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Piracy United Kingdom Your Rights Online

UK ISPs Asked To Block More File-sharing Websites 89

Posted by Soulskill from the shut-down-everything dept.
another random user writes with this news from the BBC: "The UK's major internet service providers have been asked to block three more file-sharing websites. The BPI (British Phonographic Industry), which acts on behalf of rights holders, wants ISPs to prevent access to Fenopy, H33t and Kickass Torrents. The BPI alleges that the sites are illegally distributing music. The ISPs told the BBC they would comply with the new demand, but only if a court order is put in place. It follows a separate court order in April which saw popular file-sharing site The Pirate Bay blocked in the UK. ... The letter, which was not intended to go public, was sent to six ISPs last week, namely BT, Sky, Virgin Media, O2, EE and TalkTalk. It is understood that the BPI is hoping all three sites will be blocked before Christmas — far more quickly than the process has taken previously."
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UK ISPs Asked To Block More File-sharing Websites More

UK ISPs Asked To Block More File-sharing Websites

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  • Oh, never mind; misread that.

  • 70's porn music? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Come on, really?

  • Imagine if you will, a country where any company or group can have any website blocked because they don agree with the content.

    Better start setting up some fast VPNs, guys, because it won't be long before this gets out of hand.

    • Re: (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      I object to these sorts of bans because they don't work. Everyone in the UK can easily access the pirate bay through a mirror hosted by the UK pirate party.

      However, not agreeing with the content is very different from attempting to block websites that almost exclusively serve illegal content. It would be the same as saying that a country that has made murder illegal is just in the habbit of banning acts it doesn't approve of.

      • Some of us don't even need to use a mirror - we use Fastnet for our ISP at work here in London and they haven't blocked it.

    • The Pirate Bay blockade is pathetic - if the best they can do is a poor King Canute imitation, I'm really not worried.

    • Which part of the "Hopefully before Christmas....Quicker than before" makes you think we need to get VPNs up *quickly*?

      Welcome to the UK, where your Police State moves that slowly it never catches up to you!

  • Is anyone really surprised by this? (Score:5, Informative)

    by JosKarith ( 757063 ) on Wednesday October 24, 2012 @04:16AM (#41749513)
    So TPB's ban was the thin end of the wedge? What a surprise.
    And I absolutely love "The letter, which was not intended to go public" - so they want ISP's to filter traffic for them without all the hassle of legal process or negative public opinion.

    • If it's the thin edge of the wedge, it must be a wedge of Swiss cheese.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Walterk ( 124748 )

      Well, no one should be surprised by this. No one will be surprised to learn that the banning of TPB has made no significant difference to the amount of traffic to it [bbc.co.uk]. The BPI like the RIAA sees every download as lost revenue, where the real link is that the most prolific downloaders tend to be the most frequent purchasers of media as well. The biggest impact on reduction of illegal downloading has been the introduction of legal services such as iTunes, Amazon MP3 store, etc..

      Of course, posting this here is

    • I believe it was the child porn blocking that was promised to be "just the tip".
  • Here is a precedent for censorship...boycott the fuckers, no more DVDs, CDs and cinema for me.
    • see, the RIAA/MPAA will just assume if you are boycotting them, that you are indeed pirating more, since this clearly why they lose revenue.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by grahamm ( 8844 )

        And they just cannot understand how anyone would not want to watch/listen to the movies/music produced by their members. The same as the UK TV Licensing cannot understand how any household could live without a TV set, so assume that anyone who does not have a TV licence is watching TV illegally.

        • And they just cannot understand how anyone would not want to watch/listen to the movies/music produced by their members. The same as the UK TV Licensing cannot understand how any household could live without a TV set, so assume that anyone who does not have a TV licence is watching TV illegally.

          If you don't have a TV you don't have to pay for a TV licence. Similarly, if you don't want to pay to watch a movie or listen to a piece of music, don't.

          The movie/music industries exist because people want to consume their products. You always have the option not to consume them.

      • Yes, that's true, I think. Just today I saw a funny article here [wordpress.com], which begins by claiming that piracy is the reason that the newspaper industry is on the decline. (The site is focused on the music industry, but the author seems to blame piracy for every bad thing that happens in the world.)

    • Here is a precedent for censorship...boycott the fuckers, no more DVDs, CDs and cinema for me.

      How is stopping someone from reading/viewing/listening to your own stuff censorship?

