The man is making plans to end you, geek thief, as the government considers proposals to stop illegal file sharers using the internet.
Though those proposals are for the moment only at the draft consultation stage, the Green Paper’s suggestions that internet service providers should monitor and punish those illegally downloading music and films online could have wide-reaching consequences on the surfing habits of millions of people.
The Times claims that the government state in the paper that they “will move to legislate to require internet service providers to take action on illegal file sharing."
Those caught in the act would be monitored under a ‘three strikes’ rule that would see them warned, first, via e-mail before suspension from and then termination of internet access came into force.
Broadband firms failing to enforce the rules could be prosecuted and the details of customers accused of illegal downloading supplied to the courts, the Times goes on to claim.
An estimated six million illegal downloaders will be buoyed, however, by comments from the Internet Service Providers Association, who cite data protection laws as a barrier to the proposals and assert that “ISPs are no more able to inspect and filter every single packet passing across their network than the Post Office is able to open every envelope."
"ISPs bear no liability for illegal file sharing as the content is not hosted on their servers," it continued.
The government have so far refused to comment on the content of the leaked document.
DiScuss: will the Green Paper make it through parliament? And, if so, will it alter your downloading habits?
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Great picture
Tee hee...
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/02/12/anti_filesharing_paper_leak/
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not a chance in a million years this is gonna happen.
MPs are going to discuss this, are they?
good to know that the people most qualified to pass laws on this are involved...
I like the ISPs answer
can't do it. data protection.
That would be the stock excuse for anything ever then.. that and health and safety. :)
Its true tho..
this is a copyright issue between the individuals and the labels, the latter of whom want the ISP's to police it for them at no cost to themselves!
this is impossible to implement
end of story.
^Quite.
There's no way to stop An Individual from downloading something on the bloody internet. There was, last time I checked, more than one computer in existence, and they're not all in the same room.
Unless they ban entire IP addresses from accessing the internet. Which would surely constitute collective punishment? Which is, like, illegal and stuff, at least in a WAR?
Not true
There are actually quite a few ways for ISPs to prevent or monitor what people are doing on the internet. However, there are (almost) always ways around them.
That said, it'll absolutely never happen. Privacy, not technology, is the fundamental problem - you can't just monitor/record the "illegal" things that users are doing, you have to monitor (and keep a record of) everything, thus negating our right to respect private family life (and a million and one other things) that are set out in the European Convention of Human Rights.
yeah clearly
never. gonna. happen.
Hahahah
WE'RE GOING TO BAN YOU FROM THE INTERNET! Jesus. Cock off.
Wank
Time to ban major labels I think for consistently providing poor quality products.
Yes, I can just see the ISPs already suffering from
the effects of the fierce price wars that they've been waging against each other for years all sitting down and agreeing to get rid of one third of their client/profit base FOREVER!!!!
Even worse...
risk losing these hotly competed for customers to rivals who are seen to be more relaxed about downloading.
It's was U2's idea!
<a href = "http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/content_display/industry/e3i062b16e707aa99916c212e660cbffd3e" link to Paul McGuiness' full speech</a>
This idea is terrible and was previously suggested by Paul McGuiness - U2's manager. It's hard to complain of the damage that your fans are having on the industry, when you have just boasted about earning $355 million from the Vertigo tour, and selling 150 million copies of your albums throughout your career.
Thieving dirty fans.
The sooner record labels and the film studios realise that a £5 (or £10..) a month license fee added onto your broadband subscription to download whatever you want (similar to the TV License) is the way forward, the better.
How much money would it bring in? There are a reported 6 million people in the UK downloading illegally, 6 million x £60 a year (£5 a month) = £360million a year. A nice little boost for a supposedly dying industry.
Although this does appear
to be complete bullshit, does anyone else get fed up with people that simply don't pay for music any more (or, i suppose, films, tv, etc.)? My flatmate has bought one cd in about 5 years, but uses limewire all the time. I actually quite like that knock-off nigel advert. This post seems to be turning into a stream of consciousness.
This is true
and I know a few like this. I try to buy when I can but normally feel better about gigging for the bands rather than buying the record.
The fundamental problem is distinguishing between legal and illegal file-sharing.
As I understand it an ISP could tell I sent an MP3 to someone but not tell if I had copyright to that MP3 or not.
On the whole, if they decided to do it and it was workable (which it isn't), you'd have to say fair enough.
We've all been pretty lucky to be able to get away with do something completely illegal for several years with little risk of getting caught but we've got no right of complaint in someone decides to make that harder for us.
I concur
with splitterwill. People who don't pay for any of their music kinda piss me off. It makes me think that they're not actually that into music if they're unwiling to pay.
Interesting to note that
music blogs (and when have you ever read successful music blog that doesn't have MP3 links, often via rapidshare, megaupload, etc) are being linked to album sales:
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080209-blog-social-network-buzz-correlates-to-better-album-sales.html
It's just a correlation at this stage - no cause and effect - but has implications for something like this. Where's the line drawn? Downloading a track or two to sample it? If that's deemed 'okay,' I'm sure there are plenty of people out there who could get by on a daily diet of Hypemachine tracks.
I don't know where this idea that it can be illegal to download a file came from—
it simply isn't. What's illegal is infringing copyright; an uploader does this when they redistribute a file without permission.
“Handling stolen goods” doesn't apply either: for something to have been stolen, its rightful owner has to have been deprived of it. The copyright holder owns the copyright in a recording, which no-one is claiming to transfer.
Besides which, easy distribution of music is good for record companies—more people will hear, and therefore want to buy, their music. The record companies seem to think that anyone who listens to a free copy of a song would pay for it if they couldn't get it for free, instead of just not listening to the song.
So while record companies are within their rights to try to prevent sharing of their copyrighted music, doing so is both futile and ill-conceived.
Actually, I *do* know where that idea came from—
uninformed media who uncritically repeat record companies' disinformation.
I hear they're going to bring in evil sorcerors to accomplish this
And they'll put file downloaders in magical holding cells in cloud fortresses, a bit like the ones in Laputa except built by Capita.
Nee chance
Nee chance
If this legislation passes
then i'll be a very poor person but without the comfort of music.. Hussah.