Trial run of controversial three strikes-and-your-out policy reportedly to begin in a few months.
There’s a disturbing report out today that Virgin Media, the UK’s largest residential broadband subscriber, is gearing up to begin disconnecting illegal file-sharers as part of the new three strikes-and-you-out policy that the BPI, the British Phonographic Industry, has long been lobbying for.
The move by Virgin Media is surely in response to demands by the UK govt. that ISPs voluntarily begin disconnecting repeated illegal file-sharers by April 9th of this year or face legislation to force them to do so. It is asking that ISPs comply as part of its strategy to become the world’s “creative hub.”
The BPI is reportedly working closely with Virgin Media to conduct the pilot program “within a few months.”
“We have been in discussions with rights holders organizations about how a voluntary scheme could work.,” said a spokesman for Virgin Media. “We are taking this problem seriously and would favour a sensible voluntary solution.”
Virgin Media will apparently enlist the help of BPI investigators who will trace illegal music downloading to individual IP addresses. It will then hand them over to Virgin Media, who will then match them to specific names and addresses for warning and perhaps even eventual disconnection.
“This is not the time for ISPs to delay further,” said BPI chief executive, Geoff Taylor. “Government clearly shares the creative community’s frustration at the failure of ISPs to take action.”
Too bad UK citizens don’t share the same sense of urgency or desire to have the data they share with others inspected by corporate censors. Also too bad is the fact that the UK govt, usually a champion of individual liberties, is so eager to begin allowing CORPORATE INTERESTS be the gatekeepers of data on the internet. Nothing could be scarier than that in my opinion.
I mean ISP content filters are little more than data checkpoints. Would UK citizens allow for physical checkpoints whereby corporations are allowed to search their person for copyrighted material? I think not. When people there wake up and realize that corporate interests are being allowed to play data gatekeepers then hopefully they will stand up and demand change.
Say what you want about the United States, but it’ll be a cold day in hell before we see any sort of filtering of the internet by ISPs or corporations. Throttling perhaps, but censorship? Never. I mean I thought Europe was supposed to be the “enlightened continent,” yet with its French and UK backbones eagerly lining up to protect entertainment industry profits it really makes you wonder who the enlightened one really is in this world.
Related
- Virgin Media: ‘We Have No Plans to Disconnect Illegal File-Sharers
- Virgin Media: ‘We Won’t Sue or Disconnect Illegal File-Sharers’
- RIAA to Quit Suing File-Sharers, Wants ISPs to Disconnect Instead
- UK ISP, Record Industry Join Forces to Fight Illegal File-Sharing
- Danish ISPs Refuse Demands to Disconnect File-Sharers
I’m just waiting to read an article about the head of a record label software company government official who championed the program to get cut off of the internet. That is if they are even using it.
UK is a nasty place indead. This is going to lead to Virgin getting sued for disconecting an innocent person.
If someone made an effort to be falsely banned I wonder if they could turn around and sue.
yes but think on this.. with all those subscribers deserting or being banned from the service it’s going to open up massive bandwidth potential I wouldn’t be suprised if very shortly we don’t see speeds of up to 200mb on offer with unlimited downloads to boot…
alright admittedly there’ll be absolutely squit to download but the burst speed as one navigate back and forth between Argos.com and Tesco.online will leave one breathless..
Ahh…. encryption…. turn it on and they’re helpless. How hard can it be to check a checkbox ?
Let me rephrase the headline:
Virgin Media Will be the First UK ISP to lose 90% of their costumers!
HA!
Everyone should pretend to be a copyright holder and get everyone disconnected.
Surely if they analysing all the traffic they must incurring slow down have extra hardware to precess the gigaytes of info going through.
and processing consumes electricity which is not very green
think about if all the isps process terabytes of info how much extra electric bills will go up as this will be a 24/7/365 operation.
How about creating a torrent app that just downloads and uploads Linux while no one is using the machine. Release the software in protest and swamp all the ISP’s form of digital protest.
You all seem to be making pretty big assumptions about HOW the BPI investigators will identify illegal file-sharers. I suspect that this will not rely on data filters but on the same tactics seen used already by the games industry: I think the BPI will effectively use an adapted version of something like uTorrent download a file recognised as a copyright infringement and then log all IPs that they connect with whilst downloading pieces of the torrent. This then gives them pseudo-anonymised identifiers which can be linked with paying customers by the ISP (in this case Virgin Media). If you read the article closely (particularly the original one at the london times website) you will see that there is NO discussion about data filtering or inspection of data packets.
This aside this seems to be a bit of a witch-hunt to me so I am cancelling my VM contract ASAP. Let’s all hope that this pilot scheme fails dismally.
Mountain Rage – I had exactly the same idea… something big like iso’s of DVD os open suze or something! Im sure all the linux heads would jump on the bandwagon just for the hell of it
At the moment ive just download ants p2p to see if its any good
Bye Bye Virgin….your service has been crap since DAY 1
Ever since Telewest sold out Ive had a very bad deal!
TIME FOR A NEW ISP
Virgin denies ‘three strikes’ agreement
http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/digitaltv/a92789/virgin-denies-three-strikes-agreement.html
Are we not forgetting that we pay for the licence feetherefore pay for the copyright the script writers actors executives the cost of transmission in fact everything. So we own the copyright anyway. The same could be said of the advertising channels.
TV is different to music we pay for everything that gets transmitted via adverts licence fees etc. So the people own the TV in reality. The people who run it are getting paid by us.
Maybe when some obscene amount of money has been made from a movie and the public the copyright should be deemed to have been paid for.