UK court to unmask 150 'file-sharers'

[andygrif]

Originally Posted by scrotnig

Not that I'm in favour of illegal MP3 sharing but the industry rather brought a lot of that upon themselves.

Software theft though? Different "cup o' fish, 'arry".

Why? Unless you can back up that statement, it's a purely hyprocritical argument. Both are protected under copyright, the act of copying one is identical to the other - the exception is that an MP3 loses the copyright owner 79p and the software company stands to lose hundreds of Pounds at a time. Please explain your justification for your statement.

Originally Posted by driver_problems

The way I see it the 'music industry' has largely brought it on itself by consistently charging way over the odds for all music over a period - well, since music started being sold. I can remember as far back as 7inch vinyl discs costing 7 and a half shillings (a fortune basically) and then they did the same with CDs. The market has been artificially cornered by the media giants over the years and if they had charged a palatable price from the off then this state of affairs would never have occured

This is an old and extremely tired argument. You can buy a CD including delivery for under £9. Are you saying that price encourages people to download? Your justification no longer applies.

Originally Posted by driver_problems

so there is no duty of care that the ISP has towards its customer? Or is it a case of the big corparate boys being above the law and making the laws they want with fancy lawyers in sharp suits?

Any duty of care, or right to anonymity under the DPA, would be overidden in 'exceptional' cases as decided by the courts, where such privacy is shown to be incompatable with the case being brought.

Right now it's a given that copyright infringements are deemed serious enough to override the DPA in the cases of the people suspected of the infringement.

It's also worth noting, although it did seem to go reasonably unreported, that last week two people who refused to settle out of court with the BPI were tried and found guilty of copyright infringement and will be sentanced accordingly.

Now that the process in place for the music industry you can expect anyone whose copyright is being infringed via P2P to be jumping on-board to get access to the people who are doing it.

[grubbymitts]

It's the UPLOADING of copyrighted material that is at issue here. If you upload warez or actively share warez then you are making said warez available to the public to download.

The **AA, BPI & Fast have never sued anyone for just downloading - as they would have a difficult time proving that they did it to simply infringe copyright. Those they have sued/hounded have been actively sharing/uploading copyrighted content to others.

P2P that follows the ED2K/Bit torrent form will always insist that the user uploads as they download - this is to help distribute the bandwidth. That is why the **AA try to shut down torrent sites. Downloading a .torrent file may only be a text file, but once you use it to gain just 1 byte of copyrighted material, then you will upload that byte too thus breaking the law - the .torrent file helps make this possible.

NZBs on the other hand point to the file on the relevant newsgroup, allowing your program to download said file, but you never actively upload a single byte of copyrighted material. I don't know whether this would stand in court, but it sounds plausible.

Now uploaders to Newsgroups are the ones that may find themselves facing a problem one day, but that day is long off I think.

[Bifta]

Originally Posted by driver_problems

so there is no duty of care that the ISP has towards its customer? Or is it a case of the big corparate boys being above the law and making the laws they want with fancy lawyers in sharp suits?

...also - if you actaully have that tune you are sharing bought and paid for, what's the story then. e.g there is a seting in Itunes where you can 'share all' so what's that all about then?



...come to think of it - its my account in the house but 4 people use the router so by that rationale it me that presumably gets shot at dawn if any file sharing monkey business goes on?

What 'duty of care'? If you're uploading and or downloading copyrighted material without paying for it then you've already broken your ISP's terms of use, to give you an example of what you agree to when you sign up this is from my ISP

The customer must NOT use the service:

9.1.3 to send, encourage the receipt of, upload, download, use or re-use any material which is abusive, indecent, defamatory, obscene or menacing, or in breach of copyright, confidence, privacy or any other rights or which may contain viruses or other similar programs, or which cause overloads to the PIPEX System;

[ian@huth]

Originally Posted by grubbymitts

It's the UPLOADING of copyrighted material that is at issue here. If you upload warez or actively share warez then you are making said warez available to the public to download.

