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.'"
Teenagers (Score:3, Interesting)
Because teenagers are more likely to feel they can't live without the internet. Older internet users may have been on it longer, but can remember a time when they easily lived without it.
is this the internets version of speeding (Score:4, Interesting)
Just like with speeding. You get pulled over, maybe you get off with a warning, maybe you get a fine and points (In the UK 12 points on your license and you lose it for a time), or maybe you get off with a warning. Either way you are more aware for a while - then you're back to your old habits.
Will downloading P2P copyrighted material be the same?
You get a warning, stop for a while (maybe change ISPs, so the new one doesn't have a record of your "offence") and then drift back to your old behaviour.
If this is a good analogy (comments?) is there really any way to stop it completely - or do people just expect to punish the most blatant offenders and keep everyone else, more or less, under control?
More like... (Score:5, Interesting)
70%? and for how long? (Score:5, Interesting)
If you want to get paid for your stuff, you better make sure all those that would pay for it legally have the option to...
case in point...regions on dvds. If say a blockbuster movie was released in DVD in the US but not in, say, ASIA...do you really think everyone of that 70% (that wanted it) will wait for it to be released?
The media groups need to embrace 'online'. They need to release product 'online'. They need to market it 'online'. They need to get everyone so hooked on getting their information 'online' that people 'offline' are looked at as pathetic. Then the media groups can release to the world...launch Ad campaigns to the world...and never have to worry about this region stuff again!
Mass warning-spam in 3, 2, 1... (Score:3, Interesting)
Response to the EU Commission (Score:5, Interesting)
Response to Commission from Pirate Party leader [falkvinge.com]
(the first few lines is a preamble in Swedish, followed by the actual letter in English.)
In short, this does not deal with copyrights and culture anymore. It deals with the cost to society of enforcing today's copyright. That cost involves the abolition of the messenger immunity, freedom of the press, and private communications as a concept.
No right exists in a vacuum - there is always a cost to society of enforcing that right. Without a proper cost-to-benefit analysis, no informed decision can be made.
Re:Unlikely? (Score:3, Interesting)
You're making the flawed assumption that for anything agreed to in a contract, any circumstancial evidence or means of verifying it is implicitly ok. Just because the contract with my landlord says I can't do certain things doesn't mean he can set up video surveilance in the apartment or lock himself in and search it any time he wants to. Some random guy on the street can't get me evicted just by making an accusation. The ISPs don't know, don't want to know, shouldn't know and what you're seeing is nothing other than trying to force the landlord into being the moral police. If you can't see the difference between "If you get caught smoking pot in the apartment I'll evict you" and "I get to rummage through your belongings looking for any hidden pot stash at any time" or think one implies the other, I hope you never get to enforce any such mandate. Or at least I want to slap you with a fat lawsuit if you do.
Yes but the internet is a lot less solid as a far as laws go because cases are only now being tested in the courts. How many people are going to sue for getting kicked off one ISP? Chances are they'll just find another ISP. It becomes a matter of picking your battles. OTOH if you found the landlord had installed video surveillance inside your apartment, you would not only sue the apartment owners and the landlord, but the landlord would get arrested.
Of course, just keep in mind (in the US) if they someone rummages through your trash you put in the dumpster or left out for pickup, and finds some leftover pot stash, you'd have no grounds to sue or expectation of privacy. They can even legally get your DNA from a tossed cigarette butt or cup. (IANAL--I just watch a lot of CourtTV.)
Re:Honesty (Score:1, Interesting)
I think that this is a fallacious argument by analogy (and a bad analogy, at that).
If I sell my time to an employer (who has agreed to pay for it), and am being paid by the hour, then yes, I am entitled to be paid for the hours I work. That would include, say, spending my billable hours composing or performing music, or what have you.
When I decide to produce a digital product and make it publicly available, I am not suddenly an hourly employee of every person in the world. The relationship is quite different, so the analogy makes no sense.
If I produce a clump of data (say an MP3 of a song I wrote) and make it available on the Internet, then I will expect that other people will duplicate it and pass it on (because that is just what people do). Their duplication of the file doesn't cost me anything. If they were using *my* bandwidth to transfer it, that would be a different story, because that would cost me something. But if they are using their own resources to duplicate digital data to which I have given them access, then I must admit that they have not harmed me. If, on the other hand, I insisted on forcibly taking control of their computers away from them (to prevent them from duplicating stuff that I would prefer others pay me for), then I will have to admit that I have harmed them (by depriving them of the use of their own property).
It is not reasonable to give someone information and then to expect to be able to control what they do with it. Furthermore, it is not reasonable to expect people to refrain from sharing something that can be duplicated ad infinitum at zero cost. Finally, it is not reasonable to expect that I, as a musician, should be able to enforce the collection of money from every person that does this. If I fear that I will not be able to make a profit (because of the inevitability of data duplication), then I should find a different line of work. Leave the music-making to those who have figured out how to monetize it in the Information Age (rather than trying to litigate the information-sharing power of modern technologies away).
Just to further the point, here is another bad analogy that people often use: if you build a car, and someone takes it without paying for it, wouldn't you feel like you have been wronged? The answer: of course. I must expend resources (energetic and material) for each and every car I create. So, each car theft is harmful to me. In the case of music (or other digital products) there is effort expended only in the original production of it. No effort on my part is expended, nor are any of my resources consumed, if someone else duplicates it. So, morally, I don't have a leg to stand on. If that means I can't afford to produce music, then the correct course of action for me is to find a different line of work (NOT deprive the entire human race of some essential liberties regarding their own physical property).
As I stated before, enough people will find a way to monetize electronic product production despite free duplication. In fact, plenty already have. If we were suffering cultural starvation because absolutely no would-be creators can find incentive to create, that might be a different story (but I am only saying "might be different," I am still insisting that there is no absolute moral principle of distribution-privilege here). However, that is not the case, and I submit that it will never be the case, because anything that captures widespread public interest can be monetized (by various indirect means).
Step back and look at the big picture. Stop using ill-fitting metaphors. Information is not made of matter, it does not follow the same laws of physics, and as such it does not receive the same moral treatment.
Re:Unlikely? (Score:3, Interesting)
To have everybody treated the same under law, all copyright content must be treated the same, so a copied photo, or web page design, by law would have to be treated the same. You could not even send birthday or wedding videos if they contain copyrighted music in the sound track. This gives enormous power to ISP to basically govern upon a profit basis, who will get a stable service, who will get an business destructive service and who can via a system of questionable complaints detsroy a competitors service.
This is of course beyond the horridly privacy invasive concept that the ISP should legally be able to continuously, monitor, analyse, filter and of course record your internet use (it has to record your use should it need to prove it's case). The privatised police state which the RIAA/MPAA will be forcing upon their own children and grandchildren in their myopic greed for their own personal profits now.
Re:Why -1? (Score:3, Interesting)
If you really wanted it to work you'd need to reduce copyright on all products to 10 years. At least there is then motivation for creating new works.