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Film Studios Seeking Complete Block of Newzbin2 in the UK
superglaze writes "Having got BT, one of the biggest ISPs in the UK, to block the Newzbin2 Usenet site, the Motion Picture Association is now trying to get the same result from all the other major service providers in the country. As this is likely to go through, it won't be long before most people in the UK will be unable to visit file-sharing sites at all, without using a proxy, VPN, or special client."
At the end of the day, they won't be surprised when the ticket sales for the utter crap that they call movies doesn't go up one bit. People who download movies usually cannot afford to go and see them, or refuse to pay the ridiculous prices to see them. Cinemas in the UK are a joke. 7 quid for a coke and popcorn. 8 quid to get in. Take a family of 4 to a cinema and you are out 60 quid ($90 ish). It's a joke. Just to sit there for 90 minutes and watch utter crap. Make cinema affordable for families again and piracy will go down very quickly.
having just read that, it seems, there is no need for smaller ISPs that resell the connection of BT to be blocked (which they wont be it seems).
now, if there is one idea we can steal from patent trolls (if they didn't patent it yet) its making shell companies with no real atributes.
how about making smaller ISPs that do nothing but resell the connection of BT, if they get sued, you drop them and offer the clients to swap to another shell company with no added costs, under the same terms.
it won't be long before most people in the UK will be unable to visit file-sharing sites at all, without using a proxy, VPN, or special client.
That's like saying you soon won't be able to leave your own house - unless you use a door or window. If the Chinese government cannot filter the internet effectively the UK government will have no hope.
shhhh, you're disrupting their world view that the USA is the world. you might hurt they're ability to further broad brush over topics....
By forcing the 'net underground they ultimately encourage truly free speech.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
Newsbin were originally a UK based site. They were forced offshore, then they went for blocking it.
One of the cases the was on Slashdot a few weeks ago was a catholic priest. Some of the pictures he had were just photograph of (clothed) children with their crotches in the centre of the frame. These were counted as child porn (not to defend the individual in question - there was also evidence that he was molesting the children, but focussing on the pictures rather than the molestation seems wrong).
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Sorry, my points have all been spent.
You might want to pick up a newspaper sometime (if they still in print) because the world has changed a little bit in the last several decades.
There have been some recent developments that you might find interesting, such as the rise of "the internet", "smart phones", "i-things", "unemployment", and "economic uncertainty".
In reading, you might also learn that most of us don't have infinite incomes. Additionally, at the risk of offending some camps, all businesses can't continue to always increase profits for an infinite amount of time.
So the average person has less money to spend on entertainment and more places to spend it, then it seems pretty likely that certain "creative industries" can feel the pinch.
You are in the "creative industry", can't you be more creative than using piracy as a scapegoat?
There are many losses of freedom that society simply will not tolerate and, even if society did, there are civil liberties organizations that will step up to the ball and fight those battles.
We here at the TSA whole-heartedly agree, and can attest to the viciousness of people trying to pass airport checkpoints without having their boobs x-ray-goggled and their scrotums squeezed. It was a humbling experience for us when the ACLU obtained a court order forcing us to cease all operations not shown to improve security, both for specific complaints such as humiliation over naked x-rays and groping and for more general complaints about using non-issues as a platform to force travelers into ridiculous and submissive positions so that we can exert control continuously and ensure that they will follow any instruction no matter how much it strips their civil liberties.
At the TSA, we now focus on working with intelligence agencies and on aircraft control strategies. Locked cockpit doors and fast response and escort when a pilot behaves in an unexpected and uncontrolled manner have become the gold standard, and we are strict on airlines that do not enforce these standards. Your convenience and safety are both equal priorities, as they should be.
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And this is why you need some related form of momentum--something to vaguely give that impression as well as something to show that we've accepted such censorship. Those arguments are nutty ... but also not so nutty, really. Abortion is fun because you can make societal arguments like the unintended consequence of ELIMINATING other unintended consequences (i.e. risks) causing a slide of other moral fibers of society, or more real effects like proliferation of STDs. Then again, you could just talk about killing babies. Or both, if you juggle your topics right and get the timing down just so.... Of course, some of that relied on people competently understanding the problem that widespread drug use causes to society--something real, but vague, which people just won't swallow. It's analogous of course to the problem that eliminating the risk of pregnancy causes to society (which is more complex and annoying, and fun to argue about in itself--if the man says abort it, the woman says she wanted to keep it, why the fuck should the man have to pay child support?)
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The industry can't see an arms-race when it's staring them in the face.
This will escalate until file-sharing is done over invite-only darknets. Best
of luck filtering fully encrypted data streams that make a jump or two
across national borders. A DNS blacklist is one thing, but forcing ISPs to
engage in highly costly traffic analysis is something they will fight tooth and nail.
> but I suspect at least 50% of UK citizens couldn't tell you which party he represents.
That's not because we're stupid. That's just because he's very hard to distinguish from the last terrorist in power.