|
|
Illegal downloaders to be cut off by UK ISPs
Author: Tim SmalleyPublished: 12th February 2008
The UK Government has drafted plans that would demand ISPs to cut off users that illegally download music and films if they are caught.
The new proposal will be unveiled next week and will require ISPs to give suspected illegal downloaders "three strikes".
Users found to be illegally downloading media will first receive an email warning. This will then be followed by a suspension for the second infringement and if they're caught a third time, the user's contract will be terminated.
It's not clear at the moment whether ISPs will share information on offenders, but it's estimated that at least six million broadband users illegally download files from the Internet annually in the UK alone. The music and film industries claim that this is costing billions of pounds in lost revenue every year.
Both the US and France are already in the process of implementing similar laws and, according to The Times, this has put increasing pressure on both the UK ISPs and the Government to take action. The UK's four biggest ISPs have been in talks with the entertainment industry about a potential voluntary scheme, but no agreement has been reached at this time.
The proposal is not without its problems though – the first involves innocent users being victims of WiFi piggybacking, where filesharers use someone else's Internet connection to illegally download (and share) copyrighted media. In that situation, does the law-abiding Internet user get their connection pulled? There are other outstanding problems too, at least from the Internet Service Provider's perspective, include how many enforcements they are expected to start and how quickly warnings would be sent to offenders.
What's more, there are threats that ISPs which fail to enforce the regime are liable for prosecution. A spokesperson from the Internet Service Providers Association said that data protection laws would stop ISPs from closely monitoring the data sent over their networks – do you really want your ISP monitoring passwords to your Internet Banking Service for example?
"ISPs are no more able to inspect and filter every single packet passing across their network than the Post Office is able to open every envelope," said the spokesperson. "ISPs bear no liability for illegal file sharing as the content is not hosted on their servers."
"We welcome the signal from Government that it values the health of the creative industries and takes seriously the damage caused by widespread copyright infringement," said Roz Groome, vice president of antipiracy at NBC Universal. "We call upon ISPs to take action now. They must play their part in the fight against online piracy and work with rights owners to ensure that ISPs' customers do not use their services for illegal activity. Piracy stifles innovation and threatens the long term health of our industry."
If the laws do get passed, it could be bad news for Internet users—regardless of whether or not they're using it for illegal activities. We'd love to hear what you think about the proposals, so please join us in the healthy discussion that's already going on in the forums!
Related
Comments (230)- Site Links:
- About
- Email Editor
- Newsletter
- Privacy
- RSS
- Score Guide
- Our Other Websites:
- Auto Express
- Channel Pro
- Computer Buyer
- Computer Shopper
- Den of Geek
All content © bit-tech.net 2000-2010
© Copyright Dennis Publishing Limited licensed by Felden
How long til torrents turn on encryption?
Whatever happened to "filing a complaint" and letting the justice system do what it's supposed to do? Yes, it's difficult, but that's the internet for you. Wasn't it Hubert J. Farnsworth (I own the DVDs, I swear) who said "nothing is impossible"?
The sooner the better imo
They can afford to buy all the radio 2 tunes they like because they tax us so they get their big wages
Ahh well end of rant
Breach of privacy would be the only thing standing in their way imo.
Surely there would be a MAJOR change in legislation required to remove all privacy from the UK internet?
Surely if your downloading by Rapidshare you would not be able to get caught out as your downloading a RAR.
Sam
Ah right I see, I guess this would refer to the more heavy user of torrents.
What with digital distribution being the way forwards (Steam, iTunes, Xbox Live movie rentals etc) they will need a method to distinguish between legal and illegal traffic. What about dodgy content on say, youtube? Are they going to block that some how too?
Lets just hope they don't pull a great firewall of china on us :P
besides, how would they want it to work in case people start using encrypted services only?
two major things they completly forgot about, since they fail to think of such scenarios the whole thing is a guaranteed fail that will create nothing but trouble on the users end and cost on their end (our tax money to be precise).
Yeah, can't have them using what they payed for. :P
Unfortunately as with most things these days we'll just roll over, complain a bit and then accept another horrendous breach of our civil liberties and freedoms by this corrupt Government of ours.
from what I understand as I don't download films or music or files of any kind ever (/Ryu smiles nicely at the ISP monitoring operative who is now reading this thread). Films, Cd's etc are zipped and then seperated into chunks so that its easier to download and share. The idea being the smaller the part of the file the faster that you will be able to share that part with other users.
So I presume Rapidshare works on the same principle but unless the file is named something blatant such as "Heres a film to download" :). The powers that be are never going to know after all EVEN if they search for all video files over a certain size being downloaded whats to say that aunt Betty isn't downloading videos of uncles Charlie's holidays rather than that movie she wanted to see.
* no aunts or uncles were harmed in the typing of this post. any resemblance to any aunts or uncles is purely coincidental and highly unlikely as well as silly after all who names the kids Betty and Charlie.
Having worked for a bank, you would be horrified at how insecure your own bank details are at your own bank. Many of the people they employ are agency staff with no credit checks and even less of an idea of the data protection act...
The Napsters and WinMX's of old were 100% of the reason for online music market as it is at the moment (Probably a massive Billion dollar industry). Continued filesharing has made that music DRM free.... if it continues (which it will) then it'll make online music properly priced to reflect the lack of distribution costs in this new market for the dieing music industry. Then there's the revolution of the artists selling their own products, the end of evil music labels and the "contract" ... the transition of which has only just begun. Of course the "MP3" format itself was popularised by the need to push the files over the internet. If anyone thinks the ipod would exist if it wasn't for files sharers... they are kidding themselves. How many billions do mp3 players rake in of a year?
Then there's video and TV. BBC iplayer... 4OD all these systems use secure P2P services. The development of that software was done by filesharers. It's free video distribution so EVERYONE is able to be their own distributor. Podcasts are only the beginning of what is possible for this. P2P through those legitimate channels is going to be the legal excuse for symmetrical net connections.
I can't see that filesharing has done anything but drive innovation and demonstrate new possibilities for business. Where exactly is the loss?... music, film, games all make more money than they ever have. Where would we be now if they were able to lock down the internet and effectively jail all "illegal" filesharers from the outset? The internet would be really crap...
Hmmm how many years have I been hearing this? I mean yes there has been a lot of cr&p music and films released over the last couple of years... but joking aside if they stopped spending so much money on preventing people from illegally downloading and cut the cost of their goods and made an excellent pay monthly scheme (like napster has for music) for downloading high quality media. Then wouldn't they invertably be cutting down on illegal downloading and also keep making a bucket load of money?
If they do start monitoring our connections isn't that just going to add a whole load of traffic from UKs already struggling infrastructure? Best I get out of my upto 8Mb adsl line is 350Kb :( at the moment anyway
Personally I'd love to see a decent service where I pay a few quid a month and get all the music I want however as soon as these services come up everyone points the finger and shouts price fixing so ends up becoming one big mess with EU and american commisions looking at them.
The proxy server industry will explode!
You make a very good point, though. There are a lot of people who use torrents for perfectly legal things, and termination of service (most likely with prejudice) is a rather harsh thing to do to someone who may not have done anything wrong in the first place. ISPs aren't going to spend the money to install proper filter/sniffers, so who does that leave us with to tell who is pirating? The RIAA? Don't make me laugh.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/technology/2008/02/uk_takes_tough_stance_on_pirac.html
It's a lot similar to the whole DRM issue, as in it'd vastly inconvenience everyone except the people they're trying to target.
