UK ISPs To Start Sending 'Piracy Alerts' Soon (torrentfreak.com) 71
Beginning next year, internet service providers in the UK will send email notifications to subscribers whose connections have been allegedly used to download copyright infringing content. In what is an attempt to curtail piracy rates, these alerts would try to educate those who pirate about legal alternates. TorrentFreak adds: Mimicking its American counterpart, the copyright alert program will monitor the illegal file-sharing habits of UK citizens with a strong focus on repeat infringers. The piracy alerts program is part of the larger Creative Content UK (CCUK) initiative which already introduced several anti-piracy PR campaigns, targeted at the general public as well as the classroom. The plan to send out email alerts was first announced several years ago when we discussed it in detail, but it took some time to get everything ready. This week, a spokesperson from CCUK's "Get it Right From a Genuine Site" campaign informed us that it will go live in first few months of 2017. It's likely that ISPs and copyright holders needed to fine-tune their systems to get going, but the general purpose of the campaign remains the same.
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TFA mentions the subgroup behind this is called Securely Using Content Reliably. Their full name is CCUK-SUCR.
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And clued-in users. . . (Score:5, Insightful)
. . . will continue to use VPNs and selective IP blocking to bypass it. I got particularly peeved when I got a nastygram from ComHell, because I was using BitTorrent to download Linux distro. . .
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When the notice states that the "infringing file" was a Ubuntu ISO image. . . . . This was years ago, but I routinely use a VPN when getting images ever since. . .
Two alleged infringements in Emacs (Score:3)
When the notice states that the "infringing file" was a Ubuntu ISO image. . . . . This was years ago
Was this around July 2011, when Emacs was discovered to include copyright infringements [slashdot.org]? Or around June 2012, when certain falling block games were ruled to infringe copyright [slashdot.org], with M-x tetris in Emacs [gnu.org] possibly next on the hit list of a video game developer who thinks free software should never have existed because it destroys the market [slashdot.org]?
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It is the same old crap, in one breath they talk about downloading a file, ohh ahh scary stuff and in the next they actually talk about reality, file sharing, nothing to do with downloading files and everything to do with uploading. I am not responsible for anything any media company does when distributing content, I watch and ad and watch content and thats it, what they do beyond that is their responsibility.
So not 'Downloading' but uploading and the ass hats are just trying to throw in scary language. A
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I'm surprised more people don't use VPNs. One can use one in a neighboring country for dirt cheap, and it not just is useful for keeping the alleged notices away when fetching that Linux ISO, but also keeping ISPs off your browsing history and connections, as well as making things like Phorm useless.
Of course, there is always the next step, and doing like Pakistan where it is 20-life to be caught using a VPN...
just wait for them to flag windows update bittorre (Score:2)
just wait for them to flag windows update BitTorrent like system as an piracy system.
But in market streaming of live sports with your tv package is nice even more so when your provider is having an issue with the TV feed on there side or with rain fade.
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These are pretty much the main reason piracy even exists: a simple lack of service issue.
What a load of crap. People do it because they can get stuff for free with little chance of being caught, plain and simple. If it was a lack of service issue then why is piracy of movies available on Netflix/Amazon still as rampant as ever? If it was about DRM why is piracy of stuff on iTunes etc which is DRM free still as rampant as ever? Stop trying to come up with ever more tenuous reasons as to why people do it and just be honest. Trying to claim that X million people pirated a track that is both availa
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Actually, many people did stop pirating when it was easy to legally get the content for a reasonable price. I stopped pirating music years ago for example.
People are as ethical as they can afford to be.
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It used to be a lack of service issue. When piracy first florished, it was a time when you just could not get very much popular media online legitimately. It took four years between the launch of Napster, the first practical p2p file sharing network, and the iTunes store. Even then the early music purchasing services were crippled with DRM that made it very difficult to actually use your purchase, limiting customers to listening only on one PC and the mobile device the store supported. It wasn't until 2009,
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Well, of course, but this is not about making it impossible to do naughty things; they just want to make sure that you can't hide behind "I didn't know". And of course, everybody already knows that you know what you are doing is illegal, but this way it has a chance of standing up in a criminal court.
