Virgin Media To Spy On & Threaten Downloaders 349
Mike writes "Virgin Media, the UK's largest cable-modem provider, has decided that it will spy on its users to protect record industry profits. Starting next week Virgin Media will send letters to thousands of households where they suspect music is either being downloaded or illegally shared. The campaign is a joint venture between Virgin Media and the British Phonographic Industry (BPI), which represents the major record labels. The BPI ultimately wants Internet companies to implement a 'three strikes and out' rule to warn and ultimately disconnect the estimated 6.5 million customers whose accounts are (supposedly) used for regular criminal activity. In other words, you download a few songs and they'll come along and cut off the one wire that delivers freedom of speech, freedom of the press and freedom of assembly."
Cut the one wire that delivers alternative content (Score:5, Insightful)
How obvious can an anti-trust and privacy case be? You just know that the internet will become an RIAA only music store for those 6.5 million people.
People with wealth and power are doing this because they think they can and they must. The political opinions expressed outside of broadcast media will eliminated along with economic threats to the music industry. People who believe in justice and the rule of law are an economic threat too, so this is all the same animal and that's why media consolidation and broadcast itself suck. Society must prevent this and may be able to because so many stand to win as a few lose.
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The argument for not punishing file sharing is somewhat analogous (with a few less relevant differences) to people walking into vinyl stores some decades ago, and using a piece of custom equipment to duplicate vinyls onto their own blank platters, at a cheaper price, without paying, and then leaving. Would this have been considered "justice" at the time? I doubt it. What are the differences? Not many relevant ones, cluttering up t
Re:Cut the one wire that delivers alternative cont (Score:5, Insightful)
The real issues are the domestic, warrantless spying and the attempt to bring down Bittorrent even for legal filesharing. Everything else is secondary.
I agree (Score:3, Interesting)
but you must understand that the attack on P2P is really an attack on free press and has the same purpose as the other, more serious violations. The point is to shut down political opposition, which in turn threaten established economic interests. All weapons are being used to identify, intimidate, harass, silence and eliminate opposition. Cutting a person's net access is the modern equivalent of exile. It will happen to those identified by wiretaps. Those that persist face the threat of search, arrest
Re:I agree (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't even pretend to mull that over - your point is seriously completely meaningless.
Re:I agree (Score:5, Insightful)
Deliberately confusing copyright with freedom of speech and trying to make a point that it should be eliminated because you don't like it, when the problem is really in the enforcement: Disingenuous.
Posting on the same thread with four different accounts and trolling Mactrope and willyhill: Dishonest.
I would add that I feel that P2P traffic (or any type of traffic) should not be throttled, regulated, filtered or otherwise meddled with simply because the vast majority of it revolves around copyright infringement is wrong. However, that's also disingenuous because it ignores the problem and makes the case that it could be fixed if the people who produce the content would just be nice enough to bend over and enjoy it.
Re:I agree (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah, that's why open source software is decades behind proprietary software and there are so few open source developers.... oh, wait, it's not like that. Maybe they have plenty of developers and state-of-the-art software in most areas because they attract the people who care about producing a good product, rather than manufactured stars who just want their money. Kind of like the musicians of old whose copyright privileges only covered someone else trying to steal the credit of composing music. You do know that there were musicians before music could be recorded and controlled by the record companies, right? I wonder why, as their copyright so limited, they would bother, since there wasn't much incentive for them to be musicians at all by your argument.
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Re:I agree (Score:5, Insightful)
I remember when I didn't understand how people equated free speech with a right to net access. I am certain this is what they feared. This broad and loose way of getting dissidents off the net opens the door for keeping "other types of criminals" off the net. That doesn't necessarily make sense to me now, but I have a feeling it will be no surprise when lobbyists start pushing and making headway with a list of "others".
Re:Seems simple enough! (Score:5, Interesting)
There's more than one "criminal" here.
You can't ignore them. (Score:5, Interesting)
These are the reasons corporate assholes fear a free press [lewrockwell.com]. They want to be above the law in every way and they don't want you to have a way to complain or do anything about it.
