Virgin Media in talks to trial three strikes regime against P2P

funny thing is....

Virgin used to advertise their speed in terms of how much music you could download. In fact, still on their about traffic shaping page they say for each package how much you could be affected, e.g.:

"Even if a Broadband Size: XL user has their speed temporarily traffic managed, they can still download over 25,000 music files per day."

(http://allyours.virginmedia.com/html/internet/traffic.html)

I mean ffs, be consistent! I believe they have their own music sharing site, but alas, when I checked it was windoze only.

Oh, and lost can be legal purchased from iTunes, DRM (for your convenience ;) ) 'n' all... again if your box supports it....

@ the get out of contract free-tards

you may want to reread your contract, I'm fairly sure you'll find it says you agree not to use your connection for illegal purposes, and if you do they can not just cut you off, but make you pay all the termination fees as if you called in to cancel yourself

Infringment of human rights - absolutely.

I can't believe that people are prepared to stand by whilst an organisation that protects the revenue of a small number of commercial companies, insists that all our private data is inspected for their benefit!

Imagine if all your mail was interfered with and inspected by the postal service at the behest of a commercial third party!

Why is this this even considered for a fraction of a second, to be acceptable in a so-called free and democratic country?!

They killed freedom, the bastards!

OK

So Virgin want to sell my browsing habits, against my will (mainly due to goat pr0n disorders), to a spyware company.

Virgin also want to suspend my human right to "no punishment without trial" and even chooses not to bother with a civil level of proof of on the balance of probabilities.

Virgin also want me to continue paying them craps loads of money every month.

Guess which one wont be happening if either of the other two do?

I really don't do piracy but them i am not the only one who uses this connection, so as the bil payer, ill just either have to kcik them off to be safe or more likely just move to another ISP. Of course that will mean my TV and Phone as well as broadband go too. Obviously ill also move my parents TV phone and ISP as well as i pay for that one too. I wouldn't need to, but i'd do it just to spite Virgin.

Data packet inspection systems

Interesting debate in comments above. A real catch 22 situation.

Governments want the ISPs to police illegal downloads. ISPs want to earn revenue from mining through data packet inspection. Without the ability to inspect the data packets, the ISPs can't police the downloads - see debate above re IP address spoofing. For those who think that proxies hide their IP address: they don't really, just give a longer trail.

I can't remember where I downloaded it from (FrontPorch?) but if you can find and download ScreenPlays_0308_Front_Porch_Article2.pdf published by screenplaysmag.com you will find on page 2:

"... They need, as in the case of the application implemented by Ohio cable operator Massillon Cable TV, to be able to notify subscribers engaged in illegal file transfers that they have been violating content rights as well as the ISP's terms of service."

The big problem with all this spyware [data mining] that is marrying with the ad networks is that it is giving the ISPs added 'value' without them having to invest anything in the technology. Venture capital is investing millions in the data mining technologies and the ISPs are getting it all 'free' plus added revenue. If they don't help themselves to the data mining technology, few ISPs will be able to afford the millions to develop their own in house systems.

Privacy really is an issue. Why should all customers give up any privacy just so that a few criminals can be identified?

Virgin - Sort your lives sout

So not only have you lost us Sky One, put up your Telephone to Per minute billing and capped our bandwidth - you are now going to push this on us.

Way to keep the customers!

Bye bye VM

In my last house I was with Telewest and the Internet was good. When I moved I got NTL. Things were also good. Since NTL took on the Virgin name I've noticed things getting rapidly worse: Premium rate "support", worsening throughput, throttling of anything encrypted (which has ****ered my VPN into my home office), selling my personal information to Phorm and an increasing number of outages on both my phone and BB. Now add this to the mix and it's enough to make me overcome the inertia and spend the money to go back to BT. I must hand it to VM though: It does take a real talent for ineptitude to screw up this bad.

I've already ordered my ADSL line (IDNet - Great company :) ) and as soon as it's in and I'm happy with it VM get my FO letter. Not only are they going to lose my Internet business I'm taking my phone lines away too. Already switched my TV to Sky as I was unhappy with VM's picture quality and rather ****ed off that NTL/VM have never correctly billed me for the phone tariff I wanted, instead putting me on something costing me more and not fixing it when I complained. I may add in a complaint to Ofcom as a final parting shot. I don't know why they didn't call themselves "Slut Media." I mean, someone that screws that many customers every month is no virgin.

