This headline was truncated to "Music royalties group poo" by my news ticker, which I quite liked.

However my favourite truncated headline has to be from the BBC: "Mills-McCartney hires royal leg [al team]".

A poor attempt at a Troll :)

See here for instructions: http://www.urban75.com/Mag/troll.html

Applying that logic on other companies, such as phone companies. All crimes committed or planned over phone should be filtered by the phone companies? Right...

Paris: cause she knows information, eh pictures and stuff, want to be free...

"ISP's generate profits from providing a gateway to the Net and as such they have an obligation to filter illegal distribution of copyright protected materials."

Um, no they don't. And it's not a view you are likely to hold unless you have either a) a vested interest or b) mental retardation.

The Post Office don't filter their packages (although they do ask very nicely that you don't send bad things through them). Telephone companies don't stop you swearing over the phone lines (although, in the UK, it is illegal to do so - at least over landlines). And in the name of Max Mosley no newspaper would ever print something libellous...

The reason ISPs are being asked to filter or at least monitor their traffic is a very simple one - because they can. Most can't be bothered and, if any of the UK ISPs had the balls, they'd fight the record companies attempts to make them play ball. Trouble is, they're just going to follow the path of least resistance - whether that means letting people do what they like or avoiding being taken to court in a test case.

Anonymous Coward, although you'll probably try and sue El Reg to trace me anyway...

I agree!!!

Also, schools should be banned, because they ignore their obligations by teaching people to read and therefore possibly use the internet via an ISP to download said copyrighted material.

that you can unerringly detect what given bits going over the interweb are specifically copyright protected and which are not? Is that 10 second snippet legal or is it even yours? Is that full song on your "protected" list or not? I'm not in favor of pirates, but i'm not in favor of "stupid", either.

Let's hope the court comes to it's senses and does a little smackdown on these protectards.

They do?...There was me thinjing they are a mearly profiding access for comms...perhaps you would like phone companies to filter all calls as they could be ilegal things happening or the post office opening all lettters to make sure nothing bad is being sent...

Or you could just fuck off you BPI shill...

"have an obligation to filter illegal distribution of copyright protected materials" ...

No, they dont. In the same way as those highways agency provides a gateway to the road system it is up to LAW ENFORCEMENT to enforce the law.

Also copyright is a civil crime, which means that it is those who feel their right have been compromised who have to follow it up...

If you are going to post AC, then you really should check the propaganda before you repeat it.

You may be right about 'Pirates' but ISPs are not pirates but common carriers. Many (me included) don't believe they have any right to perform deep packet inspection to discover what users are doing. Even if they did, how do you suppose they could discern if a particular data packet stream contained copyright material which was being transmitted without permission? The idea is absurd.

In the same way, I would not want all of my phone calls listened into by BT in case I was plotting some illegal activity. Since you are posting as a AC I guess you wouldn't either.

I think it is you, AC, who needs to get a clue.

Yawn Troll

But while we are on the subject this is a rather ridiculous ruling, should all knife manufacturers vet all their customers or car manufacturers be held liable if one of their vehicles was used in a robbery. Tut tut Belgium, what would Hercule Poirot (it's the only famous Belgian I can think of and he's fictional) have made of it all.

Actually - in Belgium they want to make copyright infringement a criminal offence, including trying to circumvent paying the AUVIBEL levy on recordable media. If they had their way they'd genuinely have Customs set up checkpoints at the border and search cars to see if you were trying to smuggle blank CDs into the country.

They already regularly get the cops to march in their dozens into computer fayres to bust importers who don't charge the levy (remember - the levy is paid to same cartel who've been caught lying in court, breaking EU competition law, support the lifestyle of drug addled homophobes etc).

really, what I don't understand is why don't they simply ask ISPs to block certain websites from being accessible? I understand that bittorrent have many legitimate uses, but those "legitimate" uses are usually tracked on certain trackers while illegitimate files are served on illegitimate trackers.

Just go by the percentage of the files on the tracker, if 90% are movies and 10% are gnu/linux disk images (and other stuff), then the tracker should be blocked.

Now stop trying to use "losing money" as a reason to spy on what I do online

that should be

Sooner or later the Pirates will steal a clue

ok ok no need to push

...unite!

And if you can't be bothered to unite, does anyone have a good tracker for the latest Bond film?

There seems to be an echo in your post. Pull your head out of your arse and try again.

Retard.