Ofcom Unveils Anti-Piracy Policy For UK ISPs

krou writes "Under plans drawn up by Ofcom, UK ISPs are going to draw up a list of those who infringe copyright, logging names and the number of times infringement took place. Music and film companies will then be allowed access to the list, and be able to decide whether or not to take legal action. '"It is imperative that a system that accuses people of illegal online activity is fair and clear," said Anna Bradley, chair of the Communications Consumer Panel.' The Panel, in partnership with Consumer Focus, Which, Citizens Advice, and the advocacy body the Open Rights Group, has released a set of principles it believes should govern the code of practice. The principles say sound evidence is needed before any action is taken, consumers must have the right to defend themselves, and the appeals process must be free to pursue. The code shall come into practice by 2011, and initially applies only to ISPs with 400,000 customers or more." Update: 05/29 09:11 GMT by T : As an anonymous reader points out below, that's 400,000 users, rather than 40,000 as originally rendered.

Comments

Piracy clarification

[Rivalz]

Im just curious on how it is illegal to download content that is copyrighted.
I understand being prosecuted for uploading content to the internet but am I breaking the law if I watch something on youtube that was placed there illegally? Or if someone emails me a photo and they do not have the rights to it?
I'm pretty certain when I take a photo of my girlfriend in the city there is something in the background that I dont have the copyright of. If I post that on facebook am I doing something illegal?
Seriously I feel like no matter what I do Driving, browsing the internet, or taking photographs I feel like at any given moment I'm breaking the law and just waiting for it to be my turn to get caught doing something idiotically illegal.

Re:Piracy clarification

[arkhan_jg]

Seriously I feel like no matter what I do Driving, browsing the internet, or taking photographs I feel like at any given moment I'm breaking the law

Well that's because you probably are; the laws about driving and copyright are so rediculously broad - and lightly enforced - that you're breaking the law most of the time, but simply aren't prosecuted for it until you appear on someones radar.

What I consider worst about this legislation is that major ISPs are going to have to monitor *all* traffic passing through them, make a judgement on whether it is 'infringing' then put you on a list, then hand that list over to the major label music industry to decide if they're going to take civil action against you. So not only am I having my privacy massively infringed by my own ISP, I'm paying them to do it, and act as enforcer and bearer of all the costs as evidence gatherer for another industry entirely - one I happen to be boycotting.

Thanks a bunch ex-labour government for pushing that little law through at the last minute without debate.

Re:Piracy clarification

[Elledan]

This whole thing stinks. Badly. Allow me to explain:

Here in the Netherlands we got a similar debate going on, with some groups demanding the downloading of copyrighted works to be made illegal (currently legal for movies and music). My housemate and good friend Pieter Hulshoff was present at a debate on this last Thursday together with a number of politicians, artists, lawyers and many other types of people (including the very embarrassing Dutch Pirate Party). As he pointed out during this debate, there is no conceivable way one could successfully implement a 'roadblock' against the downloading of copyrighted content. First of all, there's the technical limitation.

DPI, or Deep Packet Inspection, is a technique which can look into the packets sent through an ISP's network and which is suggested as a way to find those guilty of infringement. There is no way to figure out in even a fraction of all cases, even after assembling multiple packets, what format the packet's contents are in, what encoding was used, how to read it, let alone somehow figure out whether it is copyrighted information.

P2P, or basically anything involving Bittorrent, eDonkey and similar networks used for filesharing can easily be anonymized using encryption, private trackers, making it very hard to get into a cloud or similar, or figure out what is being shared.

Then there's the aspect of determining whether a copyrighted work being downloaded is actually 'illegal'. If personal copies are allowed like here in the Netherlands, or some form of fair use exists and the person downloading Generic Movie #24 also has a matching copy of the DVD he or she legally bought but feels too lazy to make a rip off (or wants a rip of the Blu-Ray version... another huge grey legal patch). Look at for example the demands made by media companies at Youtube and similar sites to keep out copyrighted content. It should be clear that it isn't feasible for even a huge company like Google to keep people from uploading copyrighted material they supposedly don't have the rights to to YouTube. Automatic filters fail, reports aren't affective enough and employing people to sift through incoming videos is so ridiculous for being impractical that it's laughable.

