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British ISPs agree on anti-piracy plan

KATE HOLTON

Reuters

Latest comment posted at 11:29 AM EST 25/07/08

For three-month trial, providers will send letters to downloaders telling them to stop downloading; if users do not comply, ISPs will send more letters ...Read the full article

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  1. The comment section stinks from Canada writes: Every time I read something about Brittan, it reinforces my belief that I am truly fortunate not to be living there

    Obscene taxes. Low standard of living. Photo radar on every street, and a government that thinks nothing of intruding in peoples lives.

    What a dump.
  2. Aaron Barlow from Victoria, Canada writes: I'm always confused when articles of this nature refer to CD sales. I would suspect that the decline in CD sales has more to do with the fact that CDs are an expensive, obsolete, media when compared with their digital alternatives, legal and otherwise, rather than it being a specific problem with illegal downloading. I mean, when was the list time you saw someone walking around with a portable CD player? Particularly since many CDs now have digital locks that prevent them from being easily copied to digital media players, purchasing them for any reason seems a bit pointless in this day and age.

    For the rest, I'm curious how exactly this scheme will work. How will the ISPs be able to identify packets that are "illegal" from those that are not, particularly if both are encrypted? How can they separate a legitimate P2P scheme (say Skype) that necessarily uses encrypted packets from someone downloading music on BitTorrent using encrypted packets?
  3. john setta from Canada writes: Why not remove the internet completely and then they wont have to deal with this problem, or better yet why don't they tell the government to take a long walk of a short pier.
  4. A. Nonymous from Compensation Ville, United States writes: This is a great [even though small] step.

    Eveyone deserves compensation for their work.

    In the future, I would be compensated for this post, since it contains my IP [Intelluctual Property].

    We need to drastically rethink our "entitlement" to free things, everyone should have compensation.
  5. Sask Langer from Canada writes: Nothing about that property is intellectual.
  6. Martin England from Whitby, Canada writes: "Everyone deserves compensation for their work."

    Right. The same people that say this are the people that say we should let the free market work. Well it has, people just choose to ignore it.

    The debate on this will never end unless media companies stop complaining and address the issue directly. Be creative and make money in non-traditional forms. How exactly is "free" music on the radio different than downloading music online? Simple- music companies use the radio to promote artists and make money through ancillary means. Rather than doing the same online, they complain and get our governments involved.

    Who cares if music companies go out of business? Really. Why should this be a concern of mine or yours. Goods and services are worth what the market deems they are worth and if people choose to get their music for "free" online than maybe that means the market says that the compensation for said intellectual property should be zero. That my friends, is not a crime. That is the fundamental principle of what our economy is based on.
  7. David Gibson from Canada writes: """"The debate on this will never end unless media companies stop complaining and address the issue directly. Be creative and make money in non-traditional forms."""" If the "media companies" and the artists make a product, they have every right to complain, sue, and prosecute, if low-lifes rip them off. Don't you leeches collect pay cheques?
  8. Martin E from Whitby, Canada writes: I collect a pay cheque from company that sells products that people pay for.

    If people stopped paying for it. I'd be out of a job.

    That's life.

    The horse carriage industry isn't the money maker it used to be 100 years ago.
  9. Carl Men from Canada writes: There is more to art and artist to money.

    Yes you want to be compensated for your work, but does that mean we have to give them money?

    No, art is more than financial gains, money is a by-product. And if that's what you are looking for being an artist, well you're wrong. In fact, this whole notion that we learn to make money is just plain wrong.

    Because, we learn to make a living, to live our life our way, to live a full life and ENJOY it. Money is not everything.

    I think that's the base of our problem with copyrights stuff. Essentially, people assume that being an artist and not have your rights protected means you either change your job or you die starving.... NO! You go famous with your songs or poem not because you are filthy rich with earnings, but because your song/poems are attractive.

    sigh... damn the copyright laws.
  10. A. Nonymous from United States writes: "The horse carriage industry isn't the money maker it used to be 100 years ago. "

    Because the government should have added a levy to cars, to compensate the horse carriage industry, DUH!

    This is what industry wants. 'People are not buying our products [for whatever reason], lets add a levy to the competitors products.'

    Each time you use your car, Ford/GM should be compensated, more if you add passenger.

    Each person you allow inside your house, should pay the builder compensation, since they were only compensated once.

    Each time you turn on your TV, you should pay Sony compensation, because they were only compensated once...

    and it goes on and on...
  11. Trillian Rand from Canada writes: From the article: "They will send letters to prolific illegal downloaders each week under a three-month trial, warning them that they are being monitored."

