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UK ISPs To Send Non-Threatening Letters To Pirates
New submitter echo-e writes: "A deal has been made between groups representing content creators and ISPs in the UK concerning how the ISPs should respond to suspected illegal file sharers. In short, the ISPs will send letters or emails with an 'educational' rather than threatening tone, alerting users to legal alternatives. The rights holders will be notified of the number of such alerts that have been sent out, but only the ISPs will know the identity of the offenders. Only four of the UKs ISPs have agreed to the 'Voluntary Copyright Alert Programme' so far, but the remaining ISPs are expected to join the programme at a later stage. The debate between rights holders and ISPs has raged on for years. This agreement falls short of the of the proposals put forward by the rights holders groups, but the ISPs have argued that it is not their responsibility to police users and that a legal process already exists for going after individuals."
It's driving me nuts!
I see it as basically advertising. ISPs agree to "alert[] users to legal alternatives", i.e. to send them junk mail promoting some streaming services.
Not really a huge win for the "groups representing content creators", but an agreement that ISPs will send free junk mail advertising your stuff is probably better than nothing. It's also at least targeted towards people who care about films/music/whatever, some subset of whom might actually be potential customers.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
If piracy is actually a problem, this may be as effective as the TV detection vans they (used to?) have roaming around, supposedly able to detect if you're watching live TV without paying the TV licence (which makes you a criminal in the UK). Apparently the high tech of those vans is... a list of people who don't have a licence. Nobody knows if they have a remote listening device like in spy movies that they point at your window, and apparently they don't even bother sending the vans out these days - they just tell you they do, and it's just as effective.
Using that logic, just the appearance of threats can get most people to comply with the law, or demands from the law that you don't have to comply with (like in "can I search your car please?"). Since an IP address doesn't identify a person, that's pretty much all they can do: send educational material, which makes people think "we are watching you", which makes them subscribe to Netflix and give up on 0-day TV shows (freshly ripped off the air).
I'd like to see "piracy" and "loss" numbers a year after people start getting these letters. My belief is that the piracy numbers will go down, but the revenue of content creators will not follow suit.
Question for religious people: where do unrepentant masochists go when they die?
The music industry is even paying for it £750,000 to set it up, and then £75,000 a year every year afterwards. I can't help but think the ISPs may even be profiting from this.
I don't know what happened, it's like the industry has realised it can't win, that even if it did push through what it wanted - the ability to extort money from people and block them from the age old right to trial and has basically just conceded on every point that matters.
There did seem to be a suggestion that if it didn't work then they could go back to the drawing board but that's a long way off, and if they couldn't win harsher penalties or the ability to bypass the right to a fair trial or the right to privacy this time then I'm not convinced they ever will. I suspect they've conceded that their business isn't in fact above fundamental human rights after all and that no court would let that stand in the long run.
This seems to be extraordinarily good news for once on this front, effectively one of the two most controversial measures in the Digital Economy Act has arrived 4 years late after numerous delays and now that it has has been well and truly gutted.
Maybe Google's closeness and lobbying of the current government and funding for their pet projects like Silicon Roundabout has finally paid off? Maybe the fact tech companies have far far more money than the music and movie industry is finally bearing fruit? Maybe the move of Ian Livingstone from BT to government trade minister has had an impact? Has tech finally learnt how to outplay the music industry at the great lobbying game in the UK?
And then I said, " ...
That's what most recipients will likely say - nothing.
So what happens after that?
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Legal alternatives usually don't even exist, or are completely overpriced, or months late in other countries.
Stop trying to educate, threaten or sue people. Clean up your copyright deals so that you do synchronous worldwide launches of your content. We're in the age of the Internet downloads and streaming. Try to keep up.
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What happens if, say, the user is downloading shows for which there is no legal source? Let me give you an example:
There's a Japanese TV show, highly popular on various anime trackers, called Game Center CX. It's a live-action show that's been running for something like 18 seasons now where a comedian named Shinya Arino plays through hard and/or bad NES/SNES era games.. and it's also had a bit of an odd cycle of rights in the United States.
Initially, Kotaku (horrible as it is) licensed some 13 or so episodes from the show's rightsholder, Fuji TV. They overdubbed them.. poorly.. and released them online. Kotaku only had the rights to those specific episodes, and only for I believe two years. The show proved unpopular on Kotaku, because at that point Something Awful already had a fansub group together who were doing a much better job translating and didn't have an annoying English-language overdub. SA-GCCX released their work on Youtube, where it stayed for years without a problem. I should also mention that they only translated the episodes Kotaku did not have the rights to - episodes that could not be legally seen outside of Japan because they were only broadcast on Fuji TV and no one bought the rights to them here.
About a year ago, Fuji TV sent a mass of DMCA notices on every episode of Game Center CX that had been uploaded to Youtube, even though the show was not licensed (and still is not, with one exception that I'll mention) in the United States. Every single episode got taken down, and there was a massive scramble to get them all back.
