Virgin warns 800 punters for file-sharing

it wont work

I wish someone would answer one question CAN THEY TELL WHETHER THE CONTENT IS bbc i PLAYER OR SOMETHING ELSE? i think not but I cannot get a answer. mine the one with the find a open WI-FI detector in the pocket.

Lost Sales

Reading this has reminded me that since Oink was shutdown I've hardly downloaded any music, and at the same time I've bought 0 CD's, whereas previously I was buying about 5 a month. Making it harder to find good quality music downloads has hurt the record companies in lost sales, as I now don't discover the new bands to "try before you buy".

Moves like this from VM/BT will only make that worse (if I actually used them)

Eh?

I am surprised that people still sign to Virgin Media, but I suppose that if you want slow on-peak speeds, dodgy phorm trials, or TV streaming that's throttled then by all means go with VM.

I hate you people who think that if you use a lot of traffic you must be a pirate, what about iPlayer, Youtube, STEAM (game delivery network - Half-Life 2 series is over 14Gbs)and all these other content rich sites which eat lots of bandwidth? Oh I forgot, you only ever go to facebook, what's this? the interweb thingy has videos and games on it? WHOA!

It is lame, we're meant to be entering the digital age and most if not all our ISPs have draconian traffic limits which prevent using the web for anything but browsing. Even if you pay for a top tier service you never get it. I have to pay £29.99 a month to have a connection that's throttled when any sign of traffic occurs so that the cheapskate paying £5.99 a month (with same ISP) can surf his/her emails a nanosecond quicker.

RE: Wow? Really??

> they [VM] did seem to provide me with a wireless router preconfigured with

> ok security and with username/password of the router different to the routers

> default. So if someone did hijack that dudes wireless then Virgin may be using

> rubbish key generation algorithms (sound familiar??)

A German Court in Hamburgh (if I recall correctly), back in July 2006, had already found the owner of an unsecured WiFi connection liable for trading of copyrighted music through peer-to-peer, so go figure...

Although I would question how forensically sound BPI's methods are. If I'd received one of those letters, I'd write back to the ISP and deny any wrong doing and require them produce evidence to back up their allegation. There's a reason why ISPs with a brain are not being bullied by the BPI...

RE: @AndyC

> (b) means that they can ask for damages. Which for non-commercial file

> sharing is about, ooh, £0

Erm, not quite - it's the money they lost because you didn't buy the product plus the money they lost because others, to whom you've supplied the product, did not pay for the product either...

@ Mark

***"Why should it matter to you if Phorm changes advertising on pages you download? You didn't visit that page purely to see the ads!"***

That is a misconception. Phorm do not replace ads, they place ads in Phorm partner websites based on the profile they have built of your browsing habits. The problem is they build up that profile by spying on you *and* the non Phorm partner websites you visit.

And lets not forget that the Phorm DPI technology can just as easily be used to track your web habits for purposes *other* than advertising. I imagine you won't mind Virgin and Phorm assisting the BPI if it keeps your ISP costs down.

@Vince sanz

Some of us were using P2P long before 1989. All hail the Spectrum and the Prism VTX5000 1200/75 modem!

dear VM

FUCK OFF!

from one of you (very) disgruntled employees

I believe a word of it

VM customers would swap down to a stupid 8Mb/s rate from 30Mb/s (soon to be 50Mb/s) and drop their HD TV connection with its video on demand services?

I don't think so.

I like my Virgin Media services and I can't get them elsewhere.

Virgin may claim it's doing this because these people are doing an illegal act but really Virgin is only doing this because these sharers are using a lot of bandwidth and as we know this hits Virgin Media where it hurts - in its purse.

If VM did get rid of its top-end users all it would do is recompile its spreadsheets of bandwidth users and get a new average user. Then it'll re-examine the top users and see what they're doing and VM may try to justify throwing them off.

What'll be next?