That is, unless you go down the extreme path of banning all encrypted traffic or forcing you to release the encryption keys to all traffic...
If only they stopped flattering themselves and didnt think that the music they are producing now is even worth downloading for free.
It's turning a civil crime (copyright theft / infringement / piracy) and pretending it's a criminal crime. So whilst murder and such are normally seen as grevious crimes that are seen in a criminal court - where you will wait in a jail cell then be taken in a police van to a dock with a security guard, and things such as copying someone's idea and passing it off on your own will normally just go to civil court where you will get a letter to turn up on this day, with a hefty fine if found guilty 'on the balance of probablities'. Yet here we see the government taking a pro-active role in a civil matter to force people to comply to the whims of corporations, with significant repercussions in line with criminal prosecution.
I'm not saying it's justified to steal music, but I do think that we're in a pretty poor state (see the article on the public vs the RIAA) - governments are capitulating to big business in giving up their citizens freedoms in the nature of preserving profits. Having said that, the only music I listen to is trash broadcasted on CSS servers 'everyone was kung fu fighting' so it won't affect me. Who is the party we vote for that will not give up our right to privacy, our right not to be spied on in the name of profits. I don't mind the government snooping on me if they think I'm going to blow something up - fair enough - but I do object to some music producer spying on me (by proxy, i.e. the ISP does it on their behalf) in case I downloaded one of his songs. He shouldn't have that right to my stuff at all.
I mean, isn't that what the fricking data protection act was brought in to stop? Just like the US who chucked the geneva convention out when it became inconvenient, our government is now ignoring the rights of people to have privacy. And anyway, at the £2000 a song the RIAA charges for downloaded songs, it's just going to be a cash cow. They'll be seeding the damn files because they'll make a heck of a lot more money catching people out than legitimate consumers. They'll even put the consumers off with draconian DRM measures. It's not been profitable up until now, but with this sort of framework, it's not far until they can gather evidence quickly and bring court cases in quickly and get a good turnover from it. Sounds ridiculous? Well it is, the whole situation is ridiculous. [/rant]
here in the USA thats precisely what would happen.
Anyway, this is a crazy idea, its just going to catch the average joe (well, maybe, if Encryption doesnt become standard in P2P software) who doesn't really understand, and probably wouldn't buy/afford it anyway
also, if you encrypt your traffic - what are they supposed to do?
It may not work but at least you tried, we're at a position now with our national politics where a concerted campaign might just work... the Gov are leery of being influenced by Business's or Lobbies that represent them, after endless cash for (insert your own little bribe here) scandals... Mr Brown is currently doing about as well in the polls as the Pope would in Iran... Standard sweeping assumptions are that 'all heavy pirates are under 25 and you know they don't bother to vote' you want to bet on how many industry represetatives are waving charts at ministers with lots of nice coloured 'statistics' proving this...
Write a letter and promise on the grave of your dead granny that if this happens you'll never vote for Labour again or any other threat (not bomb based obviously) that sounds good, surely worth the price of a stamp?
meanwhile they cant be arsed to respond to emails and snailmails to their customer relations department concerning why I am suddenly a Tiscali customer not a Pipex one (and yes I know Tiscali now own Pipex) I just dont want to be a Tiscali customer ever again, they couldn't organise a fornication in a house of ill repute.
I see it a bit like speeding... I'm happy to break the law and speed and if I get caught by a camera then fair enough, I broke the law and have to face the consequences.
Yeah, and p0rn takes another 60% and 50% for spam, or what were the figures... Reminds me of a famous Finnish skijumper who estimated he's chances like this: "hmmm, about 50/60."
Anyhow, the point of this article was ISP level packet inspection, which simply fails to work in the age of encryption and such.
How about an invite only network, that allows you to look at the warez of the friends of your friends? So allways, when a new member joins, somebody has to vote for him/her. Then we'd get the first internet-undercover-agents. HAH. I'm not saying I endorse piracy, my point is that it's a very difficult problem.
I mean, why when i go out and buy a DVD do i get a load of warnings saying they will break down my door if i pirate it - I JUST BOUGHT IT, The whole industry is backwards, they quote "damages" without having many real facts (like, did a download = a lost sale?)
Personally, i have few problems pirating, as long as prices are obscene (how many consumers do you think own photoshop?) or availability is bad, and as long as i don't feel that Ive cheated anyone out of a sale, then i don't see the problem pirating
EG, if i download Crysis, play it for an hour or 2, and then decide its rubbish and stop - did they really loose a sale? (or at least one they should have had) would i have bought the game if i couldn't download it?
The entire industry really needs to sit down and think about what their doing, how their doing it and what consumers want - and maybe even, shock horror, improve the system
EG, spending £millions on some new protection (The HD-DVD one, AACS? as an example) which gets broken in 3 weeks - is that money well spent? who pays for it? not the people who its supposed to stop - yes - the people who actually pay have to fork out for this
Sure, don't make it stupidly easy to pirate, but also make sure things have such good "value for money" that its not worth pirating it, and that the risks of doing it outweigh the cost
To give another example, what stops your walking out the local supermarket with a chocolate bar - of course, if you get caught, was it really worth it?
Edit:
Why do ISP's care if you look at some p0rn site or at youtube? who cares?
Um if you haven't paid for it then it is illegal, just because it is p0rn doesn't mean that the thought provoking script, plot, scene, etc haven't been paid for by someone and that they are not charging for it. After all nothing is for free ;)
Bad analogy, "piracy" doesn't usually involve a 1 ton and a bit hunk of metal moving at 40mph in a 30 limit, yes you get caught by a camera fair does, you hit a kid at that speed not so fair does, admittedly speed doesn't always kill, inappropiate speed often does. And yes I do speed, normally on empty roads at stupid 'o' clock in the morning, still breaking the law but I'm unlikely to kill anyone (except the copper in the bush waiting to pounce on me).
Now piracy on the other hand if taken in its literal meaning does usually involve harm upon others, normally at sea and generally involving armed robbery, both are criminal offences although one has been state sanctioned in the past.
The media and various unnamed entities (you know who I mean) portrays copyright infringement as piracy, a misnomer for sure. It involves no violence, no people are harmed mentally or physically, no physical medium has changed hands, just folk who would otherwise do without. I myself, yes I have been known to download stuff from the net, I have also been known to part with some of my hard earned on actually buying the product afterwards. Copyright infringement is a civil offence, as opposed to the criminal charge of piracy. Selling it on is probably a criminal offence, counterfeit goods and all that.
Good product + Reasonable price + No DRM then they'll make sales, probably a lot of sales, however mediocre product + blatant ripoff price then they'll get people who'll try before they buy (or not) and others who will rip them off as much as they're ripping off the consumer with vastly inflated artificial pricing.
You can with uTorrent, there's an encryption option
I thought you just meant pr0n in general, of which there is lots free on the internet
Ill be encrypting all P2P traffic now
sorry for the pun couldn't help it
Ahhh a witty retort.
No, entrapment is coercing someone into commiting a crime, whereas simply joining the swarm is coercing no-one.
