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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.
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?
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.
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).
Seriously. Here's the headline and teaser text from the same story as presented by ArsTechnica, which is painted in a vastly different light:
.I'm not tense. I'm just terribly, terribly, alert.
At first, I read "British Pornographic Industry", and I was seriously worried! But its only the music, so I think I'm safe.
Oh no... it's the future.
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 three strikes "solution" is problematic however; because suddenly a corporation is policing something. And that is more worrying than anything else.
The real issues are the domestic, warrantless spying and the attempt to bring down Bittorrent even for legal filesharing. Everything else is secondary.
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.
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.
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.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
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?
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...
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
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!
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.
I dream of a better world... one in which chickens can cross roads without their motives being questioned.
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.
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