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By escaping logging the UK could invoke legal issues with VPN providers set up in EU and NATO member nations.
Legally a few EU nations have to help the UK police with their legal internet investigations. As the users of interest are only from the UK and are under legal UK investigation they get few of the strong national protections often expected in some EU nations.
Tracking would quickly find the original UK ip.
The US has "Rule 41 makes life easier for Feds, cops t
Alternatives (Score:5, Funny)
"You appear to have tried to download episodes of [popular series which is not available on your country due to retarded geo-locking policies] from kick-ass torrents. Since there's no legal way for you to obtain this due to the short-sightedness of the copyright holders, may we suggest that you use the pirate bay instead?
XOXO, your ISP"
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Matches my experience. Fortunately, where I am this is actually legally tolerated they cannot make it fully legal, as that apparently violates some copyright-anti-terrorism-treaties), as they looked at the actual problem before making laws (rare for lawmakers) and found that there indeed were no legal alternatives and that it did not harm but help domestic content producers. Of course the country where I live is on the US watch-list for states allowing piracy now. The amount of extreme stupid expressed in t
When I meet a copyright owner (Score:1)
which is fitting its quid pro quo for their rights, then I'll start to respect theirs.
Until they stop gaming the system to get unearned rights AND THEN RENEGE ON THEIR RESPONSIBILITY, I couldn't give a rat's ass if "their stuff" is copied wantonly around the planet.
Re:When I meet a copyright owner (Score:5, Interesting)
Case in point: What "legal alternatives" would it recommend to someone caught pirating the TV series Spartakus and the Sun Beneath the Sea or the film Song of the South?
Re:When I meet a copyright owner (Score:5, Funny)
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You owe me a new keyboard and a cup of coffee.
And a bandaid because this also caused cat scratches down my leg.
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I should have been more specific that I was referring to the English-language dub, titled Spartakus and the Sun Beneath the Sea, not the French-language original, titled Les mondes engloutis.
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I have some sympathy with this argument when it's applied to Big Media who chase grannies with no Internet connection for settlements or who supply their content with system-destroying broken DRM systems or activation measures that don't work and stop someone enjoying what they paid for.
On the other hand, I'm part of a team running a small library of original online content, which is produced with considerable work and at considerable cost by enthusiasts who don't make any seriously money from the membershi
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Okay, I was with you for a little while (especially on sympathy for the little indie guys, even if you don't have to, throw a couple bucks in their hats if you like their stuff), until you made clear that they're downloading it from you, presumably the authorized distributor.
Especially this piece:
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until you made clear that they're downloading it from you, presumably the authorized distributor.
No, we are the people who create the content in question, and who run the library site providing access to it. No-one else is involved here or taking a cut as a distributor.
So...they downloaded exactly as much as they're allowed to, and then once allowed again, started again? Didn't hack your system, didn't go off to torrent it instead? And they're doing...what wrong again? How do you know how they're using it and if such use is "normally"?
It's a subscription model for online browsing of the library. (Think Netflix, Spotify, and so on.) Downloading for permanent storage and offline viewing is not allowed. This is all clearly and explicitly stated in our terms, and I suppose that real-time element is our version of an "all you can eat" restaurant bringing you your eighth co
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Alright, I get that. (By the way, I'm taking your invitation in your sig to post any disagreement, I agree that "-1 I disagree" is absolutely not a valid mod.)
I just got done setting up a new OS on this machine tonight. And of course, I installed Steam. It asked for a couple of verifications, but after that, it validated and set itself up. And I can start downloading the games I want. Downloading.. I can play them offline for up to 30 days after downloading them. That's relatively sufficient.
