UK ISP Spots a File-Sharing Loophole, Implements It 179
An anonymous reader writes "As well as taking an active part in OFCOM's code of obligations in regards to the ill-conceived Digital Economy Act (the UK three-strikes law for filesharers), niche ISP Andrews & Arnold have identified various loopholes in the law, the main one being that a customer can be classified as a communications provider. They have now implemented measures so in your control panel you may register your legal status and be classed as such." Another of the loopholes this inventive ISP sussed out: "Operating more than one retail arm selling to customers and allowing customers to migrate freely with no change to service between those retail arms, thus bypassing copyright notice counting and any blocking orders."
Lib Dems (Score:5, Informative)
I don't know if what I am saying is 100% correct. But people who might vote for Pirate, Green, ect ect. are mostly geeks or people directly involved in this.
True, and it is unfortunate that the "geek" vote is being split so badly. The LibDems are the only one of the three major parties that stood up to this law (voting against it and calling for its repeal). Whether someone's agreement with them on this issue outweighs any disagreements they may have with them on other issues is an open question.
Re:Lib Dems (Score:3, Informative)
I don't know if what I am saying is 100% correct. But people who might vote for Pirate, Green, ect ect. are mostly geeks or people directly involved in this.
True, and it is unfortunate that the "geek" vote is being split so badly. The LibDems are the only one of the three major parties that stood up to this law (voting against it and calling for its repeal). Whether someone's agreement with them on this issue outweighs any disagreements they may have with them on other issues is an open question.
Us Pirates only have 9 out of a possible 650 candidates standing; I doubt we'll have an impact on the Lib-dem vote (hell, as there's no PPUK candidate in my area, I'll be voting Lib-dem).
Re:Hmm... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Who say geeks don't make good lawyers? (Score:5, Informative)
There is only one interpretation of the l;aw that counts, and that's the judge's one. This is espacially true in UK's(and US's) Common Law system.
Either you or I have misunderstood this particular section of the Digital Economy Act, and the balance of probabilities suggests that it's you. At issue is not the legality of sharing the files - the DEA doesn't deal with that, that's part of pre-existing Copyright acts - but the short-cut that now exists that enables rightsholders to harrass suspected filesharers through their ISP without the need for a court order.
Before the DEA, firms were required to issue a court order to the ISP - a timeconsuming and potentially expensive process if done in bulk - in order to collect enough information to contact the individuals themselves. With the DEA in place, they can simply require the ISP to do their donkey work.
So, they found loopholes, or so they think. They may be correct, but you will not know until thoose loopholes are tested in a courthouse.
The loopholes definitely exist, I've seen the various discussions that led to A&A making the implementations discussed and it is quite clear from the wording of the DEA itself (which, combined with the Telecommunitions Act IIRC, is very specific in its definitions of the parties concerned). The legal route, where the case can be presented in front of a judge, does still exist: it just requires more effort on the part of the rightsholders, and specifically the amount of effort that they should have had to take in the first place before the DEA came into effect.
Re:Hmm... (Score:2, Informative)
I'm *trying* to get elected!
--Tim Dobson, Pirate Party Candidate, Manchester Gorton
http://votepirate.org/gorton [votepirate.org]
http://amiapirate.org/ [amiapirate.org]
At least they are trying... (Score:5, Informative)
Disclaimer: I am a happy A&A customer.
At least AAISP are attempting to bring to light the shortcomings of the law, as well as taking part in the OFCOM part of the regulatory process. Believe me that AAISP were also attempting early on to bring attention to this law and lobbying as much as they could themselves.
I've spoken to the owner. He does not believe in supporting pirates, but he does believe in due process and fairness. Things that the DEA is not.(to customers or the ISP's) If a court order is provided AAISP will happily process it, however someone randomly pointing at an IP and saying "they've downloaded something of mine, cut them off unless they can unequivocally prove otherwise" unfairly reverses the burden of proof.
AAISP just wants to be a neutral carrier, operating within the (sane) law and rightly so.
They particularly deserve mention on Slashdot as a geeks ISP. There aren't many ISP's that provide the following...
They aren't as cheap as the bucket providers, but then you get what you pay for....
