Internet "cut off" date set for illegal downloaders
 

http://www.nme.com/news/various-artists/48089

yeah, good luck with that Peter.. :D

Re: Internet "cut off" date set for illegal downloaders
 

I'm still wondering how they're going to address the issue of people who don't use P2P to download, but use Newsgroups and the like
Especially the ones which offer 256bit SSL.

Re: Internet "cut off" date set for illegal downloaders
 

I'm interested how they are going to "know" without monitoring every packet..

Re: Internet "cut off" date set for illegal downloaders
 

Easy with newsgroups, but will require either a change in law (which would probably come) or the assistance of courts.

The Authorities look for large amounts of data sent to/from known newsgroup server data centres. The hardware that Phorm were looking to install could probably have done this easily enough.

They organise a raid, obtaining all necessary warrants. They then look at the News provider's logs to see exactly who has been downloading what, and could probably find other nice details like their address and the credit/debit card details used to pay for access.

---------- Post added at 15:43 ---------- Previous post was at 15:41 ----------

With paid news providers, they don't. They just need to monitor where the news provider's data centres are sending a lot of data.

Re: Internet "cut off" date set for illegal downloaders
 

Only much good if the news server is in the UK... ;)

Re: Internet "cut off" date set for illegal downloaders
 

True..

Re: Internet "cut off" date set for illegal downloaders
 

They'll have to prove you're downloading illegal material. if you're using torrents and have forced encryption then i don't think it can be determined what you're downloading other than the fact it's bittorrent traffic. If they were to do this then alot of isp would go out of business.

Re: Internet "cut off" date set for illegal downloaders
 

A year on from April 2010 Labour and Mandy will be History.

Re: Internet "cut off" date set for illegal downloaders
 

Which can be quite easily done.

Perhaps the freetards should think about that?

Re: Internet "cut off" date set for illegal downloaders
 

how can they tell if a file is illegal without physically looking at the file

Re: Internet "cut off" date set for illegal downloaders
 

Without getting into the semantics of legal / illegal files let me put it this way.

You'd need to be a bit super naive to assume that everyone sharing a file is sharing it for the same reason.

Re: Internet "cut off" date set for illegal downloaders
 

I'd recommend looking into what the encryption actually encrypts, and how these 3rd parties check on what people are downloading. Encryption makes absolutely no difference here at all.

Re: Internet "cut off" date set for illegal downloaders
 

Well the title says illegal downloaders and the quote in OP says file sharing the two are different

Re: Internet "cut off" date set for illegal downloaders
 

Same way as now in the case of P2P, join the swarm and note the IP addresses of the rest of the population of the swarm.

---------- Post added at 19:54 ---------- Previous post was at 19:53 ----------

Meh these are doable if they really want, but are ISPs really going to pay to do it? Not likely.

Re: Internet "cut off" date set for illegal downloaders
 

well the law has to be specific ,they can't assume that all shared files are illegal ,granted ,a vast majority are but not all ,the same as some torrents are legal and some are not ,if they are going to prosecute file sharing each and every file will have to be examined

Re: Internet "cut off" date set for illegal downloaders
 

Marty I was referring to the distinction between "illegal files" and legal files.

They are two very distinctly different things in that whilst you can legally or illegally download a legal file you cannot possibly legally download an "illegal file".

Re: Internet "cut off" date set for illegal downloaders
 

There are a number of ways:

Introducing a scheme where you can be offered an reward for grassing people up who share illegal files.

Offer ISP's money to catch and cut off users who share files illegally.

Or rather than getting people into trouble and criminalising people for something minor, offer downloaders a warning and then get them to pay small but very affordable fees towards wherever the file came from.

Its a matter of fact,that people are going to keep downloading because they don't realise they've done something wrong until they get a knock at the door. Its easy and very accessible and to be honest maybe ISP's,original file owners ect.... need to get better security systems and ways of preventing such leaks.

Re: Internet "cut off" date set for illegal downloaders
 

i know that ,but how will they know which ones are legal and which ones aren't
how will they know which people to target ,do they target usenet or newsgroup users or all and when they have targeted these people how do they decide which files are the illegal ones

Re: Internet "cut off" date set for illegal downloaders
 

It's simple, they share the file.