EDIT: I'm hoping this won't go through, offers no commercial benefit to the ISPs or it's customers, and I'd bet quite a lot at least the conservatives in the lords and commons would attempt to stop this passing.
LOL. Great analogy!
but.... anyone a lawyer here? im sure ya can figure out if the RIAA MPAA and whatever are actually legal organizations?
Or.. can we file something like harrasment suits against em? Honest.. i feel harrased by them.. although.,... as germany isn't on the radar.. YET!!.. im with happy for now.. wouldn't worry about the privacy thing... the riaa.. or any other sub-org will just pay the freaking parties a nice contribution (so ya cant say they got bribed) and voila... wave yer rights goodbye... and im sure they are called Rights... so ya can see whats left...
...
Granted I'm no saint, I won't deny that, but I certainly dont go around saying the RIAA and MPAA are harassing me and that the DMCA is a load of rubbish and encroaches on my personal/civil rights... Get a life, wake up and smell the coffee...
Anyway, back on topic, scare tactics thats all this is. All we have to do is stand back and watch the ISP's say "bugger off, we're not doing it" because at the end of the day, they know that 90% of their customers are downloading illegally and they sure as hell arent going to kick them all off and loose 90% of their revenue now are they... Not without a fight at least.
dragon2309
Music and movies i tend to goto oden (was UCI) or rent it maybe, TV i do download as i tend to miss it in the day and as i am on Virgin cable UK i cant get Sky 1 2 or 3 so i download them as well up to sky to give virgin an good offer that an 4x price up for shitty 2-3 HD chans that the most of the UK would not pay for any way (not getting sky as i have to Rip up the floor and i prefer NTL cable)
not an fan of getting music any way as i drive alot so i get whats on the radio
the idea of paying an low fixed amount per broadband user (say £2) on top of you norm bb so you can download what ever you want, id probly go with that (on 20mb virgin bb it should be part of the £37 thay charge for it and set the Cap to frgin 5gb before speed drop to 5mb), that is if thay did that type of service
no it isn't. a correct analogy would be if you steal from a window factory, you are barred from entering that factory again (perfectly reasonable). unless they are going to bar you from going to a cd store and buying a cd after you get caught downloading three tracks.
The DMCA would infringe on many of your rights if you were a US citizen.
The problem with bill like this is it effectively passing law enforcement from the agency designed to deal with it to companies who really only want to extract money from people. As such it'll be a hash the bill will be poorly written and the ISP wills end up kicking people using torrents in general, so if there are complaints the ISPs will be forced to install software to actively snoop on the contents of your package and you will be forced to either run unencrypted or provide your encryption key on request (as they all ready can in terror cases i believe). So you end up via the back door with government able to monitor every piece of information that leaves or enters your house all for the sake of lining large corporations coffers. Sure we have no right to steal music, movies or television but we do have a right to privacy which this will effectively remove. It may not seem that bad while we have a benign government, but you never know what the next one will be like and besides that just look at this governments record or personally privacy, not exactly encouraging is it.
I don't support them on this (it'll make my life harder) but I still can't claim it's abusing my privacy, etc.
Yep pretty much. ;)
I think the reason piracy (or should I say copyright infringement) is so common is that the perceived value of the music/films etc is so much lower than the prices asked by the record labels etc.
Also, if given a choice between:-
1) an illegal download of an album, at the quality you want, without the DRM, that you can resample and play on any of your players (car, MP3 player, home etc) that's with you in under 5 mins
or
2) a legal download, which is tied to the service you bought it from, and can't be played on several of your players due to DRM, is in low quality bitrates and costs more than you think its worth
or
3) a legal store-bought CD, that requires you to travel to the store, wait in line, pay through the nose, travel home, rip to your PC and then still get accused of infringement if you copy it to your MP3 player and car player etc
Which would you choose?
I know I pick 1 every time.
If there was a 4th option of:-
4) buy legally online at a reasonable price, download as many copies as you like in various bitrates/formats and have it playing on any of your players in minutes
I know I'd probably pick the 4th option, definately if it was music I knew I liked.
All they'd need to do is allow streaming of the first half of the songs in low quality to get people 'hooked' and they would see sales.
I think until the 4th option is available, I will always download my music from less than legal sites...
I don't see how this will benefit the Telcos & ISPs if EVERY Joe Bloggs goes through the same process of down sizing their usage by a lot?
QED my arse. An encrypted anonymous proxy is one solution. That could be implemented in various ways, even in a new p2p protocol (torrent tor?), but that will mean slower transfers, etc. This crap will just lead to more encryption (probably a good thing anyway) and more anonymising and more private networks.
Their major problem is going to be differentiating legal torrents from illegal torrents. Probably no big deal as they will just craft the law so you can't do **** to any ISP or government for being banned, even if you've done nothing wrong (hi-jacked wifi, incorrect pattern match, whatever).
Would love to see this go ahead and see some politician get banned because they only run WEP on their wifi or have their box rooted. Sure would be a nice way to set someone up!
because most people will up their plan when they get a letter from their isp telling them they've gone over their limit, but then never drop it after they stop downloading.
Ramble,
the Internet isn't a product, its a service.
Of course a company can cancel your plan if they want to, hell they can do that for any reason if they want to I bet, the thing is, just because they can kick you off, doesn't mean you lose your right to privacy.
It's a simple first amendment right. Just like your right to privacy at home, where a police officer cannot just walk in and search your house (they need a warrant; spare me your patriot act mumbo jumbo right now, as its irrelevant to this discussion) they shouldn't be able to just search your internet traffic for whatever they want.
10-20 years ago when we had tapes, did random RIAA people come into your house searching for mix tapes you and your friends shared? did they do this without a warrent???
(didn't think so)
Why? Well, because they aren't able to check every packet out there, and because they can't single out users with huge traffic either. Remember internet TV? BBC iPlayer, anyone? Huge p2p traffic doesn't mean illegal downloads, and if they try to filter using this criteria they will step on someone's foot rather sooner than later. Traffic will grow, there's nothing anyone can do to prevent that.
Next thing: encryption. Bit torrent isn't the single protocol out there. Some p2ps are encrypted by default. Also there's IP tunneling.
And the last thing: cost. How much will it cost to monitor users? I'm sure, ISPs will be able pull it with their budgets. But will they be able to pay in court to many users they will accuse wrongly? This part is inevitable. IP doesn't give you a person. In fact IP gives you location, nothing more. Some open router being used by every neighbour and their dog too. How much time they want to spend in the court pursuing someone else's needs? Not too much I presume.
They have desire, but they lack the plan.
ISPs do not need to inspect the data.
When a ISP receives a letter saying that IP X.X.X downloaded copyrighted material they warn their customer, receive a second letter and suspend the customer, receive a third letter and cancel the service.
ISPs do not need to inspect the data.
And how exactly are they going to know if I've downloaded copyright material?
Send those IPs to the ISPs along with the date&time, the ISPs match the IP to their logs of subscribers and link your personal details to the IP.
Boom, letter through the door saying you've been naughty.
If it ever gets to this, I can see a lot of people deliberately leaving their wireless routers unsecured as a get-out clause.
http://www.mediasentry.com/
And similar companies.
