BPI Defends Anti-File-Sharing Partnership With Virgin Media

MrSteveSD writes "The British Phonographic Industry (BPI) has responded to criticism by Bill Thomson over its collusion with Virgin Media in targeting UK file sharers. BPI chief executive Geoff Taylor personally wrote to the BBC to set things straight, and he asserts that 'it's Mr Thompson, rather than music companies, who is stuck in the past.' Of course, Virgin Media customers who download music and TV legally often find their connections being turned down to unusable speeds due to Virgin's aggressive throttling policy." Mike also points out a blog entry that describes one of the letters received by a Virgin Media customer. In the letter were suggestions regarding the customer's router settings and anti-virus software.

Re:thats what happens when

[Anonymous Coward]

you let a record company also run an isp.

The record label was sold off a long long time ago. The only thing that's the same is the name. But don't let that little fact bother you.

Re:thats what happens when

[mdmkolbe]

There are laws against running businesses cross fields. They are called Anti-Trust laws in the USA ("trust" being an old word that approximately means monopoly).

Unfortunately the scope and enforcement of these laws is very narrow as punishing a successful company for being successful is viewed as a bad thing. Basically the only time the law will be enforced is if a monopoly power (e.g. Microsoft) in one area (e.g. operating systems) uses that power to get an unfair advantage in another area (e.g. web browsers).

(IANAL, YMMV, etc.)

Re:difference ?

[JPRelph]

Not as much as you'd think. Virgin Media is basically NTL:Telewest with a new name. Basically after NTL and Telewest merged, they bought out Virgin Mobile (a cell provider with, again, very little connection to the original Virgin business in records). Richard Branson ended up with a pile of cash and a 10.7% stake in the new company because of that. That just added the mobile operator to the mix though, the bulk of Virgin Media is basically still NTL:Telewest, just with the Virgin brand attached to try and lose some of the smell that NTL and Telewest picked up over the years. It's not really working too well.

Re:Tor Node: Who is liable ?

[alexgieg]

If I lend my house to some idiot, and there is a report of someone having brought stolen property into my house, that doesn't make me a thief

Unfortunately, it can make you lose your house anyway: Asset forfeiture [wikipedia.org].

Re:thats what happens when

[NormalVisual]

We have a Justice Department that is absolutely unwilling to prosecute any big corporations for anti-trust. It's been like this for the last 2 decades...

I agree that the current DoJ is very averse to anti-trust actions, but the "2 decades" part is provably false - Clinton's DoJ successfully pursued an anti-trust action, and the only reason MS got off scot-free was because of an idiot judge that couldn't keep his mouth closed, resulting in an appeal that spilled over into Dubya's term, at which time the new Bush DoJ decided to let MS off with a hand slap even though the appeals court upheld the original finding of MS's guilt.

My ISP's TSA

[LM741N]

explicitly forbids open WiFi routers and they actually go around in trucks looking for them.