inflict damage.

As media conglomerates systematically acquire all the news outlets in specific target markets, it is increasingly difficult to find sources of unfiltered information without resorting to the internet. The cornerstone of the Nazis' success, and what enabled a small group of fanatics to create and govern a war machine of unparalleled strength, was their control of information, and their ability to supplant objective fact with propaganda. With its attempt to cut people off from the internet as "punishment" for a trivial and probably un-actionable crime, Virgin proposes to take the first step down a road built and mapped by the Nazis. Only an incredibly naive person would assume that, having attained their objective, Virgin would not seek to apply their victory more widely, or that others won't use Virgin's precedent to do so. The first casualty will be the free flow of information.

I won't even bother telling you how many people in North America and around the world don't have the option of simply switching to another provider. If you can do so, you're lucky. If I annoy Ma Bell, my Internet access goes "poof!"

By the way, my father watched from across the channel as Hitler and his pack of thugs gradually manipulated popular opinion to get control of Germany and Austria, and gave up a great deal to fight them when they attempted to invade England. I don't need a lecture from you on perspective, thank you very much.

Re:Virgin this...

[MasterOfMagic]

Anyone who compares a company like Virgin to the Nazi war machine is someone who has lost perspective.

There's a difference between Virgin cutting off your Internet connection and fascism. If Virgin cuts off your Internet connection, you do (in the UK) have other options. If they cut off enough people because this is as widespread as thought, then those people can band together and start their own ISP. That is the nature of free enterprise. Or, if you're smart, you use a VPN or encryption when you pull down your copyright infringing tracks. Encryption is not outlawed, and if they have massive numbers of their customers canceling, refusing to use Virgin branded services, and writing a letter informing the company as to why, this policy could go away quickly. Again, I agree that this is bad, and action must be taken to prevent other ISPs from doing this. Punishing ISPs by canceling service is a good way. Writing letters is a good way. Comparing Virgin to Nazis lets Virgin portray its opponents not as level-headed, logically minded people, but rabid loonies with an agenda to push and things to hide.

In governments controlled by fascists, the people aren't able to band together and change the government. People who try to change it get slaughtered. You do a disservice to those who work to bring change in such repressive regimes by comparing getting booted because you couldn't avoid downloading the latest Christina Agulara track after two warnings to being brutally slaughtered and buried in a mass grave in the middle of nowhere because you wanted to speak your mind. You look like a fool by comparing not being able to check Slashdot to being exterminated in Auschwitz.

I don't need a lecture from you on perspective, thank you very much. With all due respect, you still have much to learn from your father.

Re:Virgin this...

[hyades1]

You missed my point. And if you took the trouble to read what was written, you would understand that I didn't compare Virgin to the Nazi war machine. You also seem completely unable to grasp the concept that nasty, evil things usually don't introduce themselves by kicking down your door.

Perhaps you should also check the definition of "Nazi", which extends well beyond the one you seem wedded to. And your claim that, "...In governments controlled by fascists, the people aren't able to band together and change the government. People who try to change it get slaughtered..." is manifestly inaccurate.

Italian fascist Benito Mussolini would emphatically refute your statement, if he were still around. He was deposed by Italy's Fascist Grand Council, which met in 1943 for the first time since the start of WWII and asked the King of Italy to resume his full constitutional powers. He was rescued from prison by his German friends a bit later, and led a rump government in parts of Italy that were not occupied by the Allies. Mussolini was summarily executed by a bunch of "people who banded together to change the government" couple of years later, when he wouldn't take no for an answer.

Seems simple enough!

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't fucking steal and you'll be all right. And you get 2 free get out of jail cards. Make good use of them all you fucking freeloading, dole-sucking kommies.

Re:Seems simple enough!

[MightyYar]

Are you talking about the politician-buying, 95-year-copyright-term corporate assholes or the people who are ignoring their asinine little power grab?

There's more than one "criminal" here.

Re:Cut the one wire that delivers alternative cont

[snl2587]

The real issues are the domestic, warrantless spying and the attempt to bring down Bittorrent even for legal filesharing. Everything else is secondary.

Just you wait

[AdmV0rl0n]

'Pirates' support Al Quida'.

Before you know it, they'll need 42 days to sift through your windows DLLs and files. After all, being able to say hundreds of thousands of files and by implication 'this is hard' means a reasonable premise(not). But only to the stupid.

The UK already has enormous monitoring and invasive abuse of its citizens, bad enough before 'companies' start attempting to take the law into their own hands and begin illicit and comprehensive invasion of people's privacy to support their monopoly.

As for Virgin, first we've seen they have an agenda in terms of net neutrality (they don't believe in it), and they also happen to believe in everyone else's rights but not their users, PAYING customers.

I hope they do send out their stupid letters, and I hope the ensuing customer response tells them exactly where to get off, along side the numbers of people leaving the services.

Re:Just you wait

[TheRaven64]

The Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT) warnings on the end of DVDs already tell you that piracy supports international terrorism and organised crim. Quite how those adverts haven't been bitch-slapped by the advertising standards agency, I have no idea.

ISPs ARE NOT COMMON CARRIERS!!!

[oyenstikker]

At least not in their role as ISPs.

Re:ISPs ARE NOT COMMON CARRIERS!!!

[Rekolitus]

This is correct. In the US, ISPs are classified as an information service by the FCC.

Re:ISPs ARE NOT COMMON CARRIERS!!!

[CodeBuster]

Then why haven't AT&T, Verizon, and QWest been sued by the RIAA members for facilitating copyright infringement when they should be filtering, monitoring, and blocking? A major point of "common carrier" laws was to codify in a formal legal definition that it was technically impossible (or at least highly infeasible) to filter and monitor communications which travel over a shared network. If one is NOT a common carrier then it implies that one is legally responsible for what happens on one's network. That is why ISPs (Comcast is skating on thin ice here) have to be careful that they do not wander off the reservation in search of more targeted advertising dollars because the courts may rule that if they can scan content to target advertising or prejudice packets then they can filter for copyright infringement as well and be held liable if they do not. IMHO the ISPs would be wise to NOT filter and remain behind the common carrier shield, but it may take a lawsuit or two to scare the ISP suits into listening to their techs and lawyers on this issue.

Re:ISPs ARE NOT COMMON CARRIERS!!!

[znerk]

Then why haven't AT&T, Verizon, and QWest been sued by the RIAA members for facilitating copyright infringement when they should be filtering, monitoring, and blocking? Because they *do* qualify under the "Safe Harbor" Act. Literacy and reading comprehension ftw!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_Copyright_Infringement_Liability_Limitation_Act

Re:ISPs ARE NOT COMMON CARRIERS!!!

[Rekolitus]

ISPs are shielded from liability under the Communications Decency Act.

ISPs have argued themselves that they are not common carriers, and ISPs don't want to be classified as common carriers. Common carrier status comes with all sorts of reliability requirements, etc. Telcos (the PSTN-running part of them, anyway) are common carriers.

Also, because judges are occasionally capable of making reasonable decisions, like decisions that holding ISPs liable for data passing through them isn't really reasonable.

Re:ISPs ARE NOT COMMON CARRIERS!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

In the US, they are.

Once they start policing content (beyond helping agencies like the FBI find child pornographers, etc), they won't be.

Re:ISPs ARE NOT COMMON CARRIERS!!!

[CodeBuster]

The requirements to obtain the safe harbor are specified in an AND relationship (or all applicable requirements must be met) and I was interested in the 4th requirement specifically:

not receive a financial benefit directly attributable to the infringing activity, in a case in which the service provider has the right and ability to control such activity If the ISP monitors file sharing traffic and then uses those records as part of a profile to serve targeted ads during subsequent web browsing sessions (which generate revenue for the ISP) then isn't that directly benefiting from an infringing activity? It seems to me that it could be argued in this way. So, the RIAA could still sue and argue that ISPs do not qualify for the safe harbor when they inspect packets in such a way that it directly benefits the ISP by allowing that "infringing" packet to pass through. Perhaps this has already been argued in court (IANAL)?

Plagiarised Hyperbole

[Kifoth]

Exact same summary (and link) on Boing Boing...

http://www.boingboing.net/2008/06/09/virgin-media-uk-work.html

I'm pretty sure Cory Doctorow used it first.

OT - YRO section

[ubrgeek]

These stories are getting more and more depressing. I suggest changing the section name to, "Your (Lack of) Rights Online."

Re:OT - YRO section

[CartoonFan]

Good idea.

Phew.

[Anonymous Coward]

In other words, you download a few songs and they'll come along and cut off the one wire that delivers freedom of speech, freedom of the press and freedom of assembly.