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Yes both are illegal, but they're different crimes. You can therefore decide that you want copyright infringement to no longer be a crime (by abolishing copyright or legalising filesharing or whatever) wit
Virgin Music AND Virgin ISP? (Score:5, Insightful)
Now if someone in Virgin were smart (and when are virgins ever smart?) they would give reduced or even near free downloads to Virgin Music's recordings. And do it in such a way that the anti-monopoly regulators can't do anything about it. Pure Syzygy. But these bozos are turning Virgin into the most hated conglomerate in the UK. Smooth move for a company that relies on its prominent logo as a universal brand of quality among youthful consumers.
However it appears that in Virgin only Sir Richard has any brains. Does he hire dolts in order to appear that no one in the organization looks cooler than he does?
Re:Virgin Music AND Virgin ISP? (Score:5, Informative)
NTL seals $6bn Telewest takeover [bbc.co.uk]
Then Virgin Mobile andd NTL:Telewest merged. Branson accepted a 10.7% shareholder offer in return for being able to use the Virgin brandname. The motivation for this was to compete against BSkyB, but the side effect was to cause the loss of Sky One and Sky News (a bit pathetic because Sky News can still be viewed using broadband, if only in 10 minute segments), and caused more financial loss to Sky (through advertising revenue) that to Virgin.
Virgin media [wikipedia.org].
From the viewpoint of a customer, the side effect of the cable network being bought out by Virgin, has been to have information packs translated into ValleyGirl Speak. The first line was "Hello you!" and an reassuring statement "We're not going to bamboozle you with technobabble, so we've renamed all our services in easy to understand S(mall), (M)edium, (L)arge and (XL)extra-large. Just as bad as sky referring to the receiver unit as the "digibox".
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Even more ironic Sky News is still of "Freeview"...
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they aren't doing anything (Score:2)
Re:they aren't doing anything (Score:4, Funny)
Hyperbole (Score:4, Funny)
For those who are unclear on the definition of "hyperbole", please read the above quoted sentence.
Re:Hyperbole (Score:5, Informative)
Seriously. Here's the headline and teaser text from the same story as presented by ArsTechnica, which is painted in a vastly different light:
.Re:Hyperbole (Score:5, Informative)
Virgin are also quoted as saying it was unwilling to disconnect customers who don't stop accessing illegal music. A spokesman said: "It's a bit of a judgement call for us to be making threats of disconnection or account suspension. We weren't willing to do that. There are now so many lawful cheap and free music services out there that we believe an education campaign in partnership with the BPI is the best way forward."
Seems Virgin aren't quite being the bad guys the summary makes out.
Wow! (Score:3, Funny)
Now, THERE'S a sentence I thought I would never see.
Plagiarised Hyperbole (Score:3, Funny)
http://www.boingboing.net/2008/06/09/virgin-media-uk-work.html [boingboing.net]
I'm pretty sure Cory Doctorow used it first.
Re:Hyperbole (Score:5, Informative)
The three strikes "solution" is problematic however; because suddenly a corporation is policing something. And that is more worrying than anything else.
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Because the rave parties were being held out in disused barns in the countryside, through the night to the early morning, disturbing both farm workers and animals.
olitical demonstrations in certain areas (like outside parliament)
Because the MP's didn't want their work disturbed by the noise made by certain protestors - if they listened to the voted population in the first place, they wouldn't have protestors outside their offices in the first place.
Re:Hyperbole (Score:4, Informative)
For example, it is illegal to wear a t-shirt with a politican slogan in the street outside Parliament.
Re:Hyperbole (Score:4, Informative)
As for no enshrined rights: the Human Rights Act codifies a large number of them, including freedom of speech. As for the US Constitution: the Bill of Rights was strongly influenced by British common law, including the Magna Carta.
That said, this hasn't stopped the government trampling on a lot of these rights. Much of this is due to the fact that we don't have a Supreme Court (yet) so it's hard to enforce any of them.
