back to article Government piles filesharing pressure on UK ISPs

The government turned up the heat on internet providers today, warning that laws to force disconnection of illegal filesharers are already being drafted for a parliamentary debut in November. Lord Triesman, the minister for intellectual property, said that if ISPs can't agree a voluntary scheme with the music and film …

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  1. Mike
    Stop

    Filesharing isn't necessarily illegal?

    Not ALL of the content of filesharing traffic is illegal - filesharing can be used perfectly legally to transmit and share user-created data...who is exactly going to determine which of the many (many many) packets of data flying back and fore are illegal and which are not?

    It won't work...

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    good too see

    It's good to see where "our" governments loyalties are.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    This confirms that the Government....

    cares much much more about money than the health of tghe nation. IF, and I say IF, the Government can so very quickly threaten legislation against ISP's for allowing file sharing WHY has the Government in 10-15 years not legislated to bar ISP's from carrying newsgroup named such as "alt.child-porn" etc etc etc etc ??. The reason is that they really care only about money and big business, just like a NEW Labour Government does !! Gordon Brown should find out what FOAD means and go and do it along with his whole Government.

  4. Gilbert Wham

    I'll be fascinated to see...

    ...exactly how this is going to work. All one need do if they block p2p protocols is spend 10 euros a month on a seedbox somewhere else, use that to do the transfers and pull what you want off over a VPN. Or, wait a few weeks for some enterprising soul to come up with a new app that makes a mockery of all their efforts.

  5. Justin Case
    Paris Hilton

    Love the blackmail

    Typical Nu-Lab: volunteer to do things our way or we will legislate to make you. WTF is the difference?

    (Paris because she is a beacon of sanity in a mad, bad world)

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Perception...

    It's all about the perception of a victimless crime...

    Paedophillia obviously has a victim; comparing the two is ridiculous at best; sickening at worst.

    Unfortunately we're unable to see the effect of file sharing, the music industry seems to be doing just as well, there aren't any musicians (with the exception of Britney, and we must use "musician" incredibly loosely here, speaking of loose...) who appear to be in any trouble.

    Until the public perception of big fat music companies charging huge amounts of cash for records changes, this will always be viewd as a victimless crime.

    I think the solution is for the industries business model to change rather than try and control something they can't.

    I've lost track of where i was going with this and cant be bothered to write any more..fill in the blanks...

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    anyway

    as an aside - I couldn't give a toss, apparently you can buy a server in China for £50 a month.

    So I'll buy a Chinese server, set up a vpn and download everything to that via xdcc and bittorrent then just vpn it down to me.

    Or I'll use perfect dark

    Government can go ---- itself.

    Not that I download anything but fansubbed anime anyway.

  8. b166er
    Black Helicopters

    Yawn

    Hey, AC, I thought your post read - It's good to see where "our" governments royalties are.

    Gilbert, that's spot on also (seedbox)

    No-one uses anonymous networks yet for filesharing, because they are too slow. They are too slow because not enough people use them... catch22. If they force people to use anonymous networks, then their speed will improve and they will become more popular... snowball. And then they'll be well and truly fked (at least at the moment, they can fine the odd person 222,000), better close the interweb thing now.

    cop'n'robbers, eh? plus ca change

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    sigh @ MPs

    what an arse face!

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Go

    Won't affect me...

    ...as I already VPN through Sweden to bypass my ISPs ridiculous traffic shaping - that affects both torrents and perfectly legitimate downloads / online gaming.

  11. 3x2

    From an ISP's view

    I still can't see how this will work in practice. An IP packet is just an IP packet so how will the ISP's distinguish an infringing packet from any other?

    Packet inspection is a none starter. Quite apart from packets containing no application related information is the fact that billions/trillions of packets flow

    round our networks every day and inspecting all that data (assuming it's not encrypted) and looking it up against some sort of database is just not practical.

    You could perhaps look for patterns of activity but this wouldn't tell you that it was infringing activity.

