Isp's to Target illegal downloading

neil40

After listening to the news today about isp's having signed up to targeting customers who download illegal music etc.I was wondering what people thought about this?.Do you think it will help the problem?....Neil

del1001

LEEWOOD wrote: »

I think the ips's will have there work cut out here millions of people in the UK down load these files from illegal sources they dont want to target the customer they want to stop it at source and shut down the sites that are letting people download the illegal files.

That's a very bold statement, in the case uf torrents the people downloading files are the same people uploading files, that's how torrents work, everyone using them are the source.

..and, not all files swapped on P2P are illegal, how would you tell if a file is legal or illegal?

punkrockprincess

I doubt it will work, as the tracking and stuff would break privacy concerns and the IP companies would be spying on their users. It is illegal to tap phone lines so why is it ok to follow someones internet activity?

I also think that it is not the big pirate people who make and sell dvds who will suffer but the inexperienced casual downloader who will get so worried about what is happening.

I also think that as the cost of CDs and legal downloads are so high people will not go for them, i know I wont. I also think that most people who download do so as a kind of free tester to see whether to buy an album or not, or weather to buy a movie on dvd because it is a lot of money to spend only to find out that you don't like it.

I also don't see why the goverment is involved in this, and why they dont put some effort into stopping the bigger crimes on the internet such as sick child !!!!!! or things like that?

As for what is and is no illegal, there is no way for them to know without tracking your information, it seems like big brother really is watching. Maybe I am just paranoid.

IP comanies wont shut off their users internet, theirs no way they can! If people are not allowed to download anything then why do they need an IP? Most people will switch to the cheapest, slowest service they can find as their is no need for a high bandwidth, etc, and then the IP companies will loose money, just so the music companies can make more.

oneandonlyboy

The only thing they could do is either block all P2P but that would cause issues as such programmes like iplayer and 4OD use P2P. The other way would be traffic management, where they would reduced the bandwidth of P2P traffic. I believe the soecond option will win due to the fact that not many ISP's will pay towards upgrading fiber or laying fiber leaving it to BT,cable and wireless and H2O.

DatabaseError

punkrockprincess wrote: »

I doubt it will work, as the tracking and stuff would break privacy concerns and the IP companies would be spying on their users. It is illegal to tap phone lines so why is it ok to follow someones internet activity?

Illegal or not, it has been going on (bt trials) and is set to become widespread, 'soon'. At the minute (as I understand it), the publishers pay groups/firms to download media via torrents etc, track the IP address of the uploader (any filesharer) and then report to the ISP, who will send the nasty letters out (rather than the lawyers at present). The really nasty thing I linked to (phorm) is not yet used to track any illegal activity, but it would be a relatively simple change to implement, and, in many eyes, justify, once in place it may as well be used to track terrorists, who could argue? then deviants (by whose definition?) and the already slippery slope becomes very icy.
The internet was not invented for sex and stealing, though these are the 2 activities which seem to have brought the biggest advances to the technology, without sex it is unlikely you would now have streaming video an youtube, or indeed the internet bandwidth required to view it, and without peer2peer (often used for stealing) BBCiplayer and 4OD would not exist, nor, again, would the bandwidth they require.

/rant over/

weegie.geek

neil40 wrote: »

After listening to the news today about isp's having signed up to targeting customers who download illegal music etc.I was wondering what people thought about this?.Do you think it will help the problem?....Neil

It won't help the problem in the slightest, other than to scare people into not sharing illegal stuff.

It's not as if warez is just being made illegal, they're just taking a more public stance on it. People have been getting busted for years and it's not stopped the majority of P2P monkeys.

LEEWOOD wrote: »

I think the ips's will have there work cut out here millions of people in the UK down load these files from illegal sources they dont want to target the customer they want to stop it at source and shut down the sites that are letting people download the illegal files.
It wont happen i know that put it this way they have got to pay more staff to do this which as anyone will agree the cost of internet access will bound to go up.

The majority of traffic on the internet is P2P. Were it not for P2P most people wouldn't need the faster connections. There are plenty of legit uses of high bandwidth, but MOST people wouldn't be any worse off if they had 1mbit than if they had 24mbit.

Most ISPs have been happily and knowingly facilitating software piracy for years. They were happy to carry all the warez newsgroups after all. the torrent sites might have some legal content, but they can't say that alt.binaries.warez was 50/50. It's only now that it's become such a massive issue that they've got to be seen to be doing something about it.

del1001 wrote: »

That's a very bold statement, in the case uf torrents the people downloading files are the same people uploading files, that's how torrents work, everyone using them are the source.

..and, not all files swapped on P2P are illegal, how would you tell if a file is legal or illegal?

