UK ISPs Hatch Plan To Block the Pirate Bay and Other File Sharing Sites

An anonymous reader writes "UK Internet Service Providers (ISPs) are already in talks with media rights holders to block around 100 file sharing and cyberlocker websites, it has emerged. The move comes as ISPs BT and TalkTalk won a Judicial review of the Digital Economy Act (DEA) resulting in a 2-year delay on its implementation. The voluntary code is a planned workaround to the delay in the DEA and rights holders attempt to curb file sharing. If passed the code would see rights holders pass evidence of websites that 'facilitate' illegal file sharing to ISPs who would then block access to the sites in question. However, ISPs are reluctant and are pushing for a high court judge to approve any site blocking. ... Amongst the 100 sites is the worlds most resilient Bittorrent site, The Pirate Bay and Usenet's reincarnated NewzBin2."

Comments

One month

[Manip]

One month, that is how long I give it before this gets used to block sites for non-piracy reasons. Like a site that talks about BitTorrent community activity or a competitor who infringes a patent for two random examples. Make my words, this will be used for political suppression even if it isn't the government doing it.

Bunch of luddites

[Kethinov]

Oh no! The existence of some internet website undermines my business model! We need to eradicate this technology quickly! Technological progress is bad for business!

Re:Bunch of luddites

[L4t3r4lu5]

I lose patience writing this over and over again.

A shoplifter deprives the store of property, which it then is unable to sell. A person who downloads unlicensed media deprives nobody of anything. There is no guarantee that the person would have bought the media had it not been available online. There is no such thing as a potential sale, or potential profit.

Re:Bunch of luddites

[Richard_at_work]

Ooh ooh ooh look, someone jumped on the "copyright infringement isnt stealing!!!" bandwagon, as I well and truly knew they would.

I never said it was, I compared two aspects (the original posters and mine) of how actions can undermine various business models - and yes, copyright violation does indeed undermine a business model just as shoplifting does.

As I said in my original post, a copyright holder has every right to try and make money off their creation - they don't have the right to make money, but they have the right to try. You, The Pirate Bay, ISOHunt or anyone else does not have the right to deny them that attempt to make money OFF OF THEIR PROPERTY.

There is no guarantee they will make any money, there is no guarantee that the people downloading it for free would have bought it, but there is also no guarantee that they wouldn't have - its the opportunity to sell to these people that the copyright holder has a right to, and that is the right that you are violating.

But go ahead, jump on the obvious bandwagon for some mod points, works every time. You can sit up there on your throne content in the knowledge that copyright infringement has no negative effect at all.

By the way, who are you expecting to produce the content when your view wins through and everything is available on torrent sites for free?

It's quite simple

[l2718]

These sites support the rapid free sharing of information, thus reducing the ability of authors to profit from the books they write, of singers to profit from the songs they sing, of directors to profit from the films they create. In turn, this reduces their motivation to create such works, and this reduced motivation might lead them to reduce the amount of works they create for our enjoyment.

Note that this isn't a silly argument -- we really need to make a tradeoff between our desire to freely deal with information (especially to do new things with old ideas, but also to profit from the creations of others), and the need for a regime where creators have a way to get paid. This tradeoff is called "copyright laws".

Now the current system is so terrible (because the incentives of the people who write the laws are very different from what average citizens want to get out of copyright law) that I don't think blocking these sites is a good trade-off, but when you discuss copyright it's important to do so in these terms.

Re:It's quite simple

[funkatron]

Hang on, hang on. On the one hand we have censorship infrastructure going on our internet connection on the other we have:

might lead them to reduce the amount of works they create for our enjoyment.

Guess which one of those isn't scary?

Re:It's quite simple

[cheekyjohnson]

Trading in illegally copied material is not protected speech, in America or anywhere else.

Where does it say that in the first amendment? These additions and exclusions appear to be complete fabrications.

Re:It's quite simple

[Errol backfiring]

... , thus reducing the ability of publishers to profit from the books they did not write

There, fixed that for you. Off course, blocking those sites also blocks the authors who want their work copied because they want to reach an audience. But as there is no money involved in that it is not important. Because it isn't culture if it isn't paid for. Did it ever occurred to you that the free authors, the real bringers of culture, could stop as well if they are bluntly censored by the hollywood pulp industry?

Re:It's quite simple

[rolfc]

It is a silly system because the copyright laws are made for the 19th century. What happens when people copy is that business is hit, which is fine for me. It is not to support a media industry that is the goal of the copyright laws.

We have now a system for cheap and rapid distribution of digital media, and the problem is that the media industry want to take all the profit from that. The obvious answer to that would be that the market forced them to lower the prices, but it doesnt work. The industry is using their monopoly to raise their margins instead of lowering the prices. As long as they do that, they will need laws and police to hunt those that try to escape the monopoly.

The politicians need to rework the copyright laws or deal with the media industry abuse of their monopoly. Lobbying has so far prevented our representatives do represent us.

In other news...

[the_raptor]

In other news UK ISP's have noticed a sudden drop in subscription to high bandwidth/high download limit plans. They fear piracy may be to blame for this phenomenon.

Re:I pirate every movie BEFORE I buy

[Shemmie]

Because there is no Netflix in my 'market'.