There is ONE exception to the licensing - SA-GCCX actually got a commercial DVD released just before Fuji TV started sending out takedown notices, of their own subtitled versions of the episodes Kotaku had butchered. However, they only had the rights to the episodes Kotaku had previously licensed, and they were not the ones who sent out takedown notices on the Youtube videos. Fuji TV also sells DVD box sets of the show, but those are not subtitled, almost impossible to import, and cost a metric fuck-ton of money (I tried to buy one once, it would've cost me something like $300 for a set of DVDs I can't understand).
So now, outside of spending a ridiculous amount of money to buy a satellite package that contains Fuji TV (which I'm not sure even exists) and learning to understand spoken Japanese (tried it, lapsed when I got a job) or moving to the Tokyo metropolitan area and paying for a cable subscription, there is no legal way for me to watch Game Center CX should Fuji TV decide to go after torrents of the show. They haven't, so far, and I don't live in the UK, but I can just imagine AT&T sending me a "non-threatening" letter:
"Dear Customer,
You have been caught downloading Game Center CX, a television show owned by Fuji TV, Inc. This is wrong and you should consider a legal purchase instead at the following locations:
(NULL)"
Well... I think it's perfectly reasonable. You'd be completely amazed at the number of people who think it's perfectly legal. Those people will potentially become paying customers as a result of this. And for people who don't care? Well, you're not gonna convert them, anyway; best not to waste time and money trying.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Of course a legal alternative exists. It's called learning Japanese, entering Japan as a tourist, and watching the video. It's impractical, but nothing in the law has to be practical.
I expect most ISPs will set up their own streaming services or at least do a referral deal with one so they can use the alert letters as high value targeted advertising.
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SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
More like...
Dear Valued Customer,
Please try not to be noticed, but do continue to use a lot of bandwidth to protect our revenue stream.
There's a good chap.
Cheerio,
Your ISP
PS If you do get noticed we, most regrettably, shall be forced into the position of writing a stern letter to your mum.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
So, how many movie pirates have opened up a flick, seen the "WARNING!" label and words saying that this product is NOT for unauthorized viewing, and immediately closed / deleted the movie? I'm guessing..... Zero.
Can they please send me one?
I am desperate to find someone to give money to, in exchange for unencumbered 1080p video (movies/tv).
I've stopped watching movies, but I know many in my position steal movies not for the price (we're engineers; cost is not an issue), but for the quality and user experience. Honestly, I couldn't care whether movies are $10, $20, or even $30. I care that I can wire someone money, click a button, and start a 10-20gb download of unencumbered, professionally encoded, high definition video.
In the meantime, I spend all of my media dollars on music, since there are multiple sources from which I can actually buy it.
Won't someone in the video world please take my money?
A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
Nope. Your not cynical enough.
Did you not catch the part "alerting users to legal alternatives"
This will be a whole new stream of advertising revenue for the ISPs.
Nope. Your not cynical enough.
Did you not catch the part "alerting users to legal alternatives"
This will be a whole new stream of advertising revenue for the ISPs.
I .. I suddenly have the urge to buy all the soundtrack music played over the tannoy at Tesco.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I have no idea. I still to this day do not understand why our attempt at a silicon valley was done in London when we had an astoundingly good research base in Cambridge and that is far more easily accessible to the rest of the country to boot because it's much closer to the centre of England than London is.
Hell, Cambridge even has more than it's fair share of hipsters so it even ticked the hipster box.
I can't for the life of me understand why they came up with silicon roundabout in a shitty part of London when Cambridge actually exists. It just seemed a nonsense to invest in that there when we have such an amazingly better choice. If it's about investors then even that is a non-issue, rail links to London are quick and convenient from there too.
We already had a cutting edge research area that was world class, and has spawned many successful startups like ARM and Autonomy. Why not just invest in that than try and make a new one in a shitty, inconvenient part of the country that wasn't exactly known for drawing in technological geniuses like Cambridge is?
As an aside a year or two back I spent some time in Sheffield and met a lot of tech workers there, it's amazing how many startups there are - Sheffield has turned itself around and it's economy is impressively made up of something like 80% small businesses now, many of which are tech startups. Even Sheffield, the old mining and steel works city would've been a better candidate than silicon roundabout they chose. Sheffield is even in a valley so they could've even gone for Silicon Valley UK and not had to involve roundabouts. Even Sheffield is only a 2hr train ride from London.
It seems like Cameron was desperate to make an area to make startups, when in practice it would've been better to just take the areas that are already spawning startups like no tommorrow and invest in them - the fact they already spawn so many tech startups is evidence that they have the formula right so why dick around trying to artificially recreate the formula in an area where you've no fucking idea if it's ever going to work?