    So what are they left with? Traffic volume? This would be a major problem for ISP's trying to sell bigger faster net access packages. Many types of site would soon

    be out of business (in the UK at least). Media vendors would go the same way - how do I distinguish a legal TV download from an illegal? How will they distinguish

    my patching up a fresh install of XP from me downloading Hero's?

    If the content producers are not careful they will have outlawed the very technologies they may need to exploit to stay in business.

    I know what my answer to a "stop or be disconnected" notice would be (downgrade) and my ISP won't like it.

  12. Neural9
    Pirate

    I have no problem with legislation

    Firstly, I have no problem with filesharing becoming ditched. However, in order to do this I think practices in the music & film industry need to change.

    TO THE ENTERTAINMENT INDUSTRY

    1. No more withholding of releases. When it's out, it's out whether it's broadcast on TV, released on a DVD or in a theatre. I think we're all sick of being treated badly because we're this side of the pond or that you want to make even more money by staggering format and geographical releases. We'll pay for different formats (i.e. cinema) if we want to watch it at a cinema - not just because you make more money by doing it that way first.

    2. You need to provide it digitally and of highest quality. There is no purpose to us owning DVDs anymore, hidef or not. Computers are more than capable thank you and we don't play the bluray game. Media Center all the way. Even a basic xbox will do it now.

    3. You need to provide a better service than a bittorent network. We want to be able to download at full capacity without delay. You can really differentiate yourself here and make us feel like we're getting something better than we get now.

    4. Pricing. Don't be daft. We want a movie at £8, an episode at £2.50 and a season at £30. Charge us extra for extra work you've done - content like "making ofs" or similar. If it's old, drop the price. Let us buy the basics.

    Don't put us in a position where we reduce our consuming of your products and suddenly realise that we don't need your products any more. A bit like the waste of money that is Sky.

    TO ISPS

    Agree to this legistlation and watch your high-paid subscriptions dissapear, people find more insecure wifi and increase the development of trjoans that connect to the bittorrent network to provide plausable deniability so that ISP traffic is inadmissable in a court of law.

    /rant

  13. Steve Browne
    Black Helicopters

    Be interesting to find oout how it will work

    I mean, the ISP sees a load of packets, so they are going to examine each one to see if it is a copyrighted product being distributed unlawfully, yeah, right, thats OK then. The thing is, distribution of copyright material is quite lawful and is an every day occurrence on the internet. El Reg has a copyright notice on this page, presumably, by filling in this form I am granting first serial rights to El Reg enabling them to publish it.

    I just cannot see how there is any means at all of dynamically identifying copyrighted material which is being distributed illegally.

    Still, it does give HMG a means of spying on the whole population, OK most of the population. With their penchant for ID cards, DNA databases, cameras (speed and surveillance) I suppose it is just one more totalitarian step. Stalin would have been proud.

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Most of my life...

    most of my life I couldn't justify the cost of music and I didn't bother. Then I spent time in Germany where it cost a third what it did here and I bought several CDs. Then eventually it became more and more accessible to download music and I started listening.

    If they take that away I'll just go back to not listening to music. The only purpose it serves is to drown out whatever everyone else is blaring out at full volume anyway, let's see a reduction in music in this country. It's about time.

  15. James Summerson
    Flame

    Legal Filesharing

    Doesn't the BBC iPlayer use p2p technology? How are uk.gov going to monitor all ISP traffic without breaching Data Protection? Can't they see what a massive fcuk up this is going to be?

    Idiots!

  16. Lickass McClippers
    Boffin

    It'll never work...

    ...I'm not in the slightest concerned. Frankly, this Gov doesn't know what the fuck it's doing on a daily basis, what makes them think the can keep up with the l33t kidz and their hax0r skillz..??

    This is nothing more than Bandwagoning by The Liebore Party, and they want to be seen as 'doing something about it' in front of their Colonial Cousins...

  17. Michael Compton

    True face of democracy...

    I do not remember the general populace getting up in arms in regard to file sharing so why are the governments getting so deeply involved. Just highlights that democratic governments are just as bad when it comes to cronieism. Corprats and Politicos are only out for themselves and know they only need to throw a bone or two to cover ur eyes in wool.

