UK ISPs To Face Piracy Deadline 287
superbrose notes that despite lots of legal difficulties regarding Internet privacy, the UK government is going ahead with plans to punish ISPs for allowing their customers to download illegal music and films. The claim is that there is "rampant piracy" in Britain with more than 6 million broadband users downloading files illegally every year. "The government will on Friday tell internet service providers they will be hit with legal sanctions from April next year unless they take concrete steps to curb illegal downloads of music and films. Britain would be one of the first countries in the world to impose such sanctions. Service providers say what the government wants them to do would be like asking the Royal Mail to monitor the contents of every envelope posted."
The solution is obvious (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, this is essentially a shutdown of the WWW in the UK. So? It's what the Gov wants, right?
6 MILLION! (Score:2, Insightful)
Escalation right around the corner... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's going to get even worse. Imagine asking the Royal Mail to monitor the contents of every envelope posted, after half of the mail writers get tired of these draconian measures and start sending their messages in code.
What if P2P users start encrypting their traffic? The difficulties involved would be significant, but not insurmountable. Are the ISPs supposed to treat every user transmitting & receiving encrypted data as a criminal?
So let it be (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:More than 6 million I'm sure (Score:2, Insightful)
Surely you don't believe they do so for any other reason than the price is zero. Some may, but I imagine the majority think more about the price than any righteous belief that "information wants to be free."
Re:More than 6 million I'm sure (Score:5, Insightful)
On the other hand, this British law, if enacted, might become the fire that will trigger that reaction. Just wait and see the growth in the amount of people pissed by false positives, or just pissed, for things to start to change.
Re:So let it be (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't know about in England, but in the US that's considered a poor argument in favor of mob rule.
While I don't agree with the bent the UK government is taking, abolishing copyright in favor of mob greed isn't the right tactic.
Re:The solution is obvious (Score:5, Insightful)
This is one of those things that will come to a head very quickly and when the egg lands, it won't be on the faces of users or ISPs. It will be on the faces of those who enacted the law.
The trouble, as we all know, is that there is no way to determine what is illegal and what is not. There will be far too many false positives, and far too many obviously innocent people will be caught by filters and such. It will go as far as MPs will let it go. Perhaps there is a manner in which people in the UK can force MPs to download LEGAL files to show them how easy it is to be caught, and perhaps demonstrate in real life how difficult it is to find the illegal stuff by asking them to PAY for additional filtering equipment/systems for businesses, schools, hospitals etc.
There are lots of people that want to help filter out illegal content, unfortunately, they also want to get paid.
Once you get buy-in on the government paying the costs for such systems, turn to appendix F and show them how these systems will be worked around in something like 24 hours of implementation.
Or perhaps you can all chip in and buy them a whack-a-mole game for the parliamentary house restaurant?
Re:Escalation right around the corner... (Score:5, Insightful)
Big brother is watching you... you don't have anything to hide, do you?
Re:The solution is obvious (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:More than 6 million I'm sure (Score:5, Insightful)
How Far Will It Go? (Score:3, Insightful)
Extraordinary lack of procedural clarity (Score:5, Insightful)
Then your ISP writes to you. You say the allegations are false and libellous. What happens next? Do you get to cross examine the industry spokesperson who made the allegations?
Then three strikes, they disconnect you. You sue them. Who is liable? Them? The industry body?
Its not so much iniquitous as unworkable in its present form. You basically cannot do this without all the expense of the courts, which is what they're trying to avoid.
Re:Escalation right around the corner... (Score:5, Insightful)
There are so many legitimate types of encrypted traffic (SSL, SSH, VPN, etc.) that they can't outlaw it. P2P programs can certainly go beyond mere encryption and specifically obfuscate the type of traffic, making it appear as another class (e.g. https) or even use steganography to hide the data in otherwise legitimate-looking data streams.
Easy answer to this (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:If you live in the UK. (Score:5, Insightful)
All UK ISPs should shut down for a day! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:So let it be (Score:3, Insightful)
The sun has set on the British Empire, and night is falling on the UK. It's coming. If you have a brain and care about your freedom, make preparations to leave -- while you still can. Britain is not a free country, and it is only going to get worse.
Re:If you live in the UK. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Petition (Score:5, Insightful)
For example:
Me: "I don't want an ID card. Police states are not good"
Reply: "Dear terrorist, having an ID card is good. It will keep you safe"
I'm not going to sign this one because I already know what the reply will be.
When will they learn (Score:5, Insightful)
OUR COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE IS GREATER THAN YOUR OWN! We have got hordes of geeks working on ways to circumvent every single way you have ever conceived to censor what we do.
What happened with iTunes DRM? It got owned by qtfairuse.
What happened when you blocked bittorrent? We started encrypting it.
What happened when you blocked the port that bittorrent runs on? We started running it on a different port.
What happened when you throttled NNTP connections? We started using lots and lots of simultaneous connections, each of them throttled, but collectively adding up to our original speed.
What happened when you started blocking NNTP all together? We started running it over port 80 and disguising it as legitimate SSL traffic.
What happened when you started listening to our phone calls? We started using encrypted VOIP.
Every single time there has EVER been ANY attempt at stopping people from doing what they want it has only caused them to grow stronger. Don't challenge us to develop stronger encryption, because we will. Its like spraying a weed with weed killer, eventually you're just going to create stronger weeds.
What you are trying to do in the UK will absolutely fail. History has shown this. Non tech-savvy users will be alienated for a while, until we create yet ANOTHER work around for your idiotic bureaucratic attempt at pleasing your own appetite for money and power.
I cannot repeat enough that this WILL fail.
The community welcomes your attempt at censoring us. It will only present us with yet another challenge and cause the gap between our skills and your own to grow.
There are only two ways I can see this going (Score:3, Insightful)
Solution 2: The Great Firewall of Britain. This is what I see the Government doing if the ISPs don't. I doubt it'll be terribly effective because the government will outsource providing appropriate technology to a consultant like EDS (a company that specialises in taking money off UK government departments in exchange for half-baked systems which don't really work properly) and once the technology is ready, ISPs will be obliged to deploy it.
Welcome to censorship (Score:3, Insightful)
The media giants have too much power, they just can't face decline. There's a massive amount of music, films and media out there, the demand and supply doesn't always match. I for example don't want much that Hollywood churns out, I don't like a lot of popular media. So am I to be prosecuted because I don't purchase rubbish commercial music and use p2p?
Re:So let it be (Score:3, Insightful)
For instance, driving speed limits are routinely broken, yet this doesn't mean we should abolish speed limits. The purpose they serve (increasing safety) may outweigh the consensus opinion. (Nevermind for a moment that a strong argument for raising speed limits could also be made.)
What's different about copyright, however, is that a large portion of the rhetoric for keeping the law revolves around "rights"--it is an implicitly moral argument. The fact that a large percentage of the population is ignoring the law suggests that (for better or worse), they do not feel the law has moral high-ground (as compared to theft for example; most people wouldn't steal a physical good even if they knew they wouldn't get caught, because they consider it immoral). In such cases it is worthwhile to reconsider the law: if the consensus is that this law isn't morally required, why do we have it?
The main reason for having copyright is, ostensibly, to promote the creation and dissemination of intellectual works. Thus the law is meant to increase the amount and value of intellectual works. However it is again clear from the behavior of individuals that they are extracting more value from the works by freely sharing them than by adhering to the restrictions of copyright law. So we must again ask if this consensus behavior is in fact telling us that copyright law, in its current form, is not properly maximizing the value, to society, of intellectual works.
My point here is only that the "mob rule" logic is germane to the copyright debate because copyright law is supposedly meant to increase value for this very mob. The opinions of common people on this topic are therefore relevant to the debate (whereas some laws should probably be insulated from the whims of the populace). Again, I agree that there are cases where the mob opinion would ultimately be detrimental to society (people can act selfishly to their ultimate detriment)--but it's by no means clear that this is true in the case of copyright law.
Re:More than 6 million I'm sure (Score:1, Insightful)
If the industry wants to sell more, they should make it more convenient. I'm not talking about using iTunes from your living room or other proprietary means that require huge amounts of personal information to be entered before purchasing media. What ever happened to the anonymity of buying the CD you like with cash at the local record store? I'm sure there's a way it can be done online without some faceless corporation knowing all about your favourite music, the bands you listen to, the stuff you buy. Most importantly, scrap DRM. Having useless protection schemes that are just annoying to anyone, regardless of what they're trying to do, are going to turn away potential honest buyers faster than any sort of "free" alternative is going to take them away. The more the industry tightens their grip and tries to attain control over everything, the more the sales are going to slip through their fingers.
ISPs are not at fault, and I think this legislation is ridiculous. The industry has decided it can't go after everyone who is downloading copyrighted content individually, so they're going to go after the fewer "middlemen", for no other reason than because of greed and the desire for control.
Re:6 MILLION! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:More than 6 million I'm sure (Score:4, Insightful)
Now they have everyone convinced it's addictive (it's habit forming but not addictive), causes cancer (it doesn't, and in fact prevents cancer) and leads to harder drugs (it doesn't; the laws against it do).
