Richard Branson backs down on piracy

[UnReaL]

RICHARD BRANSON'S news of a deal he cut with Universal Music that would allow legal downloads from his Virgin ISP outfit was lacking the details of another accommodation he also made with Universal on so-called 'piracy'.

Beardie promised that if the music industry identified a filesharer then Virgin will stuff up the user's Internet connection by turning it on and off for a bit.

According to Paid Content, Virgin has since confirmed that the deal included "doing everything in its power to prevent people from sharing music on its network, including the option of disconnecting persistent offenders."

Virgin said that it will not spy on the download behaviour of its customers or intercept traffic. Instead, it plans to warn those accused of downloading copyrighted content, based upon evidence provided by the music cartel's third party tracking companies.

Those who receive multiple warnings will have their Internet connections suspended, from "a few minutes to a few hours."

This is a turnaround from a year ago when Virgin publicly said that it would never disconnect alleged filesharers.

Repeat infringers might face speed bumps, meaning that their Internet transfer speed could be decreased significantly.

The move appears to be a legal challenge waiting to happen. The EU has opposed doing anything to filesharers unless there is a court order.

Moves by the French government to impose such a 'three-strikes' law have been ruled unconstitutional and the recent Digital Britain report stopped short of mentioning Internet disconnections.

Perhaps this is Beardie's cunning plan - offer the music *****a the disconnection plan knowing that it will not survive a legal challenge and still keep your music downloading system.

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Source: Theinquirer.net

Article: Paidcontent.co.uk

Yes, because Richard Branson will be sitting in his swivel chair, stroking his cat, saying "now my evil plans have come to fruition, mwahahahahahahahahahahah".

Or,

he has very little involvement in the day to day operational running of VM.

Which is most likely?

[BenMcr]

Originally Posted by UnReaL

Moves by the French government to impose such a 'three-strikes' law have been ruled unconstitutional and the recent Digital Britain report stopped short of mentioning Internet disconnections.

No but what it did was everything but! From the report:

Ofcom will also be given the power to specify, by Statutory Instrument, other conditions to be imposed on ISPs aimed at preventing, deterring or reducing online copyright infringement, such as:

• Blocking (Site, IP, URL);
• Protocol blocking;
• Port blocking;
• Bandwidth capping (capping the speed of a subscriber’s Internet connection and/or capping the volume of data traffic which a subscriber can access);
• Bandwidth shaping (limiting the speed of a subscriber’s access to selected protocols/services and/or capping the volume of data to selected protocols/services); and
• Content identification and filtering.

This power would be triggered if the notification process has not been successful after a year in reducing infringement by 70% of the number of people notified