Actually... it aint a "Get-Out-Clause" .. at least here it aint.. you "might not" get the harsh penaltys as you would if you got it all secured but just because you're to stupid doesn't mean you don't have to pay the price... and if it all backfires.. how about accessory? And if they can prove you did it on purpose to cloak your activities...blabla...
anyway... you're done... if ya own a gun and leave it layin around.. someone shoots a person with it: you get humped big time.. although it might not be the same ...in terms of punishment,.... perhaps its more like with Creditcard Fraud....You haven't protected your data enough.. so its your own fault..
If you do have a private torrent network running encrypted torrents, theoretically, you are safe provided you can vet your members suitably. This has the disadvantage of being a pure barrier defence - as soon as law enforcement get credentials to access your torrents (either by masquerading as a legitimate new user and being given a login or by effectively extorting credentials out of an existing member in exchange for leniency), they have full access to the IP addresses of all members joining torrents from then onwards.
That's fine for the US, but over here in the UK (where this legislation is being pushed through) we have no right to provacy outside of our homes. That means phones conversations can be tapped, and internet traffic can be monitered. It is not illegal for a company or the government to do that.
As you see there is nothing stating an individual's right to privacy, just their right to free speech and free expression (within the law). Now it may be another amendment you're talking about, frankly I can't be bothered to find it.
Also, product, service, it doesn't really matter. ISPs offer an internet service as a product to their customers, they still have a right to do whatever they like regardless of it's correct economical term.
He was probably thinking of the fourth.
Personally I'd consider random inspections of data unreasonable and thus unconstitutional. We're screwed in the UK though :|
before the patriot act..... now they consider you a terrorist and you have no rights....... but that's not for this conversation.....
it actually fits in fine, why? because its the same, cutting back the rights of the people and at the same time expanding the power of the government.
Actually no, it isn't. The First Amendment is the rights to freedom of religion, freedom of press, freedom of speech, assembly, and to petition for redress of grievances. I think you mean the fourth amendment:
also wont ISP be reluctant to strike there users off as they can just go elseware lol?
yup and add to that the massive amount of data to monitor.... if you download something when you are 20 you prolly get a letter that they will disconnect you when you are 50.
Scare tactics from fat politicians under pressure to police something they dont understand :)
just think about the abuse possibilities it creates...
Talking from a law abiding citizen's point of view, lets just hope our internet connection's aren't cut off mistakenly for downloading legitimate films, music and games..
the problem is that the whole thing has the potential to end in monitoring on the web what you say with a block internet access button for the government to shut individuals down....
The difference is that when you speed, you run a good chance of killing several innocent strangers. I'm fairly sure I don't murder people by stealing films and TV shows on torrents.
There's a difference between 'Illegal' and 'Wrong'. (People seem to have forgotten this.) The law isn't infallible, and piracy is one example of the line blurring.
Show me one person who lost their job because of piracy. One person who went bankrupt or didn't get a project through or missed a career chance or suffered any loss due to piracy. Sure: I download the complete back-catalogue of every band in the last ten years, and somewhere, days later, a musician can't afford his daily heroin party. FEEL my sympathy.
The missing analogy, in case you're still clutching for it in your mind, is Robin Hood. My life is miserable. I'm a ****ing prole; hence, I feel no shame in stealing meager entertainment and escapism from rich, comfortable producers, directors and companies. Suck it.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7246403.stm
As expected the ISP aren't going to go along with this easily
We are regarded as thieves now? Ok gimme a break.
Stealing from a shop is totally different than downloaded a movie or an album. It's like someone on the side of the road handing out products for free, you can either take one from him or go to the shop next door and buy it for £20. Most people are going to choose to take it for free, I like how someone I know compared this to how men always say that they never have a wank, when infact as soon as they get in the door they are having one.
lower the prices in media and you lower piracy, make new ways to sell stuff to people and you lower piracy.
do the same, DRM, crap media, high prices, different release times, region locking, lack of inovation.... etc.... and piracy will always be common....
edit: Silver Shamrock give me irrefutable evidence that piracy is doing the damage media producers claim...... there are lost sales and there are phantom sales... as in people download stuff they would never buy or use.... and there are the sales attributed to piracy, as in people becoming fans of X software/game/band/producer/company because they used something of that software/game/band/producer/company that they downloaded from the internet.
what is making more harm? piracy or long time dogmas and lack of innovation? what is easier to solve?
people wank of in the dark because they can without getting caught.... but in some countries if you are caught you get your hands chopped off......
maybe people pirate stuff because they cant afford to buy better real stuff, maybe they pirate because they don't want the hassle of having to pick them selves up and go to the shop or spend stupid amounts of money on music on the internet on media that is not worth it... but no, people that have at least one peace of pirated media are thieves, filthy thieves that make people starve to death and eat babies......
I think its entirely true (it is for me anyway) that if people didn't download the songs they would probably never buy them.
So saying every pirated song is a loss of revenue for the record companies is horse-sh1t.
I hope to see more artists realising that their record labels are probably not doing them any favours and are willing to try something new.
Harvey Danger are one such band and I hope it goes really well for them. :)
Except taking the product from the man probably wouldn't be illegal (presuming he paid for it etc)
In which case the store would still have got the money for the product anyway.
If you download some music or a film illegally, without paying. You are a theif. You have taken an item through illegal means to avoid paying for it. It's no different than slipping an album into your coat in a shop.
It's not exactly the same. If you steal from a large retailer, the company loses a fraction of a percent of a sales figure.
If you steal from a small private shop, the owner loses a bit of money.
If you pirate it, the original artist loses, like, a tenth of a ****ing penny. I think he'd forgive me...though, in the hypothetical confrontation, stealing someone's work might be construed as insulting despite no material loss.
Also, I agree, it makes me a thief. But that's okay, you know? I'm a thief. I happily admit it, just as I happily admit to masturbation, matricidal fantasies, polygamic aspirations, antisocial behaviour...you know, I'm just not a very good person. And it's none of your business, unless it's your CD I stole just now.
Don't count on it matey, wouldn't be the first time goverment pushed through legislation unpopular with the industry it affects.
by your analogy each time i downloaded an album from the internet somewhere in the world the same album would disappear and someone would be at loss.... (or by the RIAA analogy, each time you download a song you are stealing hundreds of songs because of the way the system works, so in your analogy each time i got an album from the internet hundreds of albums would disappear from stores and peoples homes)
nope, piracy is like having a portable cloning machine in your pocket, you go to the shop. you pass it over the album and put the album were it was, get home and voala, you have the same album but without all the bling and blang of the original and sometimes with less quality. the album is still there in the store were another person can buy it, or even you that cloned the album, the store loses nothing and sometimes has to gain, its almost as good as free advertising.....
and considering that almost everyone i know has at least one pirated album.... that's about 14 sound tracks (remember that guy that was pwnd for less tracks?).... well.... i think there are not enough jails to put pirates in or money in the world to pay for the lawsuits.....
Think you'll find it isn't.
A) You have to have a pair of balls to do something like that.
B) You have a high chance of getting caught, maybe even jail time.
C) Look like a total ***** in front of everyone.
D) People who steal products from stores normally don't have a decent life.
E) An estimated 7.4 million UK internet users have knowingly downloaded music illegally, don't think 5% of them would steal from a shop.
