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Big Six UK ISPs Capitulate To Music Industry
Barence writes "Britain's six leading internet providers have signed a Government-led agreement to stamp out illegal music file sharing. The six providers — BT, Virgin Media, Orange, Tiscali, Sky and Carphone Warehouse — will implement a series of measures against those found to be file sharing. Offenders may find their internet connection is throttled, or may even have their traffic 'filtered' to prevent media files from being downloaded. The ISPs are reportedly reluctant to impose the BPI's preferred 'three strikes and you're out' approach of cutting off users' broadband connections."
It's only a matter of time before typing www.piratebay.org into your URL bar produces "Sorry, this site is blocked for content infringement" on ALL of our browsers (since we all ultimately answer to our ISP's).
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Filtering/inspecting traffic implies taking responsibility implies getting lawsuits directed at ISPs for users' content.
You thought watching SCO trials was fun, you ain't seen nothing yet. There's going to be some fireworks over this one when they sue the wrong person.
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
Next thing you know, they'll be outlawing alcohol and chopping your hand off if you badmouth Allah. Think the British parliament would respond if I told them this law is unconstitutional? I suppose Gordon Brown wants to one-up Tony Blair by, rather than just playing George Bush's puppet, actually doing things Bush wishes he could do but can't.
Whale
If they don't want you to listen to their music, don't. Don't download, don't listen, don't buy.
:-) either. Just don't.
Don't stea... I mean infringe copyright
Everybody should pick up the attitude that if you can't share it, don't buy it. Just a thought.
The deal is something of an about-face for Carphone Warehouse boss, Charles Dunstone...
Guess they got their own "Obamas" over their too.
I hope encryption can work until we find a way to dump the ISPs.
What?
exactly how are they going to filter the connections ?
I listen to last.fm thats a music stream in mp3 of copyrighted artist it helps that last.fm (CBS rather large firm) have the license so how is my ISP going to know that ?
this looks like just as excuse to cut out people who do file sharing they simply will look at the large downloaders and accuse them
BPI has no technology and nor do the ISP that can differentiate between licensed and unlicensed !
regards
John Jones
The real issue I see with this isn't so much that the ISP's are sending out warning letters - they've all stated that they're not prepared to cancel anyone's service - but that the record companies have essentially got the ISP's to do their dirty work for them.
NOW they know that the ISP's will have detailed files on every single person they find allegedly distributing copyrighted music - detailed files that means these "John doe" cases we seen in America will start turning into "John Smith" cases.
+1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
I see it. How come they don't? There would be no reason for this if the music industry decided to make two changes. First, they need to accept the new model of doing business. Clearly, the Internet has changed the landscape of things, and the old ways simply won't work as effectivly anymore. The second problem is that none of this would be necessary if the music industry decided to change their pricing model. Again, $20 is too much for a cd. I think if pricing was a little lower, it might cut down on the amount of "copyright infringement" cases. But no, the music industry would rather bully around whoever gets in their way. It's ridiculous, any other industry would change, or lower their prices, it just seems like there's a general lack of competition.
why is the above modded troll?
its not an amazing post but its not troll
Easy - If your connection has a high ratio of uploads compared to other users on the network (or meets some other arbitrary criteria), your connection class is set to "suspect" and any traffic not identifiable by the filtering system is blocked or throttled.
If it goes on like this, step by step the internet will become more and more moderated and people will tolerate it. Now the measures in China may seem unacceptable to us, but if people accept these small steps like this one here, more and more we'll go towards the same anyway. Sad indeed :(
If you're going to Entanet why not use UKFSN who are not only an Entanet reseller but donate all profits to fund UK Free Software profits (well that's what it says on the web site).
Personally I've been a happy customer of theirs for the last couple of years. Totally transparent bandwidth allowances, no port protocol blocking, run your own servers, decent web space, database etc. etc. etc.
And no I don't work for them or get commission !
Sky subscribers are morons. They pay to be advertised at !
I wasn't sure if this was for real or just a satire. It's hard to tell these days. You offered no references. Then I double checked and noticed "BBC News April 2nd 2010".
It's scary when one can barely tell satire from real world events. It's too real. Your fiction and reality are barely separable.