  18. oliver Stieber
    Happy

    easy

    download the torrent file using tor and then setup your bittorrent client so that it does encryption.

  19. Stephen

    So does this mean...

    ...that when I play Quake Wars I will lose my internet access?

    Seriously, when an ISP can't tell the difference between a P2P packet and a non P2P packet how the hell do they think this will work? Typical government, bunch of proper wankers with no grasp on reality, I was under the impression that our MP's were supposed to be 'of the people' - guess I was wrong :(

  20. Chris Williams (Written by Reg staff)

    Re: So does this mean...

    ISPs can tell the difference between P2P and non-P2P packets. The technology is called deep packet inspection, and is already deployed by BT, Virgin media and others for bandwidth throttling and traffic prioritisation.

    - Chris

  21. Anonymous Coward
    Black Helicopters

    Tech angle too far?

    Alot of the comments above ask "how could this work" at an automatic packet inspection level, but maybe our low-tech govnt will simply force ISPs to be at the beck and call of the RIAA / MPAA equiv. Selling us out to big business as usual.

    Of course any prohibition will not work, offer an alternative and i bet alot of people would be more willing to pay something. I only tend to download US tv shows before they are shown in the UK, but that is more to do with liking the cinema experience or a DVD when it comes along.

    Still on the bright side it will spur innovation in alternative possibly encrypted technologies, which can only be good for our freedoms & privacies.

  22. Les Matthew

    Re: Re: So does this mean...

    "ISPs can tell the difference between P2P and non-P2P packets."

    But can they tell the difference between legal P2P packets and illegal P2P packets?

  23. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    @Chris Williams

    But not over ssl...

  24. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    @ Chris Williams

    Deep Packet Inspection will not work. Quite a few bittorrent packages already support encryption. As more ISPs begin to filter traffic, more people will use encryption. DPI cannot tell if encrypted p2p data is legal or not, file-sharing or not. I use p2p to obtain Linux disc images & game updates (via Steam). Even attempting DPI on encrypted bittorrent data will require a crazy amount of expensive hardware. Their only option will be to throttle ALL encrypted data which will lead to mass complaints.

    I use Virgin Media and never have problems with bandwidth throttling of my bittorrent data.

  25. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Re : ISPs can tell the difference between P2P and non-P2P packets.

    Yes, but how can they tell the difference between what are legally shared bits and illegally shared bits?

    Presumably they would also have to be able to decipher encrypted packets before they could attempt this??

  26. Tony

    Eh, before p2p

    why don't they shut off access to all the spam-spewing bots out there?

  27. Anonymous Coward
    Happy

    re: So does this mean

    "ISPs can tell the difference between P2P and non-P2P packets."

    True for non encrypted packets, however if the packet is encrypted (very easy to turn on in clients such as azureus) they can't.... The only way to get round this would be to bring in legislation baring this practice.....

  28. Anonymous Coward
    Black Helicopters

    More snooping by HM Gov

    "We're not prepared to see the kinds of damage that will be done to the creative economy," Triesman said.

    I dont think many people will argue that the creators deserve to be paid, the argument many people have is that they object to paying over the odds to subsidise marketing and advertising and media companies who treat the artists themselves like crap.

    This isnt about music, it is about control and civil liberties and government attempts to micro manage our lives down to the last detail.

    Call me a black helicopter now please.

  29. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    Corrupt little ....

    It's noticeable that our public servants seem to think action to support failing and unwanted record companies is more important than chasing down and stopping spammers.

    Any politician who makes this case is corrupt and in direct opposition to his duty to carry out the public will. They need to be punished, and hard.

    Spammer first, abusive companies second, copyright last.

  30. Dazed and Confused
    Black Helicopters

    It's all Skype's fault

    The .gov boys are just trying to find a way to ban Skype because they can't tap the conversation on it. Skype using P2P so it needs to be banned. The fact the the record industry will then give Gordon pot loads of money for banning doesn't really come into it. Oh and Billie boy will probably chip in to to stop Linux distributions, err, being distributed.