Re: Internet "cut off" date set for illegal downloaders
 

Except for the fact you're still listed in the peer list for the torrent.

Encrypting torrent traffic is ONLY good for avoiding traffic shaping (and even then sophisticated traffic shaping that monitors the traffic patterns will still detect it) it will not stop you from being caught downloading things you shouldn't be.

Encrypted newsgroup traffic is an entirely different story though, to find out what you're downloading from them they'd have to get a court order to get the logs from the newsgroup providers, they can't just go in with a "we think you're hosting copyright material, tell us what everyone is downloading" warrant, because no court would ever give one of those, they'd have to individually request the records of specific individuals, and for each one of those they have to show probable cause, and "oh my, you've been downloading a ton of data off giganews!" is not probable cause.

Re: Internet "cut off" date set for illegal downloaders
 

but sharinga file isn't illegal it's the content of the file that makes it illegal and to prove the illegality of a certain file download then surely that file has to be monitored
Now i know that the tech exists to monitor individual web connections but can it possibly monitor ALL connections ALL of the time which it would have to and can the content of such files be visible to the monitors to enable them to decide wether it is legal or illegal content

If i visit The Pirate Bay and download a software program, lets say, Open Office ,a free program ,will i be assumed to be a illegal downloader just because i visited a site notorious for illegal downloading ?

and yes i know there are better sites to get open office and other free software from,it;s just a example to show a point ;)

Re: Internet "cut off" date set for illegal downloaders
 

Where a copyright exists if you don't have the copyright holders permission to share a file then your sharing of that file is illegal - irrespective of what the content may be.

Re: Internet "cut off" date set for illegal downloaders
 

yes i know all of this .I am asking HOW they will know which of the files i have just downloaded are copyrighted and which aren't, without getting court orders and such like for everybody they think is illegally downloading

At the moment my understanding (and please correct if wrong)is the tech is available but on a limited scale i.e people downloading child porn ,this is illegal but suspects are subject to their computer being searched only after a court order is obtained through probable cause the same for terror suspects ect

Re: Internet "cut off" date set for illegal downloaders
 

They only need to prove one instance. If they engage a third party to facilitate downloading of a file that they hold copyright on and you are then identified as someone who downloaded it from that third party then that pretty much nails it.

As for "probable cause" this is a (much over used) American constitutional term and therefore not relevant here in the UK from a legal perspective. The UK equivalent is "reasonable suspicion". The threshold for reasonable suspicion can be as simple as someone reasonably suspecting ie "thinking" that a crime has been or may in the future be committed.

Given the accuracy and high quality of personally identifiable evidence available through credit / debit card subscription payments to certain services which explicitly advertize their services as being capable of carrying out illegal actions as part of their allure then it is entirely reasonable to assume that those types of activities are engaged in by subscribers.

The days of illegal filesharing are numbered. A generation has spent the best part of the last 12-15 years arguing their right to steal / infringe on others copyrights.

While they were stuck to their screens agog with wonderment and busying themselves with free copies of albums, softwares and movies the legislators were eroding civil liberties and privacy laws to the point that council officials can now seize your goods, civil servants and others can force entry to your home and detain you with no warrant and young men can be brought to trial by jury for "thinking" about a school massacre.

Anyone who thinks the "without a court order" nonsense will continue to hold up in the face of the decimation of an industry which had previously contributed billions to the British GDP against some half baked (nazi funded in the case of the site you mentioned earlier) ideal of a cultural free for all is living in cloud cuckoo land.

Sorry, but that's how it's going to pan out.

Re: Internet "cut off" date set for illegal downloaders
 

It might be an American term, but the same principle exists in UK law. You cannot simply draw a straight line from "downloads from newsgroups" to "downloads copyright material", no reasonable person would say a crime was being commited just because someone was downloading from newsgroups.