Instead of it being legal, now most employers drug-test everyone. There are now people addicted to crack who switched from marijuana when their employer started random drug testing; pot stays in your system a lot longer than cocaine.
Rather than P2P being legalized, expect some nanny-state, anti-freedom, pro-corporation, anti-people asshat like Reagan to come down like a load of bricks on P2P who convinces everybody that P2P leads to cancer, terrorism, and global warming.
Indies give their MP3s away. Share those, ignore the MAFIAA bands. Don't share their music, don't buy their downloads, don't buy their CDs, don't go to their concerts. They are the problem, and if you contribute in any way, whether monetarily or by sharing their music, you are part of the problem and not part of the solution.
Just say "no."
Re:6 MILLION! (Score:5, Insightful)
2. Any law that is violated by a sufficiently large percentage of it's population is an unjust law. Governments are supposed to be representative of the people. They have power because we as a whole agreed to let them have some power to enforce ideas that society as a whole sees as worthy of enforcing. If a law reaches a certain point where the majority of the country doesn't support it (say, Prohibition as an example), then it should be repealed.
Re:6 MILLION! (Score:1, Insightful)
It's said that 50% of drivers break urban speed limits. 20% to 65% of employees admit to various degrees of theft at work. Sounds like it's time to change those laws too?
Re:So let it be (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:6 MILLION! (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't even think it should require a "majority". If a statistically significant number of people are routinely flaunting the law then we should probably examine that law and find out whether or not it's just.
I won't argue in favor of limitless copyright infringement (even the Founding Fathers recognized the value of limited IP protection and included it in the Constitution), but off the top of my head I could mention marijuana prohibition as a policy that should probably be examined.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Where does the government's authority come from? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Escalation right around the corner... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:When will they learn (Score:2, Insightful)
Informations wants to be free, period. To try and close up the pandoras box which is progress is akin to sticking a cork into a volcano. You'll get burned, then watch your city get buried by lava when the eruption does occur anyways.
Re:Where does the government's authority come from (Score:3, Insightful)
The government is given (indeed, by its people) the authority to do whats best for the country for the present and the future. Remember, these are not democracies, but democratic republics, or variations of it. Its job is to handle issues that the population might not be able to handle, or understand the implications of. A lot of people who share files illegaly don't even KNOW its against the law... many (including here on Slashdot) are not even knowledgeable of the impact of these laws, going from word to mouth, and crap they see on websites like this one, with absolutely no critical thought put into it (they beleive what they want to beleive). Now, because of that, it is totally pointless to try and have a balanced debate on if these laws are good or not.... Point is: Its not because half a country breaks a law, that its a bad law.
Now, thats cute in theory. In practice governments tend to totally suck at their job. But thats another story altogether. If -THIS- law is a good or bad one, is also a different debate. All i'm trying to say is, saying "If a lot of people break a law its a bad law, because its the people who decide!!!1!1!" is simply not a valid point.
Re:6 MILLION! (Score:3, Insightful)
Most people don't see copyright infringement as stealing, they don't see it as wrong and think they should be allowed to do it.
Its an important distinction
Sweden's Pirate Party (Score:5, Insightful)
In other words: Your need to make money isn't going to infringe our freedom of speech.
Figure out a different way to make money.
Re:6 MILLION! (Score:2, Insightful)
Agree! We should also look at the millions of assults, rapes, murders, and so committed each year. Those numbers are certainly significant.
(Just pointing out the obvious weakness in your criteria.)
Re:6 MILLION! (Score:3, Insightful)
It might help if speed limits where assigned in some non random way however.
Most people don't see copyright infringement as stealing,
Nor does copyright law.
they don't see it as wrong and think they should be allowed to do it.
As currently implimented copyright offers the general public little or nothing.
Comment removed (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:6 MILLION! (Score:4, Insightful)
1-5km over the limit - nobody cares. 5+km over, a speed camera will get upset - $50 fine, 1 demerit point. 15+km over, a cop gets upset - $150 fine, 2 demerit points. 30+km over, a judge gets upset - $500 fine, licence torn up.
Re:6 MILLION! (Score:3, Insightful)
Secondarily, there may be a lot of people "fed up" with the current copyright system (and I, for one, think we should be REDUCING terms), but as a previous commenter said, a lot of that rhetoric is simply rationalization. They can get stuff for free, with little to no chance of being caught. So they do. Simple.
If the odds of being caught, and the consequences, were more inline with, say, shoplifting, would they still do so? Doubtful.
Finally, there's also a significant number of people out there (and I'm one of them, too), who believe that the authors of creative works deserve payment for that work, especially if one values it enough to listen, read, or watch it.