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Re:Hyperbole (Score:4, Informative)
This is a very simplistic view. Just as with the US constitution, the fact that it's not written down doesn't mean that we don't have the right. In Britain the law isn't just determined by those bills that pass through parliament. It is also defined by precedents set by judges in earlier cases. The right of Britons to freedom of speech has been upheld time and again by British courts going back centuries. A judge can't simply overturn that. There is some wiggle room over when those rights can be suspended. In the US, the litmus test for whether or not free speech can be suspended is whether or not there is a "clear and present danger". But that test isn't codified in the Constitution, it arose because of a legal precedent set in a court case. So the situation in the US and UK are pretty similar in this regard.
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Re:Hyperbole (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry, but if you believe that, then you are out of touch. Or, to put it more directly - how do you think people exercised those freedoms before the internet? Somehow, hundreds of people throughout history managed to make their views known to more than a few people without the internet. So, I say again, hyperbole.
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Sorry, but if you believe that, then you are out of touch. Or, to put it more directly - how do you think people exercised those freedoms before the internet? Somehow, hundreds of people throughout history managed to make their views known to more than a few people without the internet. So, I say again, hyperbole.
Hundreds of people throughout history might have managed to make their views know; but I guarantee there is millions of people throughout history that had their views oppressed and censored. Internet does make it a lot easier to express your opinions and to find people that agree/disagree with which to have meaningful debate (and a quite a lot more to have blazing flame wars with).
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a) Virgin aren't spying on their users - in fact, the BPI are taking people's IP addresses from BitTorrent swarms (freely available to anybody), matching them up to known Virgin media IP blocks (freely available to anybody) then sending those IPs to Virgin who mail the offending user. Virgin do not tell the BPI who you are or where you live because that would be an enormous breach of the DPA.
b) Your basic freedoms cannot be impinged upon by a company, only by governments
Good for them... (Score:5, Funny)
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(On topic) I'm surprised ISPs would shoot themselves in the foot like this
ISPs ARE NOT COMMON CARRIERS!!! (Score:4, Informative)
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Then why haven't AT&T, Verizon, and QWest been sued by the RIAA members for facilitating copyright infringement when they should be filtering, monitoring, and blocking?
Because they *do* qualify under the "Safe Harbor" Act. Literacy and reading comprehension ftw!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_Copyright_Infringement_Liability_Limitation_Act [wikipedia.org]
Broadband access (Score:3, Insightful)
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markets and competition (Score:4, Interesting)
Here in the San Francisco area, for example, there are locally owned ISP companies that have focused on high quality service and support and have grown and down well while providing DSL at faster speeds and lower cost than the larger providers.
shall we at least consider the alternatives? (Score:4, Insightful)
TFA makes it sound like the internet is the only way to exercise these liberties. I suppose blowing up the courthouse is also one way for me to exercise my voice but they seem to have made that one illegal. Shame on them!
freedom (Score:3, Informative)
Well, we're talking about the UK here, not the US.
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But that's from the Human Rights Act 1998, so it can probably be ignored
That is what comes (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:That is what comes (Score:4, Informative)
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Or at least, that's what they tell the tax department :)
over-reaching FUD (Score:2, Insightful)
download a few songs and they'll come along and cut off the one wire that delivers freedom of speech, freedom of the press and freedom of assembly
And I'm no longer in support of the author of this article.
Really, how does the internet deliver freedom of assembly? And how does not having the internet really stop your ability to use freedom of assembly? I'm pretty sure assemblies have been held without the internet in the past.
And thats just to point out one absurdity in that sentence. There are plenty of good reasons to be angry abo
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Really, how does the internet deliver freedom of assembly?
IRC, instant messaging, webforums,etc.
That is delivering ability of assembly. It is not delivering freedom of assembly.
And even if your ISP denies you internet access, you can still access the same online resources through other mechanisms - public libraries, coffee shops, maybe even (gasp!) other peoples' homes.
I don't see how the freedom of assembly is lost here.
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The only wire that cuts off all those freedoms is your spinal column.
Who needs legs? (Score:2, Insightful)
You don't need legs to join a protest, but that does not give you the right to cut mine off.
The internet, if you had not noticed, has made it possible for people all around the world to cooperate. It is vital to modern political movements and business. The ability to share and publish has gone a long way to repair the damage government created broadcast networks did to democracy and civil discourse.
