30,000 UK ISP Users Face Threat Letters For Suspected Illegal File Sharing

Mark.JUK writes with this excerpt from ISP Review: "Solicitors at ACS:Law have been granted approval by the Royal Courts of Justice in London to demand the private personal details of some 30,000 customers suspected of involvement with illegal file sharing from UK broadband ISPs. The customers concerned are 'suspected' of illegally file sharing (P2P) approximately 291 movie titles, they now face threatening demands for money (settlement) or risk the prospect of court action. It's noted that 25,000 of the IP addresses that have been collected belong to BT users."

Comments

It will never end

[Anonymous Coward]

We'll build a decentralized network before we allow you to dictate which information we may copy. We have the technology, we have the know how and you're giving us the motivation.

Re:It will never end

[sopssa]

But will you actually do anything about it? It's easy to just shout loud works and then go back to watch the latest blockbuster movie you've just pirated because it's "free speech".

btw, internet itself is a decentralized network, so what would building an another one help?

Re:It will never end

[Anonymous Coward]

We'll build a decentralized network before we allow you to dictate which information we may copy. We have the technology, we have the know how and you're giving us the motivation.

Actually it will end. When films become unprofitable to make then there won't be anything to pirate. Can't happen? Who makes films and who funds them. As everyone has noticed the businessmen have taken over so artists aren't doing it out of love. Also what are the big films everyone wants to see? 2012 and Avatar? They cost 250 to 350 million to make. Even the Twilight films cost a lot. Yes there will always be movies but one day the only Star Trek feature being made may be by a fan in his garage. I've heard people boast that fan films are superior but virtually all of them are knock offs of studio films or TV shows and few approach professional quality and the acting is uniformly bad. Theaters are struggling, that's why popcorn is $5+. Network TV is dying fast. Cable is mostly jam packed with commercials just trying to stay above water. Hey advertising will bring on a golden age where everything is free. Well back in the day we called that TV and it's dying. So far the ad based web content has faired poorly at being profitable and doesn't come close to covering the cost of even cheap productions. "But they'll find a way or they'll do it for free". So far no one has come up with an alternate way to fund movies, theatrical and DVD still cover all production costs and people like to eat so working for free isn't an option. Older viewers still mostly pay but Gen X'ers don't like to pay and Tweens feel they shouldn't have to pay. Gradually the older crowd dies off and what you are left with are a bunch of people demanding content but refuse to pay. Already average studio film budgets are 20X what they were 30 years ago and it keeps getting worse. I've been on the ground with it and theatrical releases of any size cost 15 to 25 million, hard numbers not creative accounting. That's prints and advertising. Even electronic distribution cost money. Hey just web release films? How do you return even the investment on a 250 million dollar film through web streaming? And I know everyone says "to hell with them for expecting profits" but who is going to put up 100 to 250 million without any profit? It's easy to say if we stick together we can win this one but what do you win if you kill off the very thing you are fighting over? I used to see 1 to 3 films every week in a theater. Now I've seen less than a dozen all year, probably far less. The drop in quality is partly caused by the drop in profitability of films. They are less likely to take a risk so now you get remakes of remakes and few original films. Most of the quasi original films are effects epics with little story. And television, name three good TV shows? I can't. I like one US TV show and watch a handful out of morbid curiousity but they just aren't getting any better. Piracy will end when there just isn't anything worth pirating. Who wins then?

Re:It will never end

[Anonymous Coward]

When films become unprofitable to make then there won't be anything to pirate. Can't happen?

Can't happen. What you're effectively saying is that people will stop expressing themselves. Sure, 250 million dollar movies may be a fluke, an aberration never to return, but people will keep making movies, and they will be interesting, funny, engaging, soothing, provoking and everything you can imagine, because that's human nature. There's an abundance of information out there. You couldn't possibly consume a percent of all music, not even a percent of all music you like. Even watching movies 24/7 would leave you with a quickly growing stack of movies that you haven't seen. You haven't heard all the good jokes in the world and you never will. There are pictures that are world famous that you'll never know exist, many created by people who didn't have copyright protection, much less the obscene appropriation of public domain that passes as copyright today. To postulate that piracy will end content production is ridiculous. "Home taping kills music." Yeah, it sure did, didn't it?

Re:It will never end

[Artifakt]

So what's the difference between film ending because of piracy and film ending because nobody has any spare income to afford entertainment? You want to sell 100 Million tickets in the US, better have at least 100 Million people with enough income to reasonably afford it. Means is more basic than intent. You can (maybe) change the minds of people who have intent to watch without paying, you can (maybe) convince them to buy your formula blockbuster without clocking in that predictable thrill-ride is an oxymoron, but you absolutely can't provide them with the means to buy a ticket and still make a profit.
        Right now, the film industry is reaping the 'benefits' of real wages having remained static for most since the 1970's as taxes rose, savings declines, and credit moved from something good customers paid off quickly to a lifetime of working for the credit companies. The industry is far from the only one, but they get to blame the problems on pirates instead of looking at the other factors.

Re:It will never end

[erroneus]

I find it fascinating and amusing that people fail to appreciate that people are quite naturally creative and expressive. That some fairly small group of people has effectively taken control of that and made it into an industry worshipped by the masses is something that happened after the fact. Creativity and expressiveness enabled the industry. The industry does more to control and limit creativity and expressiveness than it does to encourage it. In fact, many ideas and concepts (both good and bad) are kept silent by the industrialists. One only has to point to Firefly and a few others to see how it happens.

There will always be some people who will do it for fun instead of profit. Always.

The industrialists are simply too greedy and do not appreciate the peril they bring upon themselves. They have made lots of money over the past 20 years... their best years so far. The problem is that it is not enough for them. "Growth" is their metric for success. There is no perceived cap or saturation point in their business vision. If anything slows their growth, they will find a way to destroy it or use it as an excuse to get more legislation written in their favor.

Their foundation is their audience... their customers. They seek to weaken their foundation. What happens to their structure when the foundation is weakened? Nothing surprising about that.

Re:It will never end

[JPLemme]

There are only so many hours in a day, and there are only so many movies and television shows that people can consume. If the costs of reproduction and distribution fall precipitously, people aren't going to see ten movies a week or watch TV for an additional four hours a day. They'll just spend less money to consume about the same amount of content. That would be true even in a world with no piracy. And with more bandwidth to fill, that smaller pool of money needs to fund the creation of even more content. Risky, expensive productions were going to wither away even if BitTorrent had never been created. Or put another way, don't blame piracy for The Jay Leno Show or Saw VI. In fact (although the huge biases make it hard to trust any study of the topic), I wouldn't be surprised if most pirates haven't greatly reduced their spending on media as distribution costs fell; but rather started accumulating more bits for the same amount of money.

Once content producers figure out how to make money in a world without physical media (which requires them to figure out how to offer their customers what they want at a prices they'll pay -- you'd think it wouldn't be so hard), the content will flow again. There may be less money available to create it, and they may need to change the ways they fund it, but people with a story to tell will find a way to tell their story. The radio and the phonograph didn't kill live music, movies didn't kill live theater, television didn't kill movies, and the VCR didn't kill anything. In all of these cases there were big winners and big losers, and the scope and/or quality of the content may have morphed over the decades, but there is more stuff (both good and bad) than ever before.

Re:It will never end

[Shakrai]

Jesus dude, you make some really great points, but haven't you ever heard of the <p> tag?

Re:It will never end

[Anonymous Coward]

meanwhile honest people like me just rent movies from amazon at low cost and zero hassle. And I don't haver to act like a fucking undercover agent to enjoy my perfect quality DVD movies.

Enjoy your play acting at being a rebel kiddo. The rest of us just enjoy watching movies without all this bullshit hassle you pirate kids put up with.

Re:It will never end

[Anonymous Coward]

Have fun watching FBI warnings and unskippable advertisements. There are (and will always be) people who don't recognize that they're being violated. I prefer putting some work into infrastructure I own and control, rather than being treated like a region-coded source of revenue.

Re:It will never end

[sticky_charris]

And good for you. This whole thing wouldn't be so much of a problem if there was more people coughing up and less people downloading.

When I started with torrents it was a few scoundrels ripping off a few films - now everyone and their dog is doing it. I wish we hadn't all shown our brothers and mothers how to do it, and made the clients so user friendly. It is now way too mainstream, and that is why governments are now involved.

Hopefully new legislation will reduce the numbers once again so that only those who are truly determined will be able to get around it. The government can then pat themselves on the back for reducing it by 70% and everyone is happy.

Re:It will never end

[JackieBrown]

You just go back to the people that do not know how to download buying bootlegs and cams at the fleamarket and from friends.

Re:It will never end

[mpe]

I find it fascinating and amusing that people fail to appreciate that people are quite naturally creative and expressive.

By "people" you tend to mean the movie and music industries together with associated "hangers on". Just about everyone else is fully aware of this part of human nature.

That some fairly small group of people has effectively taken control of that and made it into an industry worshipped by the masses is something that happened after the fact. Creativity and expressiveness enabled the industry. The industry does more to control and limit creativity and expressiveness than it does to encourage it. In fact, many ideas and concepts (both good and bad) are kept silent by the industrialists. One only has to point to Firefly and a few others to see how it happens.

Better examples would be The Beatles music, Star Wars, even Harry Potter of things which turned out to be very popular (and profitable) yet were almost consigned to oblivian.

There will always be some people who will do it for fun instead of profit. Always.

People who are entirely or primarily motivated by profit would appear to be in the minority. Which is just as well since otherwise very little would actually get made.

Re:It will never end

[mpe]

There are only so many hours in a day, and there are only so many movies and television shows that people can consume. If the costs of reproduction and distribution fall precipitously, people aren't going to see ten movies a week or watch TV for an additional four hours a day. They'll just spend less money to consume about the same amount of content. That would be true even in a world with no piracy. And with more bandwidth to fill, that smaller pool of money needs to fund the creation of even more content.

Increasing population, levels of literacy and lower costs of distribution also mean more potential customers.

Once content producers figure out how to make money in a world without physical media (which requires them to figure out how to offer their customers what they want at a prices they'll pay -- you'd think it wouldn't be so hard),

They also need to be able to figure out who their customers actually are...

