download music ? face huge fines

[Dave Stones]

my mind goes back to an article i read somewhere, probably here or something.

anyway remember how metallica were all against napster and everything? well in this article the guitarist of metallica said he used to go round to the drummer's house and copy tapes from the drummer cos he couldnt afford the tapes himself...

perhaps im being naive but isnt this what the masses are doing now? us poor peeps download the music cos we cant afford £16 an album

oh and as for banning firewalls... "only in america!"

[darkangel]

Originally posted by El Diablo
I can't help but think this has all gone off track

Surely we're all agreed that music / software piracy is illegal right? Whilst the net is a difficult place to police, copyright owners are going to want to prevent people from sharing their material with everyone else... It wouldn't be too difficult, using software similar to that of Kazaa, to identify Kazaa subscribers and use the various search tools to view what files people are offering for download. If legal action then needs to be taken against the person offering the files, then the ISPs will be obliged to provide details of the individual in question... simple.... same as any other online crime, there's no hiding behind your ISP, whoever they are, they are certainly not your friend when these matters arise!!

ur missing the points above it is illegal for any company/person to share personally identifiable information to a third party without you express permission for any reason.

[kronas]

Originally posted by darkangel
ur missing the points above it is illegal for any company/person to share personally identifiable information to a third party without you express permission for any reason.

does that include your modems mac address account number ?

[darkangel]

Originally posted by kronas
does that include your modems mac address account number ?

i would presume so if it's accompanied by personal identifiable info i.e home address cc details etc, not sure of the status of a mac address even thought the are unique, i'll ask.
why do u ask?

[El Diablo]

Originally posted by darkangel
ur missing the points above it is illegal for any company/person to share personally identifiable information to a third party without you express permission for any reason.

Err... not strictly true... you should also remember - "unless required by law" ... it's a common inclusion in most privacy statements. Granted, it would be illegal in any other circumstance.

[fraz]

Originally posted by darkangel
I'm pretty sure that any UK/euro isp cannot be forced to give info because of the human rights act they are not allowed to give out personal identifiable information although ntl may do this as they are a yank company

All the copyright holders have to do is obtain a UK court order under section 35(1) of the UK Data Protection Act and ntl (or indeed any other UK based ISP/company) would have to pass over any information related to the customer identified as redistributing the material in question.

[darkangel]

Originally posted by El Diablo
Err... not strictly true... you should also remember - "unless required by law" ... it's a common inclusion in most privacy statements. Granted, it would be illegal in any other circumstance.

didn't mention any privacy statement, i referring to to the EU human rights act which supersedes any privacy statement,T&C etc it states.
"Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence" i believe that it could be argued that p2p and other Internet traffic could be considered "correspondence" which means the initial act of monitoring the connection would be illegal?

[darkangel]

Originally posted by fraz
All the copyright holders have to do is obtain a UK court order under section 35(1) of the UK Data Protection Act and ntl (or indeed any other UK based ISP/company) would have to pass over any information related to the customer identified as redistributing the material in question.

but how would they know if u where d/l or u/l copyrighted material in the first place?

[El Diablo]

Originally posted by darkangel
i believe that it could be argued that p2p and other Internet traffic could be considered "correspondence" which means the initial act of monitoring the connection would be illegal?

But the connection isn't being monitored, as such. The the third party would just need to provide time stamps / IP address of the offending person, this can then be tracked via the originating ISPs logs to see who was allocated the IP at the time the incident took place.

Originally posted by darkangel but how would they know if u where d/l or u/l copyrighted material in the first place?

If copyrighted material is being offered via services such as Kazaa, copyright owners are likely to perform some of their own monitoring as to what is being offered by participants of the service. i.e. If I have 1000 files that I am sharing and they take a look at all the files I am sharing, it wouldn't take much to identify any of their copyrighted material - simply by downloading part or all of the file that I am offering they can confirm that I am in breach of their copyright. They simply then provide the ISP with my Kazaa identity, time and IP address of my machine and it can then be tracked back to me.

It'd be different if they were looking for persons performing the downloads, and harder to trace, so by targetting persons that are making the files available to everyone in the first place, they kill both birds with one stone!