F) If I'm downloading an album from a bunch of people around the world who have downloaded it free, then they arn't making a loss and neither am I, that album came from one album, which could of been bought. Stealing from a shop is totally different, the supplier has made it, then the shop has bought it, then you've stolen it, that's a loss of money to the shop.
Every time you download an album, it's being shared around, your not stealing a product everytime you download a file. And on top of that, I don't buy music anyway, even if I didn't pirate, the last album I bought was for a mate of mine. If I want an album which I cannot download, I'll normally ask my mate, he spends about £40 a week in HMV buying music.
MAJOR; you could be right in saying you wouldn't buy music anyway. Since i've stopped stealing music, i have not bought a single album and stick to downloading new music podcasts like NYUB. its a great way to get my fix and still completely legal. but, you are completely misguided. downloading an album and walking into a shop and slipping it into your coat ARE the same thing - much as i hate to agree with that stupid annoying bloody unskippable video that plays on every (legally owned FFS!) DVD i've bought.
Stop being a complete twunt and start rewarding people who enrich your life with music.
See the problem with that argument is that many would say they have no problem rewarding the artists but are sick to the back teeth paying the record labels. Not entirely sure of the validity of that argument, with out the record company's many great artists wouldn't be discovered. However at the moment the record labels have a big problem since they seem to be pushing commercial (ie sells well) **** (x-factor etc) and not actually discovering new talent. Thus they have a image problem, ironic for an industry which manufactures images as much as music.
Definitely. Except, well, you're wrong. But apart from that, definitely! Please to be looking up the seperate definitions for stealing, and for breach of copyright, before again posting in this thread.
And again, you're wrong. Downloading an album and walking into a shop and taking a CD aren't the same thing. I'm not commenting on the morality or amorality of either act, or whether one is worse than the other, or any of that. But they're not the same acts under law. One is stealing. One is breach of copyright. Insisting otherwise just makes you look like you're someone who's too stupid to understand the distinction.
Damn straight! Download the album, buy the T-shirt!
(and buy the T-shirt if you really feel the need :D).
A) everything continues how it is now, piracy is common, music producers and artists are getting millions of dollars on crap music (artists earn most of their money with concerts and direct sales), ISPs evolve and increase their internet speed and lower their prices because of demand, all around the world industries that are parallel to piracy (like blank media makers) survive, expand and grow and feed thousands of people, Hard drive makers tend to make their hard drives bigger and cheaper for the general public (you need a big ass hard drive to put those movies, MP3s and games....).
B) people stop pirating, music producers and artists continue getting millions of dollars on crap music (artists earn most of their money with concerts and direct sales), ISPs don't have a reason to evolve their speeds because people don't need that much internet speed (around here people that used to have 16Mb internet connections at 35€ will lower it to 2Mb that is far enough for everyday stuff and pay 15€, its cheaper and its enough speed, do you think those 20 € would go to media?) now that there is nothing to download and nothing generally interesting to see..... really like 90% of all youtube videos would disappear because they have something that is "strikingly similar" to something that is copyrighted, internet prices stagnate, all around the world industries that are parallel to piracy crumble putting thousands of people into unemployment, impetus to make bigger hard drives for the general public would slow down.
C) music producers and artists embrace the digital age, change their ways to sell music to people, the way that people want it and earn billions (a la alloffmp3), copyright and patent law changes to avoid sample trolls and patent trolls and make it so that in X time the media and patents becomes public domain, ISPs get a new impetus to improve their speeds and connections and prices, all around the world industries that are parallel to piracy (that is now smaller because of the price and easiness of getting legal media) survive, expand and grow and feed thousands of people, these would in time evolve into companies that sell stuff that is now public domain for very low prices or simply give them away free....., hard drive makers would have a reason to make their hard drives bigger and faster for the general public.
A) is now
B) is the RIAA utopia
C) is what it should be
IIRC copyright laws exist to protect the artists and their families from real pirates, the scum, the people that take their work and sell them as their own. these days copyright laws and patents exist to protect large companies and stagnate human evolution.....
They get enough money, I'm sure one person in the UK isn't going to affect their £5m a year income.
And to be honest, in the last month I've spent about £100 on games. So If I can save money on albums, I will, and nothing will stop me.
And the whole slipping album under coat thing, it's not the same, your stealing +1 product everytime someone does that, but torrenting, you sharing 1 product around the whole world, it's totally different, if you like it or not. It's not my fault that some people hear spend money on music when other people get £100 worth of albums every week for free. Your choice, not mine.
Silver Shamrock - How about post something useful instead of wasting your time with smiles, get a hobby or something.
he is, as we say, "part of the furniture" and more experienced in this forum..... he is also correct when he says to you to post something more than , it is kind of in the rules, "try to post useful stuff." .
Freeloaders would keep parasitising the entire system*, thats what they do now and would continue doing.
*- Artists/developers/creators, labels/producers/publishers and, of course, the paying consumer.
so what system do you propose?
think about it, why do you need 24Mb connections and 1Tb hard drives for, if you don't have anything to download? i don't know if the influence is that big but i for one would lower my internet speed, pay less and download far less if piracy stopped, hard drives.... well.... if piracy stopped then i think there would be lots of people with Tb hard drive arrays with lots of surplus space... i think its is like..... why would i want a ferrari if i lived in the woods were roads are not flat? why do i need a huge truck if all the driving i am going to do is from home to the job and reverse everyday on flat roads?
However, here's the question: do many of the high end powerusers use their HDDs and internet exclusively for P2P in the first place? I doubt it. Even if piracy was eradicated somehow, they would still buy big HDDs and fast connections, probably for games and stuff like that. I mean, Bit-Tech users are a good example here. I bet loads of you here have big HDDs and fast internet, but not all of you file share in the first place. Even if you do file share, if P2P was banned, would you downgrade? A few might, but the majority probably wouldn't I guess.
I think we all agree that pirate organizations are harmful to any system well being, however, the current surge in freeloading is just as harmful. Just because it isnt commercial oriented doesnt mean it doesnt harm the system. If someone owns a freeloaded digital copy it is less likely to spend any kind of resource in geting a legal obtained copy.
The current system will adapt to new distribution possibilities, probably slower than some would like, but will adapt. Give it time.
Some experiments will test the waters (evolutions of Steam and iTunes), some will fail, others will prosper. For instances, I hope the $69,95+VAT for CoD4 experiment bought from Steam fails miserably and that iTunes eventually compensates more the artist than a CD sale.
PS:
As a side note, I find... interesting :D comparing this comments thread for an Illegal downloaders to be cut off by UK ISPs article to the comments thread of France leads the way in common sense article. :p
if all of these people i know stopped pirating they would reduce their internet speed and the amount of money the spend on internet, medium range computers would not come with tons of hard drive space (most medium/low ranges around here come with 320+Gb hard drives), it all depends on the perspective, there in the UK my view might look flawed, but here it is very real.