Re:It will never end

[Anonymous Coward]

they must be making lots of money to fund all these lawyers

Re:It will never end

[mldi]

Actually, I don't really pirate because there's not a whole lot worth pirating. You quoted 2012 and Avatar. Yawn. If I truly get bored, I hit up the local Red Box. If there's a film I really want to see, I'll wait until I can rent it. I REFUSE to pay $10/ticket to see it in the theater, and it's not even the theater that's coming away from the majority of that ticket price. I remember 4-5 short years ago when I was paying $5. Now it's $10. That's 100% inflation in 5 years. You tell ME why they're "losing" business?

3 conditions for me giving them my money:
1) Quality films, and it's helpful not to spit out crappy sequels or remakes
2) Tickets for 2 people should be less than it costs to buy the damn thing
3) Reduce licensing costs so that the theaters actually showing the films make a little cash. It's unreal the turnover rate for theaters these days.

Re:It will never end

[AmiMoJo]

Thing is, 2008 was a record year for Holliwood. More movies made (about 2x as many as in 2001), highest ever profits.

File sharing just means that movie studios need to alter their business model a bit, which they have begun to do. As fewer and fewer people were going to the cinema they made the experience more worth while with 3D and better sound/image quality. They expanded their lines of mechanise and branched into other media.

I suppose they would argue that they could be making even more money from all that stuff if it wasn't for P2P, but in the end every person has only so much money to spend. They will dispose of their money somehow, all you have to do is provide them with something they want.

At least until Star Trek style replicators appear, then they are fucked.

Re:It will never end

[vuffi_raa]

Actually, I don't really pirate because there's not a whole lot worth pirating.

the same is true for the distribution, since hulu and netflix are streaming in the home I only pirate things that are not available and hence have virtually no impact even theoretically on sales- if netflix teamed with hulu and the mpaa to widen the catalog of movies and tv shows and split the membership- even if the fee were raised from the current $9 to say $12-15 and split amongst the groups, piracy would dwindle on available media and all of the the groups would get a cut-

Better in Italy

[Anonymous Coward]

Strange to say, but in Italy we protect more our privacy than in UK: our Data Privacy Authority decided that it's against the law to provide a correspondence between IP Address and real person name if the suspected violation is only for copyright issues.

Re:Better in Italy

[Anonymous Coward]

Sadly the left-wing gov we have considers us all subjects and we should all do as we are told, never question the status-quo and never question Father Brown leader of the glorious party of truth and light!

However those of us who do not sit dribbling in front of our TV's watching shite like Big Brother, Come Dancing or X-Factor do have IQs at least in double digits, do argue against this pathetic excuse for a government! A government where most of the MPs are on the boards of media companies and simply do as the shareholders of said companies tell them to.

Re:Better in Italy

[damburger]

Left wing government? No wonder you were modded flamebait. The government in the UK is right-wing, despite the Labour name. And protecting the profits of big business whilst suppressing the civil liberties of ordinary people is a clearly right-wing policy.

Re:Better in Italy

[Anonymous Coward]

Damburger (GP) is of the opinion that "right-wing is always bad" and that "left-wing is normally good". This is common groupthink, in fact it is an almost universal belief in Britain.

Damburger realises that New Labour are a nasty bunch of crooks, but isn't able to make the connection between that crookedness and the Left-wing ideology that creates it, so in his mind, New Labour become right-wing. He would benefit by reading Nick Cohen or Jonah Goldberg, since their books clearly illustrate that the "nasty Left" didn't disappear with the fall of the Soviet Union.

Re:Better in Italy

[Anonymous Coward]

ORLY? Strange that all actual right-wing people completely disagree with you about that. As you would see from any right-wing blog or any right-wing newspaper.

I think New Labour are right-wing in the same sense that Hitler was "far right", i.e. NOT right-wing in any objective sense, just not your sort of leftie.

Re:Better in Italy

[Anonymous Coward]

Left wing government? No wonder you were modded flamebait. The government in the UK is right-wing, despite the Labour name. And protecting the profits of big business whilst suppressing the civil liberties of ordinary people is a clearly right-wing policy.

it shouldn't be modded flamebait, it should be modded doublethink....

Re:Better in Italy

[Smegly]

Sadly the left-wing gov we have ...

Check your political compass... you can't talk about left/right with without also including the Authoritarian/Libertarian axis. Yeah, it requires slightly more effort than linear left/right thought... probably why you never hear it mentioned when the general population talk politics.

Re:Better in Italy

[gbarules2999]

No, you've got it wrong. Right wing likes the growth of power in business (fascism) and left wing likes the growth of power in government (socialism, communism). Both inherently flawed, but in this case, it's the growth of business, so it's right wing policy.

Re:Better in Italy

[roguetrick]

I have yet to see a valid connection between economic policy and civil freedoms.

Re:Better in Italy

[Anonymous Coward]

I take it you don't subscribe to the theory that fascism and Nazism are left-wing movements, then? As in, a merger of corporate and government power that leaves the government in charge?

The leftist reason to oppose filesharing is the same as the leftist reason for opposing unauthorised typewriters and printing presses: if you control how people communicate, then you can control what people think. It just so happens that, once again, the needs of big business line up with the needs of Peter Mandelson. A better example of a left-wing fascist could never be found.

Re:Better in Italy

[Anonymous Coward]

A pox on both your houses.

You have essentially two political viewpoints:
1. Inequality is good;
2. Inequality is bad.

All struggle arises from the conflict between the two. Those who believe in (2) inevitably evolve into something corrupt that resembles (1), but (2) in its purest, nascent form is always necessary to prevent the excesses created by (1).

The socialist idealist's mistake is to assume that humans with power can be incorruptible and not seek special treatment from government, while the capitalist idealist's mistake is to assume that humans with power can be incorruptible and not seek special treatment from government. To each one must ask, "What the hell did you expect powerful men were going to do apart from push the boundaries in their own interests?"

Re:Better in Italy

[Acapulco]

I'm not sure how this concepts get defined around the world, as I live in a single country, but shouldn't a political compass include *more* than 2 axes? I mean, it probably has much more dimensions, since human behavior, IMHO, is much more complex than just "left/right, up/down" or whatever you want to call this "axes".

Maybe instead of a "political compass" we can call it a "political OLAP cube"?, with many many dimensions, including the time dimension, and many different ways of presenting this cube. No?

Re:Better in Italy

[Anonymous Coward]

In Italy we have an autoritarian rigth wing government that is constantly rewriting laws to give immunity to Mr. Berlusconi, so strange your idea of an left wing one.

Re:Better in Italy

[Anonymous Coward]

There was no part of Nazism that could be considered socially liberal no. There was also no concept of egalitarianism, so no it really doesn't come under the left-wing banner if you mean left-wing in the terms of Marx (as its often meant in the UK). Nazi Germany may have had some left-wing economic policies, but that's as far as it went - and there is so much more to the political spectrum than a few economic policies.

It is possible to create both right-wing and left-wing authoritarianism, and both right-wing and left-wing libertarianism. The problem is that many people only see the economic side of one half, or the social side of another half.

I myself land on the socially liberal side, while believing in stricter regulation of businesses and services. I have spoke to a few American friends on this subject though, and I had a lot of trouble showing them the separation. Seems to be quite a gap in the way we feel about business and money being an integral part of life. This of course only means that we have to carefully define our labels in most discussions.

Re:Better in Italy

[drharris]

Neat-o.. My dot is almost over Mahatma Gandhi. Somehow that makes me feel superior. Thanks for that link!

Re:Better in Italy

[MrSteveSD]

It's interesting that all parties have moved towards the right (neo-liberalism) and simultaneously to towards authoritarianism. Not a pleasant trend.

Re:Better in Italy

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering some of the stories I have been reading about Italian politicians lately, I find that very easy to believe.

Re:Better in Italy

[Anonymous Cowpat]

...Nazism...

Godwin!

Re:Better in Italy

[Anonymous Coward]

no one would benefit from reading anything by nick cohen - he is just another blowhard socialist who cartwheeled about 180 degs to the right. he doesn't have a kind word for anything apart from israel. like arronavich and melenie phillips it is best that they are ignored.

as i jew i'm hugely ashamed of all three.

Re:Better in Italy

[Anonymous Coward]

No, New Labour a neo-liberal government, interested in creating a state that is favourable for capital accumulation, nearly exactly the same as the Tory party. Labour stopped being about socialism after Tony Blair, hence the name New-Labour.

Re:Better in Italy

[Trogre]

Stop. Please, just... stop.

Re:Better in Italy

[swjenner]

That depends on what you mean by right wing???

Left-wing, Right-wing, is a guide to a person's view of a government's stance on economics and it's associated level of liberty.

The government of the UK and it's overseeing masters in Brussels is definitely left-wing. It has been thus in the UK since 1946 when the Labour government started interfering in everything... and I mean everything. Left-wing government is so completely embedded in the nation that most people do not even know what right-wing is. A left-wing government, is one that supports big business against the interests of small business and the man on the Clapham omnibus, this is also (according to Mussolini) called fascism. Don't tell me I am wrong, Mussolini invented and practised the principle in Italy in the 1920-30s by entering into massive construction schemes involving his government and the big industrialists at Alfa Romeo and Fiat etc. Whole towns full of men and women were herded to some God-forsaken marsh to slavishly build new cities for the industrialists to thrive in. Left-wing government operates by holding a big stick over ordinary people and telling them what is good for them... it... whatever IT is, is NEVER good for them. You can call this kind of government communist, you can call it socialist, you can call it fascist, you can call it democratic, and they often do.... but it ain't right wing.

Right wing, is where the government, protects the people and their interests from external or internal attack, by ensuring that the people can defend themselves against an attacker, and that includes a hostile government. They raise a very low tax to pay for their upkeep, and then they leave people alone! They leave people to look after their own interests, to become rich or clever, or even the reverse and they say and do... nuffink.

In one country, they have a system whereby, the people can force the government do do its will. This country is called Switzerland, and the people there are per capita, the richest and best educated and best looked after (in a welfare sense) of any nation on the earth, and they do this with very little in the way of natural resources. They do it through a system called direct democracy, the people have the whip hand, it is called a VOTE and it is used against professional politicians at every opportunity in the interests of the majority of the people.