Then there's the point that search warrants are only obtainable for criminal copyright infringement, that being making copies in the course of a business, or mass distribution, neither of which are applicable for people downloading from newsgroups. An end user downloading a copy is a civil case, and without reasonable proof of you infringing on a specific copyright work a civil case isn't going to get off the ground.

I'm also not aware of any newsgroup provider that explicitly advertises the fact that binary newsgroups carry copyright material. In fact I can guarantee they don't as then they'd lose their safe harbour provisions.

Re: Internet "cut off" date set for illegal downloaders
 

The problem is, Torrents are used for alot of Linux Distros and RPM's aswell. So how do they get around that?

Re: Internet "cut off" date set for illegal downloaders
 

Scrape the tracker and you get a nice list of IPs that are downloading whatever copyright work you want, you have to register with the tracker to download, so there's always a nicely updated list of who is infringing your copyright.

This is why p2p is bad, with p2p you cannot avoid people being able to see what you're downloading, because it's a vital part of how it works, if no one can tell you're downloading the latest hollywood blockbuster then they can't download from you. Newsgroups, ftps, and other direct downloads don't have that, if your connection to them is encrypted then no one knows what you're downloading, only that you are downloading something, unless they can get hold of the sites logs, and the sites either don't log, or if they do you need to go through a court to get access to them, and as long as the site is complying with the relevant legislation (for example DMCA for the American based ones) they'll never be able to get one baring some drastic law changes.

Re: Internet "cut off" date set for illegal downloaders
 

I suspect before that happens there will be a few test cases going to court that will result in the judgement that terms and conditions in a contract that state that the account holder is totally resposible for the data passing to and from his/her/its ip address are illegal and unenforceable.

Re: Internet "cut off" date set for illegal downloaders
 

The Don, with all due respect you appear to have entirely missed the point.

Re: Internet "cut off" date set for illegal downloaders
 

There will always be a way for people to get warez no matter what is done some clever people will find a way around it.

Re: Internet "cut off" date set for illegal downloaders
 

Not at all, the changes proposed are not drastic. They're still working on the principle of rights holders or ISPs being able to identify who is downloading what.

None of the proposed legislation gives any extra investigative measures, so there are no extra powers being suggested for going to 3rd parties to gather records of those who may be or may not be downloading what. It's simply a different way of dealing with those identified that doesn't cost the rights holders anywhere near as much as taking legal action now does.

Now if in the future the government announces that they're going to be mandating any data hosting service to turn over their logs for analysis to identify file sharers then the situation will be vastly different, but as it is the situation will be the same as it's always been, p2p is an easy way to get caught.

Re: Internet "cut off" date set for illegal downloaders
 

The new CO proposals make no reference to judicial involvement prior to disconnection. If these were not drastic measures then TalkTalk would not be getting into such a twist over the possibility of them having to hand over user data and disconnect account holders without a court order.

Re: Internet "cut off" date set for illegal downloaders
 

Talk talk are more interested in the cost of implementation rather than making any moral stand, their actions are purely from a business point of view and are two fold, one: by not having to disconnect those filesharing they don't incur added cost (which Mandelson wants split between the ISP and rights holder) and two: by making this stand they are getting a ton of free publicity.

They will not have to hand over user data, they will simply be told which customers are infringing (by the rights holders collecting IP addresses), and have to follow a set procedure, that being a series of warnings, then maybe eventual disconnection.

The proposal is that ISPs and rights holders work together to identify users that are downloading illegally, that can be done two ways, by the rights holders actively monitoring download sites and harvesting the IPs of those downloading their content, or by the ISPs monitoring traffic to detect downloads. Only the first one of those is actually being suggested, but both of these are not an issue if you're using SSL and a direct download. There is nothing in the proposals that will enable anyone to go to 3rd parties and request information on what people are downloading, the rights holders have to be able to identify exactly what you're downloading before they can start giving out warnings, your ISP will not act without being told that you're infringing, and even if they were actively monitoring their network just seeing that you're downloading a high volume of traffic over SSL from a newsgroup provider for instance would not be enough.