I have no probl
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Just to follow up on a couple of the points you mentioned:
Downloading some things from our library for use off-line is actually one of our most frequently asked questions, and again it's something where we generally take a pretty liberal approach and always have. We want people to enjoy the material. That's why we make it!
What I'm talking about is people who don't just download a few bits and pieces, but blatantly try to download everything right before the end of their subscription. These aren't people who
Did that say classrooms? (Score:3, Insightful)
The copyright powers that be are welcome to play whatever games they want as they play whack-a-mole with the roughly ten billion methods there are to download copyrighted content (and I say this speaking as an author whose books have shown up on pirate websites), but now this crap is in the classrooms? When the f*ck did that become part of the common core? I mean, sweet Jesus, at my engineering firm I can't find a kid out of college to hire who can add two numbers in their head if the result is beyond single digits, but we're going to take time out of the school day to expound the virtues of respecting intellectual property laws?
Re:Did that say classrooms? (Score:4, Insightful)
They'll get what they always get (Score:1)
Told to get rid of region restrictive bullshit like the rest of the media industry at large.
Fuck all of you.
There are things I would pay for IF I WAS ALLOWED TO.
Beyond that, I pay for pretty much everything I consume.
I WANT to pay for your content.
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Indeed. There is quite a bit of content you cannot actually buy in most of the world. They should stop whining and actually make those mythical "legal alternatives" a reality.
Hey (Score:2)
Email'd Where (Score:2)
I couldn't tell you the last time I logged in to my Comcast email account. It's been quite a few years. Last time someone had given my email out as part of some family or friends listing and were posting all sorts of nonsense.
[John]
Yessir! (Score:2)
I'll be sure to download all my public domain content from a Genuine Site [slashdot.org] in the future.
This year... (Score:2)
Is this so bad? (Score:2)
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Thats funding that could have gone into better networking, peering, new staff, expansion, profits, advertising.
Great for the new legal teams who have to ensure every letter is correct.
Users will just buy into really great VPN's well outside the UK, NATO and EU so the UK gov cant ask to log their VPN internet usage under color of law.
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Symptoms of a country in decline: There is no connection anymore with what the government thinks is real and actual reality. You can do that for a few decades and watch the lawyers getting fat, but eventually this always backfires badly.
As soon as we get a legitimate source like Netflix (Score:1)
They descend on it like wolves, divide the content, and raise the prices by 1000%.
To get what you got on netflix just a few years ago, you'd need to subscribe to a half dozen services which are really overpriced for the content they provide.
There is room in the market for Netflix vs Amazon but not netflix vs a dozen other services.
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You say that, but annual fees for the services we subscribe to in my household work out far less than the cost of buying all those shows and movies on DVD would have been a few years earlier. The gap is even wider once you take into account the not-sure things that you could try because they were on a streaming service and it wouldn't cost you any more if you gave up ten minutes in.
I still buy a load of stuff on DVD/Blu-ray, but those are the things I want to keep, because I don't trust the likes of Netflix
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What you are saying and I am saying are not contradictory.
Netflix was $10 and included DVD's.
Netflix (from $7.99 per month) ... ... ... ... ... ...
Amazon Instant Video (from $8.99 per month)
Hulu (from $7.99 per month)
Showtime (from $10.99 per month)
HBO Now (from $14.99 per month)
Starz (from $8.99 per month)
CBS All Access (from $5.99 per month)
Warner Movie Service (From $10.00 a month)
Sling TV (for Disney) is $20+ a month
For people with less money (college students?) the difference between $10 a month and $5
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Right, but most people aren't students, and $10/month for access to a library the size of Netflix is still vastly cheaper than buying everything a typical subscriber might watch there the way you had to before the streaming library services were around.
I might also wonder what anyone who is watching enough stuff to need $60+/month of subscriptions to that many different services at once is actually doing with their lives, but that's a different question.
So there are "legal alternatives"? (Score:2)
I currently only download stuff, where there are none (no, I do not think badly dubbed versions 3 years later and only on DVD are an "alternative").