UK ISP Disconnecting Filesharers 106
bs0d3 writes "A small VPN service, Koppla, has had its service terminated by its host, Santrex Hosting Solutions. Despite actively advertising their services to be oriented toward file-sharing including torrents and XDCC, even going so far as to put 'Seedbox Hosting | An Effective Solution' in the title of their contact page, the UK based Santrex will independently act to terminate users who are thought to be distributing content that they don't own the copyright to. This is regardless of whether the infringement is done by a third party, as is the case with a VPN service such as Koppla."
WRONG! (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:WRONG! (Score:5, Insightful)
It's time that someone take a stand and show these mother fuckers who is really in charge here.
They have. They did. It's not you. It's not me.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Take a pill, AC. another_twilight didn't say he liked it, or that he wouldn't do anything to stop it. For all you know he could planing a raid on the ISP as we speak. All the man did was state the facts. The people in charge right now, and for the foreseeable future ain't who you want it to be.
Although his name *is* another_twilight, so we can assume he is at the very least partly responsible for why we can't have nice things.
Re: (Score:2)
Then there was the book/movie. But that was OK. I figured it was a flash in the pan. Then there were the sequels.
But that's OK. I figure in 5-10 years I'll be able to use the name and only a few old farts will snigger.
Re: (Score:1)
Don't hate the player, hate the game. Disapprove of the actions of the player, but understand that many of us can not help being children of our times.
The world is filled with people who don't even know what would be right, through no fault of their own, being born into the rotten state of things.
There are also many of those who'd know right from wrong, but can not be blamed for not wanting to put their ass on the line. I'm one. In principle I think people should be on the barricades, but my toddler trumps
Re: (Score:2)
actively defend their own enemy the way you do it
I am sorry, where do I defend this action? I was pointing out to the AC that was calling for action that action has been taken and neither he nor I are the ones who took it. I am sorry that facts offend, but there they are.
It's people like you who, when told to help us fight this shit, loudly declare that "they have already won" so you can justify always saying that "one can't change anything" and continue to sit on your asses!
Is it? What have you done? What are you doing? I saw a wonderful and generic call for 'action' like so many arm-chair generals do and pointed out that the 'enemy' has 'stolen the march' and have already acted. Please, offer me a suggestion of what I should be doing and I will discuss th
Re: (Score:2)
Spend some time reading about politics and history instead of watching Transformers X and channel your anger into protesting against the corrupt late capitalist system instead of whining anonymously on the internet.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Winning an election does not protect filthy politicians who ignore the constitution. They are stil enemies of the Nation.
Re: (Score:2)
Whats worse is that the "sheeple" keep electing the same people time and time again.
Look at the recent result in the New Zealand poll, they elected exactly the same people who ran the place before, the same people who are in the back pockets of the big media companies (especially the big film and TV production companies), big financial companies and the US government (Google "Bruce Simpson" if you want to find out how much in the pocket of the US government they are)
Re: (Score:2)
actually, this is against EU law, if I recall correctly.
Re: (Score:2)
Let's just hope that the file-sharers who have been disconnected have the tens or hundreds of thousands of pounds needed to bring an action against the ISP. Particularly as, these days, it seems you only have to try to intervene in a file-sharing case to get threatened with significant legal costs [torrentfreak.com].
Re:Same as booting a shoplifter out of a store... (Score:5, Insightful)
Not exactly. It's a store refusing service to someone who just happens to hang out with people they don't particularly like in their spare time.
Re: (Score:2)
That analogy seems rather stretched... It seems more like Mr A ISP going into the store with a big bag, grabbing a pile of stuff, walking out without paying, ducking into an alley, giving it to an anonymous individual, then when the store refuses to allow Mr A ISP on their property, he says "But I did not steal the goods, I'm just a carrier, you cannot punish me, I was an innocent party getting paid to do it!".
Re: (Score:2)
Whether or not you think filesharing is theft, it's not a criminal offense
No, as always gets pointed out on slashdot, filesharing is not theft, nor any other criminal offence in most countries. It is, however.a civil offence. And in the same way that a company wouldn't repeat a libel (for fear of getting sued themselves) so you can't expect them to condone copyright infringement.
Whether or not you think that libel and copyright infringement should be civil offences capable of being pursued in the courts for damages is another matter, of course.
Re: (Score:2)
grabbing a pile of stuff
Copying a pile of stuff.