About internet gaming, when i had 2Mb speed internet i used to game a lot and my lag was minuscule, so why do you need 24Mb connection for gaming?
edit: impar so you are going with
D: spend billions (or trillions if you consider China) of dollars to make piracy disappear everywhere on earth, make people wait for the media makers to evolve at their own very slow pace (even with fire up their asses they don't evolve fast enough to avoid going dodo), and hope everything else wont change.
in the meanwhile why don't you teach people to cover their ears when they hear a "public performance of copyrighted material" of an idiot that is in the bus or in his car with the sound cranked up high?
not really, i mean, its rampant, but shops are selling as much or more than they used to, the only thing that is closing media stores around here are high prices, low wages, criminal competition between stores and shopping centres that strangle small shops..... ow.... and the euro also helps
people also blame piracy, but, i forgot to say, most of the top downloaders i know also spend tons of money on the real deal, they have walls covered with films and music..... the more modest wallet people tend to have fewer real stuff, but they do buy that shakira album, or britney album.... or skip some meals at school for a month and buy a game.......
A- Current situation
B- Piracy and freeloading stop entirely, system doesnt change
C- Digital Age evolution, system evolves quickly
D- War to piracy and freeloding, system evolves slowly
Well, D is very similar to A, currently piracy is being fought, freeloading is geting the first blows and the system is evolving, slowly but evolving non the less.
B is unrealist, the system feels the need to evolve.
C is utopic.
You must give time for the system (creator, publisher and paying consumer) to adapt to new realities and evolve at its own pace.
..... they had like.... 10 years of scorching fire (growing piracy) under their asses and they have evolved very slowly... how do you think they will evolve with nothing pushing them? its like putting a big, fat, slow, blind and deaf cow on the train tracks and thinking it wont be turned into burgers when the next train comes.....
well, if you are outside and hear to a random person (that is not from your immediate family or close friends) hearing to his music on his media player/radio (may it be very loud or loud enough for you to listen to it) you are in effect hearing a "public performance" which is a form of Copyright infringement, i mean, look at your music cds, they say "no public performances" or something like that.....
I think he may have thrown his toys.
TBH with regards to your point about hard disks, it may have an small effect but honestly its companies like google and Lucas arts who drive the hard drive market. I can't remember the source but the number of terrabytes generated by both of those companies a day would dwarf what you could download in a life time.
PS:
If we take into account that all this information is compressed (for example, the crawled data has compression rate of 11%, so 800 TB become 88 TB), Google uses for all the services mentioned before 220 TB. It's also interesting to note that the size of the raw imagery from Google Earth is almost equal to the size of the compressed web pages crawled by Google.
There is still Microsoft, Yahoo, Ask.com, etc.
it has taken 10 years to them to develop bad music, DRM, superfluous spending, region locking, staged releases.... i really cant see them surviving or evolving during the next 10 years, even without piracy, until now they have done nothing other than stagnate and sue.......
i see it as the USA invading India, because their crap cheap cars are killing the USA car industry, instead of evolving and improving and differentiating their cars......
if it is not high, does not bother you, is your type of music and a fiscalizing person hears it then the guy playing the music will get a fine.... if we obey the copyright law as it is.
on the harddrive side, the best way to find out the current sum total of HDD space in the world is to take how many disks have been manufactured and take away percentages for RAID, failures, and disuse
Result.
I think at some point you have to accept that they won't. People will always pirate content because they can. You can't stop them from doing so any more than yu can stop gravity or enrtopy.
The key for content manufacturers is to ignore the people who will never buy and instead focus on making content people want to pay for.
and letting other people listen to it in the process, this counts as a public performance.... IIRC.
As pedantic as it is he has a point, there was a case last year where a kwik fit garage was fined for playing the radio as it constituted a public broadcast.
that is the case i remember....
So how could they have been a response to piracy?
Region Locking does nothing but allow the assholes in charge of releasing movies to sell them for different (artificially high) prices in different regions without the people in those regions sourcing them from cheaper regions.
All DRM is fundamentally doomed to fail.
If you pay for the content you are logically going to want to view it.
They have to allow you to unlock it.
Was there any point in locking it in the 1st place if they give you the lock and the key?
in fact piracy already existed before DVDs..... but region coding is how you say it is, just another way to control the flow of the spice......... money.
At DXR's point was that while stores have to pay for a public broadcast (as should the garage) people who are playing music too loud should also have to pay if you followed copy right law to the letter.
Bonus to be added, sir you are delusional if you believe that by making people wait they add value of any description other than to them selves
Errrrr....
Copied tapes and disks come to mind waaaay before DVD piracy. B)
not loud loud, loud as in: " very loud for the person hearing it with his headphones, and a mumble or a whisper to people around him, high enough to be understood but low enough not to disturb".
as for freeloading, we could also consider people that are lent media from friends as freeloaders, they are enjoying something they did not pay for..... you could also consider the person selling second hand media part freeloader, he only paid X (were X = price of 1st hand media - 2nd hand selling price) for his enjoyment.... of course these guys are not pirates.......
Regarding the "give them time" point:
EU, broadcasters give thumbs-up to P2P startup
...
The EU is contributing 15 million towards the development of a next-gen BitTorrent client that will allow streaming in addition to P2P downloading, with another 4 million coming from 21 other partners. The partnerswhich include big names like the BBC, the European Broadcasting Union, and Pioneer Digital Design Centre Limiteddescribe the project as an effort to develop Europe's "next-generation Internet television distribution system."
The project is called P2P-Next, and the technology behind it is being developed by the folks behind open-source, decentralized P2P service Tribler. The P2P-Next project will use the next four years to determine how well a wide-scale launch of the technology will work among the masses. "If successful, this ambitious project could create a platform that would enable audiences to stream and interact with live content via a PC or set-top box," P2P-Next said in a statement. "In addition, it is our intention to allow audiences to build communities around their favourite content via a fully personalized system."
Well, to throw the gauntlet down again: I've downloaded another 3 films and 2 games since last posting here, and I heartily recommend it to anyone and everyone. Stealing is good for you!
Come on admins, trevor's tired of living
IIRC even a small portion of a copyrighted song is copyrighted, so even if you listen to 15 seconds of non paid or non publicity of music then you are infringing copyright protection.... in theory at least
2+ people on one licence..... i think that is against copyright... an starves the artist....
...paid to a person that has no rights to sell media.... the artist gets ziltch and another person enjoys the artist work
we can go softly with copyright law or we can go anal, we cant go both ways.......
edit: boiled_elephant this is not a flame war ;) this is a healthy conversation between two "tugas".
In theory, if he loans the disc to a friend, its the equivalent of selling the disc for free on the understanding its sold back to him for free in the future.
If he's MP3'd it before lending it, he couldn't legally listen to the MP3s while his friend 'owns' the disc.
The only problem is if he doesn't destroy any copies he's made (for playing in car or on MP3 player etc) before the sale.
Linky
the topic it self is a bag full of furious cats.....
KISS. ;)
These are bad people, they are stealing my internets.
For him its totally irrelevant that paying customers supported the movies and games he freeloaded, of course he might give the excuse that the movies and games are not that good so the content creators didnt deserve his particular financial contribution, or some other justification.
_________________
UK to ISPs: Crack down on piracy by April 2009... or else
The UK has been considering a plan that would force Internet service providers to "cooperate" with content owners to curtail illegal file-swapping, and a new document released today by the UK government lays out the timeline for this plan. If ISPs don't voluntarily implement some sort of antipiracy system by April 2009, the government will introduce its own legislation to make them do so.
Either ISPs tackle the problem through self-regulation or the government forces them to.