YouTube, Vreel or iPlayers viewer comes to mind.

Or maybe those of us who backup our private data to other systems?

Maybe VM will make that illegal too?

Hey VM, why not block web sites with lots of flash content on them?

That'll reduce your congested pipes too.

When will they learn?

Let me just start off by saying that 2008 is turning out to be a fantastic year for music IMO.

How do I know this? Becuase I've downloaded quite a lot of albums illegally. Why have I downloaded a lot of albums illegally? Because unless I go and stand in a record shop all day asking them to play the stuff I want to hear, then downloading stuff is the only way I'll ever get to hear the bands I like. The radio, television and music mags have been in the pockets of the record companies for years and not being in their demographic, I'm not exactly well catered for. Now it seems they want the ISPs eating out of their hands as well.

This year I have already spent double the amount on music that I did last year, this is mostly thanks to having downloaded the album first. There's no way I'd have just taken the risk and bought half of the stuff that I have done otherwise, and I'm sure I'm not the only person doing this.

So my questions to Virgin Media are this:

1. What is it you are hoping to achieve?

2. What have the BPI offered you as a reward for working with them?

3. Who is paying for the administration of this ad-hoc policing of your network?

4. Have you thought about the message this sends out to your customers?

but more importantly...

5. This one is more for the BPI... If you want me to stop downloading music illegally, ultimately you will stop me from hearing music by new bands that I am interested in, which means I am not going to be spending so much money on music, so you lose out. You should do some research into the people who are real music fans who have always bought music just to see how many of those people have now decided that because you can get it free that there's no need to pay for it anymore.. I think you'll find that number is quite low.

6. Back to Virgin Media... Just supposing I do stop downloading music. Can you now tell me why I need your 10MB broadband connection? I can quite happily use my mobile phone for all of my home surfing needs otherwise. In fact I can use my mobile phone for all of my calls come to think of it, and I sure as hell don't want to keep your TV package. You lose.

I urge anyone who does the same as me and receives one of these letters from Virgin to write back and echo these sentiments. There's just no sense in what they are doing.

@ michael

***"I use bittorrent to get stuff that is not avaible in the uk eg us series that sre not out here old tv series not out on dvd anymore animi and last but not least porn do you think they sell that on itunes?"***

Err, michael,

It might interest you to know that downloading US tv shows, and porn (well, that which isn't home made) is just as much a copyright infringement as downloading the latest Amy Winehouse album.

"An educational Campaign"

So VM say that these letters are just part of an educational campaign?

Is that akin to a huge bloke palming his fist and saying, "I'm gonna teach you a lesson"?

Icon: the result of a thorough bout of educating.

Best ISP ever

Virgin has been providing me with a consistently speedy 20mb connection for over a year. No slowdown at peak times, in fact most of the time it hits 25Mb/s.

OK so they jumped into bed with the disease ridden Phorm, not loving that idea but at least they actually deliver the service they promise, unlike every other ISP I've suffered.

Don't cancel your subscription; Use it.

Seed ISO's of huge linux distributions instead. All day while you're at work, all night. Pause seeding while you're at home watching iPlayer or whatever, but use ALL the bandwidth you pay for.

Take up AS MUCH BANDWIDTH AS POSSIBLE.

Hell, make a 5GB text file repeating the phrase "Stop messing with our pipes." and seed it on TPB, TorrentReactor, any tracker you can find. Label it "Virgin Protest Torrent."

If their numbers are correct, and 5% are using 95% of the bandwidth, then they get 5% lost revenue for 95% reduction in costs by you leaving. This is NOT going to make progress!

Protest is pointless unless the method inconveniences those you protest against. Let's get it right.

RE: RE: Disconnect Them

> But what if I don't want to use crappy Itunes and don't have an Ipod?

play.com sell drm-free mp3s and while they're not in your "price range", they are totally reasonable...