Now, that is right wing, the government is so under employed that it is part-time!

So in a nutshell, left-wing is a government that works from the top down, and right-wing government is where the people delegate the things that they cannot do for themselves to a larger body... so called bottom up, or as the European Union laughingly call it.... subsidiarity.

Re:Better in Italy

[jc79]

I think you have confused left-wing and right-wing for authoritarian and libertarian.

Think on more than one axis, please.

This "OMG your all communazis/totally fascist corporate slaves man" is getting tedious

Re:Better in Italy

[swjenner]

I did the political compass about 5 years ago, I even paid for the certificate, incidentally, I am about a quarter of an inch above the head of Ayn Rand.

So no, I do not think I am confused.

Most authoritarianism is left-wing, it is why Gandhi never formed a government, he was a socialist theorist who hated the authoritarian British regime, he oversaw and engineered it's end, even though that had more to do with WW2 than anything else, and then stood by while the even more authoritarian Jinna and Nerhu fucked up the sub-continent with war and commie crap; Pakistan has never recovered. Without becoming an authoritarian himself he could never have formed a socialist left wing government.

On the other hand if you look at the political compass; within the right authoritarian quadrant, the big ones are all just over the border from the left.

I think the political compass concept is an exercise in nitpicking... but that is just me.

I think that socialism, fascism, nazism etc. are both left-wing and authoritarian, because they force people (against their will) to modify their innate behaviour at the behest of government.

OTOH, right wing politics is by nature libertarian, because it frees people to do their own thing and thrive or fail.

The happy medium is to be found in somewhere like Switzerland, where the tendency of the politicians is to be left-wing, but the people keep them in their place through the use of their voting system, and I suppose ultimately their citizens army...

Well it has worked this way for 800 years anyway.

Re:Flamebait

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it 1984 on that motherfucking island of yours yet?

It's worse than 1984! It's 2009!!! (It would have been Orwell's sequel)

Thank gawd I use FTP

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, I've downloaded movies and TV shows using plain old (and I mean old) FTP. When am I going to get my letter?
I hate this protocol-specific gnashing of teeth...if you're downloading illegally, it doesn't matter what protocol you're using.

Re:Thank gawd I use FTP

[Anonymous Coward]

that's downloading, not sharing. Unless you also run an FTP server. It's not the same thing

Re:Thank gawd I use FTP

[Chatterton]

Yes. Unfortunatly it is more easy to track P2P users than FTP users. Now what I don't understand is that they don't seed the tracked with some false IPs like the one of the Queen and some institutions for letting them receive these letters too.

Re:Thank gawd I use FTP

[twoshortplanks]

Er...in this case BT refers to the communications company British Telecom, not Bittorrent.

Re:Thank gawd I use FTP

[Anonymous Coward]

SFTP or FTPS is where it's at :) or private BT trackers and the likes, all those are safe as long as no rats get access to it. I used to have a fair few pirated movies hosted at gopher://86.43.88.90 and I might return them, just imagine the headlines "MPAA sues obscure "gopher protocol" server operator"

Re:Thank gawd I use FTP

[inhuman_4]

Actually I think you have hit upon an interesting idea.

The lawsuits are based on the idea that the people at those IP address were downloading copyrighted content. And for this reason their private information is being released.

But what if you could muddy the waters? Make it so that there are lots of IP addresses from people who are not involved in piracy? If 10% of the IP addresses resolved to people who were not involved in piracy, then releasing the private information would not go through because it is known that 10% of these people are innocent. In the same way, once it gets to court, you could simply claim to be the innocent 10%.

I have no idea how this could be implemented. But I think decoupling people from their IP is the best way to prevent these lawsuits.

Re:Thank gawd I use FTP

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm pretty sure there's no need to seed with Royal IPs.... or Minister's home IPs either.

Re:Thank gawd I use FTP

[TangoMargarine]

Of course, the lawyers responsible would do their best to hush up the whole innocent parties thing. And once word got out 90% of those implicated would claim to belong to the 10%.

go on, complain, I dare you

[Anonymous Coward]

You knew this would happen, you kidded yourself that no-one would find out if you pirated a few movies.

The ISP can and will turn over the details to the lawyers if they are ordered to, and it's there in plain text in the contract you signed.

Stop whining.

Re:go on, complain, I dare you

[Anonymous Coward]

How is that a troll?

Here's the relevant part of the contract from my broadband provider:

5.3 You shall not use, nor allow any other(s) to use, the service to:

(a) store, send, knowingly receive, upload, download or distribute any material that is unsolicited, defamatory, offensive, abusive, obscene, pornographic or menacing, or in breach of copyright, confidence, privacy or any other rights;
(b) violate or infringe any rights of, or cause unwarranted or needless inconvenience, annoyance or anxiety to, any other person;
(c) breach any laws, legislation, regulations, codes, standards or content requirements of any relevant body or authority;
(d) obtain unauthorised access to any information, network or telecommunications system(s);
(e) compromise the security or integrity of any network or telecommunications system(s), including without limitation any part of our network or telecommunications systems;
(f) place any viruses or other similar computer programs onto the service or the internet;
(g) store, distribute or reproduce commercial software or reproduce a third party's software or material without the permission of that third party and/or the relevant rights holder(s);
(h) for any improper, fraudulent or otherwise unlawful purpose; or
(i) to spam or to send or provide unsolicited advertising or promotional material or knowingly to receive responses to any spam, unsolicited advertising or promotional material sent or provided by any third party. You agree to take all reasonable steps to make sure that this does not happen.

5.5 In all circumstances, you will indemnify us against any claims, actions or legal proceedings (including reasonable related costs and expenses, legal or otherwise) which are brought or threatened against us by a third party because the service has been used or is being used in breach of paragraphs 5.1 to 5.4.

And in the privacy policy, turn over your details for:

(l) legal compliance.

it's a legally binding contract

Re:go on, complain, I dare you

[jank1887]

right there in 5.3(a): ... download ... any material that is ...pornographic.

Boom. no porn. if people followed that, half of the IP space on the net would be freed up immediately. IPV6 adoption could be pushed off for another few decades.

Re:go on, complain, I dare you

[Xest]

There's a difference between you explicitly allowing someone to use your connection for those purposes, and someone using the connection for those purposes against your knowledge.

If your connection is used without your knowledge due to open wifi or a compromised PC then they are sharing against your will and you most certainly did not allow that person to do it- they did it without such permission and you are therefore not liable.

As Slashdot requires a car analogy, it's like someone breaking into your car and then joy riding in it and running someone over and killing them. When that happens you are not guilty of manslaughter or in fact guilty of anything at all.

On the contrary, in both cases, you are actually a victim of a crime, whether you choose to report and prosecute is up to you, but you certainly cannot be punished whether you do or not.

Re:go on, complain, I dare you

[grumpy-old-git]

If your car is caught in a speed trap while it was being stolen and joyridden you can't just say "I wasn't driving it" and not do anything about it! you're going to have to prove that it wasn't you in the car, and without having at least reported the theft of the car, that could be difficult.

Re:go on, complain, I dare you

[Xest]

I'm not sure what country you're referring to but that's not the case in the UK. Many tickets have been overturned because the cameras didn't manage to get a clear image of the driver.

This leads to a similar situation because then effectively the driver can choose to contest it in the courts and if he does the police can choose to accept the challenge in the courts or drop the charge, in many cases they simply drop the charge because they know they don't have a leg to stand on.

What you certainly don't have to do is prove it wasn't you in the car, the police have to prove it was you in the car and that's the key difference.

That's also how it should be here, but as the law companies has no actual evidence putting you at blame then it's not a case they can win, hence why they normally vanish into silence as soon as people question their claims rather than pursue it in the courts.

The point is, you're not liable until they can really prove you're liable, which they can't. The onus is not on you to prove you're innocent, only to turn up to court and refute their attempts to lie or manipulate the courts if they pursue this path to attempt to obtain a judgement in their favour, you will only receive a default judgement if you do not turn up at all.

Re:go on, complain, I dare you

[cpghost]

right there in 5.3(a): ... download ... any material that is ...pornographic.

Seen from the outside, it is quite remarkable how anti-pr0n / prudish most of the Commonwealth (still) is... at least officially. Yet most sex scandals involve their law makers, ministers etc. That's just... weird.

Re:go on, complain, I dare you

[JackieBrown]

In Texas, they only get the license plate.

You have to have the offending driver come to court with you and ask to have it transfered to their name.

Re:Flamebait

[Anonymous Coward]

They could hide from the telescreens and meet in the countryside for illicit encounters in the book, you'd never get away with that in 2009.

I wonder how they found the 25000 BT users...

[asdf7890]

I wonder how they found the 25000 BT users - it seems odd that 25,000 out of 30,000 come from one ISP if they found them by any public means (i.e by joining swarms on public trackers and seeing which IPs are also operating in the swarm).

My guess is that while they were testing Phorm's targeted-advertising-based-on-snooping technology they were also did something very similar to what Virgin are planning (from the earlier story today "CView's deep packet inspection is the same technology that powered Phorm's advertising system" - CView being what Virgin plan to use to inspect P2P traffic).

Re:I wonder how they found the 25000 BT users...

[CharlyFoxtrot]

I hope if BT turns over the personal details of these 25000 customers they all quit their contract the same day along with any sympathizers. That ought to show them customer privacy is in their best interest too.

Re:I wonder how they found the 25000 BT users...

[u38cg]

My suspicion is that these are broadband accounts which have gone through a reseller. BT has something like 400 resellers on its books, so a substantial number of people going through $SOME ISP are actually getting service from BT.

Re:I wonder how they found the 25000 BT users...

[Anonymous Coward]

Quit? if they are caught downloading copyrighted material without a licence then they can just have their service terminated (and still pay the full amount for that contract period). That's called legally binding contract terms

Re:I wonder how they found the 25000 BT users...

[asdf7890]

Yes but several large ISPs have numerous resellers, so I still wouldn't expect such a strong skew to one ISP even considering that. Even allowing for resellers, BT's user base is not even close to that high a portion of the overall Internet connected population of the UK (unless you are counting the exchange equipment, but that is a separate matter).

Re:I wonder how they found the 25000 BT users...