A Telewest employee once told me that it almost impossible to get a customer back once they've churned. Get me my coat please. Bye bye VM. I'm going to miss you like a hole in the head.

No such thing as bad publicity...

Yeah right. Try telling that to the Creative management, see http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=creative+labs+backlash&btnG=Google+Search

Hasn't the record industry shown anyone over the last decade that the "really annoy your customers" business strategy tends to result in customers telling you where to go?

Way to go Virgin!

Uhm

"I didn't see anything about virgin actually inspecting traffic though" - no because that r illegal, they are not law enforcement and they don't have a warrant. Falls right smack-bang in the middle of a bunch of very strongly-worded laws.

"Cough *Peerguardian* cough cough"

*cough* SSH Tunnel *cough*

"That resulted in 4 disconnections...and that pushed the costs too high? What was the budget, one packet of first class stamps and a postman pat writing set?" - heh <3

"Bugger I hear that the BPI have asked the Post Office to scan all mail for DVD content – now your friendly postman will know what sort of porn you are interested in." - that's a good way for the Post Office to get themselves in all kinds of legal hot water with the govt sending all those bank details around. What exactly is it that they do one they find this perfectly legal media? And worse what happens when all the data is on their is encrypted, not in the clear like how our retarded govt send data?

"If they argue that they aren't in breach of copyright because they have the permission of the rights holder, they are admitting that anyone downloading the file from them is also legal as it has been legally made available by the rigths holder. As they will be offering the file to all of the IP addresses that they collect (they'll want to make sure that they can prove the file is being downloaded), there could be an embarrassing loophole in this." - Arguably, that would possibly be my defence in court, they gave up rights to the material the second they transferred a block of data to another peer. But, when you don't take people to court and you get the ISP to do your dirty work for you, and that's the real problem - there's no real legal process when your ISP dumps you, it's also the problem - by not taking people to court, there's so many ISPs around these days it takes minutes to sign up with another one.

Somebody was talking about privacy and the human rights act and somebody else mentioned that using encrypted headers would cure what ails you. The problem here is that they are not intercepting your data, they are acting as a peer in the swarm, when you connect to a torrent swarm for example, you connect from your IP to other peers & seeds, it's actually solid evidence and not illegal - remember you connected to them, it's like arguing privacy for something you did in a city street, you gave up that right to privacy the second you left your home and other people could see you in plain sight.

But the real issue here is simple, and some have touched on it when discussing downloading of Lost episodes, due to unavailability. All we want is our media in the format we want it, what we want is to be able to download our music, movies and TV shows rather than being forced to watch it at an insanely scheduled time, in a format of our choosing (if I want a 1080p movie why does it have to be on BLU-RAY and not x264 @ 8.5GB for example?), if I want music why most I install the iTunes malware on my PC? If I want to watch a US TV show why must I wait 6 months, when all my online 'friends' are discussing what's happening in the next series, then be forced to watch it when some scheduler thinks I should in a format I don't want, then be forced to pay a license fee for TV when I should be able to just download it as a video, as much liable to TV licensing as watching a

Youtube video. Why should I be forced to pay for a broadcast network I have no interest in using, and channels I have no interest in watching? Why can't I watch live streams of the football matches I want to watch, at a bandwidth I want via a medium of my choice (the internet) and not have to pay for matches I'm not interested in, and why must I also pay for all those other channels with nothing but crap on?

Solve all the above and then we can talk about piracy and illegal downloading.

Blatant bullshit.

Remember all the furor in the 1970's about tape recorders?

Every album had the following printed on it somewhere...

"Home taping is illegal and it's killing music"

Did it?

Precisely.

And reported (possibly on this site) some months ago was an announced move by the various labels to REDUCE the amounts paid to artists in royalties.

It's about greed and ignorance.

And mostly it's an excuse to censor the net. If they can get it through "because of criminals" they succeed like their phony "war on terror" and all the loss of liberties brought in on the back of that particular lie.

And finally...

You think my life will end if I lose the net?

WRONG

It's the most overrated cesspit humanity has ever produced. I hate and despise capitalism and am sick to death of adverts, subscription based access, limited trials, legally questionable changes of T&C's, flash adverts, soft porn adverts for financial and IT services, Microsoft and their endless lying two faced bullyboy tactics, Apple and it's endless "you can be cool if you buy this" nonsense, and adware. The internet is a bit like the road system. Most people out there on it ought not to be allowed anywhere near it.

