Virgin Media To Spy On & Threaten Downloaders

Mike writes "Virgin Media, the UK's largest cable-modem provider, has decided that it will spy on its users to protect record industry profits. Starting next week Virgin Media will send letters to thousands of households where they suspect music is either being downloaded or illegally shared. The campaign is a joint venture between Virgin Media and the British Phonographic Industry (BPI), which represents the major record labels. The BPI ultimately wants Internet companies to implement a 'three strikes and out' rule to warn and ultimately disconnect the estimated 6.5 million customers whose accounts are (supposedly) used for regular criminal activity. In other words, you download a few songs and they'll come along and cut off the one wire that delivers freedom of speech, freedom of the press and freedom of assembly."

Cut the one wire that delivers alternative content

[Odder (1288958)]

How obvious can an anti-trust and privacy case be? You just know that the internet will become an RIAA only music store for those 6.5 million people.

People with wealth and power are doing this because they think they can and they must. The political opinions expressed outside of broadcast media will eliminated along with economic threats to the music industry. People who believe in justice and the rule of law are an economic threat too, so this is all the same animal and that's why media consolidation and broadcast itself suck. Society must prevent this and may be able to because so many stand to win as a few lose.

Virgin Music AND Virgin ISP?

[Simonetta (207550)]

Virgin Music AND Virgin ISP? Now the marketers that put this together for Sir Richard were convinced that this was a good idea. But it is turning out to be the marriage from hell. Did the lunatics who came up with Daimler-Chrysler have anything to do with this?

    Now if someone in Virgin were smart (and when are virgins ever smart?) they would give reduced or even near free downloads to Virgin Music's recordings. And do it in such a way that the anti-monopoly regulators can't do anything about it. Pure Syzygy. But these bozos are turning Virgin into the most hated conglomerate in the UK. Smooth move for a company that relies on its prominent logo as a universal brand of quality among youthful consumers.

    However it appears that in Virgin only Sir Richard has any brains. Does he hire dolts in order to appear that no one in the organization looks cooler than he does?

Re:Virgin Music AND Virgin ISP?

[mikael (484)]

It started because NTL (cable operator) decided to buy out TeleWest (another cable operator), mainly because Telewest was able to remain in the black and NTL kept making a loss and had poor customer service. Both networks had invested heavily in infrastructure and were struggling to make a profit.

NTL seals $6bn Telewest takeover [bbc.co.uk]

Then Virgin Mobile andd NTL:Telewest merged. Branson accepted a 10.7% shareholder offer in return for being able to use the Virgin brandname. The motivation for this was to compete against BSkyB, but the side effect was to cause the loss of Sky One and Sky News (a bit pathetic because Sky News can still be viewed using broadband, if only in 10 minute segments), and caused more financial loss to Sky (through advertising revenue) that to Virgin.

Virgin media [wikipedia.org].

From the viewpoint of a customer, the side effect of the cable network being bought out by Virgin, has been to have information packs translated into ValleyGirl Speak. The first line was "Hello you!" and an reassuring statement "We're not going to bamboozle you with technobabble, so we've renamed all our services in easy to understand S(mall), (M)edium, (L)arge and (XL)extra-large. Just as bad as sky referring to the receiver unit as the "digibox".

Re:Cut the one wire that delivers alternative cont

[snl2587 (1177409)]

The real issues are the domestic, warrantless spying and the attempt to bring down Bittorrent even for legal filesharing. Everything else is secondary.

Re:I agree

[thtrgremlin (1158085)]

Cutting a person's net access is the modern equivalent of exile.

Or even cultural excommunication. Something typically reserved for convicted felons that received due process... but in the way we communicated in the past, felons were still capable of rebelling against the system that was against them. In a growing way, internet ban means an inability to fight back.

I remember when I didn't understand how people equated free speech with a right to net access. I am certain this is what they feared. This broad and loose way of getting dissidents off the net opens the door for keeping "other types of criminals" off the net. That doesn't necessarily make sense to me now, but I have a feeling it will be no surprise when lobbyists start pushing and making headway with a list of "others".

