Slashdot Mirror
UK ISPs Asked To Block More File-sharing Websites
another random user writes with this news from the BBC:
"The UK's major internet service providers have been asked to block three more file-sharing websites. The BPI (British Phonographic Industry), which acts on behalf of rights holders, wants ISPs to prevent access to Fenopy, H33t and Kickass Torrents. The BPI alleges that the sites are illegally distributing music. The ISPs told the BBC they would comply with the new demand, but only if a court order is put in place. It follows a separate court order in April which saw popular file-sharing site The Pirate Bay blocked in the UK. ... The letter, which was not intended to go public, was sent to six ISPs last week, namely BT, Sky, Virgin Media, O2, EE and TalkTalk. It is understood that the BPI is hoping all three sites will be blocked before Christmas — far more quickly than the process has taken previously."
Oh, never mind; misread that.
Come on, really?
Imagine if you will, a country where any company or group can have any website blocked because they don agree with the content.
Better start setting up some fast VPNs, guys, because it won't be long before this gets out of hand.
So TPB's ban was the thin end of the wedge? What a surprise.
And I absolutely love "The letter, which was not intended to go public" - so they want ISP's to filter traffic for them without all the hassle of legal process or negative public opinion.
'Don't worry' said the trees when they saw the axe coming, 'The handle is one of us.'
Here is a precedent for censorship...boycott the fuckers, no more DVDs, CDs and cinema for me.
I wonder big the list is of industries/products that throughout human history have disappeared because of changes in technology.
I wonder if the phonographic industry realises that they are on that list and marked in red "pending".
I wonder if they realise that once an industry/product is on that list you can never come off.
BTW this list is called human progress.
For various definitions of "distribute"
Your mileage may vary
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Fuck off, you do not hold any copyrights yourselves, therefore you are NOT LEGALLY QUALIFIED TO COMPLAIN.
Yours Sincerely,
Everybody.
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
BT, Sky, Virgin Media, O2, EE and TalkTalk have just driven the final nail in Trust's casket. I've just called O2 and told them where to put their SIM contract.
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
Whats the point blocking aything?? All their doing is forcing people to add overhead to networks due to encryption
...just how successful ISP blocking of the PirateBay was in preventing access to it!
Just take your business to plusnet
It's cheaper and they don't block any sites.
Given widespread surveillance, by law or otherwise it will and has driven people to encrypt all traffic. My traffic is like my mail. You cannot look into every letter just because you suspect copyright infringement. You need a court order allowing you to pry into my mail. I do not like people reading my mail, even if I am only wishing my mother happy birthday. It's none of your business. Encrypt your mail/communications. Private means private. I rent a mail service from my ISP, to deliver the friggin mail, not to read it at the behest of greedy, ignorant bastards.
A 'singular oddity' is an event that cannot be explained and only happens when you are alone.
"It follows a separate court order in April which saw popular file-sharing site The Pirate Bay blocked in the UK."
PMSL! The block is about as effective as putting a cat in a wet paper bag. Why are they wasting the time of the ISPs and legal system persuing this pointless venture? Who at the BPI is actually stupid enough to think this is effective?
Remember that time where the internet was freedom? Where one could create a website, it was subject to law, like any other act. Remember when the providers of the internet buckled under the pressure from "the powers that be". Sites could be blocked, freedom quashed, because somebody didn't like the content of a site, because somebody thought it aided in crime and law breaking, despite not breaking any laws itself.
When we start forcing ISPs to block sites, based on anything other than law, we open gates that will never be closed. One leads to more, more to many and eventually freedom on the internet will be dead.
This is the key issue we are dealing with. It is getting overlooked because "piracy is bad". We have many other questions to ask: does blocking these sites even /help/ the problem of piracy? this suggests not!
Is piracy really the problem, perhaps the intermediate companies between consumer and author's of content are to blame somewhat?
Why do we have to constantly start making much larger problems while trying to fix smaller ones. Fix the music industry, the film industry, the E-book-monolopy that Amazon is building, fix the problem at the root. Provide consumers with a modern, suitable market in which they pay the author's of content for their products, for a price that represents the true worth of that product. Allow the consumer to have freedom with that product to use it in any device, in any form. Provide a good service, that is value-for-money, and people /will/ use it. We've seen it work before
Leave the internet alone, once the gates are open the wars begin....
(This is one army, preparing arms...
What amazes me, is that there isn't a bigger outcry about 'legacy' entertainment companies abusing the law to prop up failing business models.
Given the triumph of neoliberalism since the collapse of communism, I'm surprised at how the notion of free markets is so selectively interpreted and enforced. It seems as though even if you are a clapped-out dinosaur of a company, if you're sufficiently large, you can bypass market discipline through lobbying, special pleading and black PR against one's political opponents.
This is the moral issue -- how big, corrupt, dishonest dinosaurs like much of Big Media can get away with subverting the free market, and the political system itself to make their quarterly numbers.
So what's the closes thing to EFF in UK? Any ideas?
Really, all along the **IA and their ilk have been claiming that pirating is responsible for lost sales, that is 1 pirated move == 1 lost DVD sale or bum on cinema seat... so based on that argument, now that pirating is getting really hard to do a corresponding sales increase will ensue! right? Right?!
I checked. It's not a super prolific user.
It's the new insulting term for an "Anonymous submitter". So they're "Random Users" now. Because the Logged In Users can be tracked, right?
Hello, Dice.
Luv' what you have done with the place.
Once the initial line is crossed to censorship in any country, you have permanently lost freedom from censorship, and are on your way down an unstoppable slippery slope.
You will not regain freedom from censorship once it gets this foothold, and will not even have the opportunity to contest it once the precedent is set, because once it is pervasive and intrusive enough for the average person to finally see the threat, it will be too late to do anything about it.
There's no going back from this, so people in the UK have already completely lost the fight against censorship; the infrastructure being put in place to achieve this censorship, will lead to expanding methods of censorship (such as deep packet inspection), and finally to a centralized system of censorship under control of government (which doubles as an Internet 'kill switch').
The Internet has revolutionized free speech, and this kind of expanding censorship is the biggest threat to free speech that exists today; don't for a moment believe that this has anything to do with piracy or copyright.
I am one of the rights holders and BPI (British Phonographic Industry), does not represent or act on behalf of me. I use those sites as a way of deploying my product, and BPI (British Phonographic Industry) along with any court blocking them will be infringing upon my rights.
Clearly this is nothing more than a Tyrany, Organized crime hiding behind the color of law, which invalidates those authorities.
Unless you think that people are going to stop watching films or listening to popular music, then no, the film and music industries are not going to disappear.
I know people on slashdot think that everything can be made for free, but especially in the case of films, that simply isn't true. The industries are there because one man and his laptop can't make a big glossy Hollywood film.
As to whether big glossy Hollywood films need to be made, that is a different question. But as an awful lot of people seem to prefer Transformers 3 to re-watching a Kurosawa or Tarkovsky classic, I'd say they have their followers.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Major typo?
I moved out of the UK 13 yrs ago, and im no longer part of the daily culture, but I get surprised at how far my homeland has gone in terms of nanny state/police state/big brother.
How did we get to this stage? Is it Camerons gov. that has done the damge, or did blair set the groundwork? I used to take great pride in my nationality, but this is one conversational topic where you hesitate in admitting your British.
"Everyone knows that vi vi vi is the number of the beast" -- Richard Stallman