UK ISP Says No To Music Industry Pressure 70
siloko sends us to the BBC for the story of one ISP standing up to the music industry. (But note that this ISP is one of the ones said to have worked with Phorm on plans to track customers' surfing.) "The head of one of Britain's biggest internet providers has criticized the music industry for demanding that he act against pirates. Charles Dunstone of Carphone Warehouse, which runs the TalkTalk broadband service, is refusing. He said it is not his job to be an internet policeman."
Eh, whatever. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Eh, whatever. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Of course, the (secret) list of blocked sites, maintained by an organisation called the IWF [iwf.org.uk], now includes other things as well as child porn, such as "racial abuse". If the government decided to have a crackdown on file sharing they could easily force ISPs to add other sites, such as (for example) the Pirate Bay, to the banned list.
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My isp http://www.aaisp.net.uk/ [aaisp.net.uk] has not been forced by the government to do any such thing.
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Of course, like all censorship, it is not 100% effective. Presumably the people who want to download this sort of stuff simply make the effort to discover how to circumvent it.
My point is, though, that if the government ever wants to start web censorship on a larger scale, the infrastructure is already in place for them to do so.
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Yes and No.
Firstly, this is possible because the IWF have passed the URLs of sites which 'they' consider to be unsuitable to BT who have blocked them. It is NOT because anyone is monitoring all internet traffic. If a site is not reported then it cannot be blocked
Secondly, this may be the case for BT, but it is not a legal directive, or even a request, from the Government to all ISPs. If you dislike the fact that a particular ISP is doing something that you disagree with then you are free to use a diff
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"Sign up to our Broadband....we are the only ISP that won't cut off your internet connection if you file share" (Gov't legislation permitting)
Interesting point he raised during the actual radio interview was criticizing the music industry for not adapting their business model to digital technologies...
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I'm not sure the double entendre was intended or not, but ... "different tune" - I like it.
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A difference... (Score:3, Insightful)
I can live with that.
Love the guilt laden language they use... (Score:3, Interesting)
My question about ISPs in Britain is, how much say does the EU have over them? How does the EU versus the law of England stack up in regards to this situation?
Re:Love the guilt laden language they use... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Just because someone supplies a service doesn't make them responsible for what the masses decide to do with that service, especially not in terms of protecting the interests of a group of sharks in business suits.
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Well over here in the UK, they do just that. Granted they've been forced to by government legislation, but nevertheless, you can't buy a packet of cigarettes with a message on it saying you're going to die horribly, or something similar.
Cigarettes aren't really a valid comparison, as they only have one purpose - to smoke. And that gives you the nasties.
No, what we need is a good, solid car analogy.
It's more like every car seller being forced to monitor all future use of cars they sell in question to prevent a minor crime (like, say, dropping litter out of the window) which may be committed with that car.
Of course, once the CCTV, GPS and other instrumentation was in place, then it becomes a legal quagmire once the car is used for ot
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I believe that's EU legislation - they all look the same and have the same messages in the EU countries I've been to recently (ok, in the UK I didn't even think about buying cigarettes, so I can't tell). Some of them are quite pointless: The pack in front of me says "Smokin
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no more than (Score:1)
Edgymucayshun (Score:2)
STEAL.
MUSIC.
(from HMV. Download it instead. Making a binary clone is NOT stealing. Stealing is where one party is deprived of whatever it is the other party is stealing [and no, data does not equal hard cash], I wish the music industry capitalists would get that distinction through their fucking heads. Apart from that the police deal with theft which is a criminal offence. Copyright infringement is a civil offence which the police and crown prosecutors have no jurisdiction over. And spare me the "Pira
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That said, they do have the politicians from both of the major parties in their pocket and currently involved in a competition to see who can out-do each other in terms of linking file-sharing to some "despicable act".
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Oh, and IANAL.
Innocence (Score:5, Funny)
I know nothing of this, honestly!
Neutrality? (Score:5, Funny)
mod ISP -1 for cosying with phorm.
Net result: 0 points.
Is this what they mean by net neutrality?
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All your data still goes to phorm, regardless. The opt-out is a meaningless platitude.
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They make it sound like a natural thing (Score:3, Interesting)
If you read the article, you'll find Geoff Taylor's doublespeak amazing.
At the heart of this issue is ensuring that creators are fairly rewarded in the digital age
Okay so far...
and we passionately believe that working in partnership with ISPs to develop first-class, safe, legal, digital music services is the way forward.
Uh...