The system's broken. It's just that simple. I don't advocate infringing on copyright because of it, but it is beyond repair, with corporations perpetually holding everything from the public domain and (at least in the US) undermining the Founding Fathers' view of copyright.
You probably got modded as flamebait (or troll) because you use "whine" and generally talk down to an opinion that differs from yours. Remember the old adage "you can catch more flies with honey than vinegar." (or words to that effect.) That doesn't make your opinion any less relevant, but it also clouds the opposite opinion as somehow less than your own. If that's what you were going for, no problem. But the consequence of that does open one's posts up to moderation negatively. (I know, I've had the same issue in other discussions.)
I am of the camp that advocates ignoring music altogether (and the same goes for movies and TV). The sooner we choke off their lifeline (OUR money) the sooner they'll realize who is more important to them, and at the very least realize that treating _customers_ like criminals does nothing but make them former customers.
I also realize that P2P and other tech used to infringe is not going to kill the industries working so hard to kill the tech. How long has it been since Napster? And they're still around... making billions. They claim (incorrectly of course) that they're on the brink of extinction because of P2P, but we've yet to see anything tank... and with the US opening of "The Dark Knight" proving that a movie people want to see will make money (lots of money), their argument for "impending doom" rings rather hollow.
There's quite a bit more subtle nuances available to discuss on this subject, (who gets the revenue, is it really worth the $ they claim, etc.) but you get the general idea w/r/t your original post.
Besides, if more people thought as you did (and didn't bother "collecting" the drek off P2P they would otherwise not buy in the first place), we'd not have to discuss this at all... and most likely our freedoms wouldn't collectively be dumped into the abyss in the name of "saving an industry from the evil pirates."
I'd rather see the industry be forced to cater to their customers as it should be... rather than the industry strangling its userbase. But that's just a pipedream these days.
It's the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Your cable tv provider is a cable tv provider and nothing more. Now, imagine they started offering channels of entertainment and selling advertising and generating revenue from those channels. Now, imagine they started degrading the quality of other channels (periodically "losing the signal", "getting poor reception", etc., etc., etc.) which "coincidentally" encourages people to watch their channels which seem to be free of the problems of those other channels.
See an obvious problem there?
This is what's happening with ISPs - they are providing access to the tubes. They are now providing content on those tubes. They are now degrading the service of other content providers (losing connections, poor speeds, etc., etc., etc.) thereby encouraging people to use their service(s) which happen to be free of those nasty problems other content providers suffer from.
This isn't business. It's anti-competitive manipulation of a market. In most countries (I'd guess all first world nations...), anti-competitive bullshit like this is illegal. Why are we allowing ISPs to do it?
Easy - If your connection has a high ratio of uploads compared to other users on the network (or meets some other arbitrary criteria), your connection class is set to "suspect" and any traffic not identifiable by the filtering system is blocked or throttled.
Can't we hold web servers at home anymore? jeesh!
Yes. The language will say that any encrypted connection will be throttled or terminated "to protect the integrity of the internet at large" or some other wording. If you want to use your broadband speed, you will have to do so using approved clear-text protocols connecting to approved hosts.
After all, if you don't have anything to hide, you shouldn't be hiding anything, right?
Which is going to disappear once the majority want to run their on mine appliance server with IPv6 and regain a measure of privacy with their own personal email server. The money for jam IPv4 address range is coming to any end.
The reality is the ISP and simply trying to squeeze up the profit margins by throttling traffic whilst falsely advertising it as being available, that and a legalised excuse to grossly invade their users privacy so that they can show a continuous stream of targeted psychologically manipulative marketing bull shit down the throats of every person in the household.
The government should be ashamed out itself, every MP who supported this should look in a mirror with disgust at their willingness to sell out the privacy of their own children and grandchildren to placate some of the most exploitative parasites in society. The gross invasiveness of monitoring every user 24 hours a day in their own homes is sickening, what next compulsory web cams and microphones in every room of the house because once cell phones have shifted to IP addressing and voip is the norm, this gives companies the excuse to monitor every phone call, every email basically any type of internet access as the thieving contemptible general public who might deny some the richest and greediest ever more money, might be embedding 10 second copyrighted ring tones in those communications.
The general public in England would be seriously stupid to let this slide.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen