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For Now, UK Online Pirates Will Get 4 Warnings -- And That's It
New submitter Tmackiller writes with an excerpt from VG247.com: The British government has decriminalised online video game, music and movie piracy, scrapping fuller punishment plans after branding them unworkable. Starting in 2015, persistent file-sharers will be sent four warning letters explaining their actions are illegal, but if the notes are ignored no further action will be taken. The scheme, named the Voluntary Copyright Alert Programme (VCAP), is the result of years of talks between ISPs, British politicians and the movie and music industries. The UK's biggest providers – BT, TalkTalk, Virgin and Sky – have all signed up to VCAP, and smaller ISPs are expected to follow suit. VCAP replaces planned anti-piracy measures that included cutting users' internet connections and creating a database of file-sharers. Geoff Taylor, chief executive of music trade body the BPI, said VCAP was about "persuading the persuadable, such as parents who do not know what is going on with their net connection." He added: "VCAP is not about denying access to the internet. It's about changing attitudes and raising awareness so people can make the right choice." Officials will still work to close and stem funding to file-sharing sites, but the news appears to mean that the British authorities have abandoned legal enforcement of online media piracy. Figures recently published by Ofcom said that nearly a quarter of all UK downloads were of pirated content."
Tmackiller wants to know "Will this result in more private lawsuits against file sharers by the companies involved?"
The article starts off saying that they have been decriminalised, but then the government is still calling them illegal and apparently more people might be sued over this "decriminalised" behaviour. So what exactly is the stare of the legality of pirating in Britain?
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
I hope so - somebody needs to stop freetards running amok with other people's hard work
sue me.
Agreed.
No more blackmail settlements, no more blanket anonymous lawsuits, no more copyright trolls.
Somebody needs to stop those freetard publishers running amok with other people's hard work.
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Geoff Taylor, chief executive of music trade body the BPI, said VCAP was about "persuading the persuadable, such as parents who do not know what is going on with their net connection." He added: "VCAP is not about denying access to the internet. It's about changing attitudes and raising awareness so people can make the right choice."
We could not get file sharers drawn and quartered, so we are going to spin the decision that we fought kicking and screaming to our advantage and make us look better than we really are.
I came, I conquered, I coredumped
They send you a letter with 4 warnings inside.
RTFS? It says that in the summary. The goal here is to alert people who don't know their internet connection is being used for piracy and who aren't OK with freeloading, parents being the given example.
Because they can turn around in a few years when this is normalised behaviour and say "Hey, isn't it ridiculous that we know who all these inveterate pirates are, but we aren't doing anything? Maybe we should pass a simple law that fines them a few hundred quid, that's not much of a problem, is it?"
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
... in litigation.
In court, a person could not use the, "Gee ... I didn't know," defense.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
The history of antipiracy lawsuits, especially in the US, would seem to suggest that they do bugger all to reduce piracy, at an enormous cost to the IP owner and the taxpayer. When the patient's dying on the table and your best witchdoctor isn't helping, maybe it's time to switch to a better kind of medicine.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
I hope and think that the brainwashing of the younger "freeloading" generation will fail.
It is truely disgusting to see the attempts to brainwash the people to protect vested economic interests.
The collateral damage to prevent sharing of bitstreams is just too high.
We cannot prevent this, neither with laws nor with brainwashing. Sharing is just too easy and natural.
We'll have to adapt our economic model to the new reality instead, the "new normal".
The correct answer is, both.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
On the one hand, its nice that this regime is measured and not over the top. On the other hand, if I hadn't pirated anything, because my flatmates/kids/friends/neighbours had done something I didn't know about, I'd still be pissed off receiving that letter. I don't think the good people of the UK should be completely satisfied with this situation. There should be a way to push back and say, no I didn't do it, take your stinking letter back.
It's because there's no convenient way (other than pirating) to get the media you want to watch/listen to, when you want to watch/listen to it. If the media companies would make *everything* available under a subscription model (like Netflix), there would be no need to go to Pirate Bay to get it. I suspect much of what is pirated is watched once. Figure $60/yr for a VPN, or $20/mo for Netflix (which, sadly, doesn't have a tenth what's available by torrent), and the media companies could do pretty well...if they would only do it.
When you use a torrent you are also sending data blocks. So even if you leach you are still "supplying" while you are downloading. This make the situation civilly more precarious and becomes criminal too.
Because the warnings will be stored in a database. A few years down the line they can then try stealthing something into law and at that point they have a nice big database full of confirmed pirates to monitor closely until they catch them and wallop them with huge fines. Remember we have the pr0n filters now and even folks who opt-out still go through the filter but it doesn't block the connection. It isn't a great leap to hook that up to a list of known pirates and flag up each time one of them goes to a torrent site, sports streaming site or something similar. Why block sites when you can have an automatically generated list of everything a pirate downloads? VCAP is just groundwork.
Show me one parent who gives a shit about copyright. If a letter comes with contents to the ring of "you might be sued for billions and billions", at least it will turn the older generation against the overreaching copyright too...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
excellent point. selective enforcement of laws is a dangerous policy.
What happens if I share completely legal software? How are they supposed to tell if what I am sharing is in fact legal to share freely? I am constantly playing around with VMs and what not and love playing with various systems. So what happens to nerds like me who just happen to use a lot of bandwidth just tinkering? I think this is ridiculous on so many levels. Besides just because torrents are being used doesn't mean you are doing something illegal. A lot of free software is shared via torrents. Well I am just preaching to the choir here you all know what I am getting at. Either way what you do with your connection to the internet is no one else's business.