There's a huge amount of scare mongering going on about it, and there's no doubt that the proposals are bad news for p2p, but they really aren't for anything else. It'll stop a huge amount of casual infringement, but it's no silver bullet that's going to magically stop all file sharing, and they never will. But getting rid of the highly public mass of p2p sites will be more than enough for the rights holders.

Re: Internet "cut off" date set for illegal downloaders
 

What you are outlining above are the proposals as mooted in June & August of this year. What Mandleson is now proposing are new measures post the September consultation.

Legally they are very different beasts.

Re: Internet "cut off" date set for illegal downloaders
 

No, he's proposing exactly what I've said, even the talk talk site set up about it says the same. The entire proposal revolves around rights holders identifying who is downloading their content.

Re: Internet "cut off" date set for illegal downloaders
 

Again, with all due respect, it is not what he is currently proposing.

The TalkTalk site which you link actually links to the pre September 29th deadline consultation announcement in pdf format and, commenting on the at that time proposals, moots a hypothetical "It proposes an automatic process to disconnect ‘offenders’ which appears to run something like this:"

Post consultation he has removed the judicial requirement and introduced a levy per notification issued which will be payable by the rights holders to the ISP - ergo one might reasonably assume that the rights holders have no requirement to identify infringers but that this will fall to the ISPs. Hence TalkTalk threatening to throw their toys out of the pram.

Re: Internet "cut off" date set for illegal downloaders
 

Please point me to anything other than hearsay that says the monitoring is going to be down to the ISP. There is literally no chance it will be as for an ISP to monitor who is infringing they'd need a complete catalogue of every copyright work going, and it'd have to be constantly maintained. Rights holders have repeatedly refused to provide such a database to many download sites citing it as being impractical, so why would they be able to do it now?

Not even talk talk think it will be, and if there was any hint of it they'd be shouting it from the rooftops like they are with the rest of the proposal. Right from the very start it's been about rights holders notifying ISPs and then ISPs having to carry out the notifications to end users (which is what the rights holders have to pay for, added staff and technology costs to actually deal with the notices). It is up to the rights holders to protect their copyright, not any 3rd party.

But once again, even if the ISPs do end up monitoring (which they wont) then it makes no difference to what I'm saying as they cannot do on the fly decryption of SSL, and unless they mount man in the middle attacks on every secure connection (which would land them in court within seconds) then there's no way they'll know what the traffic actually contains.

Re: Internet "cut off" date set for illegal downloaders
 

See the already published proposals.

In their draft form they state that once an infringer has initially been notified to the ISP the ISP will issue a first warning. The ISP will then monitor for subsequent / continued infringements and where appropriate issue further notifications explaining that if the account holder "persists the rights-holder may take legal action against them". This is neither the language nor the tact of a third party complainant. Whichever way you look at it (including even the Talk Talk diagram interpretation) it is monitoring on the part of the ISP.

As far as the database question is concerned you have partially answered your own question further down wherein you state "It is up to the rights holders to protect their copyright, not any 3rd party". The rights holders will readily identify infringements rather than afford ISP's the opportunity to suggest that their being required to do so is impractical or an onerous burden on their resources. Moreso now that they have a firm Government commitment to address the issue.

If, as is already agreed and clearly stated in the proposals, the rights holders have to foot the bill for the issuing of any notices then what do you think Talk Talk's "And they want you to pay for this new scheme" scaremongering regarding some supposed "copyright enforcement tax" is about? Could it be their way of levying a fee to offset their additional monitoring costs?

I think they are playing to the gallery - and handling it very badly.

Re: Internet "cut off" date set for illegal downloaders
 

Those two paragraphs go entirely against each other.

An ISP cannot monitor for future infringements if they do not know what data is infringing. If the rights holders are readily identifying infringements then they are the ones doing the monitoring, not the ISPs.

I've also read all the proposals, and there's nothing in there that I can see that states that ISPs will be made to monitor anything other than the number of notifications sent and to who. Please feel free to point me in the direction of somewhere that does though, and by direction I don't mean just going "read the proposals".

The current proposals are aiming towards a 50/50 split between the cost of carrying this out between the rights holders and the ISPs, the levy will simply be to make up the rights holders 50%.

