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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."
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.
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.
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)
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.
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.
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).
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.
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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...?
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).
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
In other words, they can prove that the person uses BitTorrent but not what they're using it for.
Summation 2
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?)
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.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Check back in 3 years and 1 month. :)
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
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!
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.
Er...in this case BT refers to the communications company British Telecom, not Bittorrent.
-- Sorry, I can't think of anything funny to say here.
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.
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
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.
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).
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.
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any Limewire-like apps out there which support encryption?
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!
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.
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.
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?
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.
Have you actually read the book?
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.
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.
Yes. That's why I labeled it "flamebait". Der.
Mod down people who tell people how to mod in their sigs
His goal is to piggyback on search indexing.
-The world would be a better place if everyone had a hoverboard
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.
It's like Orwell's vision, except people do it voluntarily.
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...)
>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.
Just because you are paranoid does not mean that no-one is out to get you.
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.)
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.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
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?
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.
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!).
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.
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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.
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.
Slashdot. Unreadable news to annoy nerds. - wonkey_monkey
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.
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.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
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.
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.
That's 'Landing Strip One' to you, bub.
FGD 135
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.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Uh, Airstrip One. Geek card please.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
What did the English language ever do to you?
The brits need to torrent this movie and then emulate it, it seems like they are slowly working their way into a police state..
Have you fscked your local propeller head today?
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.
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
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.
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%.
Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
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)
The MAFIAA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes
Do you mean "opposite" as in "In communism, man exploits a man. In capitalism, it's the opposite." ?
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.
In communism, the public sector exploits man. In capitalism, the private sector exploits man.
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.
No, because 1984 isn't about exploitation of men by men. It's about exploitation of men by a totalitarian communist government.
... 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?
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
If only we had guns in the UK, this sort of thing wouldn't happen.