Ha! At least they'll still have the tubes.

Before everyone says "Aren't Virgin Bastards?"

[jimicus]

The UK government has already said to ISPs "Stop your users downloading illegally or we'll pass legislation forcing you to":

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/communications/0,1000000085,39290371,00.htm

http://www.techwatch.co.uk/2008/02/25/uk-isp%E2%80%99s-must-stop-illegal-downloads/

(You've got to admire that approach to democracy out of sheer morbid fascination, really, haven't you. It amounts to "You're not doing anything illegal, but if you don't stop doing it we'll make it illegal!")

Virgin Media haven't really got any choice here, and I think we'll see similar announcements regarding other ISPs within the next 6-12 months.

Re:Before everyone says "Aren't Virgin Bastards?"

[travelmug]

Where does the UK government draw the line for privacy? At what point aren't they allowed to track every move I make? Really now, do they open every package going through the postal system as well? Do the record labels and the government know I can hear the music on the radio at no cost to me?

Re:Before everyone says "Aren't Virgin Bastards?"

[cdrguru]

The radio is at cost. Either the tax-supported BBC or ad-supported "public" media. Either way, you are paying.

In the US it is either contribution-supported NPR or ad-supported formats. AM radio is a joke because there is about 10 minutes of content for eacy 50 minutes of ads.

Re:Before everyone says "Aren't Virgin Bastards?"

[travelmug]

So in that sense I have already paid for the music and I am just downloading it.

I agree

[Odder]

but you must understand that the attack on P2P is really an attack on free press and has the same purpose as the other, more serious violations. The point is to shut down political opposition, which in turn threaten established economic interests. All weapons are being used to identify, intimidate, harass, silence and eliminate opposition. Cutting a person's net access is the modern equivalent of exile. It will happen to those identified by wiretaps. Those that persist face the threat of search, arrest and torture. If we allow those in power to consolidate these tools, we will not be able to remove them.

Re:I agree

[Macthorpe]

but you must understand that the attack on P2P is really an attack on free press I can only assume that you've found some form of political speech that is distributed in illegally shared music, because otherwise your point would be completely meaningless.

Don't even pretend to mull that over - your point is seriously completely meaningless.

Re:I agree

[Odder]

Don't confuse copyright violation with the power record companies have just granted themselves and will abuse. It is as if they have put a kill switch on every press. You don't have to like their crappy music to get the ax, you just have to piss them off. They can make up the evidence as needed.

Now, I'll ask you to do something useful and justify the practice. What common good does copyright serve in an age of costless and limitless self publication? Is that more important than a free press?

Re:I agree

[thtrgremlin]

Cutting a person's net access is the modern equivalent of exile. Or even cultural excommunication. Something typically reserved for convicted felons that received due process... but in the way we communicated in the past, felons were still capable of rebelling against the system that was against them. In a growing way, internet ban means an inability to fight back.

I remember when I didn't understand how people equated free speech with a right to net access. I am certain this is what they feared. This broad and loose way of getting dissidents off the net opens the door for keeping "other types of criminals" off the net. That doesn't necessarily make sense to me now, but I have a feeling it will be no surprise when lobbyists start pushing and making headway with a list of "others".

Re:I agree

[Narpak]

I feel it is important to state that P2P isn't just used for the illegal sharing of music.

An attack on P2P itself would be oppressive and overkill by several degrees. However just targeting the illegal file sharing is not; unless the methods used are oppressive and over the top.

That being said I feel that individual freedom should always be weighted more heavily than corporate interests. Even if this means that minor forms of criminal behavior have to be tolerated.

Re:I agree

[Anonymous Coward]

"Now, I'll ask you to do something useful and justify the practice. What common good does copyright serve in an age of costless and limitless self publication? Is that more important than a free press?"

Copyright serves the same purpose it has for a long time. It's purpose has never been about making publishing cheaper or easier to access, so I see no rhyme or reason to think easy self-publication has any relevance to it. I should think those things only enforce the need for copyright.

The purpose of copyright is to incentivise the creation of material that produces ideas and culture and the spread of those ideas and culture, purposes shared by free press. To allow people to profit off that material as a reward for their efforts and the contribution. And that effort and contribution isn't limited only to the printing or distribution processes. You eliminate the incentives, you cut back drastically on peoples' willingness to produce, not just the willingness to publish or distribute. Which means that the spread and development of culture and ideas slows down. Granted, copyright and its enforcement has often been overstepping boundaries with ignorance of its true purpose, but the concept itself is still well valid.

Re:I agree

[Mistshadow2k4]

You eliminate the incentives, you cut back drastically on peoples' willingness to produce, not just the willingness to publish or distribute. Which means that the spread and development of culture and ideas slows down.

Yeah, that's why open source software is decades behind proprietary software and there are so few open source developers.... oh, wait, it's not like that. Maybe they have plenty of developers and state-of-the-art software in most areas because they attract the people who care about producing a good product, rather than manufactured stars who just want their money. Kind of like the musicians of old whose copyright privileges only covered someone else trying to steal the credit of composing music. You do know that there were musicians before music could be recorded and controlled by the record companies, right? I wonder why, as their copyright so limited, they would bother, since there wasn't much incentive for them to be musicians at all by your argument.

Re:I agree

[cliffski]

Whose point are you trying to make here? If open source is so superior, why hasn't it killed off windows? After all, open source is often free. SURELY it can't be poor usability?

I bet you think it's all the fault of 'teh evil corporations' and nothing to do with windows and Mac OS being easy to use compared with linux...

Re:I agree

[Macthorpe]

I can't believe you're still replying to me with the account named after me. How stupid are you?

Re:I agree

[Macthorpe]

As I've noted up the page, this article isn't about 'attacking P2P', it's solely regarding the illegal distribution of music.

Virgin have always had a fairly open policy around traffic shaping, and they've never spoken out against P2P other than the illegal use of it.

Re:I agree

[Macthorpe]

How about you don't confuse copyright violations with freedom of the press.

I'll ask you to do something useful now - use one account instead of playing the 'dreadfully easy multiple accounts game'. You've replied to me with two different accounts now (including the one you copied from mine) and there's a third one down the page. Is it actually fucking necessary to have more than one account, or do you just not like being held accountable for the horseshit you write?

Re:I agree

[dedazo]

Implying that we're all getting shipped off to the Gulag for using Azureus: Sensationalist

Deliberately confusing copyright with freedom of speech and trying to make a point that it should be eliminated because you don't like it, when the problem is really in the enforcement: Disingenuous.

Posting on the same thread with four different accounts and trolling Mactrope and willyhill: Dishonest.

I would add that I feel that P2P traffic (or any type of traffic) should not be throttled, regulated, filtered or otherwise meddled with simply because the vast majority of it revolves around copyright infringement is wrong. However, that's also disingenuous because it ignores the problem and makes the case that it could be fixed if the people who produce the content would just be nice enough to bend over and enjoy it.

Re:I agree

[Anonymous Coward]

Because windows is still propped up by copyright and patent monopolies. Let's see closed and open source compete in a true free market, where neither side has copyright or patent monopolies.

Re:I agree

[cliffski]

Cling to that belief if you like, but even amongst IT staff, programmers and geeks, a hell of a lot of them prefer to use windows or Mac at home, even though they cost money. why?
Ease of use. It's as simple as that.
Choice of O/S should be a rational one, not based on some anti-corporate dogma.

Re:I agree

[thtrgremlin]

Well, If I was duped (no pun intended), so be it. Doesn't mean I disagree. I will admit I poorly remember which posts are from who or what their political alignment / agendas are from the past based on meme.

Re:I agree

[Scrameustache]

but you must understand that the attack on P2P is really an attack on free press I can only assume that you've found some form of political speech that is distributed in illegally shared music P2P is "free press", attacks on P2P, such as assuming that only RIAA-owned music is distributed onto the networks, are an attack on free press.

Yours is insignificant, theirs is worrisome.

Re:I agree

[x2A]

"Implying that we're all getting shipped off to the Gulag for using Azureus: Sensationalist

Deliberately confusing copyright with freedom of speech and trying to make a point that it should be eliminated because you don't like it, when the problem is really in the enforcement: Disingenuous.

Posting on the same thread with four different accounts and trolling Mactrope and willyhill: Dishonest."

Getting your post ripped to shreds on slashdot: priceless!

Re:I agree

[x2A]

"I wonder why, as their copyright so limited, they would bother, since there wasn't much incentive for them to be musicians at all by your argument"

Erm, the argument does not imply that everybody is motivated and inspired by the same things as you seem to think it does. Yes of course there are musicians who will produce just because they want to (I've never charged people for my music)... but to imply there are no musicians out there who wouldn't be doing something else if there wasn't the insentives that modern copyright protection offers them? That's just crazy talk, of course there are.

