Slashdot Mirror
BBC: ISPs Should Assume VPN Users Are Pirates
An anonymous reader sends this news from TorrentFreak:
After cutting its teeth as a domestic broadcaster, the BBC is spreading its products all around the globe. Shows like Top Gear have done extremely well overseas and the trend of exploiting other shows in multiple territories is set to continue. As a result, the BBC is now getting involved in the copyright debates of other countries, notably Australia, where it operates four subscription channels. Following submissions from Hollywood interests and local ISPs, BBC Worldwide has now presented its own to the Federal Government. Its text shows that the corporation wants new anti-piracy measures to go further than ever before.
The BBC begins by indicating a preference for a co-operative scheme, one in which content owners and ISPs share responsibility to "reduce and eliminate" online copyright infringement. ... "Since the evolution of peer-to-peer software protocols to incorporate decentralized architectures, which has allowed users to download content from numerous host computers, the detection and prosecution of copyright violations has become a complex task. This situation is further amplified by the adoption of virtual private networks (VPNs) and proxy servers by some users, allowing them to circumvent geo-blocking technologies and further evade detection," the BBC explains.
The BBC begins by indicating a preference for a co-operative scheme, one in which content owners and ISPs share responsibility to "reduce and eliminate" online copyright infringement. ... "Since the evolution of peer-to-peer software protocols to incorporate decentralized architectures, which has allowed users to download content from numerous host computers, the detection and prosecution of copyright violations has become a complex task. This situation is further amplified by the adoption of virtual private networks (VPNs) and proxy servers by some users, allowing them to circumvent geo-blocking technologies and further evade detection," the BBC explains.
Thats nothing. I use a VPN everyday for my company's cloud based accounting system. My entire department is staffed by pirates.
The co-operative approach is obvious. I mean, if a Ford-brand car battery is used to electrocute a journalist's genitals in a spider-hole in Iraq, of course the journalist and his survivors can sue Ford. That's just obvious. And BBC is going to find that many businesses at home and abroad do not care to have their means of secure communication severed.
Arrrgh, matey! Debit Left!!!, Credit Right!!!
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
20 years is long enough, long enough for Terminator 2 to now be public domain and Skynet to be a free literary construct.
Considering some fashion of Skynet will probably soon be a reality, the copyright holders can then send it a forceful cease and desist letter, and will have the option to sue it in court. That'll show Skynet.
Not only that, but actually you're one of the worst. You're even doing it FOR PROFIT!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Won't somebody please think of the children !
The BBC in particular seems to have been pretty good at employing people who "think of the children"...