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

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

[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: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".