Re:I agree

[symbolic]

Let's see...reduce the current customer base by 6.5 million paying customers and what do you have? That's a pretty major loss by anyone's standards. Go for it, Virgin. Make their day.

Re:I agree

[rootooftheworld]

ease of use? FOSS OSes are damn easier to use considering ~=0 sec. problems, and not via obscurity or 'nobody writes malware for it cuz of unpopularness'. in the case of windows, H/S support are gains, but only because they were there first, besides, any issues with those are almost always easy to work around but people have execive amounts of inertia and lazyness, i guess we can just keep improving out-of-the box expeiriance. and Mac OS X ... , the second somebody sets up compiz/ROX desktop on PC-BSD, and pipeline linux drivers from paravirt VM in the kernel, we'll wipe the floor with it, unless legaly clobbered by apple. anybody know good programers in russia?

Broadband providers and Lost Revenue

[Gybrwe666]

So, let me get this straight:

6.5 million people connections.
Let's just say that, on average, people are paying $15US per connection per month.

That would be $97,500,000 per month in lost revenue to the broadband industry, or a cool $1,170,000,000 per year in lost revenue.

Uh huh. Go on, then, pull the other one.

How long until someone comes up with a way to completely anonymize P2P applications? Or someone comes up with the next way of doing this that is almost, but not entirely, unlike current P2P apps?

I'm amazed that *ANYONE* in the broadband industry is giving credence to the BPI and RIAA and MPAA. They can't afford that kind of subscriber loss, or revenue loss.

You know, I've been a computer user for almost 30 years now. During my first exposure to personal computers, there were guys copying VIC-20 tapes to pirate software. During the 80's, all kinds of software companies devised copy protection schemes to keep pirates from copying software. During the 90's, even more elaborate ruses were used, including hardware dongles, hardware locking, network checking for multiple instances of the same serial number. We've had encryption, DPI, and everything else thrown at the problem.

Nothing has worked. How long are companies going to continue to try to "stop" piracy, when it simply doesn't work. There might be one or two instances of copy protection working, but they are few and far between. It seems that the copyright watchdogs have decided to beat other peoples heads on a brick wall rather than their own, but it still won't work. This elaborate game of "whack-a-mole" is senseless, idiotic, and ends up hurting everyone.

And it will solve nothing.

It'd be sad if it weren't just so downright pathetic.

Re:Broadband providers and Lost Revenue

[mikael]

A single customer at Virgin would pay a lot more than $15 month. Just double pounds and you will get the equivalent price in dollars.

Broadband -
2 Mb = 9 pound/month (Size M)
4 Mb = 16 pound/month (Size L),
20Mb = 26 pound/month (Size XL)

Digital TV -
40 Channels - Free (Size M)
90 Channels - 9 pounds/month (Size L)
145 Channels - 19.90 pounds/month (Size XL)

Landline Phone
Talk Weekends - 11 pounds/month (Size M)
Talk Evenings/Weekends - 14.14 pounds/month (Size L)
Talk Unlimited - 18.95 pounds/month (Size XL)

Mobile Phone
Talk Anywhere 200 - 20 pounds/month
Talk Anywhere 400 - 28 pounds/month
Talk Anywhere 800 - 40 pounds/month

A single customer could be paying as much as 50 pounds ($100/month). Virgin already lost 84,000 customers from the lost of Sky One/News, so that is a large amount to lose.

Let them disconnect you

[Mizchief]

"three strikes and out rule to warn and ultimately disconnect the estimated 6.5 million customers whose accounts are (supposedly) used for regular criminal activity" I think the customers should ban togather and hammer the network with downloads 24/7. When they find out that 5 mil of their 6.5 mil customers are getting disconnected they may think twice about their policy. If enough people want to download then there will be another ISP that comes along to fill in the gap. If you have no other option in internet service then I would suggest opening up 4 - 5 browser windows and stream the "legal" music off the internet whenever you are not using you computer.

Virgin Music AND Virgin ISP?

[Simonetta]

Virgin Music AND Virgin ISP? Now the marketers that put this together for Sir Richard were convinced that this was a good idea. But it is turning out to be the marriage from hell. Did the lunatics who came up with Daimler-Chrysler have anything to do with this?

    Now if someone in Virgin were smart (and when are virgins ever smart?) they would give reduced or even near free downloads to Virgin Music's recordings. And do it in such a way that the anti-monopoly regulators can't do anything about it. Pure Syzygy. But these bozos are turning Virgin into the most hated conglomerate in the UK. Smooth move for a company that relies on its prominent logo as a universal brand of quality among youthful consumers.

    However it appears that in Virgin only Sir Richard has any brains. Does he hire dolts in order to appear that no one in the organization looks cooler than he does?

Re:Virgin Music AND Virgin ISP?

[mikael]

It started because NTL (cable operator) decided to buy out TeleWest (another cable operator), mainly because Telewest was able to remain in the black and NTL kept making a loss and had poor customer service. Both networks had invested heavily in infrastructure and were struggling to make a profit.

NTL seals $6bn Telewest takeover

Then Virgin Mobile andd NTL:Telewest merged. Branson accepted a 10.7% shareholder offer in return for being able to use the Virgin brandname. The motivation for this was to compete against BSkyB, but the side effect was to cause the loss of Sky One and Sky News (a bit pathetic because Sky News can still be viewed using broadband, if only in 10 minute segments), and caused more financial loss to Sky (through advertising revenue) that to Virgin.

Virgin media.

From the viewpoint of a customer, the side effect of the cable network being bought out by Virgin, has been to have information packs translated into ValleyGirl Speak. The first line was "Hello you!" and an reassuring statement "We're not going to bamboozle you with technobabble, so we've renamed all our services in easy to understand S(mall), (M)edium, (L)arge and (XL)extra-large. Just as bad as sky referring to the receiver unit as the "digibox".

Re:Virgin Music AND Virgin ISP?

[jimicus]

Branson has sold and re-sold the Virgin identity many times. Just because a company is called Virgin and uses the distinctive logo, you shouldn't assume it's got anything to do with anything else in the group.

Re:Virgin Music AND Virgin ISP?

[h3llfish]

This situation reminds me of the way that Sony Records has been at odds with Sony's electronics division. This is what happens when a company gets too large - it begins to contradict itself.

When I was a kid in the 80s, the iPod of the day was a thing called the Sony Walkman. Sony could have dominated the mobile music market today as well, but they were so concerned about losing their music profits that they embraced DRM and made digital music players that no one wanted. Apple is sure glad they did!

And now it seems that Virgin is about to shoot itself in the foot in similar fashion. Good job, Virgin. Sending intimidating letters to 6 million of your customers, and let us know how that works out for you. Dumbshits.

Re:Virgin Music AND Virgin ISP?

[nasch]

Now if someone in Virgin were smart (and when are virgins ever smart?)

Virgins are stupid?? WTF?

Re:Virgin Music AND Virgin ISP?

[mpe]

The motivation for this was to compete against BSkyB, but the side effect was to cause the loss of Sky One and Sky News (a bit pathetic because Sky News can still be viewed using broadband, if only in 10 minute segments),

Even more ironic Sky News is still of "Freeview"...

Re:Virgin Music AND Virgin ISP?

[mikael]

Same with CNN, Euronews, CCTV-7, Al Jazeera, Russia Today, and a whole load of other news channels, all of which require an XL TV subscription, yet are free to watch using a "Freeview" card.

Who needs legs?

[westbake]

You don't need legs to join a protest, but that does not give you the right to cut mine off.

The internet, if you had not noticed, has made it possible for people all around the world to cooperate. It is vital to modern political movements and business. The ability to share and publish has gone a long way to repair the damage government created broadcast networks did to democracy and civil discourse.

parent must have never heard of a flash mob

[ClioCJS]

Flash mobs! Which are considered a major security threat by threatened governments.

Or, rephrased

[bsDaemon]

"Virgin Media to decided what traffic it wants going through its routers and switches and crossing its wires."

Its an allegedly "free market." If you don't like the terms they require in order to utilize their property, take your business elsewhere. This is no more nefarious a move against your "rights" than a publican decided he wants his facility to be non-smoking, regardless of local ordinances.

Its a private private entity, not a government utility. There is a distinction to be drawn.

Also, I don't see whats to get your panties in a bunch over music files anyway. Then again, I mostly like classical and older jazz/band music -- not exactly the stuff one can just "find" via gnutella.