But again, this is all academic, it's only going to effect p2p.

Re: Internet "cut off" date set for illegal downloaders
 

How many times do you think that an ISP might need to be notified of a particular work being subject to copyright? You are trying to argue an already failed / rejected proposal from the original BERR Report. Move long.

OK, re read the proposals you've already read.

Sorry, you missed the bit in the proposals you already read which states that the rights holders have to pay for the notifications - not the customers. Nowhere in the proposals does it say that the customers will have to contribute anything on behalf of the rights holder (or the ISP for that matter).

For the time being.

Re: Internet "cut off" date set for illegal downloaders
 

Sith lord Mandelson:

How the news paper title should have read:

"Unelected official with previous history of corruption announces a new law to punish the electorat for not giving big business the money they want"

From a good friend via facebook

So if I have a Usenet account using SSL and the server is located aboard can they still sniff my traffic?

Re: Internet "cut off" date set for illegal downloaders
 

Every single time the work is infringed. At the very least they'd need to be notified for every separate instance of it on every p2p site (and of those there are thousands). The rights holders can't just go "yeah we own the rights to this film" and then have the ISP track whoever downloads that, it's technologically impossible. The ISPs would either have to be notified of every infringing copy on every site, and then monitor them themselves to see which of their customers are accessing it, or would need a digital fingerprint of each copy of the work, which they could then check for through the use of DPI. Both of those are cost prohibitive, the only workable situation is exactly the one they're going with, rights holders monitoring, ISPs blindly send out notifications. This is why talk talk are going on about rights holders becoming judge jury and executioner.

As I said, I don't want some wishy washy "yeah it's in the proposals" I want you to post here, in this thread, the paragraphs from the proposals that state what you're saying. I've read the proposals many a time, there's NOTHING in there that mandates ISP monitoring of traffic on their networks, absolutely nothing, this is evidenced by the very fact that no ISP in the UK is currently complaining about having to do monitoring, not even talk talk. If there was the slightest hint that ISPs would have to start doing packet level monitoring of all their data traffic then they'd be up in arms about it because it would cost them an absolute fortune.

Your inability to pinpoint where it says what you're saying speaks volumes.

It states the rights holders will have to pay for each notification, it doesn't say that this fee will meet the entire costs.

For the time being murder is illegal. Maybe in future it won't be!

You're still ignoring the fact it's technologically impossible to extend this measure to anything but p2p, and the only way to do so would by to force every data host in the world to hand over their logs for analysis, which would NEVER happen because it's in breach of just about every privacy law in every country. Fishing expeditions are not allowed in law.

Seriously my entire point here is that it's not the end of filesharing because there's many alternatives out there that have end to end encryption, end to end encryption that CANNOT be broken, and definitely can't be broken on the fly to enable real time analysis of what's being downloaded.

---------- Post added at 19:55 ---------- Previous post was at 19:55 ----------

No.

Re: Internet "cut off" date set for illegal downloaders
 

...tries to resist.....

Sorry, couldn't resist mentioning Phorm. The ISP's didn't exactly help their arguments against DPI (i.e. packet level monitoring of all their data traffic) when they tried to embrace Phorm, did they?

Re: Internet "cut off" date set for illegal downloaders
 

In fairness they are entirely different beasts, Phorm is relatively easy to implement.

Phorm just relies on being able to see what sort of sites people are visiting, which is plain text data, identifying infringing works means they need to keep a database of all infringing works, and examine all the data that passes through their networks against the digital fingerprints kept in that database, whilst also checking if it's coming from a legitimate download site or not.

Re: Internet "cut off" date set for illegal downloaders
 

I'm sorry, but you are wrong on several levels.

It is not technologically impossible to track downloads by any stretch of the imagination. I'd refer you to Youtube as just one example of the most benign version of such technology.

"Both these are cost prohibitive" - Yes, that's exactly what TalkTalk are crying about whilst trying to drip feed their customer base the idea that the Government wants the end users to pay - it doesn't.