      If I write a poem and lock it away in a drawer, how am I censoring you by not letting you read it unless you pay me?

      Yes, I know you said "a precedent for censorship" but they are just weasel words.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by ruir ( 2709173 )
        They dont are exactly locking it in a drawer, are they? They are making ISPs working for free for them, to try to hide something that is already in tech terms in the public domain.

  • I wonder big the list is of industries/products that throughout human history have disappeared because of changes in technology.
    I wonder if the phonographic industry realises that they are on that list and marked in red "pending".
    I wonder if they realise that once an industry/product is on that list you can never come off.
    BTW this list is called human progress.

    • Unless you think that people are going to stop watching films or listening to popular music, then no, the film and music industries are not going to disappear.

      I know people on slashdot think that everything can be made for free, but especially in the case of films, that simply isn't true. The industries are there because one man and his laptop can't make a big glossy Hollywood film.

      As to whether big glossy Hollywood films need to be made, that is a different question. But as an awful lot of people se

  • For various definitions of "distribute"
    Your mileage may vary

  • Dear BPI, (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Tastecicles ( 1153671 ) on Wednesday October 24, 2012 @04:51AM (#41749679)

    Fuck off, you do not hold any copyrights yourselves, therefore you are NOT LEGALLY QUALIFIED TO COMPLAIN.

    Yours Sincerely,

    Everybody.

    • NO STOP ABORT!

      Don't listen to them BPI. Please continue your research in the name of your artists. Please continue you send these letters to ISPs. Thanks to your efforts I just discovered a new torrent site.

      God bless the BPI and all you do for your artists by publishing a list of places we can pirate their material.

      • Be sure to grab some Barbra Streisand while you're there.

      • True story:

        At one ISP I worked at, the abuse@ DMCA notices were filtered into a separate mailbox, and was only read / searched to find links to download. This was, of course, not in USA :)

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Thiez ( 1281866 )

      That isn't a very meaningful limitation. All posters here are copyright holders, as you hold the copyright of your own post. Anyone who has ever drawn a picture or written a paragraph is a copyright owner. With the exception of infants, I don't think you would be able to find anyone who is *not* a copyright holder.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by FBeans ( 2201802 )

        Close. It's theoretically true. In practice much of what is said on Slashdot is a carbon copy of something somebody else said. So point 1. You can't copyright something that isn't actually yours. Point 2. Copyright law states that one must actively announce that the content is copyrighted, that it is not to be replicated without consent, and any breaches must be actively fought.

        Summary: 'All posters here are copyright holders' - Not true in practical terms, just because we all /can/ be, doesn't mean we all

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by mcgrew ( 92797 ) *

          Your points are all missing the point: you can't copyright an idea, only its presentation. If I say the same thing you said in exactly the same words, I violate copyright. If I reword it, I'm not in violation.

          You hold copyright to the comment you just wrote, unless you cut and pasted it from someone else's comment. Likewise, this comment is automatically granted copyright to me.

          Your using patent to explain your incorrect view of copyright is likewise 100% ignorant. It doesn't matter how obvious my nobot sto

    • And, as usual, slashdotters flip flop between a legalistic approach and "I don't care what the law says, I care what's RIGHT" depending on their personal stances on any particular issue.

      Yours sincerely,

      Somebody

    • Fuck off, you do not hold any copyrights yourselves, therefore you are NOT LEGALLY QUALIFIED TO COMPLAIN.

      Yours Sincerely,

      Everybody.

      As the discoverer of this amazing legal loophole, I trust you have informed the ISPs concerned so that they can rebuff teh evil BPI with a few well chosen words?

      • Actually I didn't. Recent precedent proves it.

        I quote from a comment I made on the Authors Guild -v- Hathitrust (11 CV 5361 (HB)) decision a couple weeks ago:

        ABKO Music Inc. v. Harrisongs Music, Ltd., 944 F.2d 971, 980 (2d Cir. 1991) (“[T]he Copyright Act does not permit copyright holders to choose third parties to bring suits on their behalf.”

  • Well, I guess... (Score:3)

    by Tastecicles ( 1153671 ) on Wednesday October 24, 2012 @04:54AM (#41749689)

    BT, Sky, Virgin Media, O2, EE and TalkTalk have just driven the final nail in Trust's casket. I've just called O2 and told them where to put their SIM contract.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Switch to Andrews and Arnold (HTTP://www.aaisp.com) they have an anti censorship policy.