Virgin becomes responsible for content!

[swordgeek]

OK, I've said this before, but it apparently bears repeating.

If a company assumes responsibility for inspecting your content, then THEY ARE NO LONGER A COMMON CARRIER!!! They are now gatekeepers, which means they are responsible for ALL content that goes through their network. If they fail to catch some illegal downloaders or kiddie-porn peddlers, then THEY ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR IT!

Sooner or later, this piece of shit will hit the fan, and when it does, the ISPs are going to get messy.

Re:Virgin becomes responsible for content!

[cdrguru]

I don't know what UK law is, but ISPs are not "common carriers" under US law. There is a safe harbor provision under some child protection law, but it is not in any way how telephone companies are "common carriers".

There is not and never will be the kind of responsibility you are fantasizing about.

Re:Virgin becomes responsible for content!

[QX-Mat]

For UK/EU ppl out there, http://www.opsi.gov.uk/si/si2002/20022013.htm and http://www.out-law.com/page-431 for the safe harbour provisions.

Rest is my untested knowledge for which I accept no liability.

I believe it all hinges on third party liability to a breach tho - a question of fact and degree will not suffice in claims like this. Third party liability is only established through knowing participation (knowledgeable assistance if you will).

Actual knowledge is one piece constructive, and one piece subjective. Claimants often try to claim entirely on the constructive knowledge front (so they don't have to show the state of mind) and ignore actual knowledge, which requires a dishonest state of mind. and so the argument goes a dishonest mind is hard to prove when you don't know what's going across your tubes. but then there's also a grey area: wilful blindness/recklessness and the argument you can't be guilty of being reckless as to data exchanged when you don't monitor the data upon international standard that avoids actionable per se).

I think from a liability point of view, ISPs need to take a step back, and start offering unrestricted plans that don't acknowledge *anything* about the content they're handling.

I say that because I think safe harbour provisions are an all or nothing defence. Similar to automatism as a defence to homicide. Let me explain that one. Murder and manslaughter constitue homicide. Murder is a specific intent crime - that is, to be found guilty, a jury will be instructed that they must find the action of killing and the state of mind to kill (a specific intent to kill) coincide at the time of killing. In short that means the mens rea (the guity mind) and actus reus (actions) of a killing must coincide to commit a murder. Without either, you are not guilty of murder, but may be guilty of homicide.

The intent for murder must be specific - an actuak intent to kill someone or a virtual certainty as to that effect. A virtual certainty is best described if you think of a bomber on a plane - he has the intent to kill people around him when he sets off a bomb, yet it is a virtual certainty that he will kill the rest when the plane crashes, which establishes an indirect/oblique intent.

Automatons are not responsible for their actions since they lack intent. So... if you're intoxicated (either by prescription drugs, illicit drugs or alcohol) to the extent you cannot possibly form the intent to kill (mens rea), which is so far beyond being drunk it calls for an intoxicated person to be on the brink of death almost, then you can claim automatism.

(before someone goes off to kill someone, bare in mind that issues of public policy will defeat self-induced automatism)

Automatism is an all or nothing defence. In so-called "normal cases" of homicide where someone lacks the intent due to intoxication, or someone takes a reckless risk where it was unreasonable to do so in the circumstance and they jury can infer they should have reasonably appreciated that risk, then that person is found not guilty of murder as they lack specific intent, but can still be found guilty of manslaughter.

If we apply the principal to copyright infringement, and imagine that the safe habour provisions are like a person operating as an automatom, then we assume that should a person ever be proven to be capable for forming a state of mind, fulfilling any mens rea, then they destroy their lawful defence. With an all or nothing defence, there are no levels to mitigate liability. You are either innocent or guilty of an offence if you have or have not a defense.

When ISPs such as VM start to move beyond their role as providers of a service, they start to acknowledge intent, preventing them from relying on their safe harbour defence

At the moment we all have a contract with ISPs. Under contract, in which they are obliged to provide a service, as we are o

Re:Virgin becomes responsible for content!

[swordgeek]

Thanks for the info. I'm not sure that your analogies would stand up in court, but they'd be an interesting defense.

Also, bandwidth-limiting is defensible, based on the terms of the contract--if an ISP says you're allowed to download 50GB/month, then they have the right to cut you off after that, without accountability for the content, because the limit was imposed impartially on unexamined content.

If they start to discriminate based on content, then they have entered into the content ownership battle. That's when they get in trouble.

Re:Virgin becomes responsible for content!

[swordgeek]

I could say, "who cares about US law, since this is a UK case?" But I won't. :-)

There's an interesting and detailed argument from someone more familiar with UK law, which more or less confirms my point. ISPs in the US are not common carriers, by the letter of the law. In the UK and other countries (Canada, Australia), the ISPs are more likely to maintain CC status, due to the lack of DMCA and CDA laws.

However, as you state there is safe harbour in the US. The linchpin of safe harbour is that it's only valid for transport of third-party material. If an ISP inspects the content, then the assume partial ownership of it, and safe harbour no longer applies.

Of course, in the US, ISPs are no longer required to obey the law anyways. #$*)(#@$ retroactive immunity.

The BPI have no clue

[91degrees]

Okay - Virgin are just going to be sending letters for now. Thing is, it's not really in their interest to cut anyone off. Each person they cut off will cost them at least £9 a month, more likely £15-30. And people tend to stick with the cable company for several years.

Will the BPI be covering Virgin for the costs of anyone they cut off? I think this is unlikely. Virgin will make it clear that they're doing something, to mollify the BPI but they're not going to do anything that will cost them money.

Music sharing solution

[shock1970]

So what about creating an algorithm that modifies an .mp3 file in such a way that it is playable, but is basically musical gibberish. Provide a key that will de-transform the .mp3 back to its original state. Then, when you share an .mp3 file thats been transformed by this algorithm, you are not sharing copyrighted content. Only when you willingly apply the de-transformation of the file back to its original state are you breaking the law. And make it easy enough that even a caveman can do it.

Re:Music sharing solution

[Skuldo]

Yeh, thats encryption, and everyone should be using it. uTorrent has the functionality built in, in the "speed test" menu, and probably other programs have it integrated too.

As a Virgin Customer...

[Anonymous Coward]

I think this is quite fantastic. When contention ratios are 1:50 in our area and I work from home, I won't have to worry about the idiot down the road who fires up torrent during the day when he's not using the internet and stops it when he gets back and wants to use the internet.

There are enough other ISP's on the market to soak up those people that do not wish to have such a restrictive usage policy (although expect most to follow Virgin's lead) that you don't have to affect my use of the internet.

Their cable is good (and the free option still includes all their on-demand products), we have 2 mobile phones from then (£10 per month for 300min/300text) and I get good internet speeds (18mb download on the XL package) and if they are trying to remove the more abusive idiots good on them. (Although some of the port blocking they do is annoying)

It's a free market, you are more than welcome to go any where else.

Roles

[Anonymous Coward]

Welcome to being a Subject, and not a Citizen.

Use the (Legal) Force...

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, given the strength of the libel laws in UK, this might provide a great opportunity to enforce those values.

Someone who gets one of these letters should slap Virgin back with a libel suit for defaming them, as it is essentially an allegation of criminal activity. If they can substantiate their claim that they did not download music, they could put quite a thorn in Virgin's side, similar to the "McLibel" case a few years back!

Re:Use the (Legal) Force...

[Marcus Green]

The Mc Libel case did send the two protagonists through several shades of hell before they (partially) achieved their goal, so its not the sort of thing to be entered into lightly.

3 Strikes and out, 6.5M users is a lot to lose.

[joocemann]

Let them do it. 6.5 Million users, at even 20 GBP a month, would equate to 130 million GBP of income lost. I hope it goes that far so that maybe they will realize that the 130 million/month they lose will seem more important.

they aren't doing anything

[192939495969798999]

That wire also pays their bills, and they aren't cutting off 6.5 million PAYING customers just because of some stupid illegal downloading.

Re:they aren't doing anything

[Adriax]

No, see, they just cut access, but not the accounts. The billing keeps going, the customers can't log into their banking sites to cancel auto-payments, and they can't cancel their service because you have to log onto virgin's website to request a cancellation form.

Re:they aren't doing anything

[PReDiToR]

Yes, but Virgin (NTL) are one of the companies that are sleeping with Phorm, so obviously they don't care about losing users.

I use Virgin Media (NTL), I have done since before Virgin got involved. They give you fast reliable connections, shite customer service and no limits on downloads outside peak hours.
I WILL be leaving if they drop Phorm on me. And I will write a letter explaining exactly why.