[JasterBobaMereel]

..simple Most people are BT Customers, or Customer of BT Wholesale via a third party

BT is the Commercial version of the old Government run monopoly that existed before it was sold off ...So naturally most people stayed with them, and since BT Wholesale is by far the largest Broadband provider (for the same reasons) they supply broadband to most of the resellers

Re:I wonder how they found the 25000 BT users...

[asdf7890]

If they are talking about BT Wholesale then maybe the 25K/30K isn't massively far off expected, but I suspect they are talking about BT Broadband - the ISP part of the organisation. Most ADSL providers go through BT Wholesale for access to their exchange equipment and backhauls and officially BT Broadband is just one of those ISPs. BT won't have been monitoring traffic at the exchange/backhaul level, it will have been monitored at the ISP level so they would not see the users of other ISPs like Demon for instance. And an outside monitor would not see the exchange+backhaul part of the network - from a TCP point of view that is all transparent - so they too would not count users on other ISPs networks as being BT based.

Re:I wonder how they found the 25000 BT users...

[TangoMargarine]

But you know they won't.

Re:I wonder how they found the 25000 BT users...

[Anonymous Cowpat]

I think they'll have a hard time clawing the money out of someone once the direct debit gets cancelled. What amounts to "we can charge you while not providing the service we're charging you for" is unlikely to get past any sort of unfair contracts claim.

Time to get a Relakks account

[cerberusss]

Guess it's time to get a Relakks account. Basically you use a VPN account which gives you some random Swedish IP address. This will keep you off the radar of those collecting IP addresses for a while.

Not related to them or anything, I was just a satisfied customer for a few months. I gave it up when I realized I almost never downloaded movies and music anymore.

Re:Time to get a Relakks account

[Anonymous Coward]

Guess it's time to get a Relakks account. Basically you use a VPN account which gives you some random Swedish IP address. This will keep you off the radar of those collecting IP addresses for a while.

Not related to them or anything, I was just a satisfied customer for a few months. I gave it up when I realized I almost never downloaded movies and music anymore.

Slashdotted.
yahoo cache
google cache

Re:Time to get a Relakks account

[L4t3r4lu5]

I've found exactly the same as this. I've not bought or downloaded any new movies songs, or consumed any media from Big4 or Hollywood in a long time. No doubt that's because I'm a scurvy sea-dog, though.

Oh, wait... I haven't downloaded anything either. Guess that means that all of the new stuff sucks. Who would have thought it could get so bad that people didn't want it for free?

Re:Time to get a Relakks account

[Pulzar]

Oh, wait... I haven't downloaded anything either. Guess that means that all of the new stuff sucks. Who would have thought it could get so bad that people didn't want it for free?

"you and cerberusss" != "people"

Clearly, there are lots of people who do want this stuff, for free or not.

Re:Time to get a Relakks account

[jandersen]

Not sure; I think the real deal is to stay low-profile, if you want to do something that is illegal - or even quit doing it. A bit like growing cannabis - if you grow a plant or two in your garden, you will probably get off with a warning, if the police go as far as intervening, which they may well not do, since they have far more important things to do, but if you grow a major crop of the stuff, they will of course come after you, and you will have a longish holiday.

Re:Time to get a Relakks account

[Anonymous Coward]

Add me to the list.

I keep my p2p client running all day, mostly uploading, not downloading. I've only downloaded a Hollywood movie in the last months. No music, either. OTOH, I use p2p to download foreign movies and old movies that will never be shown or otherwise distributed in my country.

Re:Time to get a Relakks account

[MacWiz]

Clearly, there are lots of people who do want this stuff, for free or not.

In the U.S., sales are down 67% since 2000. This means there are twice as many people who used to buy music from the RIAA but now don't than the "lots of people" who still do.

Another 35,000 lawsuits will not increase sales. If anything, it will just result in another 100,000 people or so that will never again buy product from the Big Four.

Re:Time to get a Relakks account

[Anonymous Coward]

Same here. I haven't seen any movies lately - legal or downloaded - because I've been too busy working 80 hour weeks trying to earn enough to pay my bills.

Something-Something Wants to be Free

[RobotRunAmok]

We'll build a decentralized network before we allow you to dictate which information we may copy.

Information? I thought it was Hollywood movies that were being copied and distributed...?

Re:Something-Something Wants to be Free

[TheRaven64]

Technically, information is stuff that isn't noise. Noise is stuff that is random. Random sequences are those that can't be generated by a program that is smaller than the data, and therefore can't be compressed. Hollywood movies are being distributed in compressed form, therefore can be compressed, and are therefore information. Mind you, so is a sine wave.

Re:Something-Something Wants to be Free

[Anonymous Coward]

This is exactly backwards - the amount of information (in an algorithmic information theoretic sense) in a sequence is its size when maximally compressed. Since random sequences can't be compressed, they have maximal information density.

1000 bits of random data contains 1000 bits of information. 1000 bits of "99 bottles of beer on the wall" contains far less.

Re:Something-Something Wants to be Free

[Anonymous Coward]

"hollywood information" vs. "regular information"

Politicians

[Mr2cents]

Everyone who's been observing politicians knows how to react to such allegations: "I do not remember doing that" (you don't deny, so you can't get caught in a lie).

Re:Politicians

[Anonymous Coward]

"I did not have bittorrential relations with that tracker"

Re:Politicians

[Anonymous Coward]

It's true that, because of illegal downloading, stars are going to live in small homes and die of starvation.

Re:Politicians

[CharlyFoxtrot]

"I connected, but I didn't download."

Re:Politicians

[L4t3r4lu5]

You got stuck at 99% too, huh?

Re:Politicians

[IBBoard]

Until they bring in brain scanners (or people who read body language) that can tell when you're lying. At that point you need to start wiping your memory of downloading copyrighted content, leaving you with the wonderful situation of going "ooo, where did that come from?" :D

Re:Politicians

[Anonymous Coward]

The only thing I want to know is - if you pay, are you then indemnified from further prosecution?

Re:Politicians

[Mr2cents]

But then we bring it back to the politicians and they'll realize in how much trouble they are. All in all, it'll be worth it ;-).

Re:Politicians

[Shakrai]

Until they bring in brain scanners (or people who read body language) that can tell when you're lying.

In the UK that might actually fly too. I heard that they've neutered the right to keep silent. Why would brain scans pose a problem to your civil liberties if you have nothing to hide, citizen?

Re:Politicians

[mldi]

"I connected, but I didn't download."

Bless your soul for seeding so generously!

"Suspected"

[Rik Sweeney]

In other words, they can prove that the person uses BitTorrent but not what they're using it for.

Re:"Suspected"

[sopssa]

How do you twist word suspected in to that? They aren't suspected of using BitTorrent, they are suspected of using BitTorrent for spreading copyrighted content without a right to do so. And now the copyright owners are suing them.

Re:"Suspected"

[jedidiah]

It may be optimistic to presume that the relevant parties have actually confirmed "what" is being transfered.

Re:"Suspected"

[jank1887]

well, they're suspected of hosting/seeding copyrighted material. The evidence is being pointed to by a torrent tracker for a file with the same name as a copyrighted work. Odds are, it's the copyrighted work in question, but it might not be. Odds are, you actually had the file shared on your harddrive at the time, but you might not have (it could have been a 'glitch' or erroneous pointer). Odds are, there was no legitimate grounds for you to provide broad access to and distribution for the material that is likely protected under someone else's copyright, but you might have.

So, it's all 'suspected' until proven. Seeding provides some pretty good evidence, though.

Re:"Suspected"

[mpe]

well, they're suspected of hosting/seeding copyrighted material. The evidence is being pointed to by a torrent tracker for a file with the same name as a copyrighted work. Odds are, it's the copyrighted work in question, but it might not be.

The odds depend very much on the actual name. If that name turns out to be a common word or term than the odds go down by several orders of magnitude.

Re:Flamebait

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you bother reading the FA? Of course not, this is /.. If you had, you would see that this is legal sabre rattling. Certainly no worse than the RIAA taking children to court in the US.

BT / Virgin Media / etc

[coofercat]

From the summary, one might draw the conclusion that "be a BT customer, and you're more of a target", but I seem to remember BT being the biggest ISP in the UK by quite a big margin*. Virgin Media (aka. NTL / Telewest) are the second largest*, and so it goes on. So I suppose it's reasonable that BT would account for the majority of the infractions. Conversely, BT have amongst the shittiest networks of all, so you'd imagine that the file sharers weren't actually sharing that much after all. But I suppose that would mean BT won't mind 25,000 people getting cut off, because it'll save them having to upgrade their network (like they say they're doing on the TV ads they're running at the moment).

So the real take-away here is that if you're at a small ISP, you're less likely to be targeted (at least until the big ones tumble). Meanwhile, the utter incompetence of the BPI and their friends should keep this from being anything more than an annoyance for 30,000 people. If even 5000 of them follow up and challenge their accusers, it'll tie the whole system up for months, if not years.

The BPI, Mandleson, and their ilk have an idealised view that file sharing should be super-illegal and so almost entirely eradicated. The problem is, best estimates suggest 7 million people in the UK share files*, so even if half give up from fear of prosecution, that's still 3.5 million people they've got to prosecute. I don't imagine there's a lawyer in the UK who's capable of executing that many cases in a decade, let alone simultaneously.

(* No, I can't substantiate this with a link right now - you know how to use a search engine though, right?)

Re:BT / Virgin Media / etc

[Xest]

Yes, which is exactly why they're trying to bypass the courts and make it possible for mere accusation to be enough to be punished.

Re:BT / Virgin Media / etc

[dgatwood]

Yes, which is why it is *urgent* that all 30,000 of those people, upon receiving notice, contact a lawyer and file an immediate suit for harassment, thus removing the industry's ability to pick and choose who to actually fight in court. There is strength in numbers.

Further, it is also essential that those people send letters to their MPs demanding that they fix the law to prevent these abuses. Ignoring the plight of 30,000 organized people would be career suicide.

Re:BT / Virgin Media / etc

[Rogerborg]

I can't work out if this is a parody, or whether you're actually serious.

First, in what possible way, shape, manner or form is accessing publicly available information and then using it to file in court for discovery "harassment"? Cite the English / Scots statute under which you'd file a civil suit.

