Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

UK ISPs To Start Sending 'Piracy Alerts' Soon (torrentfreak.com)

Posted by msmash on from the piracy-watch dept.

Beginning next year, internet service providers in the UK will send email notifications to subscribers whose connections have been allegedly used to download copyright infringing content. In what is an attempt to curtail piracy rates, these alerts would try to educate those who pirate about legal alternates. TorrentFreak adds: Mimicking its American counterpart, the copyright alert program will monitor the illegal file-sharing habits of UK citizens with a strong focus on repeat infringers. The piracy alerts program is part of the larger Creative Content UK (CCUK) initiative which already introduced several anti-piracy PR campaigns, targeted at the general public as well as the classroom. The plan to send out email alerts was first announced several years ago when we discussed it in detail, but it took some time to get everything ready. This week, a spokesperson from CCUK's "Get it Right From a Genuine Site" campaign informed us that it will go live in first few months of 2017. It's likely that ISPs and copyright holders needed to fine-tune their systems to get going, but the general purpose of the campaign remains the same.

9 of 71 comments (clear)

  1. And clued-in users. . . by Salgak1 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    . . . will continue to use VPNs and selective IP blocking to bypass it. I got particularly peeved when I got a nastygram from ComHell, because I was using BitTorrent to download Linux distro. . .

    1. Re:And clued-in users. . . by sit1963nz · · Score: 2

      Well you see, there is a great big world out there that is NOT part of the USA (i.e. 96% of the worlds population) There are also a LOT of languages spoken by people in this great big world that are NOT english. So for example if you have Polish Immigrants living in Australia, they are blocked from being able to watch News and programming that is the most applicable to them. Or in US terms, think of it if you only had access to the News from your State and you were not entitled to see any news articles from any other state. That is how restrictive this crap is. Or if you want to put it another way, how would you feel if the ONLY TV you could watch came from China, with no translations. My bet is within a day or so you would be illegally downloading/watching content that you could understand. Also, Netflix in other countries is NOT the same as the US, there is a massive amount of content missing, because they are only the rights holders for that content in the USA. Also a lot of content you may have been watching on Netflix can disappear because they have had their rights to show it removed. And as for Channel "bundling " would you accept it if that same process was used at your supermarket, yes you can buy bread, milk, cheese, but only if you buy baby nappies, extra hot chillies, fish food, and a map of Puerto Rico, and you agree to this each week for 12 months. I DO NOT watch channels, I watch programs, Put Big Bang Theory on Channel 1, I watch it on Channel 1, put it on Channel 37, I watch it on Channel 37. So, I pay for Netflix, happily. I get to watch programs with no adverts, and can binge watch a whole series, multiple times if I so choose. HOWEVER, the studios don't want this, they want channels , lot of channels full of crap you are forced to pay for, they want repeat programming, they want adverts, they want you to watch when they play it not when you want to watch it. My response was to cut the cord and I will NEVER go back. I buy DVDs because it is cheaper to buy the DVD of a movie in New Zealand than it is for 2 people to go to the movies. So I no longer go to the movies. Big media has simply become too greedy.

    2. Re:And clued-in users. . . by Maxo-Texas · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Actually, many people did stop pirating when it was easy to legally get the content for a reasonable price. I stopped pirating music years ago for example.

      People are as ethical as they can afford to be.

      --
      She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
  2. Alternatives by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    "You appear to have tried to download episodes of [popular series which is not available on your country due to retarded geo-locking policies] from kick-ass torrents. Since there's no legal way for you to obtain this due to the short-sightedness of the copyright holders, may we suggest that you use the pirate bay instead?

    XOXO, your ISP"

  3. Re:When I meet a copyright owner by tepples · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Case in point: What "legal alternatives" would it recommend to someone caught pirating the TV series Spartakus and the Sun Beneath the Sea or the film Song of the South?

  4. Re:When I meet a copyright owner by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    A personality transplant?

  5. Did that say classrooms? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The copyright powers that be are welcome to play whatever games they want as they play whack-a-mole with the roughly ten billion methods there are to download copyrighted content (and I say this speaking as an author whose books have shown up on pirate websites), but now this crap is in the classrooms? When the f*ck did that become part of the common core? I mean, sweet Jesus, at my engineering firm I can't find a kid out of college to hire who can add two numbers in their head if the result is beyond single digits, but we're going to take time out of the school day to expound the virtues of respecting intellectual property laws?

    1. Re:Did that say classrooms? by avandesande · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Teaching kids about condoms and vpns is a parent's responsibility.

      --
      love is just extroverted narcissism
  6. Two alleged infringements in Emacs by tepples · · Score: 2

    When the notice states that the "infringing file" was a Ubuntu ISO image. . . . . This was years ago

    Was this around July 2011, when Emacs was discovered to include copyright infringements? Or around June 2012, when certain falling block games were ruled to infringe copyright, with M-x tetris in Emacs possibly next on the hit list of a video game developer who thinks free software should never have existed because it destroys the market?