The problem is this:
We have fibre (Virgin/NTL/Telewest or whoever) or we have copper. Not everywhere has both available. A lot of places only have one option. My parents' house was built in a fairly nice area during the 1930s and they have never had cable laid in that part of town. A mate lives in a 5 year old property and doesn't even have a BT line because it will cost £150 for BT to come and put the copper in for him. With a 3G phone, his choice is fairly simple.

Take out this crap, Phorm, Asian call centres and immeasurably bad customer service and Virgin would be heads above all other ISPs I have experienced.

Re:they aren't doing anything

[cyber-vandal]

Um you do know that you can use a thing called a telephone to contact said company and cancel direct debits and the account. Or are you so tied to internet banking that you don't know how.

Re:they aren't doing anything

[Anonymous Coward]

*WOOOOOOSH*

Re:they aren't doing anything

[blackest_k]

That wire also cost's varying amounts.

I already cut back from the largest package since virgin couldn't provide a noticeable improvement.

I may just cut back some more just because Virgin are doing this.
Many other users will cut back because the p2p was why they had a high bandwidth package, revenues for virgin media may drastically decline.

Costs of providing the service might decline too admittedly, thus this may increase profits with less net usage going on.

However Virgin could provide some form of video and audio streaming package ala net flicks giving a legal alternative for thier customers and a revenue stream for participating media companies.

Although alternatively there is always the option of visiting a local market where you can get 3 dvd's packed full of content for a tenner.

sneaker net revisited I guess.

On the other hand open source alternatives to popular pirated software might see an increase in uptake so not all bad.

Re:they aren't doing anything

[gerrysteele]

I used to have ntl and their customer service could only be reached via a 3 digit number that was secific to that network. So they would have cut off your phone by that stage too because if you have 1 virgin home media product, then you prob have the rest

BPI

[Anonymous Coward]

Just wait till the British Pornographic Industry gets in on the act...

How long will it take...

[fluch]

How long will it take till they realize that they will lose their own custommers by this? And with this money.

And in case storries come up with false accusations made by Virgin Media ... it will get even more fun to see how custommers drop of to other ISP's. :-)

The Summary needs proper correction.

[plasmacutter]

"Virgin Media, the UK's soon to be former largest cable-modem provider,"

there we have our fix.

Re:The Summary needs proper correction.

[FluffyWithTeeth]

They're never going to be second largest, considering they own all the cable in the country. They might not be a proovider at all in a couple of years though, the way their finances have been going..

Time for torrents to wise up

[mlwmohawk]

First, all torrents should be encrypted.

All user's torrent servers should present an NDA and disclaimer to the effect:

"Before connecting with this machine you attest to the fact that you are not downloading anything that you may find that you do not have the legal right to access.

You further more state under oath that any and all activity on this connection is legal as well as private and confidential.

Any and all legal issues arising from your activity are solely your responsibility

Lastly, you indemnify the operator of this torrent server against any and all legal actions for your activity."

yes or no.

Re:Time for torrents to wise up

[cdrguru]

That would be like the "educational use only" and "law enforcement not allowed" notices on warez sites. Sure. The only problem is that it is meaningless. Let's say I get someone to sign a piece of paper saying I didn't murder them and then kill them. My defense is that piece of paper. Think that is going to help?

Sorry, but the anonymity of the Internet is the defense today. You can't prove a connection between a person and an IP address unless you leave incriminating traces elsewhere. And if folks on the defense can successfully deter ISPs from disclosing locations from IP addresses then it is impossible to sieze computers and check them for files.

I suspect in a lot of Western countries the wild, wild west of the Internet is going to come to an end. This will mean less spam, less fraud and less downloading of illicit materials. But there will continue to be spam, fraud and places to download stuff from outside of these Western countries. The question will be if Internet access can be cut off to countries that refuse to enforce their own laws and international agreements.

Today your credit card can be used for a purchase in the US and the goods delivered to a drop house where it is forwarded out of the country or sold on Ebay. The transaction originates outside the US most of the time. Today there is no defense whatsoever against this - the merchants just get ripped off unless they take extraordinary steps to prevent this. There is never any prosecution - all you have is an IP address, often through some kind of proxy. The credit card companies don't lose a dime on it - the merchants do. This is an effect of zero enforcement and anonyminity on the Internet.

Re:Time for torrents to wise up

[X0563511]

All user's torrent servers should present an NDA and disclaimer to the effect:

yes or no.

This won't work. Stop and think how many connections/second bittorrent maintains.... having people confirm each individual connection would be ridiculous. Verbiage along the lines of "If you do not agree to this contract, disconnect immediately. Continuing this connection signifies agreement to the above terms and conditions, whether manually processed or automatically handled."

You would need a lawyer to bullet-proof that for you though, and likely you would still end up spending money to fight the lawsuit that would come along anyways. Assuming this is even legal to begin with (which I doubt)

Re:Time for torrents to wise up

[mlwmohawk]

That would be like the "educational use only" and "law enforcement not allowed" notices on warez sites.

Actually there are some subtle differences. Particularly the notice about private and confidential, and the agreement that you will not do anything illegal.

Secondly, the indemnity clause is vital.

The fundamental point is that you, offering the disclaimer, are doing something which is legal and having people testify that their intent is also legal and that if illegal activity happens, it is because they did it in a way that is unauthorized.

Re:Time for torrents to wise up

[takev]

How is that ripping of the merchant?

I live in the Netherlands, I want to buy something from a US merchant. I pay the US merchant with my credit card and deliver it to a drop house. The drop house forwards it to my house in the Netherlands.

I don't see anyone being ripped of here. It is a bid sad that a lot of US companies don't ship their products outside of the US. Even thinkgeek doesn't sell a lot of stuff to outside of the US, I guess there are some sort of exclusivity deals in place, but most of the time these products aren't even sold in Europe at all. We live in a global society now, these artificial trade barriers shouldn't exist anymore.

Now personally I haven't used the drop house system myself, but there are quite a few people here in Europe that do for exactly the same reasons as above. There is even a way to get a legitimate US credit card for companies that don't even sell to people with a foreign credit card.

Re:Time for torrents to wise up

[mlwmohawk]

This won't work. Stop and think how many connections/second bittorrent maintains.... having people confirm each individual connection would be ridiculous.

An encrypted connection with a unique key can cache the agreement and be legally enforcible. I imagine that there would need to be a due diligence on rejecting keys as well.

likely you would still end up spending money to fight the lawsuit that would come along anyways

You'd end up doing that anyway, at least with this method you have a reasonable position that would fend off the typical frivolous attacks.

Re:Time for torrents to wise up

[lightversusdark]

Hotline used to do this.
It was optional when running a server, but everyone kept it on.

European Convention of Human Rights

[QJimbo]

After the terrible events of WWII, major european countries came together and created the closest thing we have to a constitution, the European Convention of Human Rights. This was ratified in law in 1998 with the Human Rights Act. But yes, our civil liberties in the UK are eroding, but we do have the same protection as our "USian" cousins. Just their constitution is being just as shredded as our human rights.

OTT summary

[tehcyder]

In other words, you download a few songs and they'll come along and cut off the one wire that delivers freedom of speech, freedom of the press and freedom of assembly.

As everybody know, the above simply didn't exist before the internet.

And its time for UK isp's to call their bluff.

[plasmacutter]

They can say anything they want to ISP's but if I were a CEO i'd be calling their bluff in as public a press conference as I could find.

For such legislation to be effective it would require orwellian measures which would in all likelihood break the internet entirely.

In other words it follows it will either be ineffective or there will be tremendous public backlash when everyone logs on and sees a message in their browsers reading "because of the BPI's whining, the government has made us do these horrible things to your internet service, have a nice day"

Re:And its time for UK isp's to call their bluff.

[AndyGJ]

They can say anything they want to ISP's but if I were a CEO i'd be calling their bluff in as public a press conference as I could find. Looks like some of them are taking this approach.

So its not all bad...

Re:And its time for UK isp's to call their bluff.

[jimicus]

Looks like some of them are taking this approach.

So its not all bad... Granted, but TalkTalk/Carphone Warehouse aren't exactly renowned for being the easiest ISP to deal with.

So you either wind up with an account with an ISP where you get to speak to tech support marginally (OK, only marginally) more helpful than a potplant with a service which tends to stay up - but they reserve the right to disconnect you on the say so of some little shit in the BPI - or you have an account with an ISP which is almost impossible to work with but they won't disconnect you just because the BPI says they should.

What a lovely choice.

Re:And its time for UK isp's to call their bluff.