Re:At least they are trying... (Score:3, Informative)
one more thing for A&A is that they offer IPv6 across the board, included in your service for free.
They've always been a more "advanced" ISP in the UK.
Re:Lets get rid of it (Score:2, Informative)
Could it be because this ISP charges for bandwidth (and quite heavily during the day) and are more expensive than other providers that supply truly unlimited tariffs?
Re:Lets get rid of it (Score:5, Informative)
Yep, they're not cheap.
But they offer static IPs, in both IPv4 and IPv6. They do decent monitoring of your line, and have excellent tools for reporting your bandwidth usage, uptime and so forth. They can be your domain registrar and offer DNS servers.
With the exception of the bandwidth limits, they're pretty much a geek's dream ISP - pay for good service, get good service.
Heck, you can ask their support staff questions via IRC. You can get SMS alerts when your ADSL line is down.
I have two friends that use A&A. They're very happy with them. Most other people I know are on cheap ADSL providers, Virgin Cable or work for an ISP so have a connection through their employer anyway. I don't really hear complaints from the A&A users or those getting their connection from their employer. But everyone else, myself included, has had issues and not felt the support was good.
And no, I don't work for A&A. I get my internet connection through Virgin's cable service, because I had cable already. And I'm not being paid to say this - A&A don't know me from the proverbial Adam.
But A&A are the first company I'd look at if I had to switch to ADSL. I want their service, despite the costs.
It's not about piracy, this is about service. Many A&A customers host their own webservers at home, for example... Do you want to lose your internet connection just because of a bogus complaint about a webserver only you and a few friends use?
That's probably why they're putting these protections in, more than anything else. Arse covering for their customers. ;-)
Re:Lib Dems (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Lib Dems (Score:1, Informative)
Guardian newspaper is running a series on the various parties & their approaches to science. So far: Lib Dems, UKIP (gack!) and the Tories. Check out http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/series/science-policy-general-election, hopefully all the parties will get involved. UKIP responses just friggin' scary! Lib Dems come out pretty convincing, I'd be surprised if any party - other than perhaps the Greens, only viable in one seat - can top their performance.
Re:Lib Dems (Score:3, Informative)
One of the quirks of UK electoral law is that EU nationals may vote in local and European elections, but not Parliamentary elections. GP is correct as well, as a Commonwealth citizen resident in the UK I can vote in all 3 kinds of elections.
Re:I can't believe..... (Score:3, Informative)
I'm fucking disgusted.
Re:Who say geeks don't make good lawyers? (Score:5, Informative)
Disclaimer, I may not be an apple or linux fanboy, but i might just be an AAISP fanboy: I use AAISP as my service provider at home and they are awesome!
Want static IP addresses? Sure, how many? As long as they see access on roughly half of the addresses you ask for, no more questions. Very very useful for IP phones.
Want detailed traffic graphing? No problem.
Want direct access to all the log files right down to the ATM session layer, no problem, there's a webpage for that.
Want to restart the line from the BT side, another button to click.
Want a redundant connection for home use? Erm, only available in certain places but i have a friend in Manchester who is using them to do this.
If all this fails and you phone them up they treat you like the geek you are, the person you speak to knows what they're talking about and can fix it themselves. (yes I'm looking at you Virgin Media)
My best experience with them was I wanted to use a Cisco 877 router (completely none standard) for my router rather than the one they supplied. Any other company would have told me to sod off, but these guys helped me debug the setup.
Nope definitely a company run by geeks for geeks, you get the impression these people enjoy their job and revel in the technology.
Re:Lets get rid of it (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, no. People who use bandwidth are an ISP's worst customers. They want to sell their basic high-speed plans to people who'll check email once a week and maybe surf the BBC or CNN for a few minutes daily, tops. They'll try to convince those who just use twitter and facebook all day that they need the next tier up. And oh, if you do any sort of gaming, well, you really want the super-high-speed $100+/month plan!
These people pay big bucks and the ISP can oversell very easily.
Pirates who use all their bandwidth mean they can't oversell as much. They'd much rather kick them off and replace them (even if they're paying $100+/month) with 5 light users who pay $40/month.