Re:I agree

[dedazo (737510)]

Implying that we're all getting shipped off to the Gulag for using Azureus: Sensationalist

Deliberately confusing copyright with freedom of speech and trying to make a point that it should be eliminated because you don't like it, when the problem is really in the enforcement: Disingenuous.

Posting on the same thread with four different accounts and trolling Mactrope and willyhill: Dishonest.

I would add that I feel that P2P traffic (or any type of traffic) should not be throttled, regulated, filtered or otherwise meddled with simply because the vast majority of it revolves around copyright infringement is wrong. However, that's also disingenuous because it ignores the problem and makes the case that it could be fixed if the people who produce the content would just be nice enough to bend over and enjoy it.

Re:I agree

[Mistshadow2k4 (748958)]

You eliminate the incentives, you cut back drastically on peoples' willingness to produce, not just the willingness to publish or distribute. Which means that the spread and development of culture and ideas slows down.

Yeah, that's why open source software is decades behind proprietary software and there are so few open source developers.... oh, wait, it's not like that. Maybe they have plenty of developers and state-of-the-art software in most areas because they attract the people who care about producing a good product, rather than manufactured stars who just want their money. Kind of like the musicians of old whose copyright privileges only covered someone else trying to steal the credit of composing music. You do know that there were musicians before music could be recorded and controlled by the record companies, right? I wonder why, as their copyright so limited, they would bother, since there wasn't much incentive for them to be musicians at all by your argument.

Re:Seems simple enough!

[MightyYar (622222)]

Are you talking about the politician-buying, 95-year-copyright-term corporate assholes or the people who are ignoring their asinine little power grab?

There's more than one "criminal" here.

You can't ignore them.

[Odder (1288958)]

These are the reasons corporate assholes fear a free press [lewrockwell.com]. They want to be above the law in every way and they don't want you to have a way to complain or do anything about it.

Hyperbole

[whisper_jeff (680366)]

In other words, you download a few songs and they'll come along and cut off the one wire that delivers freedom of speech, freedom of the press and freedom of assembly.

For those who are unclear on the definition of "hyperbole", please read the above quoted sentence.

Re:Hyperbole

[The Angry Mick (632931)]

Seriously. Here's the headline and teaser text from the same story as presented by ArsTechnica, which is painted in a vastly different light:

UK ISP bows to record industry, to send P2P warning letters:
British ISP Virgin Media has come to an agreement with the BPI, which represents the record industry, to warn filesharers on its network about the dangers of copyright infringement.

.

Re:Hyperbole

[Albanach (527650)]

Yes, The Register had a much more balanced article too: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/06/06/virgin_media_bpi_deal/ [theregister.co.uk].From that article, 'At this stage there will be no "three strikes" process; customers who continue to fileshare illegally will not be disconnected.'

Virgin are also quoted as saying it was unwilling to disconnect customers who don't stop accessing illegal music. A spokesman said: "It's a bit of a judgement call for us to be making threats of disconnection or account suspension. We weren't willing to do that. There are now so many lawful cheap and free music services out there that we believe an education campaign in partnership with the BPI is the best way forward."

Seems Virgin aren't quite being the bad guys the summary makes out.

Re:Hyperbole

[blowdart (31458)]

And it, of course, shows a stunning lack of understanding of geography or other countries. The UK has no enshrined right to free speech, the right to assembly has been slowly curtailed since the 1980s, starting with laws to stop raves, and then to stop political demonstrations in certain areas (like outside parliament) and cutting off a personal internet account doesn't stop journalists reporting.

The three strikes "solution" is problematic however; because suddenly a corporation is policing something. And that is more worrying than anything else.

Re:Hyperbole

[whisper_jeff (680366)]

There is no other way besides the internet to make my views known to more than a few people.

Sorry, but if you believe that, then you are out of touch. Or, to put it more directly - how do you think people exercised those freedoms before the internet? Somehow, hundreds of people throughout history managed to make their views known to more than a few people without the internet. So, I say again, hyperbole.

