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UK 'Pirates' Get 20-Day Grace Period After Each Warning (torrentfreak.com)

Posted by msmash on from the life-after-restriction dept.

UK Internet providers will soon begin sending piracy warnings to subscribers whose accounts are used to share copyright-infringing material. The associated "Get It Right" campaign has now published a detailed website, answering the most asked questions, while adding some new information as well. From a report: "After an Educational Email has been sent, there is a 20 day grace period during which time you will not receive any further emails. However, if further copyright infringement activity occurs and is detected after the 20 day grace period, you may receive another email from your ISP," the FAQ reads. Almost three weeks is significantly longer than the 7-days the U.S. equivalent has. Also good to know is that if no other piracy incidents are recorded in the future, all data is scrapped from the database after 12 months.

35 comments

  1. 20 days to set up a proxy? by Loether · · Score: 4, Funny

    20 days to set up a proxy? That's about right.

    --
    TODO create witty sig.
    1. Re: 20 days to set up a proxy? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And when you get dinged for copyright infringement through your proxy, get a VPN.... And when you get dinged for copyright infringement through your VPN, switch to Tor...

    2. Re: 20 days to set up a proxy? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      If your getting letters while using a VPN you don't have your VPN setup correctly or you are using a VPN that doesn't give a crap about your privacy.

    3. Re: 20 days to set up a proxy? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "or you are using a VPN that doesn't give a crap about your privacy." Isn't that redundant? Isn't all of this redundant?

    4. Re: 20 days to set up a proxy? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I think you don't know how a VPN works. A VPN hides your traffic from your ISP but all those DMCA letters you deserve will simply go to your VPN provider instead. If your VPN provider wants to shitcan you for copyright infringement it will happen.

    5. Re:20 days to set up a proxy? by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      All this will do is drive VPN sales and scare innocent people.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    6. Re: 20 days to set up a proxy? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      when you get dinged

      Good morning Security Guard Class 4 Number 47632943 Department 511 Level 4. This is your third wake up call. If you are late you will receive 7 demerits. You already have 991 demerits.

    7. Re: 20 days to set up a proxy? by fluffernutter · · Score: 1

      The business model of 'VPN provider' kind of begs that you look the other way.

      --
      Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
    8. Re: 20 days to set up a proxy? by Falos · · Score: 1

      Some have provisions in their Terms that basically say if shit hits the fan (drugs, child porn, terrorism, laundering... whistleblowing?) they're indemnified and throwing you under the bus.

      But those are your main street, well-lit, vetted, western VPNs, and they probably don't give a fuck about you watching Game of Thrones anyway. Meanwhile, if you have an IP showing you in Singapore, sending the letter at all is a waste of time.

    9. Re: 20 days to set up a proxy? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      And when you get dinged for copyright infringement through your proxy, get a VPN.... And when you get dinged for copyright infringement through your VPN

      Get a better VPN which doesn't log.

      switch to Tor...

      Don't do that; Tor wasn't built with filesharing in mind and will cripple it dead.

      Captcha: Refrain

    10. Re:20 days to set up a proxy? by jandersen · · Score: 1

      20 days to set up a proxy? That's about right.

      No, 20 days, so when you are arrested for still doing it, you can't claim ignorance. Also, it is not in society's interest to penalise a lot of young first-time offenders, many of whom will feel sufficiently worried about this to refrain in the future; the real criminals are the ones that look at the law - any law, really - with contempt and think they are too smart to ever get caught, and who immediately think of ways to try to dodge the law.

  2. US has what? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Almost three weeks is significantly longer than the 7-days the U.S. equivalent has.

    Uh, no. The US has no equivalent. We don't have any laws or rules that govern how an ISP has to act regarding the sending of strongly worded letters, other than if they receive a DMCA notice, they have to pass it along to the subscriber. It's up to the ISP to decide if they want to use a "strikes" system, terminate accounts, send nasty letters, etc.

  3. 20 Day Window by lbmouse · · Score: 1

    So each year you've got a 20 day Window to download all your shit.

    1. Re: 20 Day Window by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You mean to say "upload" because the uploading is the infringing act. TFS gets it right: "share copyright-infringing material." Share means upload.

    2. Re:20 Day Window by rtb61 · · Score: 2

      Cough, cough, upload not download. Download what ever, just do not upload, especially not target protocols or ips. You are not required to personally ensure that every website you can possibly connect is not uploading copyrighted content to you that they do not have licence to, that is their responsibility and not yours. Keep in mind every paragraph of writing, every picture, every graphic as well as of course sound and video recording is all copyrighted, except that which is already in the public domain. So you are not required to keep track of the trillions of pieces of content on the internet to track content licensing arrangements.

      --
      Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
  4. Meh, proxies already by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I download TBs a month of films and am in the UK but the difference is I know how to use a VPN and seedbox. The trick is not to be the low hanging fruit.

    BTW Any "starving" film execs can kiss my a$$.

    1. Re:Meh, proxies already by johannesg · · Score: 1

      What do you do with so many films? Do you actually buy a few TB in storage each month just to store them? Are there even enough hours in the day to watch so much film?

