The act has exemptions for criminal matters (copyright is civil), and for court orders (there’s none here). It doesn’t have exemptions for “I can make some extra money by spying on my users and selling the information to people who want to sue them”, because the whole point of the bloody act is to make that exact behaviour illegal.

They cannot do this without your permission. They cannot require your permission as a condition of service. They cannot sneak a clause into the ToS that tricks you into granting it – the standard required is informed consent.

If you do get hit up for money by the media companies, then you should (a) sue Virgin for handing out your information, and (b) have the evidence thrown out on the grounds that it was obtained illegally.

I stand corrected!

This show’s the Virgin franchise is brave – because to some people (not everyone), if they get messed about by one ‘Virgin’ company, they tend to steer clear (or best be wary) of another.

All because they share a logo.

I hope that was intentional :)

Would MP’s accept the post office reading all mail, BT listening to every phone call?

If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear, says parliament. Except loss of privacy and freedom. If we have an identity crisis about what it means to be British, it’s because of you. Our grandparents fought for our freedom. Today the biggest threat to our freedom is from within.

Fuck you, Virgin.

Labour has taken huge steps to realising Orwell’s 1984.

I’m more suprised it’s happened ‘after’ it sold off the record stores though.
Perhaps it was ‘persuaded’ into it’s actions by it’s shoulder-rubbing peers.

So Virgin are ‘sending out letters to thousands of customers warning them that infringement has been detected on their network connections’ and ‘The BPI ultimately wants internet companies to implement a “three strikes and out” rule to warn and ultimately disconnect the estimated 6.5 million customers whose accounts are used for regular criminal activity’.

So what? Some people might not know they should secure their wifi *if* they want to protect their service from others. And – on a related but essentially seperate note – the BPI want to do something about people stealing music. Fair enough.

I mean, it is stealing, isn’t it? I know record companies do all sorts of shit, but two wrongs don’t make a right…right? Can we look at the ethics coolly, or does the enjoyment of ‘sharing files’ overwhelm the rational mind? It really seems to for many people. I admit I’ve done it, but I can accept counter-measures, so long as they don’t threaten genuinely legal use.

The only problem is it’s going to cost me £125 to get the BT line switched back on. Then I have to to find another ISP.

Y shld b bng fnd! nd dn’t gv m th ‘nfrng my frdm’ crp. Tht’s jst wy f syng d mmrl stff bt dn’t wnt nyn t knw – s dn’t sk!

Chldrn, wth n mrls nd n sns f rspnsblty. Tht’s th tr lgcy f r scty tdy.

What happens when pirating something gives you a better, easier experience for free? Sometimes it’s hard not to justify illegally downloading things. When buying a CD could give you a rootkit and legally downloaded songs are chock-full of DRM telling you what you can and can’t do, it’s hard to turn down a free, DRM-less, higher-quality version of the same thing.

The music industry should take a note from VALVe when they said, “Rampant piracy is just unserved customers.“

And the ADSL24 service is WAY faster and cheaper.

Did no-one in the record industry ever take any economics classes?

Doesn’t make what they’re doing any better, though.

(Off to read the TOS for Be Unlimited.)

This, combined with the relative anonymity, has created a situation where millions of people nick stuff all the time – stuff which has been worked on by several people over a long period of time. Does any of this mean the laws should be changed so they can carry on taking the stuff for free?

I keep getting the impression that many people have blinded themselves to the ethics of all this because they have unconsciously subscribed to an orthodoxy that flatly refuses to be self-critical – possibly because it also has very many good intentions and also because it sees itself as an underdog David against various corporate Goliaths.

But this is more like the ethic of an impoverished, starving petty thief, stealing pears from a cart in Victorian London, than that of a bunch of overfed 21st century Westerners sat at their iMacs! Aren’t people stealing simply because they think they can get away with it, and attempting to justify it because because of greed?

I’m no conservative and not in any way related to any of the industries concerned – I just don’t want to see what I think is a lack of reflection on ethical issues, and don’t want to read a Geeks’ Fox News.

Poor quality product does still not justify taking the efforts of a group of people for free, without their permission, when there is a commercial option (personally I think bootlegging of unavailable stuff is *not* an offence).

I’m not saying record companies etc. aren’t dicks, but simply that we are in denial about the fact that it is theft. And I’m not saying that it is a serious offence to nick a few songs, but just that record companies *are* justified in taking protective measures.

Re: Be Unlimited
A friend received a terms of service violation letter from Be, he was using Bit-torrent.
How on earth did they assume he was downloading ‘illegal’ content such as old TV shows? Surely not spying on users?

Unlimited is Limited, war is peace, ignorance is strength, etc, etc

*If you use peer-to-peer applications to copy or distribute copyrighted material such as music, films and software, and do so without paying royalties, you are almost certainly infringing the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Yeah, right… I’m uploading someone else’s copyrighted material right now, and I’m not paying a single cent of royalties. Legally.

You (and Virgin) have made one very large assumption here, that if I download it, It must be illegal.

There is practically no way for a filter to know whether you have a right to a certain file or not, so there is practically no way for Virgin to separate the criminals from the innocents.

I have a massive dvd collection, but it is currently in storage because I’m living in a different country. I believe the law allows for a digital backup of my media, so there is no difference if I download someone else’s back-up, I already own a license to watch it (and I can guarantee that no one else is concurrently using my copies).