The **AA, BPI & Fast have never sued anyone for just downloading - as they would have a difficult time proving that they did it to simply infringe copyright. Those they have sued/hounded have been actively sharing/uploading copyrighted content to others.

P2P that follows the ED2K/Bit torrent form will always insist that the user uploads as they download - this is to help distribute the bandwidth. That is why the **AA try to shut down torrent sites. Downloading a .torrent file may only be a text file, but once you use it to gain just 1 byte of copyrighted material, then you will upload that byte too thus breaking the law - the .torrent file helps make this possible.

NZBs on the other hand point to the file on the relevant newsgroup, allowing your program to download said file, but you never actively upload a single byte of copyrighted material. I don't know whether this would stand in court, but it sounds plausible.

Now uploaders to Newsgroups are the ones that may find themselves facing a problem one day, but that day is long off I think.

There will never be anything to download from any source unless someone uploads it first. It wouldn't take much doing to stop copyright material from appearing on newsgroups if my understanding of the law is correct. Isp's can get round the law by the fact that they are only handling transient data requested by one user and supplied by another in the case of p2p transfers. Newsgroups are another matter though. Material is posted to newsgroups without anyone having asked for the data. By having this unasked for copyright material on their servers for anyone with access to them to download it they are in breach of the law.

Originally Posted by paul11974

how can they tell what we are downloading ?

If you use turrents they can't something like kazaa they can

[driver_problems]

so these people who discover people are using these p2p sharing systems must presumably use them themselves to try and download the music someone is presumably uploading. Sounds like entrapment to me

[Derek S]

Originally Posted by STOP

If you use turrents they can't something like kazaa they can

If they start downloading from the Torrent they can check who else is downloading it within the same swarm.

[grubbymitts]

Originally Posted by STOP

If you use turrents they can't something like kazaa they can

They can just view the swarm and find out what is being shifted about. Even easier if they are still using a tracker.

Originally Posted by grubbymitts

They can just view the swarm and find out what is being shifted about. Even easier if they are still using a tracker.

So they would have you for what downloading a bit of information from one computer ?

Then an even better way would be downloading from irc with ssl

[Derek S]

Originally Posted by STOP

So they would have you for what downloading a bit of information from one computer ?

If they were serious about it they would prove you were on the swarm downloading the copywrited material and then raid your house to prove that you had it in your collection.

Either that or the minute you hit a 100% download you would have to disconnect to avoid uploading information.

[grubbymitts]

Originally Posted by dezzo

Either that or the minute you hit a 100% download you would have to disconnect to avoid uploading information.

You don't have to have 100% to be uploading to the swarm. Although, I doubt anyone could present a suitable prosecution if the defendant had uploaded less than 100% of the file.

[Derek S]

Originally Posted by grubbymitts

You don't have to have 100% to be uploading to the swarm. Although, I doubt anyone could present a suitable prosecution if the defendant had uploaded less than 100% of the file.

Yep once you start exclusively uploading you are gubbed. And if everyone cut off bang on the 100% mark the whole torrent business wouldn't be worthwhile.

[handyman]

Originally Posted by dezzo

If they start downloading from the Torrent they can check who else is downloading it within the same swarm.

Unless your on a private secure tracker and don't broadcast your torrent you can easily be caught.

[mcmanic]

It'll' never be stopped, we are only human after all and everybody has abit of Del Boy inside them always looking for the cheaper alternative.

Do you really think the major players in the scene use P2P to release their goods - i think not. All this will do is stop average Joe Blogs sharing "X" software ect,ect for about 2 weeks whilst the coverage in the media is ongoing. They would have to close down the internet to put a real dent in file sharing of any kind.

Feel sorry for the poor sods who are going to get caught TBH

Originally Posted by mcmanic

It'll' never be stopped, we are only human after all and everybody has abit of Del Boy inside them always looking for the cheaper alternative.

Do you really think the major players in the scene use P2P to release their goods - i think not. All this will do is stop average Joe Blogs sharing "X" software ect,ect. They would have to close down the internet to put a real dent in file sharing of any kind

Couldn't agree more