Good ploy, you know as well as I do that the most recent proposals (not the previous ones which I have already pointed out to you your reliance upon is flawed) are not yet in the public domain - as such I'm not at liberty to post "here, in this thread".

What I can do however is draw your attention to the careful language of Mr Heaney when he says "TalkTalk will continue to resist any attempts to make it impose technical measures on its customers unless directed to do so by a court or recognised tribunal."

For those who have difficulty in translating corporate speak I would recommend that they read the musings of a certain James Alexander;

"ISPs will be aware of upsetting legitimate and loyal customers in a fiercely competitive market. ISPs will use the twelve-month monitoring period to not only measure the effectiveness of deterrents but also to hone their own detection processes. Detection is reliant on a combination of technologies and supporting processes to analyse the huge volume of data generated by all the broadband connections in the UK.

"Making this detection process efficient and effective may well be a challenge, and while direct costs may be measurable and therefore split with content owners, indirect costs such as managing calls from customers, may be harder to capture. This may be easier to swallow if the ISP is also a content owner but may still be a burden for ISPs generally".

Mr Alexander is the senior media partner at Deloitte - one of the primary Government movers and shakers post the September consultation. I'm sure if people look further they will find more.

Neither does it say that customers should be expected to contribute.

I hadn't figured you for the sarky type.

And you, again with all due respect, are ignoring - amongst other things - the DPA in its various incarnations and various subsequent Acts which have been passed which require ISPs to record and retain data for extended and specific periods of time.

When Mr Heaney bleats on about rights holders becoming "judge jury and executioner" he is highlighting something that you are missing.

When he talks about "extra judicial measures" he's not talking about "additional" judicial measures placing a burden on either his company or his customers. He's talking about measures that do not require the involvement of, or sanctioning by, the judiciary - ie, Court Orders in relation to the disclosure of personal data. Heaney knows this and that is why he's threatening to go to court to prevent the removal of this requirement. His business could potentially haemorrhage around him because he, like others, has fastidiously protected illegal filesharers by using the Court Order requirement as a cost prohibitive gateway. The Dark Lord is resolute in his determination to put a stop to it and the extra judicial move will do just that.

Seriously, the debate here is not about filesharing but illegal filesharing.

There is no point in singing the virtues of end to end encryption in real time. The argument has moved. Rights holders are not interested in "the now" - they never have been - royalties were always paid quarterly in arrears. It makes little odds to them whether they identify the infringer in real time or several months later by way of data records provided under certain legislations.

For the time being end to end encryption is safe in real time- but in the future the records of it wont be!

Re: Internet "cut off" date set for illegal downloaders
 

If you read what I said properly, I said it's technologically impossible to do it based on the name of the copyrighted work alone.

Youtube does do video and auto fingerprinting to remove infringing content, but it relies heavily on rights holders to identify work themselves and submit dmca requests first. Their system relies on them being manually notified that a video is infringing, and then it's added to a database of known violations. It cannot detect anything that hasn't been manually reported to them through a dmca request.

This is my entire point, you can't just say "yeah we own the copyright to latest hollywood blockbuster" and then expect the ISP to be able to track every download of it, they'd need to be notified of EVERY version of it to be able to track copies of each of them.

Yes, it does, it wants the costs split between the ISP and the rights holders, giving the ISP any additional costs means the end users end up paying.

Technical measures = speed restrictions and eventual disconnection, as stated in all of the proposals:

Firstly, Mr Alexander is only a media spokesman, he isn't privy to any of the internal communications about this, he's speaking solely as an outside observer.

If anyone is in any doubt that Mr Alexander is not privy to anything that's not public, I point you to this quote from him just four days before Mandelson dropped the disconnection bombshell:

A strange comment from a "mover and shaker" ahead of an announcement that they were looking at going further with the technical clamp down then they have ever suggested before!

(Thanks for bolding the part that backs up my point that they want the costs split between the ISPs and the rights holders that you seem to disagree so strongly with though!)