Even if you could "organize"(sic) 30,000 people - which you can't - that's 46 people in each of the UK's 646 Parliamentary constituencies. It's an insignificant number.

Opponents of anti-piracy laws might be more credible if you kept themselves grounded in reality rather than raving in absolutes about how the world should work.

Re:BT / Virgin Media / etc

[imakemusic]

"Organize" is the correct spelling in American English. Your argument would be more credible if you kept yourself grounded in reality rather than pointing out how the English language should work. :P

Re:BT / Virgin Media / etc

[Anonymous Coward]

BT used to be the government owned monopoly, and still has many links (jobs for the boys etc) with the government, so it's not suprising at all.
(In fact if you want adsl, you still need a BT phone line before you can get it, the other ISPs have to rent it off BT).

Re:BT / Virgin Media / etc

[Xest]

I don't disagree.

The problem is I believe a good portion of those 30,000 (although the BBC article only says 15,000 by the way) will be completely unaware of any campaign or what to do and will just pay up regardless.

For what it's worth though, the BBC article also states the company ACS:law is under investigation by the law society and some solicitors grouping, I don't know what standing they have, but it may be that they will not be practicing too much longer anyway with any luck. Lawyers and solicitors in the UK generally have a better reputation than the US and I believe such a grouping will be unhappy with being brought into disrepute, at least, I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

For what it's worth, I shall contact my MP without being one of the people to receive such a letter- there is no need to wait to see if you're one of those that receives such a letter before you decide to act.

Re:BT / Virgin Media / etc

[aunt edna]

Not all UK law is statute law -- perhaps you'd like to check that before replying?

Re:BT / Virgin Media / etc

[Anonymous Coward]

The mapping between IP address and home address is definitely not public.

Re:BT / Virgin Media / etc

[Mortice]

It's also a correct spelling in British English. Please see this page.

Re:BT / Virgin Media / etc

[imakemusic]

Interesting. I'd mod you up but I've already commented and don't have any points left.

I can never remember which way round it is anyway! I just thought it was a strange thing to pick for Rogerborg to pick up on.

Re:BT / Virgin Media / etc

[LordAndrewSama]

This is why I want to become a lawyer(yes I know, soul to satan and all that), I'd do cases like these for free. hell, if the list was released to wikileaks, I'd email all of them and offer my free of charge services. sadly, I can't afford the studying just yet, but hey, i'm still young...

Re:BT / Virgin Media / etc

[Anonymous Coward]

> BT being the biggest ISP in the UK by quite a big margin*

Here you go, from OFCOM in September:

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/4044-q1-2009-market-data-published-by-ofcom.html

BT Retail have now actually been surpassed in residential numbers by TalkTalk, with 4.7 million LLU customers after they consumed Tiscali.

Bizarrely, these oversubscribed and impersonal networks actually *attract* more customers every quarter! BT Retail added 72,000 net in the last quarter, despite rubbish service.

Re:BT / Virgin Media / etc

[Anonymous Cowpat]

wait till the dust settles, find a few dozen other people who were sued unsucessfully, apply to get whichever company it was declared a vexatious litigant, screw up their ability to access the courts any further.

Re:BT / Virgin Media / etc

[Rogerborg]

What is this "UK" law of which you speak - perhaps you'd like to check that before replying?

Re:BT / Virgin Media / etc

[dgatwood]

First, in what possible way, shape, manner or form is accessing publicly available information and then using it to file in court for discovery "harassment"? Cite the English / Scots statute under which you'd file a civil suit.

I don't need to. It's quite irrelevant whether a harassment cases themselves would have any merit. The point is that the industry in question could not readily handle 30,000 suits coming in simultaneously, and that even sending someone down to ask for 30,000 cases to be individually dismissed would be sufficiently punitive to make them reconsider the wisdom of making such broad, sweeping legal threats in the future. It would also massively piss off the judges after seeing a hundred people in one day all complaining about the recording industry's threat letters. They would thereafter be more likely to recognize the industry's broad, sweeping legal threats as an abuse of the legal system, and would be more likely to be biased against the industry when scrutinizing future industry suits.

Re:BT / Virgin Media / etc

[dgatwood]

Err... the harrassment cases. Too many revisions to a single sentence introduce errors.

Re:BT / Virgin Media / etc

[aunt edna]

"UK" refers to the United Kingdom, which is comprised of Engand, Scotland & Wales; thus the UK law is that which pertains in those countries ... with variations.

What I was refering to is the common law.

Re:BT / Virgin Media / etc

[Rogerborg]

Common law is a quaint old-fashioned tradition. Point at it.

It's not Nineteen Eighty-Four

[Sockatume]

No, it's the real 1980s' vision of the future, only instead of OCP, it's the media industry that's gone on a power-mad rampage.

Re:It's not Nineteen Eighty-Four

[malus314]

Can anyone explain to me why so many of the above posts are modded "Troll"? I must be misunderstanding what the term means because I see very little trollish activity here (maybe I'm getting it confused with flamebait?)

Re:It's not Nineteen Eighty-Four

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, because if I beat back a thief in my house I'm on a power-mad rampage.

Re:It's not Nineteen Eighty-Four

[roguetrick]

Some mod got pissed about seeing the same thing over and over and decided to try and retaliate.

Re:It's not Nineteen Eighty-Four

[malus314]

I see. Thank you for clearing that up for me!

Re:It's not Nineteen Eighty-Four

[Anonymous Coward]

Those bastards! They copied my flat-screen TV!

Re:Flamebait

[JWSmythe]

Check back in 3 years and 1 month. :)

That's the Ticket!! Implicate the Royal Family!

[RobotRunAmok]

The pirates won't just get nasty threatening letters, they'll be arrested, drawn, quartered, and their ancestral lands salted with the dust of their ground-up bones. Good thinking!

BT's Statement

[bencoder]

I am very impressed by the statement from BT:

A BT Spokesperson told ISPreview in September:

"BT and other ISPs agreed to send 1,000 notifications alleging copyright infringement a week for a 12-week trial period, with BT picking up the bill for this activity for our own customers as an act of goodwill. However, it was understood that at the end of this period, we would need to take stock and have further discussions with the rights holders about costs etc.

During this period, the BPI sent us around 21,000 alleged cases, but less than two-thirds proved to be properly matched to an IP address of a BT customer and not a duplicate, so this could indicate that the true extent of this activity is much lower than the 100,000 number the BPI claim since February. In addition since none of the customers we wrote to during the trial were subsequently taken to court by the BPI, we don't know whether they were actually guilty of infringement."

I never knew BT could actually sound reasonable. What a shame governments are still left trailing behind on common sense and decency.

Why, oh why, oh why?

[xirtam_work]

Isn't the logical conclusion that if millions of people find a particular type of behaviour acceptable that it should be legalised? Otherwise it's socially unjust. We're not talking about murder or actual *stealing*. We're talking about copyright infringement. If we think it's a bad thing then we should also be allowed to decide how bad the punishment is, whether it's a small fine or a prison sentence.

I visit the cinema on average once a week and every time the copyright warning is displayed and mentions 10 years in prison for recording a movie in a cinema I cringe. That's more than people get for killing and maiming people, robbing banks and committing other violent crimes. The MP's are in the pockets of the media companies. I'm not talking about small indie film studios, but the distributors and those who own them like Sony, etc. They've been persuaded that if the penalties are high enough people will not perform actions that are trivial to execute and have no visible consequences. This has been shown not to be true time and time again.

I buy lots of DVDs and DVD boxsets. I probably spent about £500 a year on these. I pay for the cinema one a week. I buy music on iTunes and only search elsewhere online if I can't find what I want. As a kid I pirated every virtual computer game in existence in the 8/16 bit eras. Now I rarely play games, apart from on my iPhone which I pay for. I don't have TV at home, so *sometimes* I get TV shows I like online before going out and buying the full season boxset as soon as it becomes available. I might consider buying them on iTunes or similar if they were available at a reasonable price, but they're not. Most episodes of TV shows cost far more than the equivalent DVD for lower quality and no physical media to keep and store and are non-transferable to other machines, etc. I hope I'm not one of the people discovered in this haul of IP addresses, but I do not download movies, only a little bit of TV. Fingers crossed.

Re:Why, oh why, oh why?

[arethuza]

Doubleplus ungood thoughtcrime!! Copyright infringement is stealing. Copyright infringement has always been stealing.

Re:Why, oh why, oh why?

[Anonymous Coward]

My thoughs on this are if there are so many people "pirating" movies/tv shows then there must be a market to allow users to download them and pay for them either individually or via a subscription. The future is clearly on-demand viewing.
Why are the copyright holders trying so hard to protect their current revenue stream when there is an un-tapped additional revenue stream? In the same way that downloading music online legally has flourished since Napster's made people think it was ok to not own physical media downloading/streaming films/tv shows will catch on and be big business, eventually putting dvd shops, dvd rental places and traditional tv channels out of business.

Re:Why, oh why, oh why?

[Asmor]

Isn't the logical conclusion that if millions of people find a particular type of behaviour acceptable that it should be legalised? Otherwise it's socially unjust.

Millions of people found slavery acceptable. That doesn't mean it should ever have been legal.

Millions of people currently find all sorts of horrible practices acceptable. See, for example, the way women are treated in various parts of the world. That doesn't mean that it should be legal.

A huge number of people believing something is acceptable does not mean that it is, in fact, acceptable.

Please note that I'm not making a judgment on the issue of copyright law one way or another; I'm merely pointing out that your argument is flawed.

Re:Why, oh why, oh why?

[TheRaven64]

I would love to see the content owners hit with a massive fine for environmental damage. I currently watch most films by renting the DVDs. These are plastic disks which are posted to me, put in a machine, and posted back. This involves them travelling several hundred miles in a fossil-fuel-powerd machine. The only reason that I do this is because the copyright owners do not allow network delivery under the same terms. If I could download the DVD image, for example (or, ideally, something with more efficient compression), then it would cost vastly less for the company that I rent the DVDs from, and have far less environmental impact.

