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Piracy Government United Kingdom

UK IP Chief Wants ISPs To Police Piracy Proactively 87

An anonymous reader sends this report from TorrentFreak: The UK's top IP advisor has published recommendations on how Internet service providers should deal with online piracy. Among other things, he suggested that Internet services should search for and filter infringing content proactively. According to the report, ISPs have a moral obligation to do more against online piracy. Mike Weatherley, a Conservative MP and Intellectual Property Adviser to UK Prime Minister David Cameron, has pushed various copyright related topics onto the political agenda since early last year. Previously Weatherley suggested that search engines should blacklist pirate sites, kids should be educated on copyright ethics, and that persistent file-sharers should be thrown in jail.
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UK IP Chief Wants ISPs To Police Piracy Proactively

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  • by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 01, 2015 @02:23AM (#49384171)

    They need to do something. Local bobby on the beat? Gone. Investigate burglaries, assault, vandalism, all on camera - no chance. How about going after someone that said something naughty on twitter, yes, they'll do that. Terrorists out in the open, hate crimes from muslim groups, no fucking chance. They're so lazy today they don't even bother with speed camera behind bus stops.

    Anyone visiting from another country would wonder whether the nation has a police force. They gobble up plenty of money, but what they do for it is anyone's guess.

    • by davester666 ( 731373 ) on Wednesday April 01, 2015 @03:18AM (#49384287) Journal

      IP is worth approximate a jillion times more than the total value of all physical goods sold for the entire existence of humans on this planet, so yes, it should be the priority of every single human being on the planet to ensure every copy is paid for.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      They need to do something. Local bobby on the beat? Gone. Investigate burglaries, assault, vandalism, all on camera - no chance. How about going after someone that said something naughty on twitter, yes, they'll do that. Terrorists out in the open, hate crimes from muslim groups, no fucking chance. They're so lazy today they don't even bother with speed camera behind bus stops.

      Anyone visiting from another country would wonder whether the nation has a police force. They gobble up plenty of money, but what they do for it is anyone's guess.

      It's so true. Basically reporting any crime that isn't worthy will get a default response of "we'll check the cameras and let you know", which is code for "fuck off, you annoying pleb".

      There is an upside to the lack of police on the beat though, at least you're much less likely to be beaten to death by cops in the UK than in the US.

  • Moral obligation? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ashkante ( 1714490 ) on Wednesday April 01, 2015 @02:24AM (#49384175)
    ISPs have about as much 'moral obligation' to filter pirate content as do power grid companies to filter electricity used for the same. And it's about as hard to implement, I'd imagine.
    • by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 01, 2015 @02:35AM (#49384193)

      ISPs have just as much moral obligation to filter pirate content as IP holders & lawmakers have moral obligation to make all IP go into the public domain within 5 years.

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) *

      It's a clever plan to drum up business for VPN providers. Between website blockades and spying they are really helping push up subscriber numbers.

  • My two cents (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    American here.

    I agree that ISPs should monitor our traffic and deal with it appropriately. I agree so much that I think we should extend the idea to traffic on real-life roads. Yes, we should have roads policing us. Not cops, but roads. If a road detects someone doing something criminal (we need to design the right of kind A.I.), we can program it to stick spikes up from itself to stop us.

    • by MrL0G1C ( 867445 )

      You should watch what you wish for, it is likely possible to use tech as cheap as bottom of the range smart phones to monitor traffic, detect violations, keep a video snippet, transfer it to some computer which posts the video online and mails you a letter detailing the fine and a link to the video+password. If it'd stop drivers from playing with their phones whilst driving I'd be for it.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    I mean... as long as "want" goes!

  • ... until software stops being so expensive and TV shows stop being delayed and locked down by DRM. It's that simple. Let me buy a cheap subscription, let me convert it and stream it to any device I own... or bust.
    • ... until software stops being so expensive and TV shows stop being delayed and locked down by DRM. It's that simple. Let me buy a cheap subscription, let me convert it and stream it to any device I own... or bust.

      That is a blatant lie. Take as evidence iOS jailbreakers who do it so they can download $0.99 apps for free. There are plenty of people who are never going to pay anything if they can get away with it. I don't care what you do, but don't tell us that nonsense about stuff being too expensive.

      If you think for example that a computer game is too expensive and you pirate it, surely you should put the amount that you think is correct in an envelope and send it to the producer of the game? How many people are

      • by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 01, 2015 @03:40AM (#49384331)

        That is a particularly badly thought out response. Of course there will always be people who are prepared to pirate in order to avoid spending $.99, but these people would not have spent the money in the first place, so they are of no consequence. What matters is the people who would pay regularly and substantially but who are so inconvenienced by DRM or who perceive that so much of what they are paying is going straight into the pockets of middlemen that they choose to pirate instead.