    If they can't tap the Skype calls they can't find the terrorist and people who might not want to vote for them.

    So it's gotta go.

    Expecting politicians to understand that they can not write a usable law against something is as naive as your typical MP.

  31. Jack Hughes

    Encryption

    "ISPs can tell the difference between P2P and non-P2P packets."

    Yes, but as Les points out, they can't tell the difference between legal and illegal P2P packets. Also, encryption should also prevent them from telling P2P packets from those, say, from when you are accessing your Internet banking or purchasing something online.

    If they were investing in deep packet inspection technology, then they may as well also use it to shape the traffic flow (which DPI gear is perfectly capable of), reducing the bandwidth available to other high data resources such as video streaming or those they do not like (the BBC's iPlayer, for example).

  32. Anonymous Coward
    Alien

    Copyright, as implemented now, is out-moded

    > The minister was speaking at the launch of the government consultation on new

    > copyright exceptions following 2006's wide-ranging Gowers Review of intellectual

    > property in the UK.

    Can we have some real journalism round here, and have a link to where the government is taking feedback from the public as part of this consultation. A well organised collection of rants from the public could well push these threats the otherway.

    There does indeed need to be a way for creativity to be financially rewarding, and the government should protect that method, but I feel that the way copyright is currently implemented is totally unfair to the customer.

    A DVD writer can cost less than a new DVD movie, we all have computers that exist to copy data. The music and movie industry for many years now have been taking advantage that once the large investment tech is made, duplicates cost next to nothing to produce. Now computing tech has fallen in price so much that the average man on the street has more computing power in their phone than a 70s supercomputer, it is unfair to tell us "no" when it comes to copyright when the technology is saying "yes, you'd be stupid not to".

  33. Anonymous Coward
    Boffin

    Slight over-reactions

    Regarding most of the comments, I don't believe they're talking about getting ISPs to monitor and disconnect users off their own back. They're talking about a scheme whereby ISPs will sign an agreement that says if one of the companies in the music industry prove that a subscriber has been downloading their content, the ISP will agree to disconnect them. Much in the same way that BT would disconnect someone's phoneline if it's being used for illegal activity. The onus to discover the illegal activity is still on the police, RIAA, Sony, BMG etc. or potentially share a "blacklist" of illegal torrents etc. If they don't do this, the government will legislate against it and force the ISPs to do it, probably without consultation.

    (off topic) DPI and traffic shaping etc will probably still exist, as we get closer and closer to the "subscriber" internet, whereby packets of different types will "cost" more or less depending on their priority. I can completely understand this model - you're paying for (usually) a contention ratio of 50:1 - if all 50 users max their connection, what would you prefer to get through first, a Skype packet or a torrent packet? To be honest I think this would be a better solution to traffic shaping - simply prioritise whenever the backbone from the exchange is congested. It's what you pay for, but a more elegant way of solving the problem

  34. Anonymous Coward
    Linux

    Kids fairy tails anyone?

    1) Story of King Canute (arch.)

    or

    2) The Emperors new clothes (H.C Anderson - out of copyright I Think :)

    Politicians really should read these things as most kids learnt these at kindergarten. Just what the UK needs - more half arsed new labour laws. Gordon - try enforcing the old ones like grannies getting mugged or more guns on UK streets than Baghdad on a Saturday night.

    When my mobile phone can hold 20 albums this puts the value of content in perspective. That makes it cost more than the phone !

    Your Francis Urquhart ;)

  35. Anonymous Coward
    Coat

    Anti-Record Industry Lobby

    Why don't we all get together to buy a few politicians like the record industry does? Send your MP £5 to not support increasing this copyright madness. Maybe even promise them theres another £10 in it for them if the laws fail. Seems to work for the record comanies.

  36. Morely Dotes

    Illegal filesharing?