PS:
i don't think its going to only the heavy users.... think about it... if everyone that downloads something will get slapped and almost everyone i know downloads something sporadically... if all of them got banned of the system.... or got a slap in the hands, they most certainly, as i would, lower their internet speeds and pay less.... i could be using 1/8 of the speed i have, it is enough for everyday use, and pay 1/3 of what i am paying now, i would see a decrease in profits and in taxes collected.... plus a crowd of very pissed off people, and the current party loosing the next elections....
who says that paying customers would increase? i mean, look at your (and my) country, do you sincerely think that paying customers would increase if they had no way to pirate and/or paid large fines? peoples money is not elastic, contrary to what PM Socrates may think..... i have asked my self the same question "would i buy more media if i had no way to pirate?" and the answer is "no", in reality it would be more likely that i would buy less media than the media i buy now..... "why?"... exposure to pirated media converts you into a kind of a "fan", on that topic there are some bands that grew popular because of piracy..... "how would you get your fix?"..... well... do what i usually do, wait until it comes on tv or some friend has the dvd for it and invites me to see it.... hear the music on the radio or on mtv.... all free things on my side.
by the way, avoid calling "pirates" as "freeloaders", a pirate freeloads, but a freeloader does not always pirate.... think about the "lending a friend an album" analogy, the friend is freeloading....... call things by their names.... "pirates" are "pirates", "thieves" are "thieves", "freeloaders" are "freeloaders", they all cause damage in their own way and the type of damage they make may be good for some part of the industry, and the damage each does is different from each other ....
The time spent playing/listening/watching/reading freeloaded material would have to be filled with either the same activity, this time paid for, or with any other good/service/activity paid or not.
In the end a net positive effect to the economy.
Sure, there are other kinds of freeloading but they dont apply in this thread topic.
Happy?
Meanwhile two digital age advancements continue to improve:
- Valve mulls music, video downloads for Steam
- Amie Street's pricing, social features attract indie artists
Conversly if shows were shown the same time all over the world there would be no need to torrent tv from other regions. Look a Lost in the UK Sky TV at the moment has it one week behind the states so most people I know, my self included, are just watching it even more so was Battle Star it was broadcast first in the UK and as such wasn't torrent from Britain and thus generating advertising revenue.
On the other hand were about a year behind CSI so I torrent it and watch it at my leisure then if i'm flicking the channels looking for something to watch i might just watch the CSI i've seen since I know it was a good one or i might keep on flicking. In that situation only good quality TV still generates ad revenue rubbish is still ignored which is reflected quite well in many of the arguments people make for the try before you buy method of listening to music.
Point is if the business model is broken fix it don't whine about it, sue about it then a decade later make half hearted attempts at updating it. Its too late the audience has made there own mind up how they want to sample the product and the system being set up (too late) are not part of that.
My thoughts exactly...
QFT! :)
substitute "free loaders" and "people" with "clients", because really, if they sent everyone that downloaded anything to jail or finned them to hell they would loose lots of clients, you would have like 1/2 of the population in jail..... or in deep economical problems.... IMHO
In fact here is an excellent example of why private citizens should not be heavily involved in law enforcement/ sentencing i would say simple slap on the wrists and made to use Linux so they might better appreciate foss but i think many would find that cruel and unusual punishment.
The penalty must be adquate to the infraction, a broadbad ban seems adequate to a broadband abuse.
Arent we on a circular discussion?
I'll do the cop-out summary thing, instead of trying to redirect the flow: dealing with pirates is convoluted and barely worth while (if at all), and wastes everybody's time. We are still completely ignoring the actual perpetrators - the torrent host sites, the developers and distributors of p2p, the moles in the cinema industry who leak copies of reels onto the net, the marketplace traders who make and sell hundreds of poor-quality copies of the same film or album.
Instead, we insist on blaming the greedy idiot prole who gets bored and downloads or buys a copy. This is like hacking at the upper branches, when we should be going for the root. It's shooting the addicts and giving the dealer a pat on the back.
Why is nobody bothered by this imbalance? Why isn't anybody concerned with getting to the root of the problem?
Yeah, I steal stuff. But it's not like I masterminded a bank robbery; it's more like someone ransacked an HMV outlet and threw the spoils all over my lawn for me to pick up. Persecute me if you want, I know piracy is technically wrong, but please don't stop there - go on to tackle the situation that made it so easy for me to steal. Otherwise, you're not really acting out the proclaimed desire to tackle piracy.
Trying to convince punters its 'baaad mkay' to download stuff obviously isn't working.
Stopping it at source so they don't have to make the choice between downloading and buying seems the only logical step.
Or lower prices and raise the quality of the originals so that the knocked-off version isn't any more appealing.
Survey: File-sharing Could Drop 70% if Pirates Received ISP Warnings
Results advocate enforcement by providers
7 out of 10 file sharers would cease pirating if they received a warning from their ISP, says UK law firm Wiggin in its soon-to-be-released 2008 Digital Entertainment Survey.
The survey presents compelling news for the world’s content owners, as it paints a telling picture against the resolve of digital pirates in the UK. In addition to the aforementioned findings, 66% of the survey’s respondents said they would “stop downloading completely” if they felt there was a higher chance they’d be caught.
besides its always worth checking your source for confilcts of interests
If the government feel there is sufficient need to police the web they can spend the resources and direct the police force to do it. Not have the content owners sick lap lawyers on people.
At the end of the day the laws being broken are government laws not riaa laws. The content providers may be effected by the results of the breaking of these laws but they are not authorised to enforce them. If your brother is killed you may be effected by the breaking of the no murdering law but your are not authorised to exact punishment.
Steveo_mcg, I understand what you are saying, and from a point of full legality, I have to agree with you.
But this is a situation that if/when the state (police/courts/etc) gets involved the outcome can be very nasty.
nastier that suing everyone and everything in sight? even if they don't have a computer/internet or are dead.... and then don't give up making the family pay....
it is a criminal act, i agree, it is against the law, meaning that the organism responsible for the law is the one that gets to beat people around.... either that or put all legal decision in the hands of privates.... yeah right!
"We're coming up on an announcement of using some peer-to-peer technology for distribution of some of our own content," he says. "We generally think that peer-to-peer technologies are very useful for distributing large files, they can significantly reduce bandwidth costs, and generally they are technologies today without a business model. We think the distribution of legitimate content using that technology saves us a lot of costs and we're happy to share some of that savings."
I beg your pardon?
The fact they are using p2p is not to benefit us in any way it is a simple exercise in cost reduction, in stead of them paying the bandwidth bill we do so if you have a low cost broadband tariff you will end up paying twice once for your bandwidth, which you will blitz if iplayer is anything to go by, and once for the content, in the form of ads before the content or the licence fee.
So see my earlier post regarding half hearted attempts which the consumer isn't going to benefit from. The cynic in me says they do projects like this to fail then they can say "we tried" and continue to sue there customers.
Just to reiterate
____
Honestly how can you take a company seriously that claims NBC: Peer-to-peer costs corn farmers money
Some advantages of having big players involved in P2P, is the investigation to optimize networks:
Verizon embraces P4P, a more efficient peer-to-peer tech
...
P4P, which stands for Proactive network Provider Participation for P2P, ultimately aims to decrease backbone traffic and bring down network operation costs by enabling service providers to communicate information about network conditions to client applications for the purpose of facilitating improved P2P file transfer performance. Instead of selecting peers at random, the P4P protocol leverages network topology data so that peers can be selected in a manner that increases routing efficiency.