The same company also provides a streaming service, which I use quite often. At present, they have just under 2,000 titles available for streaming (with TV episodes counted individually) and 60,500 titles available on DVD (with seasons of TV shows counted as single titles). There is absolutely no technical reason why they could not provide every single one of these DVDs for live streaming or DRM-free download for playing on mobile devices. The only reason that they do not is legal; the copyright owners do not permit it.

Re:Why, oh why, oh why?

[Anonymous Coward]

A huge number of people believing something is acceptable does not mean that it is, in fact, acceptable.

Non sequitur. That something is obviously acceptable to the huge number of people.

Re:Why, oh why, oh why?

[Anonymous Coward]

and what about the other millions who don't find it acceptable? who wins? the ones who shout the loudest? the ones with the largest amount of people? why is it socially unjust? just because my mob is bigger than yours?

idiot.

Re:Why, oh why, oh why?

[mpe]

Isn't the logical conclusion that if millions of people find a particular type of behaviour acceptable that it should be legalised? Otherwise it's socially unjust.

That line has previously been crossed with drug prohibition. Even though effects of prohibition are more damaging to society than the most dangerous drugs.

We're talking about copyright infringement. If we think it's a bad thing then we should also be allowed to decide how bad the punishment is, whether it's a small fine or a prison sentence.
I visit the cinema on average once a week and every time the copyright warning is displayed and mentions 10 years in prison for recording a movie in a cinema I cringe. That's more than people get for killing and maiming people, robbing banks and committing other violent crimes.

It's also more than you'd get for actually stealing a DVD or even sneaking into the cinema without a ticket.

Re:Why, oh why, oh why?

[mpe]

I would love to see the content owners hit with a massive fine for environmental damage. I currently watch most films by renting the DVDs. These are plastic disks which are posted to me, put in a machine, and posted back. This involves them travelling several hundred miles in a fossil-fuel-powerd machine.

There's also plenty of pollution and use of limited resources involved in the manufacture of these disks together with the transport of materials and finished product most likely several thousand miles.

The only reason that I do this is because the copyright owners do not allow network delivery under the same terms. If I could download the DVD image, for example (or, ideally, something with more efficient compression), then it would cost vastly less for the company that I rent the DVDs from, and have far less environmental impact.

A lending library has all sorts of costs associated with dealing with physical media in finite quantities. Things like how to cope with 10's of thousands of people wanting a specific work in one year and 10's wanting it in the next are not easily solvable with a lending library approach. But which is fairly trivial with a download model.

The same company also provides a streaming service, which I use quite often. At present, they have just under 2,000 titles available for streaming (with TV episodes counted individually) and 60,500 titles available on DVD (with seasons of TV shows counted as single titles). There is absolutely no technical reason why they could not provide every single one of these DVDs for live streaming or DRM-free download for playing on mobile devices. The only reason that they do not is legal; the copyright owners do not permit it.

Even though it's probably easier for someone to rip or copy a DVD than it is to convert a streaming into a regular AV file.
Copyright works when you have physical media which can only be reproduced cheaply in large quantities. This was after all the situation where the concept came into existance. The thing is that this is no longer the case not only are CDs and DVDs trivial to copy there is no reason for sound and video recordings to be bound to any specific media.
The only area where physical media are still useful is printing. Most likely because in this case the media is directly usable by a human. Whereas every sound and video recording media requires a machine in order to be of any practical use.

No, you won't

[Anonymous Coward]

What will you personally - aside from posting on Slashdot and internet forums - do about it?

Yeah... Thought so.

Re:No, you won't

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me put it this way: I have personally pulled fiber between buildings (and it isn't my job).

Re:No, you won't

[sopssa]

As a kid we also pulled lan cables with my brother from my room to his room. Every day, because it didn't fit under the doors and wasn't built-in to the house. Then we played Counter-Strike beta 6 and GTA 2.

And no government in our darknet!

Re:No, you won't

[Ragzouken]

Just so you know, a linebreak does not constitute an adequate chance to respond to your first question. Do you understand?

I'll take that as a yes.

So BT are even worse

[jabjoe]

So not only are BT expensive, slow, with terrible customer service (bar one guy I managed to get hold of when I was stupid enough to be with BT), but they give up their customers, or even just hand them over without being ask to.

Re:So BT are even worse

[arethuza]

Wow - we must have met the same guy. They do have at least one rather good engineer who fixed our line issue in a rather interesting and resourceful way. However, to protect him I won't give anything away otherwise they would probably use the information to track him down, make him submit to enhanced customer service retraining then shoot him.

Re:So BT are even worse

[jabjoe]

He was great. I had been through loads of people trying to walk me through the "have you turned it on" script. Each for some reason thinking that them walking me through the script would be different then those before. None admitting they couldn't help. On about the 5th call I got pissed, and finally was put through to some one who knew about computers. He didn't have a script. We had a chat about Linux and computers in general while he tested the line and tried to connect to the router. An engineer was sent out to look at the line, but it was the router that was the problem, it was toast. All the semi skilled people with scripts in the world wouldn't have helped. Cheep support departments, Indian or otherwise, don't cover all cases, and must admit they are out of their league and hand it up to more skilled workers. The problem I had was until I got angry I couldn't get above the semi-skilled department, who couldn't order the engineer to look at the line, which was what I was asking for. After that, and the finding O2 was £20 a month cheaper, I switched, and since have found O2 much faster too. Not had cause to test their support yet......

Re:So BT are even worse

[arethuza]

Amazing - there are two decent people at BT! The problem we had was a dodgy line - once we got BT to accept the fact that it was the line (not the easiest thing in the world) we eventually got an engineer out. This first engineer had a look out the window and spotted a junction box on the line which he guessed was almost certainly the problem. However, this box was in a neighbours garden and they weren't in - so he couldn't fix it. So he asked me to arrange a time for them to visit our neighbour and our property. This turned out to be practically impossible due to their crazy attitude to arranging engineer visits.

However, we reported the problem again and this time a different engineer came round, found that our neighbours were out, jumped over the wall into our neighbours garden and fixed the junction box and things have been fine every since.

KEEP YOUR EYE ON THE SPARROW !!

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't do the crime if you can't do the time !! Don't do it !!

Funny how this applies to so many /. stories !!

Re:Christmas gifts, they start here.shoes,handbag,

[Inda]

If your goal was best Ingrish, I would have bought a pair of Nike shox and a handbag.

Narrow Definition of Infringement?

[mrpacmanjel]

If you go to the ACS web site thier definition of infringement seems to only apply to P2P traffic and even then seems to be limited to uploads.

Anyone with half a brain-cell would not use P2P networks for piracy anyway!

If you are really worried, the article has a link to http://www.beingthreatened.com/ - they seem to have some genuine advice.

By the way if you decide to pay the fine, it means you have admitted to guilt and will not be able to contest it or get your money back!
If you recieve a letter asking for payment under NO circumstances pay it!

Also, reply to the letter as soon as you can - you have a limited time to respond to it (cannot remember how long).

Re:Narrow Definition of Infringement?

[noidentity]

And don't go erasing or replacing your hard drive immediately after. That will just make your case worse.

Re:Narrow Definition of Infringement?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's because that's all that's illegal in the UK - you can read the act..

http://www.statutelaw.gov.uk/content.aspx?LegType=All+Legislation&searchEnacted=0&extentMatchOnly=0&confersPower=0&blanketAmendment=0&sortAlpha=0&PageNumber=0&NavFrom=0&parentActiveTextDocId=0&activetextdocid=2250425&versionNumber=3

Downloading for private use is legal.

Uploading to people (especially outside the country)

It's something that they keep very, very quiet.

Re:Flamebait

[cerberusss]

Is it 1984 on that motherfucking island of yours yet?

Actually I think that in almost every country, some company is harvesting IP addresses on the P2P networks. Just in case this stuff gets valuable.

Need a way to encrypt Limewire now

[jackflap]

any Limewire-like apps out there which support encryption?

Re:Need a way to encrypt Limewire now

[Deth_Master]

http://torrentfreak.com/how-to-encrypt-bittorrent-traffic/
Just turn on encryption in your favorite torrent client, and only allow encrypted connections. In combination with the Distributed Hash Table, Magnet Links, and Peer Exchange, an entirely decentralized file sharing system will work

Re:Need a way to encrypt Limewire now

[jank1887]

yes, you can find them here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_BitTorrent_clients#Features_I

Sort according to Encryption setting. note you won't see LimeWire on the list. Don't be scared.

Re:Need a way to encrypt Limewire now

[jank1887]

I stand corrected, there it is, supposedly with encryption. Is that just the Pro version?

Re:Need a way to encrypt Limewire now

[Per Wigren]

You don't need encryption, you need anonymity.
There are a few networks like OneSwarm and GNUnet and you can run a Gnutella network or BitTorrent on top of I2P. Don't expect to find much, though.
You can also sign up for an anonymous VPN service like Relakks and continue to use whatever you are used to.

Re:Need a way to encrypt Limewire now

[roguetrick]

Encryption only hides it from your ISP noticing what you're doing. If you're hosting shit on Gnutella, your ass is going to get canned.

Re:Need a way to encrypt Limewire now

[aunt edna]

Peer Guardian?

Re:Need a way to encrypt Limewire now

[Anonymous Coward]

One Swarm isn't anonymous. It is privacy preserving, you choose if you only want to connect to known hosts. The default for most users is to add the community list to the known or accepted hosts - anyone can be part of the community group so it defeats the purpose of using the software.

We need a new p2p focused anonymous system.

Tor is no good for privacy as it has been broken, its not trivial to break but it is still not secure.

Re:Need a way to encrypt Limewire now

[Anonymous Coward]

I like to think it the other way around, after all, with encryption who needs to be anonymous?
Cheers

Re:Need a way to encrypt Limewire now

[cpghost]

Yes, it works perfectly, but it still allows for 1) traffic analysis (IPs are not hidden through encryption) and 2) entrapment (you don't know the reputability of your peers). What we need is all this on top of an anonymising layer that routes traffic through many intermediate hosts. Maybe something like I2P, Gnunet or Freenet...

Re:Need a way to encrypt Limewire now

[Per Wigren]

Encryption only prevents middleman snooping. They can still connect to the same BitTorrent swarm as you, put up bait files and log who is connecting and they can try downloading from you to get your IP and verify the data.