Here's the appropriate response to that idiocy from Charles Dunstone, TalkTalk head.
We are the conduit that gives users access to the internet. We do not control the internet, nor do we control what our users do on the internet.
Good job, Charles.
Re:They make it sound like a natural thing (Score:5, Insightful)
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When they get smug about it.. (Score:1)
Look at this way:
Each time you purchase a CD from an RIAA label, you're paying the salaries of the jerks who say this sort of thing.
Boycott them all - let their album sales atropy to nothing.
It couldn't happen to a more deserving bunch of corporate slimeballs.
Re:They make it sound like a natural thing (Score:5, Interesting)
Easy business decision if you ask me.
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"...and we passionately believe that working in partnership with ISPs to develop first-class, safe, legal, digital music services is the way forward."
Digital music services that are controlled by BPI members that is. Not music services controlled by "new media" companies or independent record labels.
"the [ISPs] need to educate their customers not to steal music..."
The ISPs need to educate their users not to take advantage of the fact that modern packet-switched
conduit (Score:5, Funny)
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presumptuous much? (Score:3, Insightful)
(Sadly, they're probably on safe ground.)
Amazed (Score:5, Interesting)
Any special interest group worried about a particular activity on the internet will want the ISP to ban it, ever media craze will lead to more things being banned and the ISP carrying the can for policing it, any government dept looking for some quick headlines will get them to report ( for example ) anyone talking about benefit fraud in chat rooms to the benefit agency.
Today Jaqui Smith, some brainless minister in the British government, is suggesting ( yet again ) that all paedophiles should register their e-mail addresses with the police and not be allowed to register on chat rooms with those addresses. She says she is in discussions with ISPs to police this. She is too stupid to realise what she is asking for and too moronic to understand palming her inability to convict people and lock them up should not be palmed off onto commercial entities who have no business whatsover doing her policing for her.
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(a) how does she know all the emails and aliases of every paedophile. Ask them? Like they're likely to tell her... More likely she only has one on record.
(b) does she *realize* how quickly you can create a gmail or hotmail account?
(c) good luck getting myspace/facebook/etc. to do this.. they're not UK companies and are just as likely to tell her to sod off.
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The weaker part is getting the paedophiles[0] to register their email addresses, in the same way as they have to register their physical address. We all know it's easy to create new email addresses, but the poin
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It's not a perfect analogy, but it seems to me a pretty reasonable attempt to do something, involving the right people - users of web sites and admins of web sites - without stomping all over everyone else's use of the Internet.
As a parent to a rather smart 3 year old, and with another 2 on the way currently, I can honestly say that website users and admins of web sites are *COMPLETELY* the wrong people to be doing something...
1) Most paedophiles are people the children in question already kno... So how does a website monitoring anything help anyone?
2) Be a good parent. Kee
Re:Amazed (Score:5, Funny)
Not to mention a stringed instrument!
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AFAICR, the Swedish ISPs have been saying this from the beginning.
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Today Jaqui Smith, some brainless minister in the British government, is suggesting ( yet again ) that all paedophiles should register their e-mail addresses with the police and not be allowed to register on chat rooms with those addresses. She says she is in discussions with ISPs to police this. She is too stupid to realise what she is asking for and too moronic to understand palming her inability to convict people and lock them up should not be palmed off onto commercial entities who have no business whatsover doing her policing for her.
That stupid bitch has obviously never heard of hotmail.
~Dan
The heart of the issue (Score:2)
BPI chief executive Geoff Taylor:
No, the heart of this issue is who gets to decide when a creator has been wronged and what the penalty for that wrongdoing should be.Talk Talk: bit torrent throttlers (Score:3, Informative)
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They're going for publicity here - good for them. I don't think they're really standing up to anything.. ISPs are reluctant to do the kind of thing the BPI is asking without a court order anyway, so it's all noise right now.
If the government tried to legislate that ISPs are effectively censors of t
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Phorm (Score:2, Informative)
Perhaps if the BPI and friends weren't so stupid and greedy, this situation would have never arisen? There is a discussion to be had concerning renumeration
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Is it not also a matter of privacy? (Score:5, Insightful)
Music Industriy must be astonished (Score:2)
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The prime minister chooses the money!
Charles Dunstone - head of TalkTalk and AOL (Score:1)
Time Warner - who still operate the AOL portal in the UK - will be worried about the BitTorrents stealing their precious "Cats and Dogs" and other quality DVD releases. Interesting... could we end up with one AOL suing the other in the UK?