In other words this is yet another wet dream of the companies behind such constructs as the RIAA/MPAA and their many cousins throughout the world, put into law thanks to bribes and clueless politicians and completely not feasible in the Real World (tm).

Re:Piracy clarification

[TheRaven64]

Even if you have a complete list of all files that are copyrighted and require a license to distribute, it becomes hard. For example, my publisher and I frequently exchange files that are illegal for most people to distribute, but not for us because one of us owns the copyright. This system would be required to spot when two people exchange the file, determine that it is copyrighted, and then note that we are the copyright owners and so are legally able to distribute it so should not go on the list.

Requiring a system to do two impossible things is generally considered a case of bad specification design.

Re:Piracy clarification

[Joce640k]

This is just some ISP's PHB having a wet dream after being wined and dined by the RIAA. It's going to be impossible to put into practice. I've heard the boss of Spain's leading ISP ranting about this sort of thing and he's a barely coherent old codger who obviously doesn't have a clue about anything technical.

As a protest we should create a screen saver which maxes out an Internet connection 24/7 transferring random data to random people. Get your friends to install it ... let's see if the ISPs who sign up to these schemes can provide the bandwidth they've sold.

Re:Piracy clarification

[Rich0]

Well, while I agree with your overall points and philosophy, there are a few things that DPI could do to make things really annoying for ISP customers:

1. They can probably detect http headers that have a GET line that includes a filename of something that seems to be infringing. Better not view any websites with photos of artists named "Mariah Carey - singing Name-That-Song.jpg" on them... Or, if you're going to post mp3s on a website maybe you should rename them to .jpg files once they start filtering those out...

2. They could detect http response headers that have a mime type the record industry doesn't like, such as a torrent file or mp3.

3. They could detect non-encrypted torrent traffic, or non-encrypted mp3s/etc in general. Assembling the packets would be hard, knowing they're being sent is probably not.

4. When "suspicious" traffic like any of the above is detected, they could probably start logging full packets and assemble full streams for further analysis - if you only do that on a small percentage of traffic and don't keep the captured packets around forever it may be practical.

Sure, all of the above will probably hassle lots of people who do nothing illegal, but I don't think the recording industry really cares about that. Don't want to prove your innocence? Well, just don't use bittorrent. Oh, we're not banning it - anybody can keep using it as long as they don't mind proving their innocence in court every six months (make no mistake, in the end the burden of proof will end up on the defendant since the industry will have some nebulous report output that has their name on a list).

As far as not being able to catch all of it - I don't know that they really care. If the ISPs give the music industry 1000 people to sue every year, or 1000 people who they can ban from the internet every year, that would be a victory for them. Once people are afraid to click on links lest they accidentally go to a "bad site" and end up with a ruined life then they will be happy. That's why I pretty-much don't browse the internet from work - with the laws in the US as they are all it takes is one misclick or typo and a zealous log monitor and you can be in VERY deep water.

Re:Piracy clarification

[AmiMoJo]

The biggest flaw is not so much the difficulty in gathering evidence but the fact that in the end the copyright holder still needs to sue the accused individual.

The law in the UK makes it quite clear that they would need to sue the person who did the infringement. Good luck figuring out who that is in a household with more than one person. Being a civil matter they can't seize your PC or anything like that.

Even if they do somehow figure out who it is the chances are the evidence they have will not stand up in court. Even if it does they won't be able to ban people from the internet because it would infringe on their human rights. Without the internet you become cut off from your friends, unable to do your job, unable to use many mobile phones. The real kicker is that if you share a connection with someone else then they would loose their access too which is clearly unjust. No court would ever allow that.

Anyway, the current government said they would repeal. I know, manifesto promises... But at least they are in principal against it.

How? Passive traffic analysis?

[Sean]

Encryption will make this difficult. It'll be right back to making unsubstantiated claims that some IP address was serving up copyrighted content then demanding to know the subscriber details.

Re:How? Passive traffic analysis?

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed, why don't torrent sites and trackers already run over https? Wouldn't that kill this idea entirely, plus any other ISP-based snooping?