    Fine, no problem. After the arrest, trial, and conviction of an accused illegal filesharer, the ISP can disconnect him without notice.

    Any time prior to conviction, however, the ISP is liable to find themselves facing civil charges of defamation, should they disconnect someone for "illegal filesharing."

    Another useless, unworkable law that will punish only the legitimate ISP. Apparently UK politicians are at least as stupid (and venal) as US politicians.

    And I (in the USA) will continue to use BitTorrent to share Linux distros - which is purely legal, Mister "Lord" Triesman. I suppose UK residents will be forced to pay the Microsoft tax (probably by having Inland Revenue collect it, and paying Microsoft directly out of the National Treasury).

  37. Chris Williams (Written by Reg staff)

    Re: Copyright, as implemented now, is out-moded

    Filesharing is not part of the consultation, and so the consultation is not relevant to this story.

    The consultation is taking submissions on the series of new copyright exceptions, as the sentence you quote makes clear. This report is based on my own interview with Triesman and comments he made during a Q&A session at the announcement of the those new exceptions, as well as sources on either side of the debate.

    On a broader point, if a simply posting a web link constitutes "real journalism" these days, we're in more trouble than I thought.

  38. Chris Williams (Written by Reg staff)

    Re: Slight over-reactions

    You're much closer to reality than some of the tinfoil hat brigade. At present ISPs require rights holders to get a court order to identify people they have detected sharing copyrighted works. It's quite easy to do so, although fallible because of dynamic IP pools etc.

    What the government and record/film industry appear to want is to have a agreement or laws where the rights holders can approach the ISP without involving the courts. The ISPs will presumably check the allegation themselves, then warn the filesharer to stop.

    If he/she persists, they'll be kicked off the network, rather than be hit with the fine they might receive in civil court. Make no mistake; whether voluntary or by legislation, this is looking a very likely scenario.

    The result is a system that makes it quicker, easier and cheaper for BPI et al to pursue their fight against copyright infringers.

    Arguably, for most major BitTorrenters - who likely consider net access a very important service - losing net is a bigger deterrent than potential court fines, which rights holders have not sought en masse (in the UK at least, the US is a whole other story).

    It's also an easier political sell to boot people off the net than clog up the courts. I hope to tackle the habeas corpus-type questions it raises in these pages soon. I can't think of any similar system in commerce or law.

    An interesting question would be what'll happen once someone is kicked off. Will they get a MAC? Will they be able to join another ISP straight away, or might they be sin-binned for a while via some list of illegal file sharers circulated among providers, or blacklisted permanently even?

    Interesting times ahead.

    Of course, there's ways commited geeks can anonymise their filesharing completely, but they're a small minority among an increasingly mainstream problem for record and film companies.

    P.S. To all those telling me that deep packet inspection can't distinguish between copyright and non-copyright files, and that encrypting torrents is easy, thanks, but I kinda knew that (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/11/08/bittorrent_encryption_explosion/). I was just letting Stephen know that his gaming can be distinguished from P2P.
  39. Greg
    Happy

    Use two ISPs

    I plan to pay for TWO ISPs and have my computer send and receive all the 1s over one of them and all the 0s over the other. Hey Mr Triesman - decrypt that, if you can!

    (and if you manage, please can you burn me a copy? Ta)

    Magic Carpet please....

  40. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    also

    it is even more steps down the

    "Guilty with no right to prove your innocense."

    <Rant>

    Back in the day people had to prove you did something wrong, now days it's easier to get you done for something you didn't do becouse the accusers don't need to prove anything.

    <rant +1>

    "This person got these files! My lord"

    "I see, well obviously they stole them, robbing you of thousands of pounds by giving them to hundreds of people. You can't prove any of that and neither can I infact nobody even bothered to investigate but hey this is a 21st century democracy - we don't need to prove anything!"

    Much like

    <rant +5>

    "This rag wearing Arab is a terrorist suspect, we will hold him, revoke his freedoms, supress his rights to information and fair trial, becouse this is the west and we can do stuff like that without fear of repercussions! Evidence? No we can't show you any evidence, isn't the fact he speaks foreign and wears a teacozy enough to prove our point!? Of course it is!"