Re:over-reaching FUD (Score:5, Insightful)
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A right (what we're calling freedom in this case) is something you already have, it doesn't require anyone to give you anything. People who are too broke to buy an internet connection still have all of the listed rights. Government and corporations cannot give you rights, they can only take them away.
This seems like pedantic nitpicking but it is a critical thing to understand when talking about rights, and losing them. The sentence in q
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:It bears repeating time and again (Score:5, Funny)
I'm not sure I believe in this. The ability to create derivative works is not just to protect the value of the intellectual property. It is also to protect the integrity. Think about how horrible it would be if you could take classic films (like Star Wars), and add tons of CG effects, and resell them.
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Your number 2 is not going to fly...
Here is a counter proposal...
http://zotzbro.blogspot.com/2007/04/some-thoughts-on-copyright-offensive.html [blogspot.com]
all the best,
drew
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Until intellectual property law is forced to conform to the same expectations that private property has, it will never have universal legitimacy in the culture the way that physical property has (except with thieves and Socialists; I repeat myself...)
IP should not have the same expectations. Otherwise, we would still be paying the estate of Aristotle. We need keep it possible to build on the achievements of previous generations. This won't work if we have to pay fees to the many thousands (millions?) that have added their intellectual work to our technology and culture.
And I think you mean "real property" instead of "private property".
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I assume Virgin
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Apple didn't do it. They released an update, they warned people
Totally Cheddar (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't mean to be critical, but isn't this just a touch over the top? I don't like the idea of people tracking downloads and cutting of Internet connections any more than you, but for the moment, downloading is still illegal. If someone managed to catch you and charge you $10,000 per song (or whatever the going rate is...I think it's rationed on the same scale as gas prices) or throw you in prison for repeat offenses, would that be any better than losing your ISP?
We need to convince the world that the recording industry is trying to bill us for not buying horseshoes even though we're driving cars. They've said it themselves: they made a mistake by not having download services sooner, and now they've lost a generation of kids who think music grows on the web for free. Let them charge the band for the original recording of the song, the videos, take a share of concert revenue for the advertising work, etc. But taking a percentage of money every time the song is played or recorded elsewhere, in the age of perfect digital copies, is archaic at best.
But don't make me want to go buy duct tape and plastic sheeting because I'm breaking the current copyright laws.
it'll be a step too far for most ISPs as well (Score:5, Insightful)
No way that's ever going to happen. No industry in its right mind would destroy itself to satisfy the needs of another.
Re:it'll be a step too far for most ISPs as well (Score:4, Insightful)
I am a Virgin Media subscriber (Score:3, Insightful)
"the one wire that delivers freedom of speech, freedom of the press and freedom of assembly"
--- Mike, take an antacid and calm down. You'll save yourself a stroke.
*Why could you not legally download the songs?
* If they wanted to disconnect you, could they not just find some other trumped up reason to do so?
* There is plenty of alternate choice for broadband in places where Virgin Media is commonly available
Let's wait to see just how often this gets used before it becomes an issue.
I get throttled all the time after a few DivX downloads, and the solution is to download in non-peak times.
I'm sure slashdot will be informed once the letters actually start being posted.
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Why do you assume guilt? it's not like their methods [slashdot.org] are infallible.
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I agree with you that the detection algorithms may be heavy on false positives. But it will help your case if you as an end user have 99% legal purchases to demonstrate as evidence.
As I said, let's wait and see how this pans out. If you're really worried, switch ISP now.
Surely people are at much greater danger of some knob planting kiddie-pr0n on your computer, than someone planting illegal downloads.
Troll and flamebait in the same post! (Score:2)
So, will this be a P2P dragnet? (Score:3, Interesting)
From TFA:
I think the real question here is how Virgin intends to "catch" subscribers. Will any form of P2P traffic result in a letter? TFA, while full of feel-good rhetoric about damages to our vibrant economy, is scant on details in this regard.
Phew! (Score:5, Funny)
6.5 million (Score:2, Insightful)
Because no one will sneakernet songs (Score:4, Insightful)
They just do not get it.
People do not have $10,000 to load up an IPOD with content.
