UK P2P Fight Brewing 244
forunder writes "Zeropaid has been covering a very hot topic going on in the UK right now. The government, prodded by entertainment lobbyists, has gotten six UK ISPs to agree to help police piracy on their networks. A leaked government letter says they are looking to cut internet piracy by 80%. In the same week Microsoft released a study which found that some 54% of UK file sharers are between 11-16. The UK's Green Party has already spoken up, calling the new policies an 'Attack on Civil Liberties.'"
Re:How to cut internet piracy by 80% (Score:5, Informative)
Unless you're playing it yourself, you will find there's still copyright on the performance of that music.
You're free to take Beethoven's music and form a string quartet to play it. You're not free to take a performance of Beethoven's 5th by the London Philharmonic Orchestra and stick it up on bittorrent - that's definitely still copyrighted.
Cheers, Ian
A Microsoft study says what? (Score:3, Informative)
That's a very different statement from what the article says.
"UK kids are driving a new wave of digital piracy, and 14yos are the most likely to be file sharers, according to a recent "Real Thing" anti-piracy study conducted by Microsoft.
The "Real Thing" survey involved 270 children and 1,200 adults (16 and older).
Some 54% of children aged 11-16yo use illegal P2P and file-sharing services compared to 15% of adults."
Some 135 children surveyed do not constitute 56% of all illegal pirating activity in the UK (as claimed by the slashdot article?), and this seems like a case of intentional (or merely bad) pruning. Supposedly 145 children (54%) out of those surveyed pirate. A rather equivalent number of the adults, 180 (15%) do.
Studies tend to be up there with lies and benchmarks, but comparing two groups with radially disproportionate sample sizes? And where are the samples from? Are these at specific places? Why such a disparity in the group sizes? Then again, it does admit to be an "anti-piracy" study, so I guess they aren't exactly that interested making it fair or unbiased.
At any rate, the statement in the slashdot version and in the the article linked are very different, regardless of the supposed validity of the study.
UK Government undertaking consultation on this.. (Score:1, Informative)
This issue is under currently consultation.
The consultation document can be found at http://www.berr.gov.uk/consultations/page47141.html which explains the background to the issues, the legal issues and the questions BERR are requesting feedback on.
I assume the Green party (and many others) will respond via this mechanism.
Some areas I found interesting were the thoughts on possible technical measures, and what is being undertaken in other countries in this area, such as France.
Re:Unfortunately (Score:5, Informative)
UK government business minister Baroness Vadera is expected to announce a deal she brokered...
The UK government has stated [theregister.co.uk] that they will bring in legislation, starting after the summer, to force all ISPs to co-operate with the music labels on copyright infringement if they can't come up with a self-regulation scheme that satifies the labels' agency, the BPI. The UK government is working hand in hand with the french government, who've already started the implementation of the 3-warnings-and-cut-off setup the french government favours.
A number of UK ISP's, with the notable exception of virgin, have been telling the music business to piss off, that policing their customers for potential infringing content and invading their privacy without any say-so from a court or judge is not their responsibility. Unfortunately, the UK government disagress, and is piling on the pressure to co-operate voluntarily before they are forced to do so by laws very much in favour of the copyright cartel.
UK ISP's are already required to keep records on users email and web-traffic due to the RIP act; it wouldn't take much for that system to be expanded substantially and the government have already ballooned the idea of having it all stored in a giant government database instead of at the ISP.
A conservative government would likely be no better; they mooted the idea of extending the duration of copyright for music recordings in exchange for more 'family-friendly' lyrics from rappers for example.
Be under no illusion - this is a direct result of government threats against the ISP industry to spend their time and money to prop up the existing business model of the copyright cartels.
Re:It's summer, and Slashdot is trolling (Score:3, Informative)
>let me ask you this question: let's say the subway (metro, tube) cost $20 per ride, but the ride wasn't to work or particurly >necessary, it was just fun. What sort of punishment would be appropriate for somebody who was caught after jumping the turnstyle >every day for 10 years? After all, the nominal "cost" to the metro company of another rider is effectively zero. Clearly $20 x (10 >years) is not a reasonable punishment since there's no disincentive in this - we'd then ALL jump the turnstiles and just pay if we >got caught, since we'd be no better off.
Atleast in sweden the punishment for jumping the turnstyle every day for 10 years is exactly the same as the punishment for jumping it once, aproximately the cost of 2 months of metro access.
"Anti-USA rant" - can you read? (Score:3, Informative)
Other than that, a number of other posters seem to have pointed out to you that you didn't read the original submission.
Re:How to cut internet piracy by 80% (Score:3, Informative)
What "free" music from Beethoven is that? Is there any place on the internet where you can legally download "free" music from Beethoven?
Um...yeah. [google.com]
At least google something before claiming it doesn't exist on the internet.