UK ISP Spots a File-Sharing Loophole, Implements It

An anonymous reader writes "As well as taking an active part in OFCOM's code of obligations in regards to the ill-conceived Digital Economy Act (the UK three-strikes law for filesharers), niche ISP Andrews & Arnold have identified various loopholes in the law, the main one being that a customer can be classified as a communications provider. They have now implemented measures so in your control panel you may register your legal status and be classed as such." Another of the loopholes this inventive ISP sussed out: "Operating more than one retail arm selling to customers and allowing customers to migrate freely with no change to service between those retail arms, thus bypassing copyright notice counting and any blocking orders."

Comments

Lets get rid of it

[funkatron]

Vote pirate, or green or yellow or something like that. Anyone who thought that this was a good idea doesn't deserve to win.

Re:Lets get rid of it

[grantek]

ISPs siding with the public domain is a good step towards having governments listen to someone other than media corporations - hopefully plenty of people flock to this.

Re:Lets get rid of it

[zero.kalvin]

I don't know if what I am saying is 100% correct. But people who might vote for Pirate, Green, ect ect. are mostly geeks or people directly involved in this. The problem is that the general population are not very tech savvy or don't care(yet). What is needed now is not voting for these parties(even though it is important, and we should do it), but it's education the general population of the dangers of these laws and how can it affect them. Point is we need advertisement campaign or whatever that might do the trick. Or else we will have an internet dark age. However Kudos for the ISP, good work I say.

Re:Lets get rid of it

[commodore64_love]

The key issue for me is not the copyright law. I don't care if Paramount and other companies want to protect their income stream on the new Star Trek movie.

The issue for me is that these 3-strike laws assign punishment without benefit of trial by jury. And once that precedent is set, then the government can further erode the rights of Englishmen. "You were caught stealing three times. 5 years jail for you." - "But I had no trial." - "Precedent shows we don't need to give you a trial. Take him away!"

Well done

[Janek Kozicki]

I hope that the ISP will earn enough money from this, so that they will be able to defend this when faced legal action.

Re:Well done

[iYk6]

That's sort of what I was thinking. Giant corporations can take advantage of loopholes to rip off their customers. Individuals and small businesses can't do that.

Who say geeks don't make good lawyers?

[Taco Cowboy]

Apparently those running the ISP - presumably geeks - know how to interpret the laws better than those who wrote the laws themselves.

Re:Who say geeks don't make good lawyers?

[Anonymous Coward]

There is only one interpretation of the l;aw that counts, and that's the judge's one. This is espacially true in UK's(and US's) Common Law system.

So, they found loopholes, or so they think. They may be correct, but you will not know until thoose loopholes are tested in a courthouse.

Re:Who say geeks don't make good lawyers?

[amw]

With the DEA in place, they can simply require the ISP to do their donkey work.

Require how? There must be some recourse that the copyright holder can take against an ISP that is failing to respond to complaints.

By 'require', I was referring to the fact that the DEA allows rightsholders to send their complaints to an ISP, and the ISP is required by law to pass those complaints on and (I think - I've not read it in a while) take further action where they relate to a subscriber of that ISP. AAISP's view is apparently that they can alter the status of their customers away from 'subscriber' to circumvent this requirement.

Eventually such a recourse could end up in front of a judge, and that's when AAISP might find themselves in hot water.

They seem to believe otherwise. It is quite possible (I'm not going to say 'likely', these things are notoriously difficult to predict) that the judge will view the legal definitions as strictly as they are written, and AAISP can be shown to be in the right legally. At which point, court orders again become a requirement in order for the holders to contact the potential infringers directly.

None of this is directly aimed at taking the legal system out of the loop when it comes to copyright infringment. That is still something that can be put before a judge in a court of law. AAISP are, it seems, simply applying a large 'RESET' button that puts things back to how they were before this section of the DEA was put into law.

Re:I can't believe.....

[Angostura]

Yes, but the point is that this was rushed through as part of the "washup" at the end of parliament, so did not have the same level of scrutiny as it would normally do. It's a crass way to handle complex legislation and I'm glad that this ISP has taken the time to go through the details. Well done.

Re:That'll work

[Anonymous Coward]

There shouldn't be any limits as I'd imagine once you switch to branch #2 then you are no longer a customer of branch #1 and so they can remove your details. Then there is no limit as you can do the reverse just as easily.

Hmm...

[AlexiaDeath]

A communications provider is say someone that operates a free Wifi hot-spot and they are immune? And anyone can sign up? O_o Somebody has effectively neutered the entire law. You guys really vote some Pirate party to your parliament to properly put an end to this crap properly tho.

Re:Hmm...

[Rogerborg]

A communications provider is say someone that operates a free Wifi hot-spot and they are immune?

Doesn't even have to be that. The contract for the line coming into my house is with me. My wife and kids use that line, without a contract with the ISP. How could they do that if I - the contracted individual - wasn't providing them with the service?

Re:Don't see this working

[physicsphairy]

They are only circumventing the intended aims of the people who lobbied the law into being.

Regarding the written law itself, they are legitimately following and making use of the provisioned measures. It doesn't sound like they are relying on particularly liberal interpretations of the text, but rather are going off of what it plainly states.

Granted, I don't know a great deal about UK law, but it sounds to me like it's rather more on the legislature want to remove these elements than for judges to sit down and play psychoanalyst of the "offender" and for the legislature simultaneously.

Re:Don't see this working

[Richard_at_work]

An ISP having no customers but plenty of peering communications providers at residential addresses is a deliberate attempt to skirt the law.

Re:Come May, I'm quite stuck.

[VJ42]

LibDems, OTOH, seem to like the idea of even more taxes and even more bureaucracy... and frankly we're taxed heavily enough as it is, TYVM. Damned either way, IMV.

Whatever you think of their other policies, the Lib-dems are the only ones proposing PR, vote for them at this election, so that another party that you*do* support can get MPs next time. If we do get PR, watch the Tory party split over Europe, Old Labour split from New Labour and the Lib-dems old Liberal (recently relaunched as the "orange bookers") split from the newer SDP more left wing part. We'd actually get a proper choice!

Re:Don't see this working

[PhilHibbs]

They can say that you are deliberately breaking the rule that says anyone providing communications services must monitor and log the usage of that service.

Re:Come May, I'm quite stuck.

[VJ42]

How would PR allow me to vote for an Individual to represent me and my constituency in parliment?

The Single Transferable vote system has larger, multi-member constituencies; the geographical link is not broken, and you can still vote for individuals, not party lists. It's already used in the UK and around the world: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_transferable_vote

Re:Come May, I'm quite stuck.

[mdwh2]

Of course they're proposing proportional representation, they've got the most to gain from it.

Even if they really only had a self-interest, what has that got to the question of voting for them? You're telling me that if a party was supporting something, that you wanted, you wouldn't vote for them because they gained from it? That makes no sense.