[AndyGJ]

So you either wind up with an account with an ISP where you get to speak to tech support marginally (OK, only marginally) more helpful than a potplant with a service which tends to stay up - but they reserve the right to disconnect you on the say so of some little shit in the BPI - or you have an account with an ISP which is almost impossible to work with but they won't disconnect you just because the BPI says they should. Most definitaly true unfortunately. I've run the gambit with UK ISPs, recently ive tried plusnet (even the highest package diddn't give me a high enough limit), blueyonder (who were pretty much fantastic for a spell) and now obviously the blueyonder+NTL clusterfuck that became virgin. If someone has any suggestions for a decent ISP over here, im all ears. Contract with virgin is nearly up...

Well...

[travelmug]

I guess the British Government has better things to worry about other than online predators and such. How about using the ISP's to look for them?

Aside from political activism

[Dan667]

The only thing that customers of Virgin Media can do is to switch to another carrier and bad mouth their service to others (and encourage others to switch). They still want to make money and bad press changes behavior.

-1 Flamebait

[thtrgremlin]

Only if P2P means "distributed networking for an illegal purpose". Did you even read further than your quoted portion?

While your Mad Lib style Flamebait doesn't typically deserve a response, I am disgusted at the moderation of "Insightful", and seriously question its origin.

Don't stay a virgin

[Weezul]

Well, just Don't stay a Virgin !

Three strikes?

[rgviza]

That's actually pretty kind for people that violate their ToS, which usually list copyright violations as one of the big no-nos. Technically they could drop them on the first offense then hand them over to the RIAA with all the evidence the RIAA needs.

Personally I'd rather have my service cut off and learn a valuable lesson than get sued by the RIAA. It's doubtful that it's a antitrust violation since they are punishing people that break the rules outlined in their ToS.

Bravo? They are doing their subscribers a favor. They could collect the info, forward it to the RIAA, then let them keep subscribing so the RIAA can surgically get their statistics and log them sharing files until they get a suitably sized sample of their activity to get whatever damage award they want.

Another point: Since shares are publicly accessible on the p2p networks, it's not spying, despite the tin foil hat mentality the author is implying. Spying implies the interception of communication. Sharing files illegally doesn't require spying to see it happening.

All it takes is a p2p program on the same network...

It's the ISPs duty to police illegal activity occurring on their network.

The only danger I see is that people sharing files legally (the copyright owners) could be singled out and dropped erroneously.

I fail to see how this is any worse than an employer firing someone for running a p2p server which is sharing copyrighted files to the world from their employer's network. Copyright violation is copyright violation, and is illegal activity according to current laws.

If you want to fix this problem, write your leaders and have the copyright laws changed. They are the real culprit, not the people abiding the law by policing their networks.

-Viz

Re:Three strikes?

[travelmug]

I guess it all depend on your IPS's TOS. "Online Sharing is where subscribers can manually upload and download files and folders to their private online vault. You can also send password-protected invitations containing links to your files and folders for friends and family. If you receive an invitation you can view, download, upload and change files depending on the permissions granted to you by the person who sent you the invitation. The Online Sharing site allows you to share files, photos, personal videos, music and more without the problems associated with email attachments. Online Backup can be downloaded from this site." This is what my ISP offers.

Re:Three strikes?

[rgviza]

That's not the ToS, that's a feature description. ToS is a legal document that looks more like:
"11. MONITORING THE SERVICES
EarthLink has no obligation to monitor the Services, but may do so and disclose information regarding use of the Services for any reason if EarthLink, in its sole discretion, believes that it is reasonable to do so, including to: satisfy laws, regulations, or governmental or legal requests; operate the Service properly; or protect itself, its employees, its customers or others. See our Privacy Policy. EarthLink may immediately remove your material or information from EarthLink's servers, in whole or in part, which EarthLink, in its sole and absolute discretion, determines to infringe another's property rights or to violate our Acceptable Use Policy or other policies or laws."

In the acceptible use policy:
"2. VIOLATIONS OF EARTHLINK'S ACCEPTABLE USE POLICY

The following constitute violations of this AUP:

      1. Illegal use. Using the Services to transmit any material (by email, uploading, posting, or otherwise) that, intentionally or unintentionally, violates any applicable local, state, national or international law, or any rules or regulations promulgated thereunder.
"

Give me your ISP name and I'll pull yours. Violating their rules can result in account termination. That feature you mentioned is guaranteed to only be usable if you don't violate the ToS and AUP. Sharing copyrighted materials is a violation of law so would be an infraction.

-Viz

Complete Provolone

[znerk]

Only if the monitor the content can they tell if what I am uploading is legal or illegal at which point they become partly responsible for it... And how, pray tell, can you determine whether that mp3 of (insert song) is illegal simply by determining it exists?
Perhaps I just ripped it from the CD I legally purchased, and am now uploading it to my personal, access-restricted webserver, so that I can listen to it at leisure from any of my multiple points of internet access?
Or maybe I did just steal it from the intartubes... but again, how can you tell that from looking at the file?

This same argument is being used to "inspect" ipods, laptops, etc at the borders, now, with the same question being asked... how can you tell, by looking at a file, that it has come from an illegitimate source?

BPI?

[microbee]

I wonder when the Brithsh Pornographic Industry will jump in.

The end of the internet and civil society.

[westbake]

When you combine these "cut off" programs with the ACTA end of the internet, what you have is more distopian than 1984. ACTA will turn the internet into something that resembles cable TV/spy machine. It will read people's mail and track them as they visit the few officially sanctioned and "free" internet sites. The power to exclude people from even that will complement ACTA's broad powers by allowing those in power to ruin those who deviate. Who's going to dare run VirginSucks.org when they might lose their ability to pay their bills, get a job, and everything else that requires the web? This kind of power is too dangerous to grant anyone.

Re:The end of the internet and civil society.

[willyhill]

I suspect plenty of people will run "VirginSucks.com". You are simply exaggerating something that has not and probably will not happen, likely because you're angry that Cox Cable won't let you run your own SMTP relay on their network for $40/month.

--
twitter/Erris/Mactrope/gnutoo/inTheLoo/willeyhill/westbake/Odder/ibane? Click on my home page link to do a SockCheck(TM)

Wow!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, The Register had a much more balanced article too

Now, THERE'S a sentence I thought I would never see.

So it's just music their looking for?

[aplusjimages]

Good because I'm downloading movies and software, so I should be good to go.

Who is hurt more?

[ratboy666]

Who is hurt more?

Let me guess. Virgin Media loses 6.5 million subscribers. Forever.

The subscribers lose a bit of music.

6.5 million at 10 pounds (or more) per month -- 65 million pounds per year at the bottom; it is probably closer to 120 million pounds. I guess "they" are betting that the revenues will be made up be increased CD sales. Personally, I don't think so.

The BPI doesn't have anything to lose. But Virgin Media? 1/4 billion dollars (US) a year from the bottom line? All I can say is: Wow, that's some bluff!

Re:Who is hurt more?

[zmollusc]

6.5 million customers at 10 pounds a month is 780 million pounds per year.

Re:Who is hurt more?

[ratboy666]

You are correct. My bad math!

Now, some additional facts. In 2005, 159m CDs sold in the UK. Cutting off 6.5 million high-speed internet users is like increasing piracy to 100%. To quote the BPI:

"The findings of the study, revealed today by record companies' trade association the BPI, suggest that physical music piracy in the UK lost the industry 16.5m in sales - approximately £165m in retail value in 2005."

Now, the 165m pounds lost was at retail, and we can see that the BPI assumes a CD sells for 10 pounds at retail -- so the loss of the internet service is worse (internet service has less overhead -- fewer brick & mortar shops, no packaging, cheaper delivery).

Talk about extreme! Might as well just sign over the business to the BPI, and have done with it.

Re:Who is hurt more?

[zmollusc]

If you want to work out some more figures, how about the car sales lost due to inferior anti-theft devices? There are 15 year-olds out there that have stolen _dozens_ of cars. By music industry logic that is over a quarter of a million pounds that the teenager would have spent on cars if he hadn't been able to steal them.

Re:Cut the one wire that delivers alternative cont

[PitaBred]

Completely O/T

Wait... why can't you modify GPL code and sell it? There's no reason you can't. The only restriction is that you have to make the source available. That's not too terrible, is it? The kinds of people who'd buy software are the kinds who wouldn't really be your competitors anyway.

Ooooh! I must try this out

[The Mgt]

I'm using VM at the moment but have been considering switching due to STM, Phorm and general crapness since the Telewest/NTL merger.
Sooooo I'm going to leave aMule running every night sharing all my music and see how long it takes to get a letter and whether they cut me off.

