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."

Comments

This is the way we're all headed

[elrous0]

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).

Re:This is the way we're all headed

[CastrTroy]

And then we'll all just use TOR.

Re:This is the way we're all headed

[CastrTroy]

It makes me think of West Germany. I was watching "The Lives of Others" the other day, and one scene made me realize just how crazy things were. They analyzed the output of a typewriter, and figured out the make and model of the typewriter, and then they proceeded to ask who in the country had one of these typewriters. Apparently none were registered? Registering typewriters? Seriously. Treating a method of disseminating information as a controlled item. It seems we are headed in that direction. Where the governments want to be able to control what we talk about, and with whom we talk.

Re:This is the way we're all headed

[Anonymous Coward]

see, people ARE willing to pay for music and movies. they're willing to pay eight dollars a month for music and movies.

frankly, that sounds like a fair deal to me.

Re:This is the way we're all headed

[Keeper Of Keys]

Why is this person being modded down?

Something like you suggest has also been proposed today - £30 a year for immunity to prosecution. Not sure if these announcements are related or not, but that does does seem about the right price to me, perhaps even a little low - around $1.25 a month.

But one has to wonder whether the major labels deserve this, the way they've been behaving? If the money went directly to artists, though, and copyrights lifted from non-profit digital copying, now that would be a perfect solution.

Re:This is the way we're all headed

[mpeskett]

The way things seem to be going sometimes, I get the impression that the media companies and "content" producers would like it to be a one-way connection from corporation to consumer, like TV is.

You get to choose from a regulated selection of providers (analogous to TV channels) who serve up their own content. All nice and regulated. Put up some high cost-barriers to setting up such a channel, and the internet becomes like every other medium - a way for the big companies to push their content to a passive audience.

Just look at radio - started out open, anyone who could transmit could communicate, then it got regulated. Written media started out expensive (had to hire a team of scribes to make copies) became cheap with the advent of printing, then as mass printing and distribution became more expensive you had to have yourself a publisher or be a large newspaper.

Filtering/inspecting...

[anonieuweling]

Filtering/inspecting traffic implies taking responsibility implies getting lawsuits directed at ISPs for users' content.

This should be good.

[AltGrendel]

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.

Don't.

[getuid()]

If they don't want you to listen to their music, don't. Don't download, don't listen, don't buy.

Don't stea... I mean infringe copyright :-) either. Just don't.

Re:Don't.

[CastrTroy]

Agreed. I started getting my music from emusic, where things are a little bit more sane, in terms of pricing and the lack of DRM. I miss the big name bands a little bit, but I still have plenty of good music, and I'm discovering more good stuff all the time. I'm not saying emusic is the only good service. There's amiestreet, or just straight up Creative Commons stuff. There's plenty of good music out there. You don't need to stick with the big name bands to get good music.

FILTER HOW ??

[johnjones]

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

[neokushan]

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.

Re:Dodge this...

[Suzuran]

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.

Re:Dodge THIS

[unlametheweak]

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.

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