        There are lots of pieces of software which are effectively donationware, and if a developer gives an easy method of donating and acknowledges those donations then I will be happy to send a few dollars - indeed, where a developer provides both a Google Play store version and a downloadable APK, I choose to download the latter and then send money e.g. by PayPal to them, because I'll be fucked if I'm going to accept someone taking a 30% cut for payment processing and adding to an automated catalogue. Just because your thought processes are based on regulations rather than values, it doesn't mean that most people choose to offload responsibility like that.

      • by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 01, 2015 @03:53AM (#49384353)

        OK, where IS that evidence?

        Go on, all you did was tell us to look at it, you never supplied.

        Why not look at the greatest "pirates" were the biggest buyers, or how when the biggest filesharing network was canned, the increase in revenue by the music industry fell into a decline within six months.

        How about we look at that evidence?

        Not to mention the evidence that the "IP industry" have already broken the contract, so I feel no obligation to feel the slightest twinge of guilt at their "loss" even if it killed the entire set of intellectual property and dropped millions into poverty.

        • I don't pirate Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. Why? Because it's available via an affordable subscription to watch whenever I want. Go Netflix!

        • OP also fails to take into account artists make money from ticket sales of concerts. In the grand scheme is it trivial the concert goer didn't drop $20 on the artists cd, yet never having heard the artist liked them so much they went to see them in concert.

          Or the person that pirates a new release movie and ends up loving it so much from watching it at home they end up going to see it multiple times in the theater.
      • Take as evidence iOS jailbreakers who do it so they can download $0.99 apps for free. There are plenty of people who are never going to pay anything if they can get away with it.

        Well sure. On the other hand, look at iTunes. Before iTunes Napster et all were wildly popular. Then Apple starts offering downloads at $0.99 a track and suddenly they're making a ton of money and the music filesharing sites seemed to lose all traction. Lowering the price may not have solved the problem, but it greatly reduced it

      • Ever buy a cd because you heard a song and liked it? Find out the rest of the cd is crap? Expensive song wasn't it?

        Ever buy a game that didn't live up to it's hype or the hype of reviews? Ever feel robbed by a game company?

        Ever been to a film you walked out in the middle of? Ever feel robbed?

        Pricing is one point of piracy, a customer feeling disenfranchised for having been taken before is another, a small portion of those that pirate could fall into the spectrum of those that will/would never pay for any
        • Tell me again why I am paying $60 for a new release on Steam that didn't have to get stamped, packaged, stored and shipped to a store for someone to place on a shelf for me to purchase yet costs the same?

          Due to a fiduciary responsibility to maximize shareholder value (and in acknowledgement of the escalating costs of executive bonuses, cocaine, and hookers) to maximize out synergies and leverage existing payment schemes the board has elected to treat virtual goods as costing the same as physical goods.

          The c

      • I do pirate games, what I do is play it, if I like it I'll purchase it legally, if not I uninstall it delete it and never look back.

        Sometimes I purchase more than my share. I recently gave 3 Steam friends a copy of a game on Steam the game is $30 per copy. I enjoy the title, I think it's a fresh take on a game idea and unlike most of what's out there. They accomplished a lot with a little. So I in essence have shown my support by purchasing 4 copies of the title. If that's not supporting a developer I don'
      • Yes, lots of people aren't going to pay for anything. We shouldn't worry about them, as they were never going to be customers. The important question is not how many people will get illicit copies but how many people will actually pay.

        This turns out to be more complicated than people might think. Some people will buy if they can't copy. Some people will buy only if they can get a free look. Some people will buy only if the DRM isn't too inconvenient. Some people will buy only if they can get a copy

  • by Stormwatch ( 703920 ) <rodrigogirao@POL ... om minus painter> on Wednesday April 01, 2015 @03:24AM (#49384303) Homepage

    To learn about copyright ethics -- that is, how unethical the very concept is -- be sure to read Boldrin & Levine's Against Intellectual Monopoly [ucla.edu] and Lessig's Free Culture. [free-culture.cc]

  • by serviscope_minor ( 664417 ) on Wednesday April 01, 2015 @03:25AM (#49384309) Journal

    Damn right they should educate kids on the ethics!

    You know about how copyright was about enhancing the greater good by restricting the free flow of ideas temporarily to improve the pool of ideas and how the current insane terms break this contract.

    So he doesn't actually mean that, (surprise! he's a liar!) what he actually means is educate kids with corporate propaganda.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • He's a Conservative. There's probably some angle in there, where either him or his friends stand to benefit.