    <Rant + 10>

    Jeez I love that we're such a free, honest, just society, that the citizen comes first, that men who have sex with bicycles in their own room end up on sex offenders registers. That your dna ends up on databases forever after being found drunk in a bush. That they stand by you when threatend by money grabbing s---heads. The record industry and its cronies arn't capitalists. Capitilists know how to inovate and provide. Their just gangsters leaching off a servial state.

    <Rant over load>

    F--- labour, f--- the tories, f--- the lib dems, f--- this shitty country. Once I can speak a new language I'm out of here. Theres no place here for citizens, just mindless slaves. Barcoded and tracked, raped left right and centre for the good of gangsters.

    <Rant Critical level>

    ---ing ----s

    Welcome to the West. Please Suck this old encumbants c--k, he hasn't invotated or provided anything to society for 20 years but we think he still deserves all the pie.

    <Rant concluded>

    <.<

    Whatever, I hope they all get cancer. Every last one of them.

  41. Mark Boothroyd
    Alert

    ISP are just being asked to bad users, not monitor them!

    A lot of you don't actually seem to have read the article!

    The government is talking about adding laws to force ISP's to ban users who repeatedly share copywrite material.

    It is not asking the ISP's to monitor the users themselves.

    The monitoring will continue to be done as it is done now, by companies employed by the record and movie industries to infiltrate p2p networks and report on who's sharing what.

    So as far as I can see, no real change other than if you do get caught, you might get kicked of the net and unable to get another connection in the UK (in addition to any fine etc.)

  42. Michael Compton

    Re: Re: Slight over-reactions

    Its the fact that large lobbying groups can achieve these sort of results where as the peoples opinions don't really seem to hold much water that is the worrying and sickening part.

    They have asked to be cop, judge and executioner, proverbally of course :), and they are going to get it. Don't remember people asking for speed camera stealth taxes, costly invasions, 'high score' system for police, sorry targets, or a creeking NHS.

    We have to remember we are talking about entertainment here not military/state secrets. And its over priced entertainment at that if u ask me.

    In days of yore artist where not in it for vast quanities of money but rather a love of medium within which they choose to express themselves.

  43. Andrew
    Stop

    Re: Re: Slight over-reactions

    > Of course, there's ways commited geeks can anonymise their filesharing completely, but they're a small minority among an increasingly mainstream problem for record and film companies.

    The same was said about MP3 and bittorrent itself a while back, somebody will make it easier for the mainstream user. The whole thing will go deeper underground and get harder to track. The only people that will really suffer are online roll playing games and people like me who download OSS via. bittorrent, although I will just fall back to FTP or rsync if this goes ahead.

    I highly doubt it will ever get anywhere. As with all these things it is too little too late.

  44. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    anyway

    Ranting over woohoo I feel releaved.

    I can almost say I've never downloaded a holywood movie, almost, sadly I did aquire a copy of 300 just to see what all the fuss was about - man it was rubbish. Anyway that slight indescretion I don't download anything that I'd expect to be of interest to any license holders from the UK. Of course I do violate copyrights downloading fansubs - but as far as I'm concerned - if the Japanese license holders don't want to sell their series at a reasonable price they can go swing.

    Seriously only the most sort after and loved series are translated, then only years after the origonal air date.Then they're mostly commercial rubbish (Naruto, one peice, bleach - please kill me.) This year 4 series have been announced for release in the uk WOW one of which is 7 years old LOL. Now compare that to the number of series I was watching last anime autumn season - 17 series. Of which at best 1 will ever get a UK release (in 3 or 4 years) and maybe 5 will get a US release (in maybe 1 or 2 years.)

    So I download fansubs. It's the only choice I have, bar learning Japanese and importing the DVDS (and my friends that is unbelievably expensive as anime DVD's in Japan are only for collectors really.) I do actually have about £3000 worth of legit anime dvds. Along with about £1000 worth of figures and £1000 worth of Concert DVDs.