Well you can sit discussing the ifs and buts of what might happen in future till the cows come home. My point stands, the currently proposed measures ARE NOT drastic law changes of the sort that would be needed to target anything but p2p (which is also why the entire consultation has had p2p in the title)

And what about the laws that restrict who can access that information, and the burden of evidence to get a court order to see it? As I've said, fishing expeditions are illegal, you can not just get someone to hand over their logs so you can go looking through them to see if anyone might have infringed your copyright, and until there's a drastic law change that changes that, doing so will remain illegal, and it doesn't matter what data is being held as long as no one gets to see it (I'm also not refering to ISPs here, but 3rd parties like newsgroup providers).

I'm not missing anything. The measures are for dealing with those that have been identified, my point is that outside of p2p identifying people that are infringing is next to impossible without actually going through the courts to get information from 3rd parties, and there would have to be drastic law changes that as they'd have to essentially rip up the DPA to make it possible.

Yes, they will be.

You will not crack SSL even given 10 years.

Re: Internet "cut off" date set for illegal downloaders
 

I have always been led to believe its the uploading of files that is illegal, if you look round the net there are loads of places to download files of all sorts from.
There is also another loop hole which means you can download a rar file but it only becomes illegal if you extract the content. There is also encryption systems available which is going to make the whole process difficult to implement. Then there are the darknets that actually use high amounts of different users pc's to download parts of a file so no complete part is downloaded by any single user. There are also very competent hackers about that can readily use someone elses pc remotely to get the files they want with no come back to themselves. I personally think this scheme is going to be virtually unworkable, ie too much time to break things down to catch people unless they are using torrents

Re: Internet "cut off" date set for illegal downloaders
 

Indeed.

It's complicated, and has never been tested in a court, but there is good reason to say that the act of downloading infringing works in itself is not illegal.

The copyright act makes numerous exemptions for personal use, such as importation and possession otherwise than in the course of a business. Just simply having a collection of infringing copies for example is not illegal. The only things that are are having any dealings with infringing copies in the course of a business, distribution otherwise than in the course of a business that has a detrimental effect on the copyright holders business, and making infringing copies.

The test is if downloading is making an infringing copy or not. You could argue that the downloader makes the copy, you could argue that the host makes the copy. It's something that is untested and until it is we'll never really know the answer to. Personally I'd say it's the host, as the downloader never has access to the original to make a copy, the downloader just keeps saying "ok, send me the next bit".

The main thing the government care about is it's a perfectly workable scheme for p2p (especially as p2p has no gray area over legality, if you're using p2p you're not only downloading but also distributing) and it has the potential to kill off the public p2p sites in this country, but as for anything other than p2p, it's never going to work.

But then killing off the casual p2p infringer is propably going to be enough for the rights holders, they know they'll never stop it completely, they'll just hope that enough people don't just migrate over to newsgroups where they'll have far bigger problems stopping them.

Re: Internet "cut off" date set for illegal downloaders
 

21st October 2009 - publication of James Alexander's comments on a "backdown" as previously mooted by Bradshaw and kindly linked to by yourself.

28th October (seven days after that publication date - not four) and Mandleson (who happens to be Bradshaw's superior) delivers his latest proposals which Bradshaw subsequently - and unsurprisingly fully endorses in his closing speech to c&binet.

Go figure.

Re: Internet "cut off" date set for illegal downloaders
 

I often wondered on that myself
Anytime I've read about the lawsuits and threats of law changes, the newspapers/online sites always say it's the SHARING that's illegal (i.e the upload/transmitting of copywritten material)
It doesn't actually say it's illegal to download. hehe

Re: Internet "cut off" date set for illegal downloaders
 

Well, even if they did class downloading as a form of copying making it illegal they'd still go for the distribution charge as it simply has a higher penalty.

Copying a copyright work for personal use is a civil matter, and as such the penalties for it are purely damages, that being the loss of a sale. Distributing to the extent that it damages a copyright owners business (which is the charge they go for in this country) is a criminal one, and as such carries not only damages, but also a threat of a fine or jail time.