        Well that's totally unlike Labour who generally have some angle where they or their friends benefit.

        Hopefully we're moving to a more multi-party parliament this time.

      • Whilst I am no fan of the Tory Party or their policies in general, a quick look at his Wiki page suggests he's not the cartoon villain you might suggest. He is also not standing for election in the forthcoming General Election, presumably on health grounds.

  • Providers will do all they wants and will use user's data for their own purposes. The blocking pirate sites is not business of providers
  • by Anonymous Coward

    Do not route yourself to the internet, Mr IP Man.

  • MediaDefender (Score:4, Interesting)

    by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Wednesday April 01, 2015 @03:59AM (#49384369)

    Yep I fully agree. I hope they start knocking off all sorts of legitimate media as a result because how the hell are they supposed to identify is any specific website hosting content actually owns that IP? What with thousands of publishers owning the IP rights to billions of pieces of media who knows if Sony has the right to distribute a video they are showing on their own website? Heck streaming a football match on ESPN isn't even certain. Maybe there's a dispute in the background and they don't own the IP there either.

    I saw we block everything, starting with all the media companies. Man that would make the internet far more pleasant.

  • I completely agree (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Alain Williams ( 2972 ) <addw@phcomp.co.uk> on Wednesday April 01, 2015 @04:02AM (#49384379) Homepage

    Also:

    • * the post office should also check every parcel
    • * the train company to check that no passenger is a crook travelling to do a robbery
    • * bakeries that no one buying buns is going to put poison in them and so kill old ladies
    • * clothing shops that no one buying a mac is a flasher

    The word will be a safer place if everyone checked that their customers were innocent!

  • All this will do is force the file sharers to start encrypting everything. Give me access to the content I want, when I want it (I live outside the USA) and I will gladly pay. Until then, I will gladly pirate what I want, when I want it.
  • ... will they be given guns, or batons at least?
    • ... will they be given guns, or batons at least?

      Of course they will. They'd also get spare military equipment (if there was any). These file sharers are hard core crims don'tchaknow.

  • civil vs criminal (Score:5, Informative)

    by pr100 ( 653298 ) on Wednesday April 01, 2015 @04:34AM (#49384475)

    The police should be interested in criminal offences, not civil matters. Copyright is complicated because (in the UK at least) infringement can be both, but the two aspects get conflated. The criminal offences (broadly) are to do with dealing in infringing items for profit, and it's reasonable that the police pursue people committing such offences.

    The issue of whether these things *should* be offences is a separate matter. What we don't want is the police deciding which offences they're going to try to enforce. If society doesn't want criminal copyright infringement then that should be for legislators to decide, not law enforcement.

  • Rules are differrent there than in the US, but I doubt that there's no money channel to himself, his party, or someone about whom he cares enough to sell out Her Majesty's subjects in favor of the money.

    • His owners are the same ones that own all of UK politics: The US.

      People here in the UK are supporting the likes of UKIP because they'll keep those pesky Europeans at bay - the thing is, Europe is like a pussy cat compared to the behind-the-scenes back-channel under-the-counter pressure that comes from the US.

  • ... in a political backlash.

    so most of these statements are just noise.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • I'll torrent via the UK link of my VPN to give them some work to do.

  • The UK's top IP advisor has published recommendations on how Internet service providers should deal with online piracy. Among other things, he suggested that Internet services should search for and filter infringing content proactively.

    Now, does the top IP advisor who hasn't been bought and paid for by the media industry/conglomerates have anything to add? ......*crickets chirping*.....
    Yeah, didn't think so.

  • by Wowsers ( 1151731 ) on Wednesday April 01, 2015 @07:11AM (#49384897) Journal

    By strange coincidence, a politician who wants ISPs to pay for the job the film and music industry should do if they want, is paid by: http://www.theyworkforyou.com/... [theyworkforyou.com]

    Name of donor: Motion Picture Licensing Co Ltd
    and
    Name of donor: CASBAA (Cable and Satellite Broadcasting Association of Asia)

  • So when will media companies and governments that pass bad copyright laws get educated on ethics.
  • With the stories today I'm sometimes not sure if I should attribute to April Fools and other stories I just wish I could attribute to April Fools...
  • By using their standards if you could sue the gov because you or a loved one got in an accident on the M1.

    Obviously the government provided that road, they should also be responsible for stopping accidents proactively.
  • What business would ever actively drop their own paying customers? Makes no sense.
  • Oh gosh, it sure took me a while to get it, but I finally did! This one is a doozey!
    HAHA HAHA HAHA This is hilarious. So many amazing prank articles out today and this one is the best!

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