Similarly (but slightly different), I have a massive record collection, again, in storage. I don’t consider it stealing to be able to listen to the albums I’ve already bought. I’ll grant that a digtal version is potentially better quality than the records I bought, but at 128kbps, I doubt it.

The real point I’m making is that there is no smart-filter that’s going to check my storage unit, to see if I already own a certain dvd or cd, before serving me with a notice. It can only see files for what they are and presume my guilt.

So now, as a paying customer (without access to my purchased product), I will have to take extra steps (like encryption) to avoid being labeled a criminal. That seems like the whole DRM debacle, where only the innocent, good-customers bear the brunt of the measure, while everyone else avoids it easily.

Also, to add to your “bootlegging of unavailable stuff is *not* an offence” comment, I mostly agree, and the internet is full of movies and albums that will never again see a commercial release, but they are still someone’s IP and we will still be busted for them.

They don’t spy on anyone, pretty much no ISP has the time nor resources to do that.

Most ISPs actually already have a three strikes style system, you just don’t hear about it. However, I’ve never, ever seen a connection cut off because of it.

It works via the standard abuse notification system, addresses listed on WHOIS info for each ISP. The copyright holder, or those acting on their behalf (MediaDefender et al) sit on P2P networks harvesting IP addresses.

They then WHOIS these IPs, send an automated fill-in-the-blanks response to the ISP abuse address and the ISP essentially tidies it up and passes it onto the customer.

The issue with the three strikes is really down to the knee-jerk media reaction; in my experience with three different ISPs, the three strikes apply to the same set of files. So as long as you stop seeding that new episode of Lost when you get the warning, you aren’t at risk.

I’d suggest people actually read the notices that are being sent out as well, they’re far from nasty and actually indicate legal alternatives for buying music, and how to secure your networks.

If I could buy the songs I want, without DRM and rootkits for, say, 0.50$(maybe even a bit more) or equivalent per song I wouldn’t bother with dowloading stuff from bittorent.Especially if I knew a hefty part was going to the artist rather then to the bottom line of the record industry.

I wouldn’t have a problem with filtering on a mutually agreed level, if it would be technically possible.

The ‘mutually agreed’ level would be a constant point of haggling, obviously, but so are many other parts of public life. I could easily live with the mainstream being protected if it doesn’t impede on my internet connection and my torrent use for everything else.

Leaving the technicalities aside for a moment, I could imagine a mechanism that protects the blockbusters, but leaves the long tail open for free torrent use.

Of course, should there be a case where some 12 year old gets sued for singing her favourite song on YT, ISPs should be required by law to drop their filters and the public feel morally obliged to download as much material as possible in the next 24 hours – the kind that hurts, not necessarily what they like.

You have a good point which is worthy of debate.

I would just like to point out two things.
1) Theft: no. Copyright violation, yes.
2) Proportion.

ad 1) Where I live (the Netherlands) it is legal(!) to make a copy for personal use. I am allowed, by law, to create a 1:1 copy of my neighbour’s CD. I am not allowed to create multiple copies and sell them. There is no thievery involved, my neighbour still has his CD. It’s about distribution, not about copying. Hence, downloading is allowed, uploading is not.

ad 2) Artists have rights. They need to make money, somehow. I am not saying that is wrong or should be changed.
A little bit of history. A long time ago, when there was no copyright, artists would create a song or work of art and it could be copied by anyone with the skills to do so.
After a while, society decided that this was not in the best interest of the public, because artists could and would create more of their art if they didn’t need to have other jobs.
So, copyright was invented. A limited monopoly on the distribution of art, granted by the government (ultimately, the people.) The goal was to have the artist create more art, for the benefit of society. I don’t know how many years the monopoly lasted at the start, but it’s probably something low like 7 or 10 years.
Skip to today. Copyright has been extended to 70 years after the artist’s death in the USA. Copyright is now transferable to other people or entities. The copyright holders are suing the people who are not only their customers and only line to making money; these are the same people who should be served by copyright, they should be the ones who benefit indirectly.

As stated above, 10% of the people living in the UK are now copyright violators. It’s safe to say that the people no longer benefit from the law as it is now. Remember that ultimately, it is the voter who writes the law, and can unwrite the law.

Again, your point still stands and I think too many people, me included, ignore the fact that most of the contents of their ipods are not kosher. It just needs some back story and isn’t as black and white as you make it out to be.

In the end, the pendulum will probably swing back to a more relaxed state of copyright. The current situation can’t hold for very long, which is illustrated by the freak moves the industry makes. (Suing customers is not business as usual.) They are truly grasping at straws, the entire business depending on control of distribution and controlled scarcity of the good. Artists are finding ways to create an audience without the industry’s interference. Distribution is a non-issue with digital copies and cheap bandwidth. The jig is up.

There will be a new and lean recording industry (2.0) that will provide useful and meaningful service to artists. It will not be the pot of gold it is now. For all you free market folks: this is a good thing, the market is cutting out the need for middlemen who do not add anything to the product except price. Services the industry can provide could be shared recording studios with pro equipment and personnel, knowing the right people to get that gig at a large venue, putting up money for advertisements on web and in print, creating a better itunes music store, etc.

Well, in short, concluding, tl;dr, my point is: if so many people are doing something that is against the law, the law is wrong.