back to article Premium-rate calls watchdog to join battle against pirates

The UK's regulator of premium rate services (PRS) will pass on details of copyright infringing websites to service providers under a new "proactive" arrangement with police and music industry representatives, it has announced. PhonepayPlus said that PRS providers notified of copyright infringing sites could be charged under …

COMMENTS

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  1. haroldo
    WTF?

    Payments for pirated music?

    Surely the whole point of pirating music is to avoid paying for it..?!

  2. Christoph
    Black Helicopters

    Convict on suspicion

    "Proactive approach"

    "suspected of offering illegally copied music"

    So when a provider is notified of a suspicion about someone they should check them carefully?

    What a load of cobblers. Whoever claimed that must have know perfectly well that it's nonsense.

    The provider will cut them off immediately on notification, with no further evidence whatsoever. Why should they spend money on investigating whether it's safe to take a risk, when they can easily avoid both the risk and the expense?

    This will have a massive chilling effect on legitimate sites - and is presumably deliberately intended to do that.

  3. yoinkster
    WTF?

    "pirated music downloads were almost exclusively paid for by consumers using credit cards"

    excuse me? Since when did people pay for pirated music? I thought the idea of pirating it was because it was free?

  4. Nick Thompson

    I bet most of these websites are blatently dodgy selling them at "too good to be true" prices. Why would anyone pay for music from one of these services? Just because you've paid for something doesn't mean you're legally allowed to own it if the seller didn't have the right to sell it to you in the first place so you might as well have just downloaded them (illegally) for free.

  5. Tom 38
    Unhappy

    Meh

    "Until relatively recently, pirated music downloads were almost exclusively paid for by consumers using credit cards"

    I've been doing it wrong :/

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I believe that this one is aimed at those Russian etc. music sites that sell music for a song, as it were.

    I am very much not liking the "suspected of offering illegally copied music" and "Proactive approach" quotes though. Considering the burden of proof at the moment seems to be a copyright holder pointing at random and saying "it was him wot dunnit"; it's just not a good sign.

  7. Atonnis

    Why is it that whenever I see the phrase 'music industry representatives' I automatically translate it in my head to 'scummy clueless weasels'?

    I'm actually all for protecting intellectual property...but the music industry (and worse, the movie industry) has proven time and time again that it's a very shitty world, full of some very shitty people.

  8. Field Marshal Von Krakenfart
    Trollface

    "use phone payment services as a replacement for the credit card facilities"

    "business that rip-off artists, songwriters"

    That's x-factor and x-factor voting he's talking about

  9. Clyde

    Premium rates calls watchdog

    When I read "The UK's regulator of premium rate services", I thought, great, finally someone is doing something about these premium rate phone call scams.

    How wrong could I have been.

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