Re:Need a way to encrypt Limewire now

[jc79]

We need bittorrent over tor, with each bt-o-t client being a tor relay server by default. This would vastly improve the speed of browsing on tor, while giving almost totally anonymous filesharing.

Incidentally, I2P has a built-in torrent client

Take action

[CookedGryphon]

Everyone who thinks this is a bad idea should sign this government petition, get everyone they know to sign the petition, and generally cause a ruckus
http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/dontdisconnectus/

Then install Tor, because you have to look out for yourself when you don't live in a democracy any more.

Re:Take action

[IBBoard]

Yes, because getting sent a letter saying "we believe you were committing a crime" ends your nation's ability to vote on who controls their nation...

Re:Take action

[CookedGryphon]

Depends on your definition of democracy, if you see it as picking your dictator (from, I might add, quite a limited pool), fine I accept your point.

If however you have a more rose tinted view, like the view that the will of the majority matters, then we should get a say in matters of law, not just be told what's legal and illegal

Re:Take action

[IBBoard]

Go find me a nation where you have full democracy - I'm betting it is nigh-on impossible. Get beyond a few hundred people in your population and you can't adequately poll everyone, so you need to bring in some kind of leadership who do the majority of ruling for the people. Is it perfect? No, but then the anarchy of everyone trying to vote on every issue wouldn't be either (true and full democracy). Does it work? Yes, it seems to for most of the world. Granted the corporations have pushed the main parties in almost all countries closer together, but that's an issue of the morals of the people in charge, not an issue of the wider system of "voting in people whose sole job is to run the country for the best of the country".

One of these days I'll find that Terry Pratchett quote again. I can't remember it exactly, and it is probably related to Lord Vetinari, but it basically says that people have the wrong idea about democracy and elected government. The point of elected government is to do what they think is best for the people, not to do what the people think is best for themselves.

Besides, determining laws through self-serving greed and individual ignorance of the greater picture might sound nice in the short term, but it sure as hell won't last in the long term.

Time to encrypt everything.

[Anonymous Coward]

How much more of this crap will it take before all internet traffic is switched to use HTTPS, PGP etc. ?

What is it going to take for the geeks of the world to say "enough of this crap" ?

It is our internet after all. We built it.

Re:Time to encrypt everything.

[YrWrstNtmr]

It is our internet after all. We built it.

Al? Is that you?

Re:Time to encrypt everything.

[mrsquid0]

>It is our internet after all. We built it.

The internet was build primarily by various universities, governments, and the US military, and it basically remained their toy for about twenty years. In the early 1990s a clever piece of software came along that allowed people without deep computer knowledge (well beyond that of the typical BBS/Fidonet user of the time) to use it easily.

30,000? 25,000? 15,000?

[Xest]

The numbers are already messed up, the article above says 30,000, 25,000 of which are BT. The BBC article says only 15,000:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8381097.stm

So how many people really are covered I wonder?

Re:Flamebait

[mdwh2]

Indeed - it's a bit annoying that any posts about the UK have to turn into a US vs UK match, as if it was some kind of competition (if it's a competition, it's one where citizens in both countries lose!)

All we need is someone to pipe up and say that if only we had guns in the UK, this sort of thing wouldn't happen.

Gives me an idea...

[Anonymous Coward]

My NEW Business Model...

Send out massive bulk snail mail (widely dispersed across the country as possible) claiming some copyright infringement (being really vague about the infringement on some copyright your bogus company actually does own)...

The letter would say something like: It has come to our attention that you have infringed upon our Copyright.. We "can" pursue charges OR we "can" settle out of court.

Now request a small amount (less than $500). The fear implied that they will face full legal action potentially costing thousands of dollars will be enough to scare most people.

If anyone really contests it then drop them... claim it was your mistake and apologize for the error (hell even you even offer $5-$10 gift certificate for your error if your getting lost of people to pay up). Most people have infringed on some copyright so some people will pay (easy to determine the threshold limit by average household income in a given postal code).

If you mail drop to 1 million homes (say at the outrageous cost of $1 million to generate the letters and pay for postage). Asking for an average of $200. Then you just need 0.5% to pay up to break even. In reality you will most likely get 10-20% pay up. At 10% you net $20,000,000.

See the problem with allowing fishing expeditions... very easy for a company to claim an error and never actually pursue legal action. The current system is in favor of the company.

BTW: I am patenting this business model as I write this and will happily licences it for a 10% of your gross for implementing it.

Re:Gives me an idea...

[Acapulco]

Patenting spam are you? Sounds interesting...actually, I wonder if anyone has tried to file a patent for a spam-like business model like yours.

Re:Flamebait

[Vahokif]

Have you actually read the book?

Re:Flamebait

[Le Marteau]

Yes. That's why I labeled it "flamebait". Der.

Re:Christmas gifts, they start here.shoes,handbag,

[roguetrick]

His goal is to piggyback on search indexing.

Re:Flamebait

[Anonymous Coward]

That's why this is not about companies looking for IPs in P2P networks.

It's about a court actually granting discovery on 30.000 IP addresses, a political elite valuing perceived security over freedom and a populace that doesn't appear to care whatsoever, welcoming it even.

It's certainly not 1984, but equally abominable nonetheless.

Re:Flamebait

[sakdoctor]

1. Cam whoring
2. Arranging to go dogging on craigslist

It's like Orwell's vision, except people do it voluntarily.

For one, it's easy to get around

[jonaskoelker]

Now what I don't understand is that they don't seed the tracked with some false IPs

Under the assumption that the party sending out the letters is doing the due diligence thing, they'd connect to the IP claiming to seed and ask it for a chunk of the torrented bit sequence. If the client doesn't get one, there's no infringement going no.

Now, we can discuss whether the due diligence assumption is realistic, of course, but if I were them and I was genuine about preventing piracy (as opposed to going scaremongering), that's what I'd do. (fwiw...)

Re:For one, it's easy to get around

[mpe]

Under the assumption that the party sending out the letters is doing the due diligence thing, they'd connect to the IP claiming to seed and ask it for a chunk of the torrented bit sequence. If the client doesn't get one, there's no infringement going no.

If they do get one then either they themselves are a "pirate" or they are data they are entitled receive thus there can be no infringement. There's also the issue of how possible it is to reconstruct a file from a random file fragment.

Now, we can discuss whether the due diligence assumption is realistic, of course, but if I were them and I was genuine about preventing piracy (as opposed to going scaremongering), that's what I'd do. (fwiw...)

Really what they'd need to do would be leech the whole file, taking note of where they got each bit from, then have person look at what they had downloaded.

What the f*ck?

[jonaskoelker]

5.3 You shall not use, nor allow any other(s) to use, the service to:

(a) store, send, knowingly receive, upload, download or distribute any material that is unsolicited, defamatory, offensive, abusive, obscene, pornographic or menacing, or in breach of copyright, confidence, privacy or any other rights;

Hmm...

Your post^W^H contract advocates a

( ) technical (X) legislative (X) market-based ( ) vigilante

approach to fighting spam. [...]

The way I read the legalese, you're not allowed to download (via POP3) and not delete (that is, store) spam. I'm not sure whether the "knowingly" only applies to the things between the same commas it itself is between or whether it also applies to the "download" part, but if it's the latter, how the f...

Are they deliberately phrasing the contract such that everyone is violating the contract (unless they don't use email)?

(Probably not, it's just my tin foil hat that's malfunctioning again.)

Re:What the f*ck?

[Cwix]

Naw mine tingled when I saw that too

Re:What the f*ck?

[Jaazaniah]

Wow...ok, let's take this how legalese might interpret it if you were being prosecuted (or contesting your account being shut off), and make a simple Cartesian Product explanation of things that would cause contracted consumers to breach this.

Unsolicited: The receiver didn't as for it.
Defamatory: Defamatory material, even if it's about you.
Offensive: Good luck not finding a transmitted opinion that is not offensive to someone in the world, unless the scope is merely limited to the ruling body - stuff that pisses us off.
Abusive: This covers a wide variety of things, but is basically a step up from offensive, possibly expands scope.
Obscene: Despite the fact that there are generations alive today who grew up thinking anything Brittany Spears did in front of a camera was obscene, I imagine this scope is once again limited to the firm. They don't express their views on obscenity.
Pornographic: Don't keep porn here. For several reason, probably mostly image, but also for technical reasons like potential hot-linking to a stored file.
Menacing: Your kink, plans for world domination, or the informative chemistry video about the reactive applications of alkali metals
Breach of Copyright: No one on /. should need this explained.
Breach of Confidence: Ok, really? How can they enforce this? Only if your spurned friend, who knew you were on the mailing list for their leaked AND knew about this application of your contract would this be usable.
Breach of Privacy: PIs need not apply.
Breach of Any Other Rights: Conflicting breaches to be resolved in court, either way your service is toast.
--Times--
Store: Don't keep any material dealing with any of the above on our servers. (with no time limit, the first time something hits your inbox could trigger here on any of the above conditions)
Send: Don't forward, compose or otherwise cause any any material dealing with any of the above to be sent from your account.
Knowingly Receive: Getting into intent contracting here, but basically if they find that you've arranged for something that trips the material provisions above to your account, it's toast.
Upload: We don't care if something off the list above did come from your virus-infected computer, don't send it to our servers.
Download: This is the kicker here, and I'll expand after this table.
Distribute: Doesn't send already cover this definition because of its more restricted scope?

Download is the one that will fry everyone who's ever been the recipient of one of those bad forwards, like a goatse attachment. So let's say you get an email one day that is simply titled 'Check this out' with some explanation from a friend that this is funny and you have to see these pics. It's a horrible joke and it is a goatse-type attachment - offensive, obscene, possibly pornographic, and unsolicited - that you just: downloaded (you can't display it without receiving the information), and stored on your email account while you reeled. because each of those lists in the legal statement is effectively concatenated with 'or', you now have a breach of contract sitting in your inbox because you downloaded the horrible joke from their machines to yours.

It will also threaten anyone who's researching any controversy - You're supposed to see and consider points that may be very offensive to some. What trips the offensive clause, what doesn't, and will this be used as a new corporate censorship to the masses to cancel accounts on discovery of researching that corp's old skeletons in the closet? Deals like these are no deals at all, we need fresh blood in the provider industry.