More reason for a mesh network

[MichaelJE2]

I mean seriously, if they disconnect 6.5 million people from their network, why wouldn't that same 6.5 million people simply be like, oh wait, we don't need them. We can just make a huge network that will be faster and cheaper with WiFi routers and collaberation.

From their perspective

[damburger]

We are just consumers. Government and ISPs see the Internet as a means of delivering consumers to high profile commercial websites and thus generating revenue for the big boys. The fact that the Internet also allows unprecedented levels of free association and free speech is to them an unfortunate side effect. The communities and rights we so value show up as waste on their balance sheets (because all this time we spend freely associated could be spent buying stuff you know)

Okay, hit me...

[xA40D]

I'm with Virgin, so far all the download music I have is 'legal', but simply reading about this has me wondering how I could go about downloading illegal music to bring myself to their attention. Not that I especially wish to download illegal music. However, ISPs doing thing like this has me itching to cross the line, because it's simply so wrong. That said, I wonder if announcements like this don't make ISPs legally liable... after all, ISPs that don't spy on customers packets can claim neutrality, ISPs that do simply can't.

Of course ISPs in the UK are so caught up with their lack of bandwidth they are trying to get the BBC to cough up cash to expand their networks to cope with the traffic 'caused by iPlayer'. Odd that, the capability to do what the marketing has always claimed now exists and the suits are now crying foul.

As for the suits; I've found more acceptable forms of life stuck to the bottom of my boots.

You can't ignore them.

[Odder]

These are the reasons corporate assholes fear a free press. They want to be above the law in every way and they don't want you to have a way to complain or do anything about it.

He's using slashdot trope

[Anonymous Coward]

in the hopes that these sock accounts get enough trolled-for (what is the opposite of trolling? y'know, where you are manipulating for approbation rather than ire) mod points that he can use these sock accounts to mod up his normal crap.

That point applies to copyright, too

[Anonymous Coward]

So point that gun there at the ones trying to cut off internet access.

damn_registrars, maybe THAT'S why you're overrated: it adds nothing to the conversation that can't be leveled at the ones making the move.

Re:Cut the one wire that delivers alternative cont

[cliffski]

What amazes me is that this is spun as "TEH EVIL CORPORATIONS SPYING TO PROTECT TEH EVIL PROFITS!!!111"

Whereas a security guard working in your local bricks and mortar store to prevent people walking out with a CD is just fine and dandy.
It seems that people who download copyrighted material KNOW that its wrong to take music for free that you should be paying for, but somehow they want to do a mental backflip to justify doing it if they can do it online instead.
I can assure you that store security don't politely warn you the first two times they catch you.
Either you believe that people who create original works are entitled to profit from them or you do not. If not, you need to go live on a commune, or one of the (very few) communist societies out there.

And to anyone wittering on about it not being the same thing, it doesn't matter a fuck if something physical is taken or not. You are breaking the law to get a product for free that you would otherwise have had to legally pay the content creator for. Spare me the mental gymnastics designed to kid yourself its not theft.

Re:Cut the one wire that delivers alternative cont

[mpeskett]

The distinction is between "theft" and "copyright infringement". Both involve obtaining something without the permission of the owner, but theft would be actually taking their stuff whereas copyright infringement is making an unauthorised copy for yourself. It's not mental gymnastics, it's what the law is.

Yes both are illegal, but they're different crimes. You can therefore decide that you want copyright infringement to no longer be a crime (by abolishing copyright or legalising filesharing or whatever) without also deciding you want to legalise "proper" theft.

Calling it theft is a tactic used by the copyright holders to make copyright infringement sound like a more serious crime than it is. Unfortunately for them they also called it piracy and hence made it cool.

-1 Missed the point

[Macthorpe]

Your argument stands if the article was actually about them attacking P2P, but it's not. It's about asking people not to illegally share music. So, my point is accurate because the entire discussion is about "distributed networking for an illegal purpose".

Did you even read the article you're posting to? Or didn't you notice that both you and Twitter up there are making a completely tangential argument?

Re:-1 Missed the point

[thtrgremlin]

Ok, I'll agree that the entire thread is off topic to the point of the article, but the article itself was completely lacking in substance. The arguments in this thread, albeit extreme from both ends was attempting to bring up the most important part that upsets people about this type of article: It is easy to agree with if you DON'T know the issues involved, and in this case the matter in which twitter was responding was how the media giant/ISP will be tracking down customers / downloaders. Not to mention the fact that these articles are trying to convince people of something that is simply NOT true. Maybe the law should change, but for now downloading copyrighted material from a site without permission isn't even copyright infringement except by the person that made it available to you, but at the same time "making available" isn't illegal. BitTorrent has the special circumstances of necessitating uploading when you download, not to mention that based on the article the only type of tracking they could have been talking about was that type of P2P. Using limewire may be wrong morally, but has no legal implications I know of Iin the US) for the downloader that does not share their downloaded music. Does that make it right? no. What these guys are going to do is download a mass of torrents, join the swarms, and send notices to the account holder of every IP address in the swarm without further evidence.

There is good content, legal content that is only distributed via bit torrent. People try to argue the quality, but that is the major issue; content industry must do its best to shut it down in any way before it becomes better. I think it is apparent that while there has been a growing range of video and music content on the web, there is good stuff out there. Want a specific political example? How about Steal this Film I & II? These movies only method of distribution is P2P.

This is the most revealing and damning statement in the article:

If you use peer-to-peer applications to copy or distribute copyrighted material such as music, films and software, and do so without paying royalties, you are almost certainly infringing the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. This is an absurd statement, and only one that could be made by a monopoly that has found a venue for media distribution it does not control. The media organizations (at least in the US) also control most all the news. In that way they are only trying to further their monopoly and censor political opposition. And just to reinforce the point, Steal this movie is far superior than what can be expressed in a blog.

Re:for the moment, downloading is still illegal?

[terminalhype]

Wait a minute...now I'm confused. You stated that "...for the moment, downloading is still illegal." But is it actually "downloading" that's illegal? Or is it "making available" that's illegal? Or is it illegal to merely provide a way to search for content that may or may not be copyright restricted? Is there really such a thing as Fair Use, ever? Just curious. You seemed so sure of your statement, yet it seems that even many judges and lawyers aren't always in agreement about such things.

Shouldn't the law be established more clearly so that ordinary folks (like me, or my kids) can clearly know what is or isn't illegal, BEFORE allowing Corporations to decide for us?

Or maybe it's best to keep things confused so the definitions of "illegal" and "criminal" can be stretched and twisted to fit whatever and whoever, for the benefit of those who just want to control it all.

gyanesh

[gyanesh]

Charles Stross wrote about this on April 14th see http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2008/04/brand_dilution.html

Some good points, but I hope there was satire...

[Xenographic]

> Copyright holders cannot restrict how any one copy of their work is used by buyers, except to make them respect the artificial scarcity of copyright law.

You might want to call King Canute and ask him how he managed with the tides. Because, somehow, that reminds me of the original 'modest' proposal...

Are you for real?

[westbake]

We should not be willing to let Music companies decide who gets to use the internet but that's what Virgin is doing. Only a complete moron would trust the music industry at this point, but they would be wrong even if they were telling the truth.

Re:Are you for real?

[mpe]

We should not be willing to let Music companies decide who gets to use the internet but that's what Virgin is doing. Only a complete moron would trust the music industry at this point, but they would be wrong even if they were telling the truth.

Even if the BPI were likely to be moderatly competent at investigation if would be foolish for Virgin Media to trust them very much. All the evidence indicates that their so called "evidence" is likely to be less trustworthy than anything the average government minister might say on television news.

Re:Are you for real?

[x2A]

Erm, you do realise that whenever VM stops providing the service to someone... they're no longer making the money off that person? Which is kind of their business model? I really don't think we have to worry too much about them disconnecting people willy nilly because of another industries' paranoia.

They just don't get it ...

[TallMatthew]

At what point will the powers that be in the record industry realize that they will never get back to making billions off of CDs? What a bunch of whiny little bitches.

The world changed. But rather than adjust to a new business model (heaven forbid!), they're bullying ISPs into policing the Internet and litigating individuals. All in an attempt to return to a market which will never again exist.

Worse yet, the MPAA is doing the same thing. They could move first-run movies to pay per view today and make billions, but instead they're sticking to their guns, staggering release dates to try and maximize DVD sales. In the meantime, people are becoming increasingly comfortable downloading rips and screeners off of the various torrent portals.

