OfCom's Anti-Piracy Measures Announced (UK)

[cuzant]

Not sure if this is the right place, feel free to move it.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/10183820.stm

Basically if this is brought in anyone on the big ISPs will be logged anytime they have downloaded anything illegal and their details can passed on to music or movie studios and i suppose they could take legal action.

It also gives the minister in charge the power to block or slow anyone internet connection.

So thought's on this anyone, necessary evil or infringement on civil rights?

 

[Amnestic]

Didn't they try this in one of the Scandinavian countries and the ISP just stopped logging stuff because they disagreed with the law?

Which then impacted proper police investigations into things like child sex sites and the like because ISPs weren't keeping logs anymore and thus couldn't turn over helpful information to the police?

Yeah, great idea guys. Seriously.

 

[DividedUnity]

hahahaha well thats a load of controlling bullshit right there. I hope to god they dont get away with this.

 

[howdyoldbuddyoldpal]

Just the 'Big' ISPs? I'll keep using little post office broadband in that case.

 

[cuzant]

Just the 'Big' ISPs? I'll keep using little post office broadband in that case.

Sorry man, but it appears Post Office are classed as big, 400,000 is the threshhold, i'm not quite sure who that actually leaves mind.

 

[m@]

AOl and pipex to name 2 but theres loads so it's fine and anyway its stupidly easy to get around so theres no worry lol

 

[howdyoldbuddyoldpal]

Just the 'Big' ISPs? I'll keep using little post office broadband in that case.

Sorry man, but it appears Post Office are classed as big, 400,000 is the threshhold, i'm not quite sure who that actually leaves mind.

Wow, I had no idea, very few people have even heard of it.

 

[Pyrofoxable]

Is there a legal difference between downloading & watching a stream on a website? Youtube has pretty much every song you could think of for example.

 

[cuzant]

Is there a legal difference between downloading & watching a stream on a website? Youtube has pretty much every song you could think of for example.

I'm not sure legally, but surely not because that would stop a very large percentage of youtube traffic. I guess you don't actually download and own the song, but there are add-ons and such that let you download the videos. Another reason why this is quite a silly idea in my opinion.

 

[mad825]

From what I gather they will be only monitoring P2P network transfer, DDL I'm not too sure about however it has never been their concern with pirating

The communications watchdog said the code would go alongside other work to educate customers about copyright infringement, promotion of legal alternatives to file-sharing networks and targeted action against the most persistent offenders.

well this suggest only for P2P is going to get targeted but it will be bypassed easily with ipredator
Direct downloading? I doubt they would bother, would cause too many problems plus we could all argue that we all are downloading illegal material because we download copyrighted images to our machines

 

[Delusibeta]

The problem is that, really, Ofcom doesn't have a lot of proof. How are they going to tell if you're "infringing" or not? If, for example, going onto The Pirate Bay gets your details on the list, you could legitimately argue that you were looking for Linux distributions, or you're just researching how many pirate downloads a certain game your "PIRATES R RUININ GAMES" blog post. Again, you can argue that your torrent use was not to get the latest Pendulum album (for example. Stoopid Warner only officially streaming "samplers") but rather, the latest OC ReMix album or, again, Linux. Likewise, I question how they would record P2P networks and if that will just drive the pirates to Megaupload and the like, like the French law did. And what if Steam or Gamersgate or similar gets flagged as a piracy site? "No, I didn't just download 16Gb of pirated material, I bought GTA 4 off Steam". And then, there's still the big, glaring issue of IP spoofing that no-one in power seems to realise exists. Plus, the whole Scandinavia experience. Yeah, that went well.

There's just too many holes for this to be effective. It's like trying to ban porn on the internet. Oh, wait... [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/10180937.stm]

[Edit] Another thought: Mechwarrors 4 Free. The client is P2P based. Oboy. Also: iPlayer downloads. Yep, P2P, last time I checked. Although I would be surprised if Ofcom started flagging up the BBC as a provider of pirated material.

 

[mad825]

The problem is that, really, Ofcom doesn't have a lot of proof. How are they going to tell if you're "infringing" or not? If, for example, going onto The Pirate Bay gets your details on the list, you could legitimately argue that you were looking for Linux distributions, or you're just researching how many pirate downloads a certain game your "PIRATES R RUININ GAMES" blog post. Likewise, I question how they would record P2P networks and if that will just drive the pirates to Megaupload and the like, like the French law did. And what if Steam or Gamersgate or similar gets flagged as a piracy site? "No, I didn't just download 16Gb of pirated material, I bought GTA 4 off Steam".

There's just too many holes for this to be effective. It's like trying to ban porn on the internet. Oh, wait... [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/10180937.stm]

Plus, the whole Scandinavia experience. Yeah, that went well.

people who pirate will just use this

recording P2P is rather costly to the ISP however it is possible to know exactly when a person pirates becuase of the internet protocols being used, they can determine what the data packets contain and where they are coming and going from assuming that it hasn't be covered with a proxy

 

[cieply]

Well Scandinavia isn't UK, it hurts me but in UK your freedom is much less valued despite of what media might be promoting.

As for the measure itself, intelligent pirates will just use TOR or something else that protects their data. And even if they won't it's a damn hard case in court. How will they proove that it was YOU that downloaded anything and not your nephew or girlfriend? They would have to deal with maaany rights to enable them to do anything. But, I guess that with such big money involved it will happen sooner or later. Our freedom < our money. Remember that.

 

[Continuity]

so they're going to "monitor" p2p traffic... wtf? for them to know what a person has downloaded they will need to capture every packet and then reconstruct the file and then inspect the file... multiply that across all p2p traffic and they're going to need huge amounts of storage and processing power.

Besides, screw p2p, encrypted usenet ftw!!

 

[Liberaliter]

I'm not on a big ISP, but I still get 20mb broadband and fast download speeds. But this still sucks.

 

[Continuity]

How will they proove that it was YOU that downloaded anything and not your nephew or girlfriend?

They don't have to, the owner of the line is liable, simple.

 

[FiXT_Cake]

I hate UK ISP im ment to be on 20mb yet my download speed is 120k/bs max

 

[Flour]

Is there a legal difference between downloading & watching a stream on a website? Youtube has pretty much every song you could think of for example.

There isn't.

You're still looking at or listening to copyrighted material without paying for it.

 

[WrongSprite]

Is there a legal difference between downloading & watching a stream on a website? Youtube has pretty much every song you could think of for example.

There isn't.

You're still looking at or listening to copyrighted material without paying for it.

But you're doing it on a legal site, so it would be easy to claim innocence.

 

[Gralian]

It's just bullshit scare tactics. None of this will really take off. I'm pretty sure they tried to explain the "three strikes and you're out!" system before. It doesn't work, it won't ever work, and it's not going to stop certain people i know from pirating the next big album or movie. There is no way to effectively police or enforce this without infringing on a fuckload of rights themselves, i don't think hypocrisy will stand up in court, even if it is government backed. The UK has gone mad with this "big brother nanny state" and i'm sick to death of it.

Edit: They should stop going after minor offenders like pirates and focus on child pornographers, terrorists and the like. It's a complete fucking waste of resources. It disgusts me that a fairly average young man gets done for pirating an album of his favourite band, and yet Peter the Pedo still roams the interwebs fapping to children. What the fuck?

I think this echoes my thoughts on drugs as well, though. Stop going after the people doing them and focus on the people bringing it in to the UK.