    Putting aside the ominous 'you are being monitored' threat, how will the ISP's know that prolific downloaders are doing anything illegal? We are, after all, in the digital age. Many people now work from home, uploading and downloading files from offices or clients as necessary. The only way an ISP can know if any download is illegal is by examining it, which is like the Post Office opening your parcels to find out why they are so heavy.

    That the government and industry have succumbed to the music industry on this issue is truly scary. That the British public hasn't risen up in anger is absolutely amazing. One should expect the same rules to apply on the Internet as they do off it. If the Post Office can't open my mail to see what's inside, neither should my ISP.
  12. Andrew Ion from Toronto, Canada writes: More to the point, it seems very likely that the ISPs will pass along the extra cost of all this "monitoring" to the consumer...

    If this was something I was faced with, I'd switch ISPs... I'm not interested in paying them more to work for someone who isn't me...
  13. Ivan Canarus from Canada writes: .
    Thanks British for this interesting experiment ! Actually we are very interested in how the traffic control will affect on Internet consumption. Also there are a lot of legislative questions too. What does “file share” or “downloading” mean ? Could I share my files with my wife or kids ? How the ISPs recognized copyrighted files from not copyrighted ? Will the government monitor only downloading process or also will reading my emails and watching my internet activities ? Lets see.
  14. Mike H from Grande Prairie, Alberta, Canada writes: From the Article:
    "Music companies have been trying desperately to boost digital sales in recent years following the growth of Internet piracy, which has cut into CD sales."

    Has anyone ever proven that internet piracy is the reason CD sales are down? Couldn't CD sales also be down because of iTunes and legal sources of downloading? Or people getting satellite radio for one. I never listen to CD's in my car anymore since I got a satellite radio.

    Just because people are engaging in piracy of music doesn't automatically mean that they are causing CD sales to fall. You would first have to prove that they would have purchased the CD if internet piracy wasn't an option. I suspect a lot of the people stealing music never would have purchased the cd in the first place.

    I had shoddy reporting like this.
  15. Mike H from Grande Prairie, Alberta, Canada writes: Oops...that should be:

    "I HATE shoddy reporting like this" Stupid typos.
  16. Richard Daystrom from Toronto, Canada writes: I can hear the bleating from the Canadian music sheep next. Oh please support me!!!!
  17. Keith Duguay from writes: I guess they don't have privacy rights in British or EU law. If they do, those ISPs are in for one heck of a legal ride.
  18. Devil's Advocate from Canada writes: So how are they going to tell if it's "illegal" filesharing of music or legal? What if I'm distributing my band's music to get exposure? Or do they just throttle all filesharers? Completely unacceptable.

    Or maybe they are doing deep packet inspection, which is also completely unacceptable. My post office doesn't (as far as I know) open my mail to see if I'm illegally sharing music, and neither should my ISP open my packets for the same purpose.
  19. who me? from Canada writes: It should not be incumbenbent on the ISP's to bear the costs and accountability to police their networks in order to support the last gasps of the music industry's prehistoric business model.

    These clowns are still in the ~80 year old business of flogging plastic disks and the world has passed them by. Sure, the format of the disk changed (and the price doubled) about 25yrs ago, but the executives have sat on their collective butts and watched the security of their technology be obsoleted by progressive enhancements to the home PC.

    Then they completely missed the shift to digital formats and the Internet and their continued lack of investment rendered their security and distribution channels obsolete.

    After all this they expect the ISP's to pony up the cost of DPI to police the networks looking for signatures of copyrighted material? Completely absurd!

    Now, if they were to pay for it, that's a different matter...
  20. B T from Toronto, Canada writes: The comment section stinks from Canada writes: Every time I read something about Brittan, it reinforces my belief that I am truly fortunate not to be living there Obscene taxes. Low standard of living. Photo radar on every street, and a government that thinks nothing of intruding in peoples lives. What a dump. "

    Never been outside your mom's house right? London is amazing and people there are respectful and their police services are the world's leaders. Dump?? ok, ignorance is very becoming. Canada has ALOT to learn from London... ALOT!

    Fileshareing should be permitted IF the band gives authorization of it's release. ITunes is a great example of picking up a song you like for a reasonably low price. If people want to share music, truly, they will swap CD's. (which ARE expensive and most music nowadays is not stellar stuff just repeats or covers.)
  21. P McLean from Canada writes: Frankly, if you could buy directly from the band, I would be in favor of that. At least then you know they are rally getting the money. The way things are set up now there are too many other people getting way too big a cut, and only scraps left over for the band. The only thing I shop for in Walmart are DVDs(the TV/movie industry is just as bad as music). Walmart puts the squeeze on the suppliers so "they" can "lower" prices. This is one industry I have no problem seeing the screws put to.

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