70% of P2P Users Would Stop if Warned by ISP 318
Umpire writes "As the UK considers a three strikes policy to fight copyright infringement, a new survey reports that 70% of UK broadband users would stop using P2P if they received a warning from their ISP. 'Wiggin commissioned the 2008 Digital Entertainment Survey, which found that 70 percent of all people polled said they would stop illegally sharing files if their ISP notified them in some way that it had detected the practice. When broken down by age group, an unexpected trend emerges: teenagers are generally more likely to change their behavior than older Internet users.'"
I'm in the 30% (Score:3, Insightful)
Unlikely? (Score:4, Insightful)
No surprise (Score:1, Insightful)
It's like speeding. people speed every day, until they get flashed by a speed camera and given points on their license or a fine. Then they suddenly start obeying the law they ignored.
This would be a win for everyone. Nobody wants to waste time suing potential customers. People should be warned, and then we can go back to a normal, functioning market.
Reading the data another way... (Score:5, Insightful)
When broken down by who's paying the bills, an obvious trend emerges: People who have to answer to Mom and Dad as to why nobody in the family can get their email anymore are generally more likely to change their behavior than people can just buy another throwaway account.
Suggestive question (Score:5, Insightful)
Did they also asked: "Would you stop your perfectly legal activity, when reprimanded by your ISP?"?
Or: "Do you think it is right, that your ISP should monitor your activity on the internet?"
70% do not know....... (Score:1, Insightful)
Wouldn't stop, just change (Score:1, Insightful)
Encryption (Score:5, Insightful)
Commandment 11, Don't Get Caught (Score:3, Insightful)
it was further found (Score:5, Insightful)
get clue, riaatards. the game is over. you lose. your business model is dead, and cannot be extended with legions of lawyers
Re:Unlikely? (Score:5, Insightful)
When the warning comes, I would have questions... (Score:4, Insightful)
1. Yes I have been using P2P, but I have been torrenting legal stuff like unlicensed media and free software. So why the warning ?
2. Could you please give me the reasons as to why you think I am downloading illegal content ?
3. Could you please show me the logs which show I have downloaded illegal content ?
4. What are the methods you have followed to come to the conclusion that the stuff I am downloading is illegal ?
If the ISP has valid answers for my questions, I will have no choice but to comply. It after all, is the law. The answers however, I would need.
Re:Unlikely? (Score:5, Insightful)
From my perspective, enforcing those policies would be entirely within their mandate.
Source? (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm a self proclaimed British Media Expert, and I can hereby announce that a credible source has revealed to me that 85% of artists think privacy and free speech is more important than profit.
Sorry, but based on previous events "media lawyer" is not something which smells particularly credible.
Hilarious (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe in a less independantly minded country 70% is the case, but on this side of the pond the best response you will get is laughter.
Whoever posted this article, thanks for a much needed laugh.
Re:is this the internets version of speeding (Score:5, Insightful)
In any case it's not the place of the ISPs to impose a (flawed) version of morality on anyone, just like it's not the place of the phone company to monitor my phone conversations for possible illegal or immoral content.
Re:Unlikely? (Score:5, Insightful)
Honesty (Score:1, Insightful)
I DO have a problem with people who sincerely believe that data duplication is morally wrong. We are talking about the arbitrary imposition of limitations of freedom of *every human soul* in the world to prevent the proliferation of an inexhaustible resource. This is utter madness.
It is different in the case of data that could be directly harmful to a person, such as account numbers, passwords, a social security number (or similar), embarrassing medical information, and so on. The free distribution of this kind of data has a very direct, and harmful, impact on a person. Real dollars that this person has earned, owns, and has in the bank, can be taken out of said bank, due to this data duplication. That is genuine theft, and it is enabled by the distribution of the data. I could accept that duplication of this kind of data is morally wrong, for this reason.
Duplicating a song or a movie does not have this kind of effect. You can't use an MP3 file to entice a bank to deliver someone else's money to you. That category of harm is just not there. It is true that the free duplication of this data means that the original creator may not get paid for every copy duplicated...but I submit that the expectation that he is entitled to receive money for every copy made is unnatural, unreasonable, needless, and ultimately harmful (as it encourages the deprivation of people's control over their own actions and over their own hardware which they have paid for).
Once upon a time such limitations on freedom may have been necessary. Today, there are not. Despite the free data duplication which is alive and well, and has been so for well over a decade, there is no shortage of new art production. The art industry is bigger than ever. We are doing just fine, and as such we don't need any peculiar notions of the immorality of data duplication (for intrinsically harmless data) in order to keep things humming along.