Sucks for my neighbour

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been using his open wifi for years to download stuff

That's fine...

[Manip]

It is great that people who create content might get paid for doing so (*genuinely). The real issue here is the publishers who's 1980s business models cannot adapt to the 2000s with high speed internet in every home and multiple mobile devices per person. In the long term these publishers will go out of business but not without dragging their feet ruining it for everyone else in the mean time.

Why can't I buy online instead of a DVD and get all the extra features?
Why does online content cost more than a physical disc?
Why when I buy online content can't I put it on my iPad, Google Phone, Laptop, and PC?
Why can't I watch Hulu and YouTube in another country? What's this international border junk doing on the internet?
Why is content priced unfairly between different countries (*even taking into account taxes, duty, and cost of living)?

Publishers claim they can't compete with free/"stolen" and while for the poor that is often true, there is a large percentage of people who would LOVE to pay for content but literally cannot. For example if I slept through last week's episode of a TV show, and cannot watch it online in my country -- what other options do I have? Wait for the DVD a year from now?

Re:That's fine...

[Opportunist]

Do you know why train stations are usually at the outskirts of towns? Nooooo, not because of the steam engines causing so much pollution. You're kidding? Back when these things were fashionable, the average steel mill in the middle of the town blew more black smoke constantly into the vicinity than the occasional train possibly could.

The reason is that hackneys and cabs were fearing that they'd go out of business. They immediately noticed that they will (and did quickly) lose all the business between towns. Nobody wanted to be transported like cargo when they can sit comfortably in the "luxury" of a train waggon. So they campaigned and clamoured, citing the most impossible and unbelievable dangers and threats of those horrible machines (look it up, some are quite entertaining. Like claiming that just watching "zip" by at that breathneck speed of 40 mph will send people into seizures and a delirium furiosum and that train tracks have to be shielded off so nobody gets to see these trains) until the politicians caved in and put the stations at the edges of towns, to protect their failing business.

Of course the whole deal completely floundered when cars started to become the next big thing (and again, accompanied by similar ridiculous laws, like requiring a man with a lantern running in front of the car to warn others). But by then the train stations were already at the outskirts of towns, and of course they stayed there because by then nobody wanted to spend the money to lay tracks through the growing towns.

A perfect example how an outdated business model keeps progress at bay with harebrained claims and artificial scaremongering. People don't want to adapt. That's nothing new. And companies even less so. Who likes to change his job? But standing in the path of progress for the sake of retaining your comfy job makes you nothing more than a sponger. You contribute nothing to the progress and expansion of the economy but you leech off it.

FTFY

[jez9999]

UK ISPs are going to draw up a list of those who are suspected of infringing copyright

This is simply wrong

[Budenny]

"Under plans drawn up by Ofcom, UK ISPs are going to draw up a list of those who infringe copyright, logging names and the number of times infringement took place. Music and film companies will then be allowed access to the list, and be able to decide whether or not to take legal action."

No, its not those who infringe. It is ONLY those who are ACCUSED without proof of any kind in any forum which is legitimate to establishing the truth of that accusation.

We should consider similar cases. Do we want to draw up lists of those who three people accuse of speeding, and on the fourth accusation, take away their driving licenses?

The utterly ridiculous and anti-democratic aspect of this is the following: there is a move in this particular case to substitute accusation for proof. This is wrong. We need to treat all violations of law in the same way: require proof before sanction.

Dear customer

[91degrees]

It has come to our attention that you have been frequently accused of piracy. As a large ISP we are required to log this information. However, we would be willing to transfer your account details to our wholly owned sister company which currently only has 399,998 customers and has no policy of logging your information.

Proxy, proxy, proxy

[Anonymous Coward]

Like it's not pathetically easy to proxy yourself out of the whole mess. For those inclined a small VPS can be obtained for a few dollars a month in one of the more liberal european countries such as the Netherlands or Sweden, or if you feel the need go further afield to the obscurity of Panama, Hong Kong or Malaysia. Setting up Squid server and SSL tunnel is then the work of less than an hour. Alternatively if that's too complex there's any number of companies offering private non-logged VPNs for a similar price.

