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Virgin Media and BPI to punish sharers
Author: Gareth HalfacreePublished: 1st April 2008
The BPI - the British equivalent of the RIAA - is keen to 'help' ISPs police their networks for infringing users.
The service provider is implementing a three-tier policy, initially to deal with the sharing of music files where the copyright is owned by BPI members. If successful, the BPI is likely to be joined by other trade bodies who will want to see similar sanctions against sharers of films, TV programmes, and software.
Virgin Media is the first UK ISP to bow to increasing pressure from the film and music industry to police their networks for illegitimate file sharing, but is unlikely to be the last. Even the government is getting in on the act, with guidelines due to be published which will offer ISPs legal sanctions in addition to contract termination.
The monitoring of peer-to-peer activity will be carried out by agents of the BPI, with the trade body handing information about suspicious IP addresses to the ISP. Virgin Media will then send a letter warning customers that naughtiness has been detected on their connection, and would they please stop forthwith. Should this fail to stop the flow of copyright material, a temporary disconnection will prod the errant user into action. If they start torrenting again as soon as their connection is restored, the final sanction is complete termination of their connection.
The only good news for file sharers is the one-way nature of information sharing between Virgin Media and the BPI. The BPI never get any personally identifiable information on customers accused of sharing infringing files, with the name and address associated with the IP never being divulged by the ISP. This means that customers are unlikely to be sued, but that will be little consolation when your account is terminated because your little brother couldn't keep away from those Slipknot downloads.
The agreement between Virgin Media and the BPI is a sign of things to come for Internet service providers and their customers in the UK: I predict that more and more ISPs will join forces with industry groups in voluntary projects like these, if only to stay the threat of legislation – a threat the government is using as a cudgel to encourage the two industries to work things out amongst themselves.
Could this be the future of Internet connectivity, or should the BPI keep their nose out of your downloads? Share your thoughts over in the forums.
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Comments (41)Stats: 0.123 seconds
I just cant tell!
Otherwise, I'm gonna use the C-word in a bit, as in, Virgin Media, "you're a bunch of"... :(:(:(
But regardless, on a brighter note, the alt.* universe still teams with a multitude of delicacies to be had, all the time..
Enlighten us, I can see this plastered all over the internet now, some of it starting on the 30th so its more of a smear campaign than an april fool if it isn't true.
actually, a few other things i thought might've given it away. in this article, there's no reference or quotations or evidence to back it up, and another site i check for news said that BPI was a music based company, which obviously clashed with my interpretation of a pornographic industry!
Thats a good point, i think in june i shall be archiving every linux distro and all patches i need for my games just to get a letter before i leave uni. But i think the BPI will be torrenting major releases themselves so they can harvest IPs to send to VM. Lets hope PeerGuardian does its job and i wont need that RS or usenet account after all.
The article indicates it's not Virgin Media doing the monitoring. They are simply screwing over good customers.
The BPI can simply monitor torrents that are known to contain pirated content or log onto a P2P network and share dummy files to entrap people. Pass on IP's that connect and let virgin deal with the backlash
So, if I can't use bittorrent any more, what's the obvious route for me to watch Lost now?
Hmmmm....
I use to use proxy tunnelling software when I was at Uni to connect to a tracker. Does that offer any protection? I thought it did until I read somewhere that a peer can inspect TCP packets to find the original IP (or is that just when you use use regular proxies? - I'm no technical expert). Might have to use Usenet more often if o2 bring this in.
While still not impossible to catch you, it is far less likely than using p2p..
for the most part you just need to find out where there clients are running from and blacklist there ips or jsut simpley Blacklist the UK and use out of uk peers only or thats alot easyer use giganews + newzbin
makes note needs to fix my own server mobo died
Nah, don't be daft. Why would anyone do that?
It looks like they will only be keeping tabs on music downloads (being the BPI and all), so I don't see any reason why they would care about anyone downloading Lost, or any other TV, films or software for that matter.
I'd love to if:
The money went to the artists, rather than the greedy *******s at BPI/RIAA et al.
I weren't a poor 16 year old who likes to discover new music that isn't easy to find on CD for a sane price.
CDs didn't cost £10-£15 for maybe 40 odd minutes of music.
iTunes etc didn't suck.
That being said, if I truely love the artist/album, I'll generally buy the album. I just can't afford to all the time.
Then don't buy it.
No doubt that most of the music industry's business model is flawed in the extreme, but I think people thinking that they have a right to listen to music is also flawed. Music isn't a right, its a luxury, if you can't afford it then you can go without.
I just hope to see more artists following NIN and Radiohead's lead, as it makes a whole lot more sense and I'd rather not have physical media anyway. When I buy a CD, it gets ripped and then goes in to a box in a cupboard never to see the light of day again.
And it would be the pornographic industry working with VIRGIN Media, those two don't seem like they go together ;)
I'd go with a usenet provider that doesn't keep logs and is located in a country with a questionable justice system that isnt easily accessible for our government.. but yes, virgin is too stupid to realize that those pirating stuff will simply use a different service, it's like speeding, the police puts up more cameras, those speeding simply buy more warning devices...
The copyright holders would send a letter in saying on dd/mm/yy ip address 123.123.123.123 was downloading/sharing a file that we own the rights too. Tell then to stop it sharpish.
The abuse dept forwarded this letter on the customers saying that you need to stop otherwise we will cut you off.
If the same person did the same again they would be warned again, and told if they do it again they will be cut off.
Many years back when I used to sit next to the abuse guys they were doing maybe 10-20 of these a day and closing quite a few peoples accounts.
So nothing has changed they are now just telling people thats what they are doing.
And remember its not the downloading they care about it the SHARING or publishing as they call it.
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Also remember virgin dont care what you do, they are trying to make sure that they dont get sued too much by the copyright holders, so they pass the buck when ever possible.
Besideds if virgin lose a few people that are running flat out 24/7 they are really not going to care. All that does its ease network conjestion for the 90% of users that are not running flat out.
Rumour denied:
Virgin Media denies anti-file sharing agreement
There is no pilot 'three strikes and out' measure preventing illegal music downloads, it says
excellent!....i hoped something like this would come up.
Well it makes me dislike Mr. Branson slightly less but i'd still prefer it if he hadn't come along with his money whoring tendecies and bought NTL Telewest in the first place
is there anyway around it? :-)