UK file-sharers to be 'cut off'

The UK government has published new measures that could see people who illegally download films and music cut off from the net.



"The UK government has published new measures that could see people who illegally download films and music cut off from the net.

The amendment to the Digital Britain report would see regulator Ofcom given greater powers to tackle pirates.

The technical measures are likely to include suspending the net accounts of "hardcore copyright pirates".

It is believed that Business Secretary Lord Mandelson has intervened personally to beef up the policy.

The Digital Britain report, published in June, gave Ofcom until 2012 to consider whether technical measures to catch pirates were necessary"

news.bbc.co.uk...

I for one see this, coupled with the demise of the Pirate Bay this morning, as a major attack on the freedoms of the net and yet more liberties being taken away from us. I know that file sharing is loved by some and hated by others however the crux of the matter is that big music and movie production companies charge too much for the end product and have done for 70 years.
I build up a massive DVD collection when they first came out and due to the quality of the product only buy original Xbox 360 games however when it comes to Movies I download all the way

To give an example of why downloading does not harm movies look at the Gross income of Wolverine or Taken, both had perfect workprints released before the move and still did higher than expected numbers. I believe that the companies should offer more high quality downloadable content and if it was affordable I would pay for it. I am not talking about the itunes rip off by say a couple of pounds for a one off watch of a movie is acceptable. I find going to the cinema to see the majority of movies a pain in the arse, the people with their mobiles and kids and the overpriced seats and food can mean going to see a movie can cost up to £45 which when you can get a perfect copy from the net that you can watch in your own home, does not compete.

I suppose the only thing to take from this is more proxy servers, better shielding client programs and moving ISP if they turn into the internet police


[mod edit: replaced quote tags with EX]

[edit on 25-8-2009 by 12m8keall2c]

I for one see this, coupled with the demise of the Pirate Bay this morning, as a major attack on the freedoms of the net and yet more liberties being taken away from us.

Last time I checked stealing isn't a liberty.

I know that file sharing is loved by some and hated by others however the crux of the matter is that big music and movie production companies charge too much for the end product and have done for 70 years.

Cars are expensive. Should I go steal someone's car since I don't want to pay for one myself?

heres a top tip..

if your worried about your isp taking up the roll of "internet police" then do some reaserch and you WILL find an ISP that does not follow this rule. I work for the biggest group of isp's in the uk, and the big big boss of the whole group (charles dunstone) has gone on record as saying .....

TalkTalk has always maintained the defence that it is merely a broadband pipe and not an online policeman for the content industry. Dunstone said any technical measures to try and clamp down on sharers of copyrighted material would soon be bypassed by pirates

basicly saying, talktalk do NOT give anyone into trouble for file sharing, we dont promote it but we dont chastise people for it, as its up to people to know right from wrong when downloading, not the isp ..(i cannot speak for aol or tiscali as they are part of the group but not part of talktalk) .

(btw, im not trying to promote my work lol, just pointing out that this is NOT fact as all isp's have their own rules and views on this situation.)

Is streaming a liberty ?

I dont do it but what if your just streaming the video and not downloading it hahaha ?

Take care.

Regards
Lee

Last time I checked stealing isn't a liberty.

Do you know that the intelligence services perve into peoples lifes,a nd hand details to people like bbc to ridicule people.

So is that stealing.

Or intelligence services perving into peoples lifes, to steal info, taht have nothing to do with them, is that stealing.

The bbc and media are full of criminals, just stealing anything they can. The real world if full of it, and they have the criminals on there side to protect there so called interests.

If you do something in uk or usa against the government, you may find your life perved into, and ridiculed on tv. They can go back through your entire life.

It won't happen. It didn't happen the last time they tried it and it won't happen this time.

Originally posted by Totakeke


Cars are expensive. Should I go steal someone's car since I don't want to pay for one myself?

Haha, car analogies. Car analogies are not a valid argument when discussing filesharing, that chestnut was deemed irrelevent years ago. Here is why;

If you have a car and I come along and copy your car then drive off leaving you with your original car, what have I stolen exactly.

Once you understand that, you will see how absurd your car analogy is.