If the media companies pursue this then all that's going to happen is it'll be increasingly lucrative for companies to set up anonymising VPN services in regimes around the planet where their copyright writ doesn't run or is practically impossible to enforce. Instructions for how to use these will pass from geeks to common knowledge, and furthermore because people will be paying a few dollars a month for the proxy they will be more inclined to use it to "get their money's worth", and hence 'piracy' will actually increase.

Of course the sensible alternative would be to provide a widespread service such as Spotify which would effectively do the above but legally, but the media companies are too short-sighted to see that.

a short explanation

[petes_PoV]

First of all, forget about the sorts of examples you've cited. That's not what it's about. Really it's only about emerican film and music companies wanting to punish (as opposed to simply recover any lost revenue) who look at their products but haven't paid them before doing so. The basic problemm with all f this is that if you download a movie then they're after you not just for the £10 or so that a top selling DVD goes for, but they want to ruin you - take your house, all your money and make it impossible for you to live normally forever after that.

Although I'm not an expert, I wouldn't be surprised to discover that a convicted rapist has a less onerous punishment placed on them than someone in the grips of these film studios.

Re:a short explanation

[Rich0]

Agreed. What's wrong with a $200 fine like you have with speeding? It isn't like people go flying down the streets at 200mph with impunity since they don't mind paying the fines 3 times a week. Really, even just a slap on the wrist will tend to moderate bad behavior when you're talking about stuff that isn't all that serious.

Suppose a 15-year-old downloads some songs - either they or their parents are at risk of a seriously damaged life (and I mean effects that will last decades even with bankruptcy "protection" / etc). If a 15-year-old stabs somebody with a knife the penalties are FAR less onerous. The parents won't be prosecuted at all, and the child will be tried as a minor and will have an expunged record in many jurisdictions. If the kid turns himself around he could still have a fairly normal life. A 15-year-old who commits homicide might end up in worse shape, although I suspect a 15-year-old rapist could do better. We're effectively placing teenagers downloading music in the same category as aggravated assault, rape, and murder. I looked up somebody I knew who was convicted (as an adult) of simple assault and associated minor crimes (first time conviction) and they paid $4k and a year's probation.

Re:Correction

[TheRaven64]

Stop that! You keep doing that! Reading the comments and posting corrections is going to make the other editors look bad! Slashdot editors are not supposed to read the site, and they are definitely not meant to care about facts. You are doing it entirely wrong.

Reality shear

[swm]

What we're seeing here are the results of reality shear (props to Neal Stephenson).

Historically, people had separate legal and ethical frameworks for managing tangible objects and for managing speech.

The basic rule for objects--respected by almost everyone--is don't take other people's objects.

The basic rule for speech--generally respected by democratic governments--is you can say what you want and you can hear what you want. You also have some privacy rights in your speech.

Now the internet has inextricably and irreversibly enmeshed these two very different frameworks. Things that used to be objects (CDs, DVDs, etc) can now be moved around by acts of speech (FTP, BitTorrent, etc.).

Copying infringes the content owners property rights, and they are enraged. They have responded in three ways.
Social : convince people that copying is theft, and hope that people's natural moral aversion to theft will dissuade them from copying things.
Technical: DRM
Legal : copyright enforcement; ISP regulation; 3-strikes, etc.

Socal doesn't work. People don't think that copying is theft (because it doesn't deprive the owner of a tangible object), and you can't rewrite people's ethical systems with a PR campaign, no matter how slick or how insistent.

Technical doesn't work. DRM doesn't stop pirates, it just annoys your paying customers.

Legal responses necessarily infringe people's conceptions of their own speech rights. What used to be a free and private act of sending and receiving signals over the internet is how subject to review, judgement, and punishment by the the government and corporations.

Just as you can't convince ordinary people that copying is theft, you can't convince ordinary people that speech acts are morally wrong. Not the kind of wrong that really guides people's actions. The kind they learned as children: don't hit, don't steal, don't lie.

So people see the legal responses of the content owners as grave infringements of their own legitimate speech rights. And they get enraged.

So we have two groups of people, each enraged, each convinced of their own right, and working from incompatible premises.

I don't know how we get past this.