RE: Defence

> Is it possible to defend yourself against claims of piracy without giving an unvetted

> third party access to everything stored on your PC? There must be a way.

Is the burden not on the accuser, not on the accusee???

There's a moral here

I'm reminded of the children's story about the dog with a bone in it's mouth while crossing a stream. It sees it's own reflection in the water and thinks it's another dog with a bone in it's mouth. The dog thinks the other dog has stolen his bone or some other foolishness and barks at the other dog. In the process, the dog loses it's bone in the stream.

If I get such a letter from Virginmedia, I'll cut myself off straight away, and then get a Carphone Warehouse deal, maybe ? Or some other ISP, and carry on as usual, until we run out of ISP's I suppose.

I'll lose the digital telly as well, but I'll save myself quite a bit of money every month, which VirginMedia will lose from their coffers.

I doubt my that kids will start buying CD's or pay to download music from the internet, just because someone threatens to cut our internet service. I will however make my children dutifully aware of the greedy pigopolist's ploy.

Considering how crap digital television is now, the very finite life span of CD and DVD media, and Flash Drive memory, we don't have to work hard to imagine the sort of music service we'll get for our dosh.

I suppose it'll be all Girls Aloud tracks available for download anyway and other similar pop rubbish. No real music though ! I mean, who buys Amy Winebar music anyway ?

Get some real music from real artists like, The Soil Brothers, Two Wise Men, Andrew Chaparral Hodges, Alfazed, The Barmy Army, Nine Inch Nails and many more, just Google 'em, all downloads are free and legal from various servers.

PS the music tracks used in Adult Hood are all available on You Tube. Listen to the lyrics pigopolists of the recording industry, you can download them for free.

ALF

New news story

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/jul/03/virgin.filesharers

"As part of this we don't make any kind of accusation about the user — it could be somebody else in their house, their block of flats or they might have an open Wi-Fi connection," said the spokesman.

"We can't point the finger at the account holder, but we can point out what's happening with their connection. Often it's a lack of education that's causing the problem."

So Virgin wont be cutting anyone off, they are leaving it to the rights holders or representatives to take action as it has been for some time already.

Big up Carphone Warehouse!!

I'd like to highlight a point I haven't seen much of on this thred:

BIG RESPECT TO CARPHONE WAREHOUSE FOR SHOWING SOME BLOODY INTEGRITY and telling the BPI to shove it where the DRM don't shine.

That for me would be a good enough reason to switch to their service

They are a listed company though, and if pushed to it they'd comply, if their shareholder's interests were threatened....

@ Mycho

Well, it would be a straw man argument if it wasn't for the fact that I didn't realise he was quoting (bad eyesight). It's why I emphasise quotes to avoid confusion.

***"Quoted stuff"***

Apologies to Michael for not getting his point.

Paris, 'cos I'm feeling a bit blond at the moment......

RE: Screw the file sharerers

Well, while RIAA produce shit, there's shit to steal.

Retard.

Peerguardian?

Riiiight, never heard of Peerguardian then?

Paris Whitney Hilton because even she knows to use Peerguardian when engaging in some peer to peer.

Why virgin cant disconnect you

There is something very unique to virgins cable internet service which means virgin need to be very careful who they accuse of piracy, and also would make it very hard for them to truly disconnect someone.

You can use someone else's subscription.

Yes you read it right, with some effort and a "hacked" cable modem you can pretend to be somebody else and everything you download will end up being attributed to whoever's MAC address you cloned, you dont have to mess with such nuisance things as standing in the street trying to break someones WEP key, You just need an active cable feed to your house.

When your cable modem connects to the network it is assigned an IP address based on whether the modems MAC address is active and tied to a subscription, if you stop your subscription they update their end and blacklist your modems MAC so that your cable modem gets a dummy config file that doesn't let it connect.

And since you cant change the MAC address the modem no longer works on virgins network.

