Movie Industry Files Injunction Against UK ISP 165
daedae writes "The Motion Picture Association (MPA), which represents studios including Twentieth Century Fox and Walt Disney, have filed suit in the UK against BT, Britain's largest ISP. The studios are asking for an injunction which would force BT to block access to Newzbin, on the grounds of massive losses to Usenet piracy."
Fun quote (Score:5, Insightful)
"The applicants and others have been making huge efforts, not only against the Newzbin website, but against piracy in general and yet the industries are still suffering huge losses to piracy," Richard Spearman, representing the MPA, told the court.
I guess this is as close we'll ever get to hearing them say "Over the past 10 years we've spent a lot of our members' cash trying to kill off sharing sites, yet we've ultimately proven ineffective."
Apple, Amazon, Spotify, and others have affected piracy far more than the RIAA/MPAA/etc. ever will.
Re:Again??? (Score:5, Insightful)
The American movie industry has been trying to censor the entire world's internet, in case you hadn't noticed. It being the UK this time is nothing special.
That's what happens (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Again??? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: Would otherwise have purchased them? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:So friggin' what! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Hehe, so much for cooperating (Score:5, Insightful)
Just as bad is the fact that they want to use Cleanfeed, the system that silently and transparently blocks child porn sites. Talk about a slippery slope. We were assured that this system would not be abused for commercial reasons, it was purely for blocking the worst examples of child abuse.
BT has a history of screwing its customers. They throttle iPlayer and YouTube so you can't watch the high quality streams in the evenings, and heavily retard (or "manage" as they prefer) P2P traffic. They have data unlimits* too. They also conducted secret Phorm trials and somehow got away without anyone going to jail. Oh, and according to Ofcom their "up to 20Mb" service gets an average of about 7Mb.
* In ISP land "unlimited" now means the same thing as "limited", the only possible difference being that with unlimited sometimes the actual figure is a secret (e.g. Virgin's is 350GB/month but they don't publish it). I suppose it is a bit like flammable and inflammable. Therefore I am coining a new word: unlimit. It means the same thing as limit.
Genie is out the bottle (Score:4, Insightful)
At the end of the day, file sharing wont go away. It may well change forms and maybe even go back to sneaker net or "swap meets" but no matter what they do, they won't be able to get back to the 80s revenue streams. (It doesn't help that the music is more crap these days, but thats another argument)
At the end of the day, the world of file sharing has been changed forever by the internet. We can get offshore encrypted proxies for as little as $5.
The other major difference the net has made is that people are better connected and tend to gravitate to like minded people. In the world of instant communication, encryption and dropbox et all, sharing will just mutate into other forms, and groups with similar interests will create their own file sharing platforms and darknets.
Also in my area at least (or my interests) there are more artists giving stuff for free.
The days of mega money from media are gone. All this is akin to trying to put toothpaste back in the tube, it's not going to work.
Re:Genie is out the bottle (Score:5, Insightful)
When I was a student most other students had twin tape decks and shelves full of cassette tapes. Strangely enough, the "80s revenue streams" happened after that.