[edit on 25-8-2009 by quackers]

Those are greed-based industries. Boycott films for a while and see if they don't loosen their ties a helluvalot on this matter.

I never go to films and I don't watch tv because I don't want someone else's flawed views rammed down my throat. I have my own flawed views that I'm quite content with and it costs me nothing to air them.

Originally posted by CosmicEgg
Those are greed-based industries. Boycott films for a while and see if they don't loosen their ties a helluvalot on this matter.

I never go to films and I don't watch tv because I don't want someone else's flawed views rammed down my throat. I have my own flawed views that I'm quite content with and it costs me nothing to air them.

that still doesn't mean its ok should you download films and music for free and share them. It just means everyone involved in the making of the film get less in return for their hard work, and im not talking about the glitzy actors, im talking about the sound crew, make up artists, scene and prop consutrcuters.

Can you back that up because the figures say otherwise. The movie industry especialy turns a healthy profit every single year. And its year after year increase. So... if the sound guy cant feed his family it aint becuase of downloaders. If mr soundguy is hungry, its because he's employed by a corrupt industry, it certainly is not because they cannot affort to pay him.

Congrats in buying into their antipiracy propaganda.

[edit on 25-8-2009 by quackers]

reply to post by quackers

The movie industry especialy turns a healthy profit every single year.

So as soon as you feel someone's made enough money they should be forbidden from making any more, regardless of whether or not they're corrupt?

Stealing movies because you think an industry is corrupt is the wrong way to fix the problem. I really don't believe people pirate because they think they're doing good because if they did, they'd do something about the "corrupt movie industry" (like calling their elected officials, for example) instead of downloading the movies produced by the very same industry.

[edit on 25-8-2009 by Totakeke]

Is that what I said? I don't believe it is. I never said profit was an excuse, I said that you cannot say that filesharing is hurting the little man when the industry is producing larger and larger profit margins every year despite filesharing. The perception certainly does not fit the reality.

Now, on to "stealing". Filesharing is not stealing, not technically, and not legally. At worst it is "copyright infringement", a separate and distinct infraction, unrelated to theft. Theft is a criminal offence, copyright infringement is a civil offence. One gets you jail time, the other gets you sued.

reply to post by jonny2410


Yeah, but you know...if I buy clothing and choose to loan it to my friends and they can make patterns and stuff and they lift the design for that piece of clothing, sew it up and voilá, they have something cool, do you see a problem there? Or should we have to reinvent the wheel all the time?

Listen, defend them if you must but they are all making a mint off you poor suckers. Who invented the hamburger? McDonald's owes somebody some serious cash. What about everything else we ever do? It isn't always about tons and tons of money. Sometimes it's about the love of what you're doing.

Quite simply, anyone who cuts off their customers for using illegal download sites and stuff, will go out of business rather quickly.

I hope sky do it to me. I'll laugh at them as I cancel my account and go to someone who doesn't restrict your internet usage. As will many others.

Originally posted by quackers
It won't happen. It didn't happen the last time they tried it and it won't happen this time.

Originally posted by Totakeke


Cars are expensive. Should I go steal someone's car since I don't want to pay for one myself?

Haha, car analogies. Car analogies are not a valid argument when discussing filesharing, that chestnut was deemed irrelevent years ago. Here is why;

If you have a car and I come along and copy your car then drive off leaving you with your original car, what have I stolen exactly.

Once you understand that, you will see how absurd your car analogy is.

[edit on 25-8-2009 by quackers]

agreed, that car analogy was horrible


THERE ARE A LOT OF PEOPLE THAT DOESNT UNDERSTAND THE TECNOLOGY BEHIND COMPUTERS MAKING STATEMENTS LIKE THAT GUY ... REALLY, GET OUT OF YOUR BUBBLE OR STOP MAKING STATEMENTS LIKE THAT

[edit on 25-8-2009 by Faiol]

Originally posted by Totakeke

Stealing movies because you think an industry is corrupt is the wrong way to fix the problem. I really don't believe people pirate because they think they're doing good because if they did, they'd do something about the "corrupt movie industry" (like calling their elected officials, for example) instead of downloading the movies produced by the very same industry.