However there are pirate firmwares available for the cable modems which once the modem has been flashed (either using a serial cable or jtag) allow you to change the modems mac address and pretend to be somebody else.

You can also scan the network to find the MAC address of other peoples modems, However you cant use them as they are on the same segment as you, if you try the real modem and the fake modem will fight for an IP address and keep rebooting, but if you use a MAC address from another part of town the real and fake modems will co exist.

They have made some efforts to stop this like adding some sort of xor table to the firmware to obfuscate some communications but I believe it still works.

The upshot of this is virgin really have no idea who is using their network, and cant 100% say who was downloading what.

@Peerguardian suggestion

Peerguardian IS 100% an utter waste of time since the BPI will most likely be doing this from a residential address or over VPN's to residential addresses (BPI employees homes with exemption???)

I suspect the BPI have paid some 12 year old school children an extra 2 pounds in pocket money for some top IT advice on downloading successfully with peer2peer so sorry guys the BPI will be right up to speed on the cutting edge of P2P technologies...

I can really see this backfiring spectacularly in a future sense though, whilst the BPI might claim 100% "victory" for now (ludicrous), it definitely looks like the next evolution of P2P that comes out might lean towards it being completely anonymous.

One idea is to integrate filesharing to webmail inboxes, most webmail has 2.5Gb of storage, you could have shit sent to you without even downloading it off a P2P, it all ends up in your email to download off blazingly fast servers in a data centre. Its really easy to get a PC application to control email uploads and downloads...

Oh shit now ive gone and give the game away to the BPI....

Anyway dont the BPI realise most P2P is KIDS online? Most of these CHILDREN are not old enough to face a telling off at school let alone legal action...

Lets have a vote, who would prefer your kids FILESHARE or get DRUNK and roam the streems with KNIVES in their pockets....

Hmmmm oh jesus I cannot decide.

Oh yes.... one is harmless.... and the other is filesharing.

OMG!!!!! >>>>> Writer/publisher get 6p, Performer 6-8p,

Well thats it then, its official - the REAL truthful price of a track is 12p-14p then.

Right where do I order... oh yeah sure:

That mp3 Russian Site!

So their prices were right all along.

Paris... because she would do it too for 12p

legislation = protectionism

"If the ISP's themselves don't start to act then we'll end up with government imposed legislation"

On what grounds? That an industry is upset at having failed to spot a market opportunity? That some corporate execs will lose their jobs?

Media content is not knives, guns, drugs or alcohol. If you could be murdered with a WAV* or raped with a stolen MP3 or if AAC-high psychos were terrorising our highstreets, or if DVD-crazed teens were ripping around the streets at 2am, I'd see why legislation was appropriate. Otherwise its just protectionism.

*I exclude the possibility of Marvin's autobiography of course. Or a Celine Dion CD...

Holy turdspurt Batman...

...this looks like a job for the Freetard-O-Tron!

"wft!!!!! facsist bPI pWn3d my ISP an i got tihs leta mannn it sux bigt ime!!!!!!!!"

Dear freetards,

There are at least three different issues going on here, mixing them all together and then ranting about the unholy mess just makes you look dim. Let's try to unravel them...

(1) lots of people have been stealing copyrighted material on-line for quite a while now, to the point that some people now feel that it is their god(TM)-given right to do so. Wrong. We just happen to be around at one of those junctures in history where the new medium is taking over from the old and this new Wild West Frontier will be tamed at some point and it will become difficult/pointless/socially unacceptable for large numbers of people to continue to steal copyrighted digital media;

(2) the BPI are a bunch of shites represtenting the old attitudes of the media megalo-corps that our money belongs to them and that they should have to provide us with as little quality product as possible in exchange. Wrong. As the ongoing demise of DRM in music shows, media companies will eventually (slowly and kicking and screaming in most cases) have to provide quality usable product at a reasonable price as a more effective strategy to combat piracy;

(3) spineless shortsighted ISPs like VM think they can continue milk their customers like cash cows providing the bare minimum of service and not looking beyond the antiquated all-you-can-eat fixed price broadband model that is slowly failing as the sums don't add up any more. Again wrong. As with (1) and (2) the ISP business model will have to evolve (whether that means music ISPs, metered broadband or whatever) and the dinosaurs like VM will become extinct.