This all could have been avoided (and in the movie industry's case, would be avoided), if the corporations would adjust to new technologies instead of trying to squish them. If the Itunes Music Store had opened before Napster, it would be a totally different world.

Cut off your paying customers

[nurb432]

Thats brilliant.

The downloaders were not going to buy that music garbage anyway, so at least you got their x$ a month internet bill.

But, seems they don't want that either. And of course they will blame the reduction of revenue on 'piracy'.

More of the same.

[Odder]

Implying that we're all getting shipped off to the Gulag for using Azureus: Sensationalist

Ask someone in China behind the Golden Shield. If we build the same mechanisms and have similar laws, we will see the same abuse. Others have made the case very well without knowledge of internet press issues. You are not looking at the usual opinions of left wing radicals, you are looking at the whole spectrum of thoughtful society that's shocked and outraged. From WSJ reporters to Naval Academy graduates and Admirals. Fundamental rights and laws are being raped. The nubjobs doing it will cost us all dearly.

Deliberately confusing copyright with freedom of speech and trying to make a point that it should be eliminated because you don't like it, when the problem is really in the enforcement: Disingenuous.

The only confusion here is yours. Tell me how Virgin cutting me off is not a violation of free speech. What happens if every ISP honors RIAA blacklists? As more and more business is conducted on line, getting kicked offline will be more and more like stealing everything they have and throwing them onto the street.

I'll grant you that the problem is enforcement. Society should not waste it's time and money on copyright enforcement and that enforcement should never violate natural rights. Society should not trade it's freedom for entertainment. Free press is more important than all the games, movies and music owned by big publishers and other unfriendly assholes who think they are owed your home for sharing a few dozen songs.

the vast majority of it [P2P] revolves around copyright infringement

Irrelevant bullshit.

Someone who's writing looks exactly like the industry talking points laboriously repeated here should not be talking about sockpuppets.

Re:More of the same.

[x2A]

What a load of crap. It is not a god given human right that you must be given access to a network and allowed to illegally transfer copyright protected material over it. By the same token, nobody is forcing you to download and share RIAA owned copyrighted works. This is not something like being forced to add floride to your drinking water, this is something, that you do not have to do! It is not inhumane to provide a service to law abiding citizens.

Re:More of the same.

[willyhill]

Someone who's writing looks exactly like the industry talking points laboriously repeated here should not be talking about sockpuppets.

So, dedazo not only works for Microsoft, but also for Virgin Media now?

You realize of course that this "if you disagree with me then well gosh darn it, you must work for the Evil Entity I am doing battle with" line marks you as nothing more than a desperate troll with expired talking points, right?

--
twitter/Erris/Mactrope/gnutoo/inTheLoo/willeyhill/westbake/Odder/ibane? Click on my home page link to do a SockCheck(TM)

Re:More of the same.

[dedazo]

Ask someone in China

Your incessant comparisons to China are getting old. The US is not China, and I have a hell of a lot more hope in the Western affinity for freedom than you.

Tell me how Virgin cutting me off is not a violation of free speech.

You can't really see what's wrong with your question, do you? You're blinded by your paranoia and your hatred.

Irrelevant bullshit.

Thank you for suggesting I work for Virgin, like willyhill said. Your moral bankruptcy is well-noted, as usual.

Re:More of the same.

[dedazo]

Heh, that's a blast from the past alright. Whatever happened to jb.hl.com, BTW?

Re:More of the same.

[willyhill]

I think he's still posting as "joejaybee" or something like that, I'm not sure.

The obvious

[nfc_Death]

Clearly the sending of large mails-outs as well as possible subscriber losses would not be attempted or even conceived of by a money making entity, unless there were to be some financial benefit in the short term future. Since those actions in and of themselves only cost money, they must be a precursor to the actual money maker. We have yet to see what the next step in this horror will be. If this is not halted at the state its in the next step where they make money is gonna be awfully offensive.

Re:Cut the one wire that delivers alternative cont

[Anonymous Coward]

What freedom, you fools. You lost that when you gave up your weapons. You in commonwealth(poverty) countries I am talkin to YOU. Now do not weep when the cartels finish the job on you worthless apathetic cowards. A real man would take that cable modem to the ISP that supplied it and cram it where the sun does not shine. Use dial up or go to internet cafes and sign in as 'ob laden' and see what happens. Dont like the rag that calls itself a simpering newspaper these days...do not buy it. Take your money, all of it, out of 'your' bank while you are doing it too. I forsee a time of huge bank failures, and the so called US Deposit Insurance Corporation is bankrupt, nothing in its coffers but IOU's from the present administration. That 'deeeposit insurance is worthless and you will hold worthless papers just like your grandfathers and grandmothers did in 1933!! They pay less interest (1%) than the rate of inflation and devaluation (40%) and are were allowed by the present administration to take flyers on the stock market with your money for the first time since 1936 when such illegal speculation with funds that it did not own were made so by the Roosevelt Administration with the passage of the Glass-Steagal Act. Get your money out NOW. Buy Euros, or even Mexican Pesos. I have some Mexican 10000 Peso notes that I bought while on a trip to Mexico back in the early 1980's. Then the rate was somewhere about a penny a peso or so. Now the suckers are worth a grand apiece. Whatever you do..do NOT buy the products of the bloated moooosick industry. That is ONE decision that you can make that if taken often enough by enough people, this WILL hurt the monopoly. The word is BOYCOTT. Inasmuch as so much of the products of this cartel are made in China, look at it this way. Every cent paid for products of this monopoly goes to pay for Chinese weapons that may end up being used to kill your sons and daughters in some future war.

Re:Cut the one wire that delivers alternative cont

[x2A]

"theft would be actually taking their stuff"

Illegal sharing of copyrighted works does remove and deprive the artist of their legally granted rights to control the duplication and distribution of their creation.

Is it not stealing because their rights only give them the ability to accrue physical property but is not a physical object itself?

I'm innocent! I tell ya!

[iminplaya]

The printer did it! Yeah! Look inside the paper tray. That's where you'll find the jewels...

Re:Cut the one wire that delivers alternative cont

[TapeCutter]

"Either you believe that people who create original works are entitled to profit from them or you do not."

So, how's that other "with us or against us" meme going?

Re:Cut the one wire that delivers alternative cont

[Lunarsight]

Obviously, if you want to prevent that one wire from being cut, you go after the bastard holding the scissors.

The problem is most people either indifferent to the whole issue, or are playing too nicely with the major music labels that are responsible for this crap.

We need to resort to their tactics. Let's kick them in the groin! They'd do no less to us.

(As far as whether the above comment is intended literally or figuratively, I haven't decided yet. While the former is appealing, it's admittedly a lot of groins to kick, and my foot would probably get tired after a while.)

ha ha

[Anonymous Coward]

another ruined twitter sockpuppet account posting at -1

good riddance.

I'd rather have no internet...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd rather have no internet... than an internet without freedom.

Re:ha ha

[x2A]

They haven't threatened me. And without any desire to touch RIAA's stuff, it doesn't bother me in the slightest. Now, if they start going after people who download tv shows...!

Form letter to users in plain English

[^_^x]

Virgin Media
Alan Hole, public relations manager
0 Progress road
Brazil

Dear Customer,

We have recently noticed you have been taking advantage of your broadband connection. This is not a bad thing, but we remind you that the only approved uses for it are as follows:
- Checking email
- Browsing fully legal internet sites
- Watching streaming, public domain video from the hours of 8:00am Saturday to 10:00pm Sunday.
- Multiplayer gaming (note - if a complaint is filed against your account for inappropriate language or conduct, you will be placed on probation.)

Any unauthorized usage may result in account termination.

Have a nice day, and thank you for choosing Virgin Media!

A. Hole

UK, same as US

[Anonymous Coward]

Just like the US, the UK and big business are in collusion. After all, corporations and gov't are merely quid-pro-quo whorehouses sold to the highest bidder. When the gov't needs illegal wire-taps, Verizon and Sprint allow them secret rooms to listen in on calls. When Haliburton (and KBR) need more revenue, the gov't hands out no-bid contracts. When the gov't dislikes literature, Amazon and Wikipedia ban the book "America Deceived". We The People had our gov't sold out from beneath us.
Final link (before Google Books caves to pressure and drops the title):
America Deceived (book)

Re:Cut the one wire that delivers alternative cont

[Anonymous Coward]

The real issues are the domestic, warrantless spying and the attempt to bring down Bittorrent even for legal filesharing. Everything else is secondary.

This is nonsense, Virgin won't be spying on anyone, the BPI already spy on people and collect their IP addresses will then pass them onto Virgin who will send out a letter warning the customers that their connection is being used in this way.