Oh... so calling a corrupt elected official is the answer!

In a perfect world maybe this would be a legitimate course of action. However, this is not a perfect world and elected officials stopped representing their constituents a long time ago. These days they are just glove puppets for corporations and big business. So long as they're being palmed a few dollars through the back door to keep their noses out of it, they will because it's profitable to turn a blind eye.

Personally I see every dollar in my wallet as a vote on a ballot form. I don't give it to industries that shaft the common person. Voting with the hip pocket is the best course of action - but sadly people caught in the consumer trance don't have the will power to abstain and stick it to the man.

Therefore, we need our revolutionaries and pirates to pick up the slack of spineless people.

IRM

reply to post by quackers

If you have a car and I come along and copy your car then drive off leaving you with your original car, what have I stolen exactly.

Well, nobody gets paid for that car when normally they would.

Originally posted by Acidtastic
Quite simply, anyone who cuts off their customers for using illegal download sites and stuff, will go out of business rather quickly.

I hope sky do it to me. I'll laugh at them as I cancel my account and go to someone who doesn't restrict your internet usage. As will many others.

thats all very well, but very naieve dude.

ALL , and i mean ALL isp's restrict internet usage in one form or another in the uk (even be! ). Restriction of traffic really has nothign to do with illegal file sharing.

traffic is restricted as the networks get completly overloaded if its not, theirs a big difference in traffic restrictions and actions against file sharing. Traffic restrictions do not actualy target file sharing per say, they target a form of traffic, for instance, traffic shaping to slow down torrents is not done because torrents are illegal, because their not illegal in any way, its because at this moment in time, torrents are what alot of the internets bandwith is getting eaten up by, and if theirs no bandwith their will be no internet/.

do not confuse traffic restrictions with a companies view on filesharing. I get bb from be, they do not restrict anything, YET , they will send you emails and threaten you to stop downloading / uploading the files mentioned.

(tip - dont download pokemon roms from mininova!)

reply to post by Totakeke


And we encounter another antipiracy fallacy, the "imaginary loss" concept.

You cannot simply assume that 1 download = 1 lost sale, its absurd and completely unrealistic. In the vast majority of cases, they would never have seen a dime as the person who downloaded had absolutely no intention of buying the thing they downloaded. Hence "imaginary loss". In those circumstances, there is no loss, nor can loss be proven as it would be impossible to prove that the downloader intended to buy, and prove that the reason they did not buy was solely due to its availability on filesharing networks.

Added to that, lets not forget that not every country plays by the same rules. In Spain its not illegal and in Germany there is a limit to how much people can acceptably illegally download. So not everyone is so backwards thinking.


reply to post by boaby_phet


Traffic restrictions are imposed becuase ISPs oversell capacity. They know full well they cannot even hope to provide the advertised bandwidth to everyone. Its a legal way of screwing the consumer, something Britain is a champion at.

[edit on 25-8-2009 by quackers]

traffic restrictions are in place as when broadband first launched in uk. or anywhere... their were no such things as youtube / torrents / p2p filesharing / i player (or any other on demand service),its only scince these services have became such an important part of the internet that traffic restrictions have had to be made.

traffic restrictions are not started because companies want to screw people over, companies provide what they can and they have to work with what they have to give everyone as good a service as possible,, its just a shame we have idiots in the government trying to make a name for themselfs every few months by saying everything needs to change and that isp's need to make changes.

fact is, it does not matter how much the isp's actualy do, they can have the worlds fastest data centres with backhauls that could handle the whole worlds internet connection, but it makes no real difference as in most cases the signal has to pass accross the PSTN (public switched telephone network - bt / openreaches network), which in parts are up to 30-40 years old, with very poor quality cabling / lines , this is what causes most of the uk's traffic problems and internet woes .. not the isp's , their just a scapegoat for bt's network 80% of the time.

Originally posted by Totakeke
reply to post by quackers

 

If you have a car and I come along and copy your car then drive off leaving you with your original car, what have I stolen exactly.

Well, nobody gets paid for that car when normally they would.

But what if the file say a TV Show is not shown on TV or available on DVD in your country then it wouldnt normaly have been sold.