It was the big talk two month ago when British ISP Virgin Media send out it’s first warning letters to users they suspected to be sharing files online that they did not have the rights of. Yesterday the news hit the Internet websites that six major Internet Service Providers from the United Kingdom have agreed to implement a set of measures against file sharing in the United Kingdom.
The ISPs in question, those that are better avoided like the plague from now on are: BT, Virgin Media, Orange, Tiscali, Sky and Carphone Warehouse. I really do not care as much for the reason why they signed the agreement as to that they did sign it at all. The Register thinks that they agreed to the “voluntary” code to avoid or even mute further legislation of the matter which might have forced them to invest in monitoring and storage equipment.
There is no word on punishment yet but it is interesting that the ISPs, Ofcom and the music industry have a few month to agree on a punishment. And I thought it would be the law that would determine the punishment, boy was I wrong.
The Music Industry is favoring the three strikes and you are out punishment which means that if your name, sorry IP, turns up three times you will be kicked out of your contract with the broadband company. No word yet on how they are going to manage false positives and identify offenders in first place and if the user has the right to appeal against the offending letter.
One of the Internet Service Providers (TalkTalk) published a FAQ already on their website that is answering some of the most pressing questions that their customers might have.
It will be interesting to watch how this unfolds.
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It will be like France probably
I’d like to refer all these isps – and the media industry in general for that matter – to a story my mother used to read to me as a child.
The story concerned a man with a golden goose…
What’s France like at the moment?
I was disappointed to read about the story in the news as well.
They are never gonna stop file sharers. There are web-based p2p services like FilesWire which work directly from the web and can be used on any internet connected computer. (work,internet cafe,uni, etc). So how are they going to pinpoint p2p activity if it is not even tied to your ip address.
When the vast majority of the public do something – who has the RIGHT to call it a crime?
The problem is – at its most basic – caused not by digital technology, but by corporate greed. The media industry has had a field day with obscene profits over the last half-century – but the party is over. People don’t just share files because they’re mean – they share because everyone is pig sick of being screwed over by an industry that think 1000% markups are fair game, where true competition hardly exists, and where our intelligence is insulted almost every time an ‘anti-piracy’ spokesperson opens their mouth.
And just as sick of governments and law enforcement increasingly seen to be in the pocket of that industry. Report an assault or burglary and you’re often wasting your time – but a teenager ripping off CDs can have a dozen police kicking in his door in the early hours. It’s obscene.
There is money to be made, with new and imaginative business models. But the old media model is dead – and trying to maintain it against all odds is a luddite exercise comparable to banning the printing press and sabotaging looms.