People will spend to the level they can/feel is ethical and then take the rest.
If they can't get it off the internet, they'll do it face to face in sneaker nets.
Or they'll encrypt/mangle the packets.
Or things we havn't even imagined yet.
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Within 5km of where I live, there are several malls (one huge one, several smaller ones) and countless other small stores located in strip plazas, where pirated CDs and DVDs are available by the thousands if not millions. Six new-release DVDs for $10? No problem. Hollywood? Bollywood? Euro art films? East Asian cinema? No problem. CDs and DVDs filled with mp3 music? No problem.
This activity has been going on for years and years without pause despite various "crackdown" efforts I read about in the news. It
Virgin this... (Score:5, Insightful)
The wonderful thing about huge, sprawling conglomerates like Virgin is that there's no shortage of ways to hit back at them when they pull this kind of bullshit.
Do you have a Virgin cell phone? Pound it to slag and mail it back to the bastards, along with a letter explaining why you won't be needing their services anymore. Tell your travel agent that you won't accept a flight on any Virgin plane, and drop them a line telling them about it. Show up at good old Sir Richard's next publicity stunt with appropriately humorous and offensive signs.
The beauty of it is that if enough people act, the pressure doesn't have to be kept up for long to have a real effect on the bottom line. How long would it take before losses in other areas overtake any possible gain from Virgin's Nazi-esque assault on free speech?
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I do use Virgin Mobile for my mobile phone, though, because of its simple PAYG tariff. Maybe I'll reconsider that one...
Just you wait (Score:2, Funny)
Before you know it, they'll need 42 days to sift through your windows DLLs and files. After all, being able to say hundreds of thousands of files and by implication 'this is hard' means a reasonable premise(not). But only to the stupid.
The UK already has enormous monitoring and invasive abuse of its citizens, bad enough before 'companies' start attempting to take the law into their own hands and begin illicit and comprehensive invasion of people's privacy to support their monopol
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OT - YRO section (Score:3, Insightful)
Before everyone says "Aren't Virgin Bastards?" (Score:4, Interesting)
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/communications/0,1000000085,39290371,00.htm [zdnet.co.uk]
http://www.techwatch.co.uk/2008/02/25/uk-isp%E2%80%99s-must-stop-illegal-downloads/ [techwatch.co.uk]
(You've got to admire that approach to democracy out of sheer morbid fascination, really, haven't you. It amounts to "You're not doing anything illegal, but if you don't stop doing it we'll make it illegal!")
Virgin Media haven't really got any choice here, and I think we'll see similar announcements regarding other ISPs within the next 6-12 months.
Broadband providers and Lost Revenue (Score:2)
6.5 million people connections.
Let's just say that, on average, people are paying $15US per connection per month.
That would be $97,500,000 per month in lost revenue to the broadband industry, or a cool $1,170,000,000 per year in lost revenue.
Uh huh. Go on, then, pull the other one.
How long until someone comes up with a way to completely anonymize P2P applications? Or someone comes up with the next way of doing this that is almost, but not entirely, unlike current P2P apps?
I'm
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Broadband -
2 Mb = 9 pound/month (Size M)
4 Mb = 16 pound/month (Size L),
20Mb = 26 pound/month (Size XL)
Digital TV -
40 Channels - Free (Size M)
90 Channels - 9 pounds/month (Size L)
145 Channels - 19.90 pounds/month (Size XL)
Landline Phone
Talk Weekends - 11 pounds/month (Size M)
Talk Evenings/Weekends - 14.14 pounds/month (Size L)
Talk Unlimited - 18.95 pounds/month (Size XL)
Mobile
Or, rephrased (Score:2)
Its an allegedly "free market." If you don't like the terms they require in order to utilize their property, take your business elsewhere. This is no more nefarious a move against your "rights" than a publican decided he wants his facility to be non-smoking, regardless of local ordinances.
Its a private private entity, not a government utility. There is a distinction to be drawn.
Also, I don't see
Virgin becomes responsible for content! (Score:2)
If a company assumes responsibility for inspecting your content, then THEY ARE NO LONGER A COMMON CARRIER!!! They are now gatekeepers, which means they are responsible for ALL content that goes through their network. If they fail to catch some illegal downloaders or kiddie-porn peddlers, then THEY ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR IT!