Koppla wasn't an ISP, they couldn't claim immunity (Score:5, Interesting)
I am not quite sure what the story is here. Okay, so it is a bit rought that a business was put out of operation because it was being used to VPN up some torrent files - but it certainly didn't look like they were trying to hide it.
I mean "Hey, we offer great ways to avoid being caught when uploading torrents..." then "Awww.... we got shut down for uploading torrents..." really aren't to far apart in any business plan that starts with the first.
On the upside, the article points out that new EU rules take any sniffing out of the requirements for an ISP. So maybe this won't happen again.
I am really unsure which side to take here. I don't support the ludicrous fines and penalties that all of the **AA goons are trying to enforce, but I also don't support a business model that seems to be basically aimed at people breaking copyright of others.
Re:Koppla wasn't an ISP, they couldn't claim immun (Score:5, Interesting)
Except that the one advertising "Seedbox hosting" wasn't Koppla, it was Santrex, the ones who DID the disconnecting.
I'm thinking Honeypot, but I'm the paranoid sort.
Re: (Score:2)
Damn summaries and articles - or perhaps damn my comprehension ability today. I read that about five times as well as reading the article to try to work out why it was an issue.
If it is the parent company that is advertising itself as a pirate friendly ISP, then it's a bit of kettle and black pot, but at the same time, if Koppla is nice and clean, they will no doubt have zero problems switching over to another ISP with next to no problems or downtime for their customers.
Re:Koppla wasn't an ISP, they couldn't claim immun (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Koppla wasn't an ISP, they couldn't claim immun (Score:5, Insightful)
No, not at all. There are linux torrents, world of warcraft patches and wikileaks insurance policies that are perfectly legal uses for torrents.
Having said that, if I asked just about anyone I know what torrents they last downloaded - it would be rather unlikely to be one of the three examples above and it would also be unlikely that they were not downloading torrents containing copyrighted material.
While there are many legal uses for torrent files and peer to peer, I would really love to see a true (read: not produced by **AA or torrent*****.com - both of which I assume would be biased) percentage breakdown of illegal vs legal torrent use. If the numbers are overwhelmingly in favour of pirated material (which I think they likely are) then advertising a business as "seedbox friendly" is by definition somewhat clouded (at least in my mind) by their perceived potential market - no matter what their intentions are.
To pop my thoughts into a car analogy - You can put a massive super powerful engine into a normal car because you like the sound, but much more likely you want to go faster.
Again, as I said in the original post here - I don't support piracy, but I am dead against the stupidly over the top litigation that record companies are bringing against people for downloading a few songs. Two polar wrongs don't blend to make a right somewhere in the middle here.
Re: (Score:2)
Having said that, if I asked just about anyone I know what torrents they last downloaded - it would be rather unlikely to be one of the three examples above and it would also be unlikely that they were not downloading torrents containing copyrighted material.
Try asking your friends. Maybe you'll get a surprise, especially if you remind them about the WoW updates.
The last torrents I participated in were Linux distributions (Ubuntu & PCLinuxOS). In each case, I kept seeding until the traffic had essentially died away - that was after about 50GiB uploaded. In the most recent release, I restricted myself to Lubuntu, Kubuntu, and Xubuntu torrents, and left out the poxed Unity/GnomeShell Ubuntu. Mind you, I still run 10.04 on our home systems.
Copyright is now (practically) universal (Score:4, Informative)
> it would also be unlikely that they were not downloading torrents containing copyrighted material
After world harmonization with Berne, that would be practically all material, so... I think you rather meant "unlicensed, copyrighted material".
Re:Koppla wasn't an ISP, they couldn't claim immun (Score:4, Insightful)
Except that the one advertising "Seedbox hosting" wasn't Koppla, it was Santrex, the ones who DID the disconnecting.
You're right.
This is the worst written blog article I have ever read (hopefully, someone will read this entry and fix it). They need to qualify who's doing what instead of using ambiguous pronouns for everything. It's only once you read the rest of the blog article that you understand what happened.
Re: (Score:1)
Koppla was an ISP. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second-level_ISP
Anyone offering hosting etc. services of somekind is one kind of an ISP. ISP stands for: Internet Service Provider, whether that is access to internet, or service within internet meant for somekind of communication (ie. webhosting, vpn, shell accounts, remote desktop, dedicated) is an ISP.
Re: (Score:2)
Although they advertised their intent, the very nature of their service makes me wonder how they got busted... I've long suspected that filesharing would move to entirely various VPN-like networks precisely to hide their traffic.