Everyone using them is the source, but if the tracker is taken down it effectively kills the torrent. (I'm saying torrent because it's by far the most popular and understood P2P method. There are of course other networks and protocols that don't have trackers or central servers, but relatively speaking nobody uses them)

Of course not everything on P2P is illegal, but 90%+ of the traffic P2P generates is. With encryption though, how will the ISP be able to identify what's what? I'll be interested to see. The only way I can imagine them doing it is by offering a "walled garden" service, which kind of defeats the point of it. Limiting threads to a degree that would make P2P pointless and blocking tons of ports, blocking encrypted and un-monitorable traffic... Unthinkable, but then Tiscali were doing just this not so long ago.

punkrockprincess wrote: »

I doubt it will work, as the tracking and stuff would break privacy concerns and the IP companies would be spying on their users. It is illegal to tap phone lines so why is it ok to follow someones internet activity?

It'll just be written into the FUP/T&C.

I also think that it is not the big pirate people who make and sell dvds who will suffer but the inexperienced casual downloader who will get so worried about what is happening.

The problem is it's the casual downloader who's supporting organised for-profit piracy.

Some of these torrent sites are making an absolute killing through "donations" and the like. I'm not anti-piracy in the sharing sense. I'm strongly anti-piracy in the making money sense. When I was a kid I used to spend my pocket money buying the latest Amiga games at the barras for a pound a disc. There wasn't P2P back then, only mail trading and the BBS scene, but I regret having encouraged paid-for piracy, and now I know a bit more about the world I can't help but wonder where lots of illegally obtained money in the predominantly catholic east end of Glasgow eventually went...

I also think that as the cost of CDs and legal downloads are so high people will not go for them, i know I wont. I also think that most people who download do so as a kind of free tester to see whether to buy an album or not, or weather to buy a movie on dvd because it is a lot of money to spend only to find out that you don't like it.

I've only ever bought one album that I turned out not to like. "We Care" by Whale Anyone remember the one good single? It happens so rarely that I can tell you the name of the album. I can also tell you where I bought it, and that it cost about £3. As it turns out, it grew on me a bit, but it's easily the worst album I've ever bought.

So for this reason I don't really buy the whole download-to-try-before-you-buy argument. These days you can listen to snippets of more or less every track anyway, via last.fm / myspace / amazon / lots of other places.

I also don't see why the goverment is involved in this, and why they dont put some effort into stopping the bigger crimes on the internet such as sick child !!!!!! or things like that?

I 100% agree. More proof that big business runs things, like more proof was needed. :rolleyes:

As for what is and is no illegal, there is no way for them to know without tracking your information, it seems like big brother really is watching. Maybe I am just paranoid.

No paranoia, big brother's definitely watching. No different to walking down the street and being in shot of 3 CCTV cameras. If you're doing nothing illegal you've nothing to worry about. And to get around internet big brother all you have to do is encrypt your traffic. Easy peasy.

IP comanies wont shut off their users internet, theirs no way they can! If people are not allowed to download anything then why do they need an IP? Most people will switch to the cheapest, slowest service they can find as their is no need for a high bandwidth, etc, and then the IP companies will loose money, just so the music companies can make more.

They can and will. They'll have to. If they don't, the music/film companies will sue them. If you're caught downloading illegal stuff they have to act.

Most people will switch to cheaper services, but then the network will be less congested and they'll not have to upgrade anything. They'll then be able to charge you for THEIR music/video on demand products.

ISPs are tiny. They can't afford to get into legal battles with Sony or whoever, so they pretty much have to do as they're told, especially if our spineless government agree.

del1001

It would seem that Carphone Warehouse (AOL, TalkTalk) aren't too happy with the idea that they could loose subscribers.

Take a look here -
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/214896/isp-threatens-to-walk-out-of-illegal-filesharing-pact.html

Sylvester

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/news/2008/07/will_letters_stop_people_illeg.html

Interesting discussion.

neil40

Thanks for your comments.Will be interesting to see what happens in the near future!....Neil

Viper_7

Yes lets stop illegal file sharing now.

but lets not do much about Child !!!!!!...

What's doing most harm? Ah yes the record companies are the ones complaining the loudest...

BritBrat

And does anyone here think an IT idea that the goverment is involved in will work?

About as much chance of getting the people to have ID cards, wait till they try and it will be another poll tax victory by the people all over again.

Don't you think they know to much about us now?

By the way there are other ISP's not on that list, in fact there are many.

Zen Internet is one.

Anyone use the BBC to view again? That's P2P too and if you don't stop the running service you keep sharing your bandwidth and I don't mean just stopping the program.