Sooner or later, this piece of shit will hit the fan, and when it does, the ISPs are going to get messy.
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Rest is my untested knowledge for which I accept no liability.
I believe it all hinges on third party liability to a breach tho - a question of fact and degree will not suffice in claims like this. Third party liability is only established through knowing participation (knowledgeable assistance if you will).
Actual knowledge is one piece constructive, and one piece subject
Time for torrents to wise up (Score:4, Insightful)
All user's torrent servers should present an NDA and disclaimer to the effect:
"Before connecting with this machine you attest to the fact that you are not downloading anything that you may find that you do not have the legal right to access.
You further more state under oath that any and all activity on this connection is legal as well as private and confidential.
Any and all legal issues arising from your activity are solely your responsibility
Lastly, you indemnify the operator of this torrent server against any and all legal actions for your activity."
yes or no.
Well... (Score:3, Insightful)
Aside from political activism (Score:3)
Three strikes? (Score:3, Informative)
Personally I'd rather have my service cut off and learn a valuable lesson than get sued by the RIAA. It's doubtful that it's a antitrust violation since they are punishing people that break the rules outlined in their ToS.
Bravo? They are doing their subscribers a favor. They could collect the info, forward it to the RIAA, then let them keep subscribing so the RIAA can surgically get their statistics and log them sharing files until they get a suitably sized sample of their activity to get whatever damage award they want.
Another point: Since shares are publicly accessible on the p2p networks, it's not spying, despite the tin foil hat mentality the author is implying. Spying implies the interception of communication. Sharing files illegally doesn't require spying to see it happening.
All it takes is a p2p program on the same network...
It's the ISPs duty to police illegal activity occurring on their network.
The only danger I see is that people sharing files legally (the copyright owners) could be singled out and dropped erroneously.
I fail to see how this is any worse than an employer firing someone for running a p2p server which is sharing copyrighted files to the world from their employer's network. Copyright violation is copyright violation, and is illegal activity according to current laws.
If you want to fix this problem, write your leaders and have the copyright laws changed. They are the real culprit, not the people abiding the law by policing their networks.
-Viz
They just don't get it ... (Score:4, Interesting)
At what point will the powers that be in the record industry realize that they will never get back to making billions off of CDs? What a bunch of whiny little bitches.
The world changed. But rather than adjust to a new business model (heaven forbid!), they're bullying ISPs into policing the Internet and litigating individuals. All in an attempt to return to a market which will never again exist.
Worse yet, the MPAA is doing the same thing. They could move first-run movies to pay per view today and make billions, but instead they're sticking to their guns, staggering release dates to try and maximize DVD sales. In the meantime, people are becoming increasingly comfortable downloading rips and screeners off of the various torrent portals.
This all could have been avoided (and in the movie industry's case, would be avoided), if the corporations would adjust to new technologies instead of trying to squish them. If the Itunes Music Store had opened before Napster, it would be a totally different world.
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Re:Kinky (Score:4, Funny)
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1) The work should be in the public domain.
This came up in the RIAA case where they won the $200K judgement.
They tried to win sympathy with the jury by playing some moldy oldie
that rightfully should have gone into the public domain by now but
hasn't.
Re:What's wrong with this? (Score:4, Insightful)
Copying: I copy the data, now we both have the data.
Copying != theft. Copyright as originally intended "to promote the progress of science and useful arts" is arguably beneficial to society, but copyright as currently implemented mostly benefits the rich elite. With lower barriers to entry for both authorship and distribution the optimal copyright term is now shorter than the original term, but it has instead been increased to be effectively endless. It is no surprise people do not respect such an obviously broken law.
Re:What's wrong with this? (Score:4, Interesting)
Do you see the difference between singing a song on a street corner with a hat on the ground and seeing a sidewalk sale and walking off with CDs?
And to be honest, here at least, I think the penalties for being in posession of a knock off CD or DVD are way more harsh than for stealing the same from a store.
all the best,
drew
Re:Sheesh (Score:5, Insightful)
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