Here's one for the Record Industry - if you don't like the net - fuck off somewhere else.

virgins are stupid

You know, they are slow to giving us the best service, yet so quick at introducing crap like this.

I tell you something though, I hope they understand the difference between legal and illegal P2P, because its an amazing technology for large downloads (eg; Linux ISO's, demo games', trailers'). Id be FURIOUS to the point of taking legal action if they cut me off for my continuation of sharing our various distributions.

Well Virgin, lets see something done properly for once, coz I for one haven't lost faith, yet!

.. or is this an April fool?

One less for Virgin Media

I fell for a Virgin Media broadband offer, despite being more than happy with Freedom2Surf for three years.

I signed up, and got so pissed off with the shitty connection and arsey call-centre staff, that after a MONTH, I was happy to pay the disconnection fee to get shot of them.

Please, anyone reading this, take heed of my experience and this story and AVOID VIRGIN LIKE THE PLAGUE.

Im now back with Freedom2Surf and situation normal, one happy bunny again.

This is just posturing...

...by VM to show that they are attempting to appease the BPI IMHO. I can't see them getting much further down this road than Tiscali did before they throw their hands in the air and claim that a partnership is unworkable. They might even get the opportunity to dump some of their heaviest users, which in their eyes, may be a boon for network management.

Of course if they actually followed through with this, the battle would just move on to the next frontier - IP filters (e.g. peer guardian), proxies, developments to BT clients to hide IPs, etc, etc.

BT would not be much of a loss if warnings forced me to abandon it anyway - VM's own newsgroup server provides all the content I could wish for!

Virgin on the rediculous ?

I wonder if this has more to do with the Virgin group trying to protect sales in its record stores ?

Richard B%^£"@D I hope your next balloon flight downs in the middle of the pacific

The only people this will affect...

...are families (Or idiots who 'share' craploads - with the emphasis on crap - of BPI music files).

I doubt anyone with half a brain will be affected much. Lets think about this.

For starters it's a 3 strike rule. In that if you are caught 3 times you get disconnected. Whoopee effin' doo! The chances of being caught the first time are remote. Remoter still if you use your head. Especially if you start using the methods outlined below either prior to being caught or after the first warning. Also the chances of being caught a second time are pretty remote anyhow let alone a third time.

First off if you don't use P2P at all and just 'download' (Never upload or share content) from usenet (SSL even better), IRC, FTP etc you are about as likely to be caught as getting a free trip to Mars.

If you must use P2P however then there are some things you can do to minimize being caught.

1. Use an IPfilter.dat file. Most decent clients like uTorrent and eMule allow the use of a filter file. Granted this won't stop them from seeing your IP but it will block them from downloading from you. It's not really a solution as others seem to believe but it may help a little.

2. Make sure any encryption and obfuscation options in your P2P client are enabled. Again this won't prevent them from seeing your IP.

3. Use a leech client. I know a lot of people will hate me for saying this as P2P is all about sharing. But lets face it. If you are not uploading you minimize being accused of sharing stuff.

4. Try not to use public trackers on torrents if you can help it. Especially for popular music and movies.

5. ALWAYS stop seeding a file once it is complete and ALWAYS move your files out of your share folder to someplace where it is not shared.

Yes there are other methods including seed boxes and darknets etc but most people won't really need them and they have their downsides.

Using the methods above you too can stay low on the radar and avoid being hassled by the media mafia.

Currently with an ISP that does not appear to give a rats arse about all of this and I have been able to max my 8Mbit connection for months on end with no comebacks. Not saying who though just in case ;)

RE: Dick emery

I wouldn't want to try and claim any kind of righteous crap about the ethics of file'sharing' as I would be the first to admit, it is most likely a bad thing. I still do it but hey, life goes on.

I just wanted to comment on the guy above as I think you dick emery are the kind of filesharer that the rest of us despise.

You remind me of the kids at school that wait until they see other kids having a fight in the playground, then they start kicking the one they don't like whilst he can't see who it is...then run away when the teacher comes.

A coward, no less.

A spineless git who sees nothing wrong in getting some of the rewards but letting others take the blame.

Moron.

So you advocate that everyone who reads your comment uses P2P but as a leecher?

Use a Leech client?

There is no such thing my friend.

I actually wish it upon you that YOU do get caught.

You seem quite contented to let others take the risk for you whilst you jump on some torrent and grab the episode of Lost or whatever crap you like, let them get in shit for it. As soon as you get what you want you're off?

I hate you.