So I have to wonder, did Koppla get the boot solely for its PR, or for actual specific all
Filesharing not synonymous with copyright infringe (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Also, this HTML document is a file and Slashdot is sharing it.
That's OK. The copyright notice at the bottom of this page indicates that slashdot (well, its parent corp) holds the rights. :-)
Re: (Score:2)
Comments owned by the poster.
Re:Filesharing not synonymous with copyright infri (Score:4, Insightful)
From Slashdot TOS:
With respect to text or data entered into and stored by publicly-accessible site features such as forums, comments and bug trackers ("Geeknet Public Content"), the submitting user retains ownership of such Geeknet Public Content; with respect to publicly-available statistical content which is generated by the site to monitor and display content activity, such content is owned by Geeknet. In each such case, the submitting user grants Geeknet the royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive, transferable license to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, perform, and display such Content (in whole or part) worldwide and/or to incorporate it in other works in any form, media, or technology now known or later developed, all subject to the terms of any applicable license.
Re: (Score:3)
From the TOS...
That basically states: /. can do whatever it likes with whatever you write, whether you like it or not.
In all essence, you lost all copyright control on a post when posting it on /. because you cannot control a "perpetual, irrevocable" license.
The whole paragraph is a basic rubber-stamp boiler-plate formulation that makes a mockery of copyright.
Re: (Score:2)
yes... but you are also solely responsible for the content of your posts should you slander or defame someone else - its a have cake/eat cake kinda thing ;-)
Re: (Score:2)
Comments owned by the poster.
The GP referenced the file in its entirety and that is copyright geeknet.
Re: (Score:1)
lets sue slashdot
Re: (Score:3)
It's not entrapment either (and this is private company to begin with). Offering hosting is not a request to violate laws.
Re: (Score:1)
No, every other hosting provider most definitely don't support BitTorrent because it drains the network because of the amount of connections it opens.
You need to go back to network school if you think open connections themselves inherently create drain on a "network".
If you're doing SPI or DPI, why should I care what that costs you if I didn't ask for that service in the first place. Even if I am sharing the server with others, then you I suppose we can agree on some kind of limitation on sockets, but that's another thing entirely.
Re: (Score:2)
Other companies also don't allow porn for the same reason. It's a huge bandwidth hog. You say they should just get more bandwidth? Well, that would mean increased prices and might not even be possible everywhere. It's a lot easier to just refuse certain types of clients.
Many companies also refuse
Re: (Score:2)
Looking at the Internet i don't have the feeling that finding a hoster for Porn can be very hard....
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The more connections that are open, the greater the chance for bufferbloat to come into play. It's not really so much "inherent drain" as it is "shitty router implementations" but nonetheless, it can be a factor.
Re:Filesharing not synonymous with copyright infri (Score:5, Insightful)
Once again, this issue is not about legal technicalities or technical workarounds... If you put up a service like the pirate bay it's laughable to claim that more than 1% of the usage is for non copyright infringement purposes. The "but you can use torrent to share Linux ISOs too" argument won't go very far in court (or with business relations like this case). Neither does the "Google can also be used to index torrents" argument. While technically correct the society is rigged to avoid technicalities in rules and take decisions based on intent. The intent of this service was clearly to profit from copyright violating distribution.
The actual problem is that non-commercial file distribution is not regulated. This is counter intuitive to the Internet as an invention and needs to be changed. The Internet has made such regulation incompatible with fundamental human rights. File sharing is not theft - it's how people will discover new information and consume culture from now and in the future. Business models will have to evolve from utilizing physical scarcity to utilizing distribution-as-a-service. When people finally start to see beyond the "file sharing is theft" and "allowing file sharing means artist shouldn't get paid" arguments/distractions we can have sensible debate and lawmaking. What would change if non-commercial file distribution would be legal/unregulated tomorrow? Think about that. The file sharers are already file sharing. Pandora's box has already been opened.
Re: (Score:2)
The "but you can use torrent to share Linux ISOs too" argument won't go very far in court.
However when combined with "we disconnected clients identified as copyright violators" it will likely go much farther.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Filesharing not synonymous with copyright infri (Score:4, Insightful)
Okay, I'll be honest, I like getting free stuff via The Pirate Bay. I have been that way all my life, even before P2P came along. I listen to music on the radio and watch movies/programmes on TV for free, then switch channel when the ads come on. Yeah, I rob the stations blind when it comes to not paying attention to ads. Now I make use of free internet services with disposable email addresses, and always have AdBlock turned on. I "try before you buy" via torrents a lot, which I guess makes me a pirate.
