Virgin Media and BPI join forces to attack illegal filesharing

This is awesome. We can now frame people en-masse: http://dmca.cs.washington.edu/

I really hope someone gets taken to court. Then the BPI's "evidence" can be thoroughly refuted in a court of law.

[Rob]

threads merged

[admars]

surely Virgin can just send out letters to everyone, and tell the BPI they've doen their bit. It seems a bit like Sony moanig about ppl copying films, yet they still sell blank DVDs and DVD writers.

[Horace]

Originally Posted by admars

surely Virgin can just send out letters to everyone, and tell the BPI they've doen their bit. It seems a bit like Sony moanig about ppl copying films, yet they still sell blank DVDs and DVD writers.

Yeah because the only reason for blank media and writers is for piracy!

[bw41101]

Dear Mr ******* we've recently reviewed your actions and have determined that you've illegally downloaded some hard core pornography from a torrent site!

Okay - and the illegal action! the content of the download? the point of origin? or the mechanism used?

Another example - EZTV. this torrent site is where it is possible to download those TV episodes like - Lost, Battlestar Galactica, Stargate Atlantis etc, You know all of those programmes that VM (in their infinite wisdom) decided to withdraw from their customers when they severed ties with SKY1 - what do you expect your customers to do? if you take away the ball then we'll play cricket somewhere else!

What next a surveillance camera in every home?

Gimme a break!

Sending letters to everyone pointing out what is already the law (and thus should be known to everyone) is pointless, and not VM's problem at all. The BPI should pony up for national advertising if they think it's important.

I seriously doubt this will go beyond a simple letter. Anything more would be inviting legal action. The three strikes thing is nonsense, because people will just say "prove it" and the BPI won't be able to.

It's easy to frame anyone for downloading copyrighted material, since you can just report any IP address you like to the tracker. Use someone else's and they are framed. As the paper I linked to pointed out, the BPI et al don't actually download anything from you, they just "your" address in the swarm.

Worse, imagine your IP address changes due to DHCP, which of course it regularly does. Because BT trackers are not updated more than once every 15 minutes, usually longer, any info the BPI gets from them is out of date and could be referring to the previous lease holder on your IP address.

Oh, and BTW, the EU considers an IP address to be private information so the BPI better have a court order if they want VM to tell them who the address was leased to at the time. Otherwise, VM are in deep for giving away your private data (protected by the Data Protection Act among other laws).

[TheDon]

Originally Posted by mojo

Sending letters to everyone pointing out what is already the law (and thus should be known to everyone) is pointless, and not VM's problem at all. The BPI should pony up for national advertising if they think it's important.

It's not pointless. Adverts are easily ignored, the whole "I'll never get caught, no one ever does" mentality. A direct mailshot saying "Hi! We know you downloaded this, on this date, you do realise that's illegal right?" would actually scare the **** out of an massive amount of people, far more than any advertising campaign will ever do.

Plus there's alot of kids that download things and their parents don't know, their parents suddenly getting a letter saying little jimmy is breaking the law will soon see little jimmy losing his internet connection.

Originally Posted by mojo

I seriously doubt this will go beyond a simple letter. Anything more would be inviting legal action. The three strikes thing is nonsense, because people will just say "prove it" and the BPI won't be able to.

It's easy to frame anyone for downloading copyrighted material, since you can just report any IP address you like to the tracker. Use someone else's and they are framed. As the paper I linked to pointed out, the BPI et al don't actually download anything from you, they just "your" address in the swarm.

3 strikes definitely wont happen, it's far too difficult to enforce. However don't be fooled into thinking that all the likes of the BPI do is join a swarm and monitor it. That's just all they do if they are just collecting IP's for ISP's to send letters to. If they are going to take someone to court they do gain actual evidence of sharing by downloading the files from you.

Originally Posted by mojo

Worse, imagine your IP address changes due to DHCP, which of course it regularly does. Because BT trackers are not updated more than once every 15 minutes, usually longer, any info the BPI gets from them is out of date and could be referring to the previous lease holder on your IP address.

IP's from expired DHCP leases are often locked out for far longer than 15minutes for precisely this reason.

Originally Posted by mojo

Oh, and BTW, the EU considers an IP address to be private information so the BPI better have a court order if they want VM to tell them who the address was leased to at the time. Otherwise, VM are in deep for giving away your private data (protected by the Data Protection Act among other laws).