Don't submit to a system of "virtue" which was designed by rich people for the purpose of keeping themselves rich, to your detriment.
I would stop 70% of my downloading... (Score:2, Insightful)
Ed
I wouldn't (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:well then (Score:4, Insightful)
Some of us pirate to help the current Music and Movie industries implode quicker
Too bad pirating something you never would have bought does about $0 in economic damages.
What was your media budget pre-internet? That's about as much damage as you can inflict regardless of how much you piss off your ISP.
Re:Unlikely? (Score:3, Insightful)
That's about the extent of what they can do given the terms, but given how few options there are for internet connectivity, it's a fairly serious threat.
Re:Unlikely? (Score:5, Insightful)
The terms are there to protect the ISP from lawsuit when the client gets sued by a copyright holder - it's not a mandate to become the police.
Re:Speeding doesn't kill, stupid drivers do. (Score:3, Insightful)
Let's say everyone on a free way is driving 100mph when the speed limit is 70mph. What is the safer speed to drive: 70mph ? Or 100mph ?
Of course that might not be a fair example since if EVERYONE was speeding you don't really risk getting pulled over.
But the point is that driving fast does not necessarily mean driving dangerously. If you're alert, matching traffic, keeping your eye on the road and leaving adequate space between you and other vehicles you can drive quite fast and still be completely safe.
Anyway in my opinion speeding limits are just another preemptive law designed to make the government richer at the expense of the population. Does imposing speeding fines lead to fewer accidents ? The answer may be "yes". However, throwing the book at anyone who physically injures another while driving could have the same effect. If you're driving dangerously and you end up killing someone there is still manslaughter, reckless driving, public endangerment, charing them for any repairs to public property and to the victim's vehicle, medical bills etc. I'd rather punish people for actually hurting people rather than for nothing.
Poor Association (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Real change? (Score:2, Insightful)
Or have you never heard of the concepts of 'trade secrets' and 'industrial espionage'?
Re:Unlikely? (Score:5, Insightful)
Once they start down that road, its only a matter of time before someone sues them for something that came through their network. I mean, it's not so far-fetched to have a class action suit against a provider for allowing crackers to run mass automated remote exploits on their network...If I can recognize them on my end, then they should be able to recognize them on the network. Hell, that's trivial beside trying to determine whether someone is downloading kiddy porn or lol cats.
Say Versus Do (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Unlikely? (Score:3, Insightful)
Out of curiosity, are you based in Europe? Even given the seemingly downward spiral of American rights or expression, I believe that hate speech is still legal here, and not at all deserving of being lumped with child-porn in a list of no-nos.
I know of several future lawyers who spend a lot of time on the net researching fringe movements and their psychology. A ban on the transmission of the hateful speech of these fringe groups would hugely handicap those who seek to understand the phenomenons of xenophobia and ultra-nationalism in America.
Re:Honesty (Score:5, Insightful)
Seems to me that the gov't came up to me on the very first day I ever worked and declared I would only get paid for about 25 of the 40 hours I work each week, and that they would take the rest. What's your point, other than that bad analogies make bad arguments?
Re:Mass warning-spam in 3, 2, 1... (Score:-1, Insightful)
Re:Unlikely? (Score:2, Insightful)
Doh!
Re:Unlikely? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why -1? (Score:3, Insightful)
I believe that the only way to know is to test it out. Declare all works as of 2010 to be public domain, and no new copyrights will be granted on anything. Give it a couple of decades and see how the market adapts to handle it. Then solve any problems that arise, and the market cannot handle.
Maybe we need some middle-ground, where copyright only applies to for-profit entities. Maybe some other, non-copyright creative solution should be used.
Moderators: Even if you don't agree, this guy makes good points, and represents a legitimate viewpoint that a lot of people hold. So why -1?
For how long? (Score:4, Insightful)
A lot of folks stop speeding for a while after they get a warning from a cop. Virtually none of them stop speeding forever.
Most people stopped using the networks which got downed, and if there's a high chance of getting caught using a particular service then yeah they're going to stop, but with encrypted connections, and the general fact that ISP's will only do what they're forced to by law or which benefits their bottom line, and you're probably looking at a pretty low number of people actually getting caught, so you're looking at pretty low risk.
I know the brits tend to have a please sir give me some more attitude when it comes to government shafting(or so it seems lately, though the US isn't much better), but this seems rather silly.