Thing is I feel pretty good about it. I still spend money on media and services, more than I used to in fact. Part of that is simply down to having more disposable income as I get older, part of it is down to finding new stuff that I like enough to spend said income on. Now I can listen to or watch what I want rather than what someone else decides to broadcast I find more stuff that interests me. Sometimes friends lend me CDs or I go round to watch their DVDs (public performance), which sometimes leads to me spending money on merchandise and the like.
So yeah, I'm a freeloader, I "steal" in the non-theft-making-a-copy sense. But artists and media companies also need people like me to survive, and if you annoy me with DRM or legal shinnanigans you can be sure I won't give you a penny. And I do in fact practice what I preach: My hardware designs and software are open source, yet I also sell them and do okay out of it. People will pay for quality and convenience even when they can get your warez for free. The publicity and community support I get from being open/free is invaluable, and you only have to look at the fashion industry or Japanese manga/anime/game producers to see how well it works on a massive scale.
Re: (Score:2)
The publicity and community support I get from being open/free is invaluable, and you only have to look at the fashion industry... to see how well it works on a massive scale.
If you think the fashion industry works like FOSS you're delusional.
Re:Filesharing not synonymous with copyright infri (Score:4, Informative)
Pando Media Booster uses bittorrent to distribute updates, and is used by quite a few other games (League of Legends, Lord of the Rings Online, etc, etc).
Linux ISOs are hardly the biggest legitimate use of bittorrent.
Re: (Score:3)
But 99% of filesharing is infringing.
How do you know that? Considering that it's likely nearly impossible to identify infringing content, I don't see how anyone could possibly come up with an accurate measurement.
Santrex sells bittorrent seedboxes (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Santrex sells bittorrent seedboxes (Score:5, Insightful)
What purpose do they think seedboxes serve other than sharing copyrighted material?
They allow you to be a respectable participant in the torrent networks, even if your personal machine is on dialup, a slow dsl connection, or is just turned off. Even more so if you have a really unbalanced up/down ratio, or if you have a draconian ISP that blocks torrents of any sort. Not everyone uses bittorrent for copyright infringement. They also improve the bittorrent network overall since seedboxes are usually closer to the backbone than your home machine.
Personally I get and distribute nightly builds of several projects using bittorrent. With a seedbox I don't have to worry about my personal machine being off the network at any particular time.
Re: (Score:1)
> Not everyone uses bittorrent for copyright infringement.
> Personally I get and distribute nightly builds of several projects using bittorrent.
You are the 1%.
Re: (Score:2)
> Not everyone uses bittorrent for copyright infringement. > Personally I get and distribute nightly builds of several projects using bittorrent.
You are the 1%.
I'm not quite sure what you did there. Are you trying to equate downloaders of copyrighted material with the Occupy protesters? Because anonymously sneaking out of paying for someone's work is not exactly civil disobedience.
Re: (Score:2)
It could be that they were threatened themselves.
After all, if there is enough evidence to show that they could be accused of doing the same thing, because they're far more public about their intent, they're in a far more vulnerable position themselves and they're far more likely to step all over the rights of their own customers to try to save themselves instead.
Re: (Score:2, Redundant)
This is funny because Santrex itself sells bittorent hosting services called "seedboxes". What purpose do they think seedboxes serve other than sharing copyrighted material?
Making some money from naive people thinking this kind of service won't be subject to regulations?
BTW, sharing copyrighted content is not illegal - sharing it without permission is. E.g. linux is still copyrighted, but sharing an ISO of the most linux distros is not illegal (not from the point of view of copyright, anyway, GPL grants you the permission).
Guess the Royal Mail is next... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Well, that depends. The EU's court recently ruled that ISPs are forbidden from inspecting for torrents. If packet inspection was used, it's in violation of EU rules which the UK is subordinate to. If the filesharers (or those doing legal fileshares, ideally) take the ISP to court for violating an EU directive and win - which they might well - then ISP disconnections will cease. At least until the corporations persuade there to be a new ruling - something Microsoft found the EU is not always amenable to.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Guess the Royal Mail is next... (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, here's the press reports [nytimes.com] on the ruling [techspot.com].
More importantly, here is the summary from the EU Court of Justice [europa.eu], the judgement of the court [europa.eu], the directives involved [europa.eu] and the opinion of the court, but in French [europa.eu] ad the English translation isn't up yet.