Bollocks!

Seriously. There are so many factors involved that I laugh at some of the comments above. Especially from those people who think they know how everything really works. Do not forget the money talks and bullshit walks. The music industry (and movie industry) were made HUUUUUGE by you and me. They did not get to be so large and powerful by accident. Unfortunately us plebs (Or rather spotty teens with pocket money) were not aware of what we were doing. We made the big name artists big, spoiled them with 50 mil record deals and lapped it all up. We spent cash to put them there. We put MORE cash in the big QUOTE 'Megacorps' coffers.

Remeber this 'industry' has only existed for the last what? 100 or so years? If you go back far enough you will find that before the phonogram there was the pianola and the record industry back then forced that out of existence through bullying tactics. This same industry amongst others has continued to pressure politicians (Backhanded) into passing bills that extended copyright beyond it's real usefullness (100 years like the US for instance is a joke and was turned down in this country but don't be in any doubt they will keep pushing for longer copyrights) and denied the public domain of what it rightfully should have.

Then we have the fact that BECAUSE the copyrights are held for so long there is a SHITLOAD of back catalogue that NEVER see's the light of day again all on the basis that something 'might' come back into fashion and they can re-release it again for extra profit.

Then you have to look at how much money the smaller artists earn. It's OK if you are Robbie the 'fatboy' who wants to 'entertain' you because he earns so much from deals, promotions, merchandise, mall openings and wotnot that the bit of money he does get from the record industry on record sales does not bother him much anyhow. But for smaller artist they earn a pittance and have shitty retainer fee's on equipment and studio time that they have to pay back to the record companies.

All of this is background information and it runs deeper still with mechanil copyrights, royalties, songwriters fee's etc etc ad nauseam.

Now we have the internet come along and they are 'oh shit the sky is falling they are stealing our copyrights! Let sue everyone!' instead of offering a proper service doing some 'work' for a change.

Even when they DO eventually get arm twisted into offering a service through Apple it's all tied up in DRM and you can only play it on an iPoo and MUST install bloated failware in order to even access the 'service'. Then they even have the 'gall' to sell it at highly inflated prices in a LOSSY format with NO fucking case, sleave, liner notes or anything. You don't even get the CD quality you would get if you were to purchase a physical format. Then they eventually through pressure say you can have a DRM free file if you pay EXTRA.

There's even more I could say on this but it needs a fucking 500 page book to go through it all. Heck there are entire websites setup to detail all of this crap.

The truth is there is more to this than just the music industry wanting to sue some spotty teen who likes to get his latest popcorn crap for free. Look at the way the world is turning right now. Our privacy is being wittled away all the time. The governments (and corporations that pay them) don't want us having control over the media. They don't want freedom of information. They want the genie back in the bottle. They want to 'control' what we say and do online.

Virgin Media's CEO even said in a speech that he thinks net neutrality is a load of old bollocks! They want to have fast and slow lanes on the internet where the little website guys are slow as shit because they can't pay for the bandwidth and the big megacorps get the fast lanes (Video on demand etc).

People out there I implore you to *THINK* for a change and do your fucking research! Otherwise give it a few more years and you'll be taking it up the arse from an internet 'Big Brother'. You don't think that's happening? Think again. Read between the lines. ISP's already are going to have to retain information about your surfing habits for a year and the government wants it all on a big ol' database so they can peek into what you naughty people are doing. Because everyone is a crim right? Also we know how great the government are at keeping our sensitive data safe now don't we?

I'll stop here as it's turning into an essay. I just think there is more to this than picking out a few naughty music downloaders.