    2. Re:Meh, proxies already by Cederic · · Score: 1

      A long film in 4K could easily hit a terabyte, just for one film. IMDB's ratings history tells me I've watched over two new films (so not including rewatching films I've seen before) every week since 2003.

      Terabytes a month? Easily, especially if someone has kids, multiple family members, includes TV and TV series.

  5. Twenty days ... by PPH · · Score: 1

    ... in the brig. Arrrrgh!

    --
    Have gnu, will travel.
  6. The real takeaway: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "Don't get caught in the first place."

    Be smart about it, kids: Get a VPN, or an anonymous proxy to work through, or for fuck's sake, if you're really that poor, then use TOR -- and you faggots who are now going to scream "But that's not what TOR is for and it's an abuse of it!" can get fucked. You do whatever it is you have to do to not have things traced back to your doorstep, not get caught, and not have to deal with these silly buggers and their silly little notes. Really, it's not that difficult to do. I have to shake my head in sadness when I see people I know, who are otherwise intelligent, working in the clear, thinking that they're not doing enough of it to draw attention and get caught.

    1. Re: The real takeaway: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Doing enough of what exactly? Watching pirated streams? Or is the real problem that the torrent protocol is fatally flawed to infringe copyright by design? You know there are ways to watch without uploading even a single byte. Maybe your intelligent yet naive friends haven't learned yet that torrents are the absolute stupidest way to obtain pirated content.

    2. Re: The real takeaway: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Sounds like you favor a hydra with one head. Decentralized content is about as out-of-the-toothpaste as it gets. Can't stop a signal with no source.

  7. So by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    However, if further copyright infringement activity occurs and is detected after the 20 day grace period, you may receive another email from your ISP

    If I don't mend my ways they'll send me another email? How will my poor spam filter cope?

  8. So... by fish_in_the_c · · Score: 1

    basically the internet providers are snooping on all your traffic. Seems like we need to start building a log more TOR enabled routers.

    --
    âoeTolerance applies only to persons, but never to truth. Intolerance applies only to truth, but never to persons.
    1. Re:So... by Spacelord · · Score: 4, Informative

      > basically the internet providers are snooping on all your traffic

      They may or may not, but that's not where copyright violation notices come from. Specialized companies working for the copyright industry monitor public torrent swarms, and simply register the ip addresses that connect to the swarm. Then they send out letters to the ISPs who own the ip addresses, with details of the infringement, and generally the ISP just coughs up your information.

    2. Re:So... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      basically the internet providers are snooping on all your traffic. Seems like we need to start building a log more TOR enabled routers.

      Nope, they're really not spying on what you do with your service at all; they simply take at face value what the BPI say regarding the offending IP address and to simply forward to the subscriber.

      The minute they start spying on what you do, their safe harbor goes straight out the window, thus enabling them to be successfully prosecuted in a court of law for child porn / terrorism materials that traverse their wires.

    3. Re:So... by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      Under the new Snooper's Charter they are likely snooping all your traffic. They have to log vast amounts of metadata, more than can be recovered simply by logging DNS requests. In fact one of the objections they raised to the law was that the equipment to do the packet inspection would be too expensive.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    4. Re:So... by severn2j · · Score: 1

      Its been awhile since I worked for an ISP, but when we received infringement notices, we would just send an email to the end user informing them that we had received notice and to please stop, then just replied whoever sent us the notice and told them we have dealt with it.. We never gave any user information back to them (Isn't that a data protection issue?).

      As to snooping, the only thing we had was the standard log files to look at (there's not enough money in the ISP business to invest in any fancy network taps or anything) but the general rule was unless ordered to (by the police, courts, etc), what the users do online is their business.

      Besides, I was once told by someone who worked in cybercrime for the police that they dont care about copyright infringes, they are too busy trying to track people who are grooming kids to worry about protecting some corporate profit margin. (yeah, anecdotal, I know)

  9. Anti-IP thread by hackwrench · · Score: 0

    Meanwhile check out my Anti-IP thread recently active at Jim Sterling's PLAGIARISM video. Now as many of you have realized I am not always the greatest communicator, but the lack of intelligence in my latest opponent is staggering. Still, he motivated me to craft several new approaches, so there's that. https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

    1. Re:Anti-IP thread by johannesg · · Score: 2

      If you actually cared about your arguments you'd post them here instead of just using them as a reason to whore your channel.

  10. Copyright not right by Wowsers · · Score: 2

    The internet providers just opened themselves up to being sued for aiding and abetting the copyright cartels Everyone knows how many fake claims these copyright cartels make on a Youtube upload, they get no repercussions for their claims, but you have to deal with their lies. We also know these corporations have no problem in stealing YOUR content, then telling you to get lost. Time to abolish copyright law and stop this protectionist cartel.

    --
    Take Nobody's Word For It.
  11. Tipping point by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Be good to know what the tipping point is, where the number of infringers v the number of consumers means disconnects negatively effect the revenue of the copyright holders, then we may see a "moral" amendment to the law to fine tune it.

  12. Re:Not my channel by hackwrench · · Score: 1

    It's Jim Sterling's channel. I just exchanged words with some people in a thread with a lot of messages there. If you want me to try to edit the exchanges and post the result here, I may try.