This is the information any of us have to work with, when it comes to understanding the ruling. Bearing in mind that none of us (except for three sheep and a hedgehog) are lawyers, a definite answer is impossible. I read it that ISPs are absolutely required to be common carriers, at least within the EU, and that common carrier status may not be infringed even at the request of a major corporation or pressure group.
Re: (Score:2)
You are going to get a one world bank and a one world government
No, no it's Zionist Occupation Government. "One world" just isn't scary sounding enough.
Re: (Score:2)
Apparently if they feel that a service is, more often than not (never mind the fact that with something as broad as someone merely using bittorrent it would likely be nearly impossible for them to determine this), used to infringe upon copyrights, it should be shut down. Even if, at most, copyright infringement only causes a potential loss of potential profit. Just shut those services down. Who cares if someone was using it legitimately?
Re: (Score:2)
Even if, at most, copyright infringement only causes a potential loss of potential profit. Yes, because no one ever actually downloaded anything rather than buy it, it's always "try before you buy" or stuff you would never have bought anyway.
I think the phrase you want instead of "potential" is "hard to quantify"
if only aliens were among us... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
I'm sure if you explained it to the Ferengi, they'd want a piece of that pie.
Re: (Score:2)
I would be loling, except that your scenario could be plausible. Intellectual property has held technological development back at least some 50 years, thought many historians would argue that is on the low side. If a giant meteor hits in the 50 years before we are ready for it...
I, for one, welcome our planet-saving communist overlords who will be necessary to abolish the vile mess that is capitalism (and therefore IP).
Re: (Score:2)
Bad idea (Score:5, Insightful)
ISPs should not be making the decision to cut a customer off based on the content they are retrieving and distributing, but only if they are attacking the network or otherwise trying to harm the network itself (or if there is a court order to disconnect a specific customer). What next, some ISP gets all "morality police" and starts banning customers for accessing porn, illegal drug information, or even political/social material that someone with authority at the ISP decided they didn't want to pass across their wires?
It'd be like the phone company disconnecting your service because you like to call phone sex lines, or the postal service refusing to deliver your mail because you subscribe to skin mags.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3)
Net neutrality has nothing to do with what services the ISP can carry. It merely states that if you DO carry a specific service, you can't play favourites - all suppliers and all users should have equitable access to that service. However, net neutrality places no constraints on what types of services are carried, what total bandwidth is made available for that service, or whether that bandwidth can be reduced if higher-priority traffic needs it. It would equally be entirely fair under network neutrality to
Re: (Score:2)
Firstly, a service is not a property. It is a service. All services have laws which regulate those services. They sometimes even obey them. The banks didn't. They wanted to play favourites. Guess what -- didn't work too well, did it? You can call well-regulated industries "slavery" until you're blue in the mouth but no sane, rational person would support you.
Secondly, Common Carrier status grants carriers legal protection ONLY if they are indeed Common Carriers - ie: traffic-neutral. If you want to run a se
Re: (Score:2)
This is called slavery, because it deprives me of the right to decide how to tailor my services to my desires.
Are you taking the piss?
Re: (Score:2)
Nothing wrong with the provider of a service deciding how the service is to be provided. Stop Net Neutrality Madness! Censorship is bad, but depriving private companies of their right to determine which services and on which terms they are willing to provide to which segments of the market is insane.
Yes, whatever the consequences, nothing must interfere with The Market.
Re: (Score:2)
Santrex is not an ISP. It is a hosting company, and a black hat hosting company at that. Almost everything they host is do to with torrents, counterfeit goods, malware and fraud. They host several carding and hacking forums, several of their hosted sites were recently seized by US authorities. A tiny, tiny proportion of sites are legitimate.. but you should read some of the customer reviews of this company for the full story!
So in other words Santrex is everything that slashdot loves about the internet. I bet the company directors are all card-carrying libertarians and everything.
Where is the problem? (Score:3)
I have been repeated told by other slashdotters that file sharing and P2P is not just for violating copyright and that by far the majority of P2P and file sharing traffic is for legitimate purposes such as distributing Linux. So, if the ISP is only cutting off those who are violating copyright law, where is the problem?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
How are they identifying the alleged infringers? Are they making sure they get a court case before deciding that they're guilty?
That's my problem.
Exxxxxceeeellllennntttt (Score:1)
I hate thieves of any sort.