  • Market forces (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Just take your business to plusnet

    It's cheaper and they don't block any sites.

  • Given widespread surveillance, by law or otherwise it will and has driven people to encrypt all traffic. My traffic is like my mail. You cannot look into every letter just because you suspect copyright infringement. You need a court order allowing you to pry into my mail. I do not like people reading my mail, even if I am only wishing my mother happy birthday. It's none of your business. Encrypt your mail/communications. Private means private. I rent a mail service from my ISP, to deliver the friggin ma

    • That's an idea - Firefox with HTTPS everywhere, and an automatic failover to Tor for everything else using FoxyProxy. Time to upgrade my net connection and start an exit node...

  • "It follows a separate court order in April which saw popular file-sharing site The Pirate Bay blocked in the UK."

    PMSL! The block is about as effective as putting a cat in a wet paper bag. Why are they wasting the time of the ISPs and legal system persuing this pointless venture? Who at the BPI is actually stupid enough to think this is effective?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jimicus ( 737525 )

      It doesn't need to be effective against everyone. It just needs to be enough of an inconvenience that those who can't figure their way around it will instead sign up for something like Netflix or Spotify.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mwvdlee ( 775178 )

        All of them were smart enough to be able to use a bittorrent client and browse bittorrent sites.
        They will be smart enough to use whatever plug-and-play method the internet will invent to circumvent these bans.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by pgdave ( 1774092 )

          All of them were smart enough to be able to use a bittorrent client and browse bittorrent sites. They will be smart enough to use whatever plug-and-play method the internet will invent to circumvent these bans.

          "whatever plug-and-play method the internet has already invented to circumvent these bans".

          FIFY

  • Remember that time... (Score:4, Informative)

    by FBeans ( 2201802 ) on Wednesday October 24, 2012 @05:32AM (#41749865)

    Remember that time where the internet was freedom? Where one could create a website, it was subject to law, like any other act. Remember when the providers of the internet buckled under the pressure from "the powers that be". Sites could be blocked, freedom quashed, because somebody didn't like the content of a site, because somebody thought it aided in crime and law breaking, despite not breaking any laws itself.

    When we start forcing ISPs to block sites, based on anything other than law, we open gates that will never be closed. One leads to more, more to many and eventually freedom on the internet will be dead.

    This is the key issue we are dealing with. It is getting overlooked because "piracy is bad". We have many other questions to ask: does blocking these sites even /help/ the problem of piracy? this [bbc.co.uk] suggests not! Is piracy really the problem, perhaps the intermediate companies between consumer and author's of content are to blame somewhat?

    Why do we have to constantly start making much larger problems while trying to fix smaller ones. Fix the music industry, the film industry, the E-book-monolopy that Amazon is building, fix the problem at the root. Provide consumers with a modern, suitable market in which they pay the author's of content for their products, for a price that represents the true worth of that product. Allow the consumer to have freedom with that product to use it in any device, in any form. Provide a good service, that is value-for-money, and people /will/ use it. We've seen it work before [torrentfreak.com]

    Leave the internet alone, once the gates are open the wars begin....

    (This is one army, preparing arms... [internetde...league.org]

    • Of course I remember that time. We're still in it. They have the freedom to be asshats and the power to change the law. We have the freedom, and indeed a duty, to disagree with and resist their conceited laws. Nothing's changed on that front, it's all business as abnormal.

      "When there is peace, the warlike man attacks himself" - that's Nietzsche, and his point is that there really is no peace. There's always some war, somewhere, with someone. And there are no winners or losers either... just those who are st

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • It's the fucking capitalist pseudo-free market that's the problem, despite the bleatings of American libertarians.
  • So what's the closes thing to EFF in UK? Any ideas?
  • Really, all along the **IA and their ilk have been claiming that pirating is responsible for lost sales, that is 1 pirated move == 1 lost DVD sale or bum on cinema seat... so based on that argument, now that pirating is getting really hard to do a corresponding sales increase will ensue! right? Right?!

  • I moved out of the UK 13 yrs ago, and im no longer part of the daily culture, but I get surprised at how far my homeland has gone in terms of nanny state/police state/big brother.

    How did we get to this stage? Is it Camerons gov. that has done the damge, or did blair set the groundwork? I used to take great pride in my nationality, but this is one conversational topic where you hesitate in admitting your British.

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