So in addition to the fact that your ISP is handing over private details to non-law-enforcement, private companies to go trolling for copyright violations, they've also put your agreement (and patronage, I might add!) at risk by their own miopic contract design.

That's criminal extortion. Period.

[Hurricane78]

The customers concerned are 'suspected' of illegally file sharing (P2P) approximately 291 movie titles, they now face threatening demands for money (settlement) or risk the prospect of court action.

The emphasized part is bullshit fearmongering to get them to pay. Expect the “charges” to be dropped as soon as you refuse and tell them to go fuck themselves. I’ve already seen it twice. You don’t pay, and nothing happens.

Which is obvious, since they have no proof, no legal anything, and were it not for the changes they pressed into law, they would not even be listened to by the courts.

If you got such a letter, tell them to go fuck themselves, because they don’t even know what “proof” is in computers, because they know shit about how computers work.

Re:That's criminal extortion. Period.

[mpe]

If you got such a letter, tell them to go fuck themselves, because they don't even know what "proof" is in computers, because they know shit about how computers work.

You just need to rephrase that in the appropriate legal jargon.

Re:Flamebait

[realityimpaired]

Most people posting about 1984 and making "Orwellian" references are talking about the Ingsoc nanny state. It doesn't matter that the book isn't actually about about that nanny state, or that it's just a plot device for the story/message that Orwell was trying to convey: what matters is that people understand what you're talking about when you make the reference. Specifically, a totalitarian society that constantly monitors its people, that assumes that everybody outside of the Party is a criminal, and that is trying to dumb down the populace in order to prevent them from thinking for themselves.

Considering the number of CCTV cameras in the UK, and the level of personal privacy that exists in the country, the suggestion that people on the Internet are being assumed to be criminals, and are being handed over to the media companies without the chance to defend themselves, really does conjure up images of Oceania, don't you think?

Mob mentality doesn't always apply

[phorm]

if millions of people find a particular type of behaviour acceptable that it should be legalised?

No. To use the often recycled example, the majority of people once thought that slavery was an acceptable practice, but that doesn't mean it should have been. This isn't to say that downloading and slavery are immediately comparable, but rather that a thing isn't necessarily right because "a lot of people are doing/supporting it."

On the other hand, the huge amount of torrent users shows a fundamental lack of support from the industry for what could be a viable market. Unfortunately it may very well be a case of "too little, too late" to tap, but had they done so they probably could have been making an extra chunk-'o'-change by this point off of online downloads. Things like the iTunes store are definitely still profitable.

They may still have a chance though. Personally, if I could purchase the various episodes of shows I like to watch for a reasonable price (at they are released), especially if they were sans commercials, I'd have my wallet open pretty quickly. Cable and even satellite seem to be dying media, and being able to pick-and-choose what you want online could be a fairly easy sell for studios. Even if they only charged something under a buck, they'd probably still make a fair bit of cash, especially if they threw a few ads on the website (not the video) for related products (e.g. if you're watching a season 2 episode of "show X" and season 1 is available on DVD, advertise!).

Re:Mob mentality doesn't always apply

[Anonymous Coward]

No. To use the often recycled example, the majority of people once thought that slavery was an acceptable practice, but that doesn't mean it should have been.

First of all, where do you get the figures to support "the majority of people ..."? In the second place, even if your assertion is correct, under a democracy, whatever the majority wants is what they should get. Period. Your private thoughts on morality don't enter into that equation.

Were these IPs collected during Phorm trials?

[Anonymous Coward]

As I remember the whole Phorm trial was illegal, so that would render the IPs inadmissable evidence?

Re:Flamebait

[cerberusss]

That's why this is not about companies looking for IPs in P2P networks. It's about a court actually granting discovery on 30.000 IP addresses

Yeah, but that time will come in most countries. There is too much at stake to ignore the P2P issue. In fact there is so much at stake that I expect the record companies to harvest IP addresses on P2P network, "just in case" the time suddenly is ripe in country X to get a discovery granted.

Insurance.

[Pig Hogger]

Insurance is the key.

There is no way those 30,000 people can be all sued; if those pool, say 10£ each, that’s 300,000£ available to pay for sollicitors to defend those who are sued.

Tor users will be safe ..

[Anonymous Coward]

It really is time for the UK to use tor full time to retain any degree of privacy.

Shame we're going to be running at 1995 speeds...

Better slow and safe though.

The more nodes should also help speed up the network..

Seen ACS:Law's 5 point plan?

[naich]

This is to reduce piracy. Seems reasonable.

"Introduce fixed fines of £750.00 minimum
Introduce statutory damages of £750.00 as a minimum for each act of copyright infringement (such provision exists presently in the United States);

ISPs to provide names of internet account holders
Make all Internet Service Providers produce, on request of a copyright owner or licensee, the identities of the account holders of the internet connection used for illegal file sharing of their copyrighted material. The cost of producing such information would be met by the copyright owner requesting it;

Strict liability for internet account holders
Make the account holder of the internet connection strictly liable for infringements where their connection was used for illegal file sharing

Simplify the court process
Streamline, simplify and speed up the court process of a copyright owner applying for the identities of the account holders from ISPs (this is presently a complex and time-consuming procedure); and

Standardise letters of claim and court documents
Secure approval and consensus for standard-form letters, documents and claims making the process of notification and prosecution of an identified infringement clear and easy to understand, with the presumption of innocence until guilt is proven."

Sorry, did I say reasonable, I meant horrifying.

'suspected'

[nurb432]

So you can be fined in the UK just for *suspicion*? And who is sending these letters, the industry of the court? If its the industry as the story suggests, id say there some legal issues with making threats with no proof.

Re:'suspected'

[lordandmaker]

There certainly should be some legal issues with it, but from what I gather we've a government completely behind the idea of letting the recording industry police the internet.

Re:Flamebait

[BrokenHalo]

Sabre rattling or not, the courts have let themselves in for a long, boring job of listening to lots of spurious complaints.

Given that judges and courts frequently complain that their offices are under-resourced and overworked, leading to long delays in prosecution of more serious cases, one doesn't need a very wide streak of cynicism to wonder if there is no better way for them to occupy their time.

How much is the fine?

[Anonymous Coward]

How much are alleged copyright infringer's going to be fined? Whats the law in the UK if you go to court? Are there statutory damages per infringement?

Re:Flamebait

[Anonymous Cowpat]

really does conjure up images of Oceania

That's 'Landing Strip One' to you, bub.

LIbertarian my backside

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah it requires quite a bit more thought bud.

There are two types of libertarian:

1) The rich and powerful libertarian who thinks he and people like him should be free to enjoy their wealth however they like no matter the cost to the less powerful and less rich.
2) The poor libertarian who thinks that he and people like him should be free to enjoy things no matter the cost to the richer, more powerful people.

If there are rules/laws you don't got libertarian. You got someone imposing rules on the others. Calling yourself a libertarian don't make you a lover of freedom (except maybe your own at the expense of everyone else's).

The strange thing is, that both groups believe themselves to be on the same side.

Re:LIbertarian my backside

[Akira Kogami]

What did the English language ever do to you?

Re:Flamebait

[TheRaven64]

It amused me no end when Apple introduced the iMac model with a built-in camera, after using 'why 1984 won't be like 1984' as the tag line for the launch of the original Mac.

Re:Flamebait

[TheRaven64]

Uh, Airstrip One. Geek card please.

Most ISPs use BT wholesale infrastructure

[Anonymous Coward]

Quitting your contract with BT won't necessarily hurt them. They might just laugh at you.

There are hundreds of ISPs in the UK but only three or four cable providers. All the others simply rent the cables from those providers.

Despite several decades of government claims that the BT monopoly has been broken down, the claim is nonsense. Between them, Virgin Media and BT account for by far the majority of cables carrying ISP traffic in the UK.

Another Tool in the Box...

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget Peer Guardian!

Peer Guardian basically denies any connection from known hostile IP addresses. It works for Anti-p2p, spammers, scammers and adware sites, keeping them from ever connecting to your machine. If they can't see your torrent, then they don't have as strong a case to file a letter.

Remember, no defense is perfect by itself. But if you use a layered defense, such as encrypted torrents, programs such as PeerGuardian to deny connections from bad guys, and other tactics, then you can greatly increase your level of protection. But at the end of the day, nothing will protect you from the shotgun approach these jerks are using. It's going to come to a point where anyone using ANY form of torrent client is going to be automagically guilty of a crime.

Until that time, don't be ignorant of the tools you have to fight them.

V for Vendetta

[nanospook]

The brits need to torrent this movie and then emulate it, it seems like they are slowly working their way into a police state..

Re:Flamebait

[Anonymous Coward]

assumes that everybody outside of the Party is a criminal

Actually the Party don't give a toss about the prols. They give them porn, beer and movies and leave them too it. They figure they're too stupid and docile to revolt.

Re:Flamebait

[Vahokif]

The important thing is that 1984 is about a totalitarian communist government. This is about large corporations trying to exert their power over people, the complete opposite.

Enough is enough

[AlgorithMan]

I just wrote a mail to TPB and told them, they should promote anonymous P2P... a suggestion by them should skyrocket the transfer-rates (which is the major problem with anonymous P2P so far)

Re:Flamebait

[azgard]

Do you mean "opposite" as in "In communism, man exploits a man. In capitalism, it's the opposite." ?

Re:Flamebait

[Vahokif]

In communism, the public sector exploits man. In capitalism, the private sector exploits man.

Re:Flamebait

[azgard]

Whoosh!

Both private and public sector comprises of men in power. It doesn't matter how you call the institution that exerts power, the exploitation itself is of relevance there.

Re:Flamebait

[Vahokif]

No, because 1984 isn't about exploitation of men by men. It's about exploitation of men by a totalitarian communist government.

The only problem is .... How?!?

[freaker_TuC]

... How do you make your neighbour care about it ?

Most people just think *WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOSH* and it's gone ...
They either are not informed, pay up the sum or simply don't know how to react or what to do ...

Where is the time of revolutions, where words did matter ?

how did society got so easy accepting all this shit?

Re:Flamebait

[jc79]

If only we had guns in the UK, this sort of thing wouldn't happen.