Re: Internet "cut off" date set for illegal downloaders
 

if they really want to make money they need to listen

see

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/21/20091101...c-e1d36ba.html

this is only the latest of surveys to show this ;)

Re: Internet "cut off" date set for illegal downloaders
 

These surveys really have no use though for a range of reasons, the main two being:

1: They do nothing to separate out those who have no interest in music, so the average spend for those that don't download is dragged down by those that just don't care about music, and whilst the average spend might be higher for downloaders, downloaders make up a far bigger proportion of hardcore music fans than non-downloaders, so the average should in all likeliness be even higher. The data is essentially skewed.

2: Nearly everyone who downloads claims to "try before they buy", but very few actually do. It's an easy way to justify your download habits to people.

Re: Internet "cut off" date set for illegal downloaders
 

sorry but lots of different surveys are showing the same thing the fact that some of the non downloaders may not be interested in music doesn't skew the results in any meaningful way as some of the downloaders wont be interested in music either

i for example don't really bother with music at all but download quite a bit on occasions mostly video

the customer base they need dont listen to music like we used to my kids only ever listen to the radio in the car with me going to school or shops etc

most of the music they hear is on you tube or similar sites or what their friends put on or stuff on X factor etc

they truly do try before they nag me or the wife for the CD

if they had any sense they would start to put their music out there for free on mass at say 128 bit quality and only go after those sharing high quality stuff there after


till then they are fighting a loosing battle that just cost them money they supposedly ( rofl ) don't have because those pesky downloaders pinched it all hmmm

i can quite happily stop them finding me if i want though at the moment i really don't feel the need to hide :) if they dont want it on you tube they can get it off there themselves not up to me to police what the kids listen to or download on the highly public sites they ( they dont use the torrents or news groups i use ) use to listen to music or music videos

as far as i am concerned they are already using the try before you buy approach but want to have a way to completely control their market if they get the chance as well ( cake and eat it come to mind )

the video industry seems to be breaking ranks slowly though we have blueray / dvd / mpeg box sets coming out which seem to realize at last that you have a right to view your purchase any way and any where you wish , which is a big change from their original idea of being able to lock your blue ray purchase to being played on 1 blue ray player :O

if they try releasing films online at a lower quality they may find their sales go up too if the movie is good enough ;)

Re: Internet "cut off" date set for illegal downloaders
 

I think you should reread the articles, mainly this bit:

There won't be a single person who downloads music that isn't interested in music, as by definition they must have an interest in order to download it.

The results are therefore severely skewed as there isn't a similar qualifier on those who don't download music.

If you were doing it in a scientific way you'd first establish peoples interest in music, and then draw comparisons across different groups, but none of them ever do so they get the obvious outcome, people that like music spend more on music.

Re: Internet "cut off" date set for illegal downloaders
 

i suggest you read the full report at http://www.demos.co.uk/

Re: Internet "cut off" date set for illegal downloaders
 

I have done, it's a pretty poor report that constantly pulls out figures without showing where they're coming from, I'd be very interested to see the source data as without it the report is next to useless.

Despite it stating fairly regularly that a third of users use illegal sites to obtain music, less than 10% of those surveyed actually admitted to downloading illegally, and it's from these 88 people that they pull the £77 average spend figure. I'd be far more interested to see what the figures were for the 20% of people that admit to using file sharing networks, but claim to do so legally, I'd be willing to bet that their average spend is way way down (after all, if they're getting free legal music, why would they spend money on getting the same legal music again?).

Re: Internet "cut off" date set for illegal downloaders
 

though this report is more about legal downloads it shows the same thing

http://www.musically.com/theleadingq...090716-cds.pdf


those who use the downloading services also spend more on cds

and though i cant find the report on thier site a report by them mentioned here

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/07...gal_downloads/

which i do have some where also shows the same as the Demos findings and that was 5 years ago

also in a IPSOS MORI poll earlier this year shows almost exactly the same thing

http://www.ipsos-mori.com/researchpu...x?oItemId=2355

there are more cant find them at the mo most likely have a few more stored on my main computer :)

the one thing that is consistent is that those who down load be it legal or not buy more music than those who don't

Re: Internet "cut off" date set for illegal downloaders
 

Point well and truly missed.