Like I say, as long as the files are available for anyone to download from your PC / server, they must be available to the copyright owners, since you have no way of knowing who they are so that you can filter them out.

Anyway, the Internet functions on the basis of sharing files, such as this web page... it's only a file stored on a publicly accessible machine... it will always be possible to share files with others but the distribution methods will have to change.

Personally, I have no problems with actually purchasing MP3s online, at a reduced rate, provided that the right mechanisms are in place. This is something that the music industry has until now failed to provide for it's many customers... If they address that and concentrate on providing a good quality service at a reasonable price, then more people would be inclined to obtain their music from any legal sources.

[fraz]

Originally posted by darkangel
but how would they know if u where d/l or u/l copyrighted material in the first place?

All they (the copyright holders) have to do is run a P2P client , record the IP thats offering the material and do a lookup on which ISP it belongs to. They then obtain the court order asking the ISP to identify who was on that IP at the particular date/time & the next thing you know you have a court order through your letter box for a breach of copyright.

Next

[Stuart W]

Well done Fraz

That's hit the nail right on the head.

I don't think peeps need to worry about using P2P software as far as the ISP is concerned, as it is not the ISP's responsibility to scan users to see if P2P software is in use. More importantly, AFAIK, ISP's arn't allowed to scan customers equipment.

This reminds me of a similar thread about peeps getting letters for sharing a certain Lord of the Rings movie.
They only got letters for that movie. Not any others they may have made available for download.
This strengthens my theory..... only individual (company) copyright owners would persue a case.
I can't see a 'governing body' stepping in to prosecute people for sharing multiple copyrighted files.

[darkangel]

Originally posted by fraz
All they (the copyright holders) have to do is run a P2P client , record the IP thats offering the material and do a lookup on which ISP it belongs to. They then obtain the court order asking the ISP to identify who was on that IP at the particular date/time & the next thing you know you have a court order through your letter box for a breach of copyright.

Next

was trying to make a point, u could argue that they could not monitor ur connection without proof but to get that proof they would have to monitor ur connection,u can not legal monitor telecomunication for the purpose of gathering evidamce without a court order?
If they set up their own p2p/ftp server would this not be entrapment of a sort

[El Diablo]

Originally posted by darkangel
was trying to make a point, u could argue that they could not monitor ur connection without proof but to get that proof they would have to monitor ur connection,u can not legal monitor telecomunication for the purpose of gathering evidamce without a court order?
If they set up their own p2p/ftp server would this not be entrapment of a sort

I get your point, but they are not monitoring anything, they are simply saying that the person at xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx was offering y product for download at z time... with y product being copyrighted by them! If someone is openly offering material for distribution then the act of someone else accessing the material is not monitoring. It's really no different to catching a market trader with a load of pirated CD's. If they're up for grabs / being sold (albeit for Kazaa points) then they're breaching copyright, which is illegal.

[El Diablo]

Originally posted by Stuart W
This strengthens my theory..... only individual (company) copyright owners would persue a case.
I can't see a 'governing body' stepping in to prosecute people for sharing multiple copyrighted files.

Ah.. but this is where it gets interesting! Whilst there may not be a "Governing body", I believe that we are likely to see agencies specialising in this field of work and therefore being contracted by, say big record labels, to recover costs that they believe to have been lost due to P2P distribution. The agents can then do all the groundwork / fieldwork and legal work and could effectively identify numerous files being offered for download that are in fact copyrighted by various copyright owners, whom they happen to be working for... this isn't too far fetched is it??!

That way, they can build up bigger cases on individuals and ensure that the relevant measures are taken to prevent any re-occurrence by the same offender.

[darkangel]

Originally posted by El Diablo
I get your point, but they are not monitoring anything, they are simply saying that the person at xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx was offering y product for download at z time... with y product being copyrighted by them! If someone is openly offering material for distribution then the act of someone else accessing the material is not monitoring. It's really no different to catching a market trader with a load of pirated CD's. If they're up for grabs / being sold (albeit for Kazaa points) then they're breaching copyright, which is illegal.

understood but they could not use this evidence in any sort of court then?
illegal suggest criminal isn't copyright infringement a civil matter unless u are passing these of as originals i.e then it's fraud?