3 strikes and your out

Use P2P to download illegal material may mean you loose your internet.

Coming home from work today listening to the news on the radio I heard a report that in the UK the government is getting together with ISPs to talk about individuals loosing their connection to the internet if they partake in illegal file sharing (sorry no link.)
You would get an email from your ISP warning you may loose your connection if you carry on then after the third they cut you off. What worried me listening to this was that P2P clients were reported as also illegal!
How this could be policed without just banning P2P I don't know but looking around I found it has also been proposed in France.

Comments?

 

A similar situation happened with my previous ISP,who would issue nasty warnings about the user being disconnected for three infringements,but I got the impression it was all a bit of a bluff,as its obviously impossible to control the average P2P user,who may D/L an insignificant harmless amount,nor is it worth the trouble.

The association representing the commercial interests were only targetting the serious heavy offenders and I cant recall any one being disconnected ,although a very few heavy users,who had happened to be caught at random,were warned.

The ISP took the attitude that they had to legally cover themselves to appear to be doing the right thing,so they themselves wouldnt be acted against.

Unless you are a serious heavy duty pirateer,wouldnt worry at all,dont think anyone is particularly concerned about the small time users.

 

The internet was built on an ethos that no one should really control it although I understand the bowing to the media industry and trying to stop a pirate sharing files they don't own the copyright on but this sort of thing effects us all.
I just can't see how they would stop a savvie user without a blanket ban or all ISPs imposing download limits.

 

I dont know if the UK law is the same as a law proposed here in sweden are identical, but here it wont be the ISP that monitors the traffic it is the copyright industry only who has the right to send a email to ISP pointing out someone they think are downloading or sharing copyrighted material. They will do that by taking screenshots of the IP´s in a filesharing program.

 

This is also the situation in Australia,the ISP is warned by the copyright people and they pass it on to the user.
A bit of a panic a few years ago,but seems to have quietened down completely.
My current ISP isnt even bothering to warn of possible consequences, but then again here they arent after the small fish.

 

It is not illegal to download ANYTHING in the UK, it is the responsibility of the person sharing the data to uphold copyright.
So they can only go after the uploaders and then it only becomes a criminal issue IF money exchanges hands, if no money swaps hands then only damages can be reclaimed (and we dont have staturory damages, which means its up to the copyright holder to prove the damages ).

The issue greys a lot where you are forced to upload parts of a file that you are downloading, as until you recieve the complete file, especially as you do not know for sure what it is you recieve as a file name is not a reliable indication of the file contents. And then it greys even more as in the UK we are allowed to store tv programs 9included movies broadcast) to watch at a later date, there is no specification to the medium of obtaining the program material (eg could be p2p, recorded straight off the TV).

But it does not stop the copyright holders and ISPs making agreements and weaving them into the T&Cs.

Sounds like it will be used to skim the worst offenders (the ones the ISP complain about wasting bandwidth).

 

Hello,

Well, some points I can make:

- Not all content downloaded through p2p is illegal - like Linux distros, for example.

- Using obfuscated connection means that no one but the client itself will know what is being downloaded.

- Using PG to filter the corpo vampires is another great idea.

Cheers,
Mrk

 

@nickr:

Wow, I didnt know that UK was so liberal in the file sharing philosophy. Here in sweden the copyright industry is spreading to the world that swedes are the No.1 file sharing terrorists in the world, because of the liberal laws we (thought we) have
Here the copyright industry doesn't have to prove that file sharing is damaging them, they only have to say so..

 

Here's one such link:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7240234.stm

 

http://www.slyck.com/news.php?story=972 makes for good reading on UK downloading copyright and backs up what I have said.

I still have yet to find a real source for this information and suspect it is fiction, as too many things said do not add up, especially as pointed out in that BBC article.