P4P isn't exactly using new tech either edonkey already prefers physically lower connections where possible. Large corporations are not going to help p2p technology advance any more than microsoft is going to help Linux.
How do you envision your ideal system?
Topic related:
Japan to strip Internet for illegal downloaders: report
Japanese companies plan to cut off the Internet connection of anyone who illegally downloads files in one of the world's toughest measures against online piracy, a report said Saturday.
Faced with mounting complaints from the music, movie and video-game industries, four associations representing Japan's Internet service providers have agreed to take drastic action, the Yomiuri Shimbun said.
The newspaper, quoting unnamed sources, said service providers would send e-mails to people who repeatedly made illegal copies and terminate their connections if they did not stop.
Ideal system Moives/Music: I pay a fair amount to download DRM FREE to use either on my htpc or my ipod/mp4 player or my main pc
Ideal system TV 1: I pay a fair subscription to download DRM FREE files to use on my htpc or my ipod/mp4 player or my main pc. Note this sub would be to one service which covers a spectrum of TV not one publisher.
Ideal system TV 2: I pay nothing to download from an ad supported DRM FREE service to use on my htpc or my ipod/mp4 player or my main pc. The files should be updated with new ads every few weeks thus negating the need for time limitation as the files.
You'll note in the above examples the important two words DRM FREE have been made bold for your benefit. Depending on the cost of the service or volume of ads p2p may be acceptable.
Yes
...which they would use in other things.... and of course, there is free media around and there is also your back collections of stuff.....
edit: don't underestimate the human way of making stuff very random....
edit2: i wonder what would be the effect of a full fledged embargo on all kinds of media during 2 months..... especially during some big media title launch....
http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2008/03/20/cbc_to_distribute_shows_via_p2p_without_drm/1
From reading around it looks like the BPI will be in Torrent swarms as opposed to active monitoring from VM. Still its either lip service to the government to try and avoid legislation or the dying breath of an ISP. Unless all get on board with this then any isp which doesn't may find its self with difficulty. TBH i think VM is more exposed to the risk of customers leaving since if a VM customer leaves they take there phone and TV business (and all ad revenue) with them.
As i have said all through this thread, it stinks that they are even entertaining this kind of thing it is not the place of the special interest group or ISP to enforce laws.
*boiled_elephant encourages other people to start making input again
On a personal note, I'm pirating a bit less this year. I've started moving the focus onto finding ways to make money, that I mightn't have to pirate. I still do it for music, because I buy if I like, and for TV shows (read: Screenwipe), because they never come onto DVD.
/pride
Imagine ISPs blocking P2P freeloading and creating their own online stores, their costs would lower since there would be less connections to other ISPs and they would sell content through their own (cheaper) network infrastructure.
ISP 1 to 9 enforce BPI letters and kick users
ISP_ 10 sees gap in market for users above....
Are you seeing where this is going. ISP 10 becomes largest player BPI attacks them ISP 2 sees gap in market fills it the circle continues until BPI/RIAA starts suing customers again. Much like the RIAA/BPI you don't seem to be following this.
Left to its own devices the market will decide on the most efficient method of distribution and renumeration, the record industry likes the current system and is fighting very hard to defend it. The government tends to favor the free market and will only legislate if enough pressure (money) is applied to them from the record industry. The ISP see the change in the wind and are trying very hard not be legislated against whilst not pissing off customers to the point where they become ISP 1 to 9.
Legislation is perhaps inevitable and it will come in with the guise of protecting IP it will earn the government much money from the Record Industry and the government will have a nice new perfectly legal method of snooping on customers.
Its the same sort of thing that happens with the newspapers and the press and them self monitoring, they have the PCC (Press complaints commision), they basically deal with complaints and any issues with what they print themselves so that no legislation comes into play, because they know when legislation comes in they are screwed and will be limited with what they print therefore cannot make as much money.
Looks like VM are like steveo says paying lip service to avoid legislation. They know that if they are proactive, or atleast look that way, then they can do a subpar job and only catch the more extreme offenders, so the government and record labels are happy for a while and VM and other ISPs can keep there customer base.
Also I cannot see how they could justify cutting off the internet completly, ie all ISPs are forced not to accept you after the ban. Peadophiles and terrorists get these rights taken away, I am sure they cannot treat the average downloader like this because they downloaded a few songs. what about work, internet retailers, banking, they are all going to be negatively effected by this.
I am going to assume that most of the people who are downloading tons of mainstream music, as this seems to be the main industry that has a problem with it, are going to be teenage girls and boys, who do not pay for the internet connection. You cannot ban the mother and father from driving because the child was caught speeding 4 too many times.
These are just scare tactics, with VM jumping in to try and stop legislation getting involved as they know it will be severly detrimental to them if anything like this passes through parliament.
IF this ever does come into play, if you are stupid enough to ignore 2 warnings, then its your own fault.
Also could someone shed some light onto where programs such as peerguardian come into play? I know they are good for blocking out the record companies and anti piracy companies, but surely they are no good at stopping your ISP from seeing what you are doing.
This was received despite the use of Peerguardian, although its the first one I've ever had and I naughtily admit to dabbling since the days of napster and dialup
Bump!
A more elaborate explanation:
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080508-how-viacom-can-sink-the-pirates.html
First European Anti-Piracy Disconnection: The Finnish Government
The Internet connection belonging to the Provincial Government of Åland in Finland has been disconnected following action by the anti-piracy outfit CIAPC. This disconnection may mark the first time an Internet connection has been severed in Europe for anti-piracy reasons.
...
This wasnt some kid sharing files from his bedroom on a residential connection, this was a government employee using a government internet connection to share music videos.
Sam
UK ISP bows to record industry, to send P2P warning letters
Looks like the ISP's aren't looking out for it, its the BPI who identify the users then contact the ISP. So using ipfilter.dat and Peer Guardian2 should make you reasonably safe from BPI. Obviously they will still be able to catch you but just not as often so could stop you from being one of the ones who gets the letter. Plus I don't download music, only TV shows before they are out on DVD, so not sure how this would effect me, if at all.
Virgin are determined to lose us all apparently.
British ISPs, Music Companies Enter Serious Negotiations
With more legal alternatives available, freeloading P2P diminishes:
P2P traffic drops as streaming video grows in popularity
ISPs have long complained about the fantastic amount of traffic consumed by P2P users. The network providers have never been keen on having their bandwidth hit so hard, especially when much of P2P's bandwidthlet's face itconsists of copyright-infringing material. But with the rise of Hulu, YouTube, Veoh, the BBC iPlayer, and many more, it's streaming traffic that now generates tremendous concern, even as P2P drops off in some cases. The shift, should it become a permanent trend, is good for everyone.
But if we take a step back, think about the enormous number of muppets who download sh*t loads, without encryption. Are they not easier to target than the clever buggers who encrypt. What I would like to know is, has anyone here who has downloaded on an encrypted connection, ever received a letter? And what about those who are downloading 50GB a day? Surely these are more of a problem than my "friend" who downloads maybe an average of 5GB a week? And I'm sure a normal telecoms company (normal does not include beardy telecoms) don't care what you're going as long as you're not throttling their servers between 5pm and 12pm when all the other idiots are...
These are the thoughts which haunt me....