Slashdot Mirror
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."
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.
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.
"...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!
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
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.
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.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
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.
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.
"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.
[% slash_sig_val.text %]
Developers: We can use your help.
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.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
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.
A learning experience is one of those things that say, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.' - D. Adams
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?
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
The real issues are the domestic, warrantless spying and the attempt to bring down Bittorrent even for legal filesharing. Everything else is secondary.
These stories are getting more and more depressing. I suggest changing the section name to, "Your (Lack of) Rights Online."
Bark less. Wag more.
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.
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.
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?
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.
I am a name troll of Westlake. Visit my homepage to learn why.
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...
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.
"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien
Don't even pretend to mull that over - your point is seriously completely meaningless.
"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien
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.
Car analogies break down.
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.
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?
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".
Want Big Business out of government? Take away the incentive and start by getting government out of big business!
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?
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.
Want Big Business out of government? Take away the incentive and start by getting government out of big business!
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.
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
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.