    I don't actually agree with copyright infringment if you have a viable alternative (local cd and dvd sales) If it's too expensive don't buy the stuff - go without it's not that hard, western music, films and series are tosh anyway (except firefly that was good.)

    Anyway onto my point. I don't think it's at all fair to accuse people of being paranoid, wearing tin foil hats etc.

    As citizens of this nation we mostly invest quite a bit (say about 50 -> 70% of your pay) in taxes and additional costs (vat, direct tax, tax built into the price of products etc.) We helped put the government where it is. We're the citizens darn it! So when a whole business sector is acting unfairly and abusing its customer base, crushing emerging businesses, refusing to modernise. When a whole secter is doing that. We'd hope that _our_ government would go "hey hold on a second, I think the public has a point here - I think you may be acting unfairly."

    We'd hope that _our_ government might say "You have to provide for this need, I mean you are a business and the customers want this service, so why pretell arn't you providing it?" That's the crux of why we're so tired of it, why we're all so angry and dissilusioned.

    Becouse _our_ politicians don't stand up for us, they don't think of us as citizens. They think of us as a problem to be solved. It's sad, and frustrating and there is nothing that we can do.

    I believe in copyright, I write a bit and I'd be annoyed if someone else used my material for their own ends (never gonna happen as everything I write sucks) but copyright is there to protect artists. So that artists can benefit the public. But there's something wrong. Very wrong with the way things are now. Very wrong indeed.

    Is this the kind of government we deserve, the kind of government we wanted? Tories, Labour or Lib Dem. Becouse let's not forget that the Tories want to give the music industy money to make happy songs.

    O well... back to apathy

    Anonymous Superhero

  45. Claire Rand

    HMRC

    dare say the implementation will be outsorced as ussual.

    they prob hope to find them CD images HMRC lost at some point and nail someone.

    this will be another law that allows investigations beyond all reasonablness for the offence, hardly ever used for what it is stated and probably used to pressure ISPs more than the actual users.

  46. alphaxion

    surely the demand for such p2p services hints that the market is missing something

    because if people are downloading TV shows and movies that are being withheld from our market surely it means people are fed up of being the last to get it legally.

    Also, what about people wanting to get their hands on content that has been broadcast via traditional TV but will never see the DVD press because they won't really sell in enough quantity to be economically viable for release - plenty of docu's, one offs such as comic connections, ancient tv shows that aren't "hip enough" to even get reruns etc or were just too "taboo" or un-PC to even think about releasing to our "sanitised" markets now (swear words beeped out at 10pm, you can't be serious!) means classic and original programming gets sacrificed to the trite gods of "reality" scripted programming (I really can't believe how many people think that everything that happens in the big brother lobotomy lab isn't scripted! and by scripted I don't mean in the traditional sense where everything they say is written for them, but rather a more ad-lib style where events are scripted but the dialogue is made up by the cretins within and then TV editors snip away at the footage to make it seamless).

    Release everything for download and give us a subscription fee and let us decide what out of their library we want to watch, the programming control genie is out of its bottle, we wish to plan what we want to watch ourselves now!!

  47. Anonymous Coward
    Happy

    P2P is so Old School

    P2P is so Old School, everyone is now using blogs with links to Rapidshare type storage sites.

  48. Anonymous Coward
    Happy

    Napster

    Following the 'free' days of Napster. Napster had to pay the music industry a big wedge as compensation for the loss of revenue etc.

    So does that now mean, all the downloads we all have that we made through Napster are now royalty paid ?

  49. This post has been deleted by its author

  50. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    DPI

    "ISPs can tell the difference between P2P and non-P2P packets. The technology is called deep packet inspection, and is already deployed by BT, Virgin media and others for bandwidth throttling and traffic prioritisation."

    No they can't - look again at the RFC's there is no such thing as a "Bittorrent" (or any other) packet - just IP packets with an IP header and data.

    VM do not shape on content (because it is impossible) they shape on volume and only at "peak" times.

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