Good for them...

[Bullfish (858648)]

my belief is that this tactic will work out equally as well as it has in the US and elsewhere. Now... the real issue for me is why do so many of these industry people believe that they can implement a stupid idea better than the last guy?

markets and competition

[drDugan (219551)]

Good thing there are still some competition on who provides Internet service. I expect that this behavior would have the obvious effect that users will simply use different providers: providers that focus on their customers and not other business' interests.

Here in the San Francisco area, for example, there are locally owned ISP companies that have focused on high quality service and support and have grown and down well while providing DSL at faster speeds and lower cost than the larger providers.

shall we at least consider the alternatives?

[v1 (525388)]

"...they'll come along and cut off the one wire that delivers freedom of speech, freedom of the press and freedom of assembly."

TFA makes it sound like the internet is the only way to exercise these liberties. I suppose blowing up the courthouse is also one way for me to exercise my voice but they seem to have made that one illegal. Shame on them!

That is what comes

[Chrisq (894406)]

From using a record company as your ISP. Anyone could have predicted that they would be tougher on illegal downloads than ISPs that are mainly communications companies.

It bears repeating time and again

[MikeRT (947531)]

Until intellectual property law is forced to conform to the same expectations that private property has, it will never have universal legitimacy in the culture the way that physical property has (except with thieves and Socialists; I repeat myself...)

A modest proposal:

1) Outlaw implied contracts. When I buy a movie, CD, program, etc., unless I sign something in writing, prior to the purchase, any "contract" should be null and void, and any effort to enforce it should be criminal activity.

2) Copyright infringement by sharing copyrighted data is treated as theft, with goods valued for the purpose of assessment under existing property laws at current market value. Copyright infringement by accident, like posting a single picture you weren't supposed to on your site is not a crime at all or at the worst gets you a slap on the wrist.

3) Copyright holders cannot restrict how any one copy of their work is used by buyers, except to make them respect the artificial scarcity of copyright law. Meaning, if I want to resell iPhones with jail-broken OSs and tons of apps, Apple cannot legally interfere with my customers' enjoyment of their iPhone and its OS anymore than Honda could interfere with my customers if I were selling modified racing civics (except to cut off their warranty).

Re:It bears repeating time and again

[Actually, I do RTFA (1058596)]

3) Copyright holders cannot restrict how any one copy of their work is used by buyers, except to make them respect the artificial scarcity of copyright law.

I'm not sure I believe in this. The ability to create derivative works is not just to protect the value of the intellectual property. It is also to protect the integrity. Think about how horrible it would be if you could take classic films (like Star Wars), and add tons of CG effects, and resell them.

Phew!

[Tx (96709)]

At first, I read "British Pornographic Industry", and I was seriously worried! But its only the music, so I think I'm safe.

Virgin this...

[hyades1 (1149581)]

The wonderful thing about huge, sprawling conglomerates like Virgin is that there's no shortage of ways to hit back at them when they pull this kind of bullshit.

Do you have a Virgin cell phone? Pound it to slag and mail it back to the bastards, along with a letter explaining why you won't be needing their services anymore. Tell your travel agent that you won't accept a flight on any Virgin plane, and drop them a line telling them about it. Show up at good old Sir Richard's next publicity stunt with appropriately humorous and offensive signs.

The beauty of it is that if enough people act, the pressure doesn't have to be kept up for long to have a real effect on the bottom line. How long would it take before losses in other areas overtake any possible gain from Virgin's Nazi-esque assault on free speech?

it'll be a step too far for most ISPs as well

[thermian (1267986)]

Cut off over 6 million paying customers?

No way that's ever going to happen. No industry in its right mind would destroy itself to satisfy the needs of another.

Re:Sheesh

[nogginthenog (582552)]

AFAIK the Virgin companies are not linked, they just paid Richard Branson for the use of the name. Virgin Media is still NTL:Telewest under the hood...

Re:over-reaching FUD

[Floritard (1058660)]

Really, how does the internet deliver freedom of assembly?

The irony being, you've posted this question on a public forum.