They wont, the BPI will just get VM to send the letters. They aren't going to shoot themselves in the foot with something like this, they have expensive legal teams to stop that from happening.

As for all the "how do they know what's legal or illegal?" people, it's easy. They monitor torrents of the work they own the rights over, anyone sharing it is breaking the law. It's not just a letter if you're torrenting, it's a response to a direct report of your IP being part of a swarm for a piece of work that they own the rights to.

Originally Posted by bw41101

Dear Mr ******* we've recently reviewed your actions and have determined that you've illegally downloaded some hard core pornography from a torrent site!

Okay - and the illegal action! the content of the download? the point of origin? or the mechanism used?

The letters they will be sending include the time, the name of the infringing work, your ip address at the time, and what protocol it was being downloaded through.

[BenMcr]

Originally Posted by TheDon

3 strikes definitely wont happen, it's far too difficult to enforce. However don't be fooled into thinking that all the likes of the BPI do is join a swarm and monitor it. That's just all they do if they are just collecting IP's for ISP's to send letters to. If they are going to take someone to court they do gain actual evidence of sharing by downloading the files from you.

I know this, you know this, both Virgin and the BPI know this.

However some supposedly tech people don't know this

http://www.trustedreviews.com/networ...-P2P-Policy/p1

Even though it isn't in any of the press releases!!

I would point it out to them but they got a bit shirty when I mentioned they read it wrong over the 20Mb - 50Mb non-upgrade

[TheBlueRaja]

Looks like all those folk that "dont miss Sky" will have to get their illegal shows elsewhere.

Good work Virgin push them all to Sky, its better anyway.

[foreverwar]

iyho, Keith .......

[TheDon]

Originally Posted by BenMcr

I would point it out to them but they got a bit shirty when I mentioned they read it wrong over the 20Mb - 50Mb non-upgrade

So I bit, and I emailed them, and guess what, I got a nice shirty reply back asking if I wanted to rephrase my statements with a "I happen to believe...". This is the problem with the digital age, any idiot can start up a new site, and most of them are run by people with no clue of what real journalism is about. I miss the days when articles were properly sourced.

[cimt]

Wow... I guess I'll be getting a letter within a few days? I'm always using sites which have TV shows on.

[Sirius]

If i get a letter i will file it in the same place my usage letter went. I wonder how they are going to find out what i was doing with my giganews account, Unless of course they are going to be using those free gifted DPI servers that PHORM are going to be useing to give you more relevant adverts.

If VM are going to be doing this in the next month or so then i wonder if they already have the PHORM DPI servers in place ready to do this.

[Kymmy]

I think though people are getting the wrong end of the stick here...

I don't think that BPI are currently targetting those downloading mp3's, mainly as the only way for them to get the IP's is to act like an illegal file share and see who connects and downloads (entrapment??)

What they are doing is trawling the file sharing sites for people sharing the material and then they're connecting/downloading whilst logging the IP.

So those who will get the letters are the ones offering copyrighted material to download and not the downloaders themselves. In other words why go for the end user when you can have the dealer.

The excessive bandwidth usage letters sent out by VM are something totally different.

Kymmy

[Sirius]

Originally Posted by Kymmy

I think though people are getting the wrong end of the stick here...

I don't think that BPI are currently targetting those downloading mp3's, mainly as the only way for them to get the IP's is to act like an illegal file share and see who connects and downloads (entrapment??)

What they are doing is trawling the file sharing sites for people sharing the material and then they're connecting/downloading whilst logging the IP.

So those who will get the letters are the ones offering copyrighted material to download and not the downloaders themselves. In other words why go for the end user when you can have the dealer.

The excessive bandwidth usage letters sent out by VM are something totally different.

Kymmy

If they send letters to those using newsgroups and note I said IF


Then they will have done one of 2 things


1. They will be deep packet inspecting, Something that the PHORM servers (if they have them installed) will allow them to do.

2. They are watching what you download from there own Newsgroup servers.

I fully understand how torrents work and i fully agree with what you said. Its one of the reason i now will never use torrents again. they are just too insecure.

My fear is if they target newsgroups as well because to do that they will have to admit they Deep packet inspect our data.

As for the usage letters I expect to receive one every couple of weeks as i have been told the trigger level that is required to send you one, Its similar to the 3 strikes rule so that's me on there list permanently .