UK ISP Disconnects Customers For File Sharing 311
think_nix writes "Karoo, an ISP in Hull, in the UK, is disconnecting subscribers without warning if they file-share, or are even suspected of file-sharing. Karoo is the only ISP in the area. Copyright owners are working with the ISP helping them identify and report suspected filesharers using their services. In order to get service restored, subscribers have to go to Karoo's office and sign a form admitting guilt and promising not to do it again. The article states that some subscribers have had their access cut off for more than two years." Update: 07/24 16:29 GMT by KD : The Register is reporting that Karoo has relented and has changed its policy. A spokesman said: "It is evident that we have been exceeding the expectation of copyright owners..."
A right not a privilege (Score:5, Insightful)
Legal CYA (Score:5, Insightful)
Seems awfully heavy handed to me, not to mention legally tricky for those who are accused. What's to say that by signing that document, they won't open themselves up to legal motions by the multinational entertainment companies.
I don't understand (Score:5, Insightful)
Karoo is NOT the only ISP in the area. (Score:5, Insightful)
The summary is incorrect. They still have the option to use dialup from some other company, or satellite.
Re:I don't understand (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:so? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I don't understand (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't understand why ISPs want to be in the business of policing their users: it costs money to do that. It also costs them lost revenue for cutting off users.
You're assuming it costs more money to police them than it does to kick off the heavier bandwidth users and then have a larger profit margin. 90% of the users pay for the 10% who use bandwidth heavily. Get rid of the 10% and profits soar. Ah, but you assume internet access is a regulated public utility and so they have to be fair and impartial? Te-he. Silly techie, trix are for kids!
Re:Legal CYA (Score:4, Insightful)
Cross-out the offending portions and write, "admits no guilt" above them. Then sign.
If they still refuse to restore service, hire a team of lawyers and sue them under antitrust/antimonopoly legislation.
Re:A right not a privilege (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I never thought I'd say this, but... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I never thought I'd say this, but... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:so? (Score:5, Insightful)
In the U.S., you typically have both the cable company and the phone company vying for Internet business.
WTF are you basing this on? DSL only ranges about 15,000 to 18,000 feet from the DSLAM. There are huge swaths of land that don't receive DSL service, even in fairly suburban areas. The telco can install remote DSLAMs if they want to but many don't make the effort because there aren't enough potential customers in the area to justify the expense.
There are many areas where the cableco is your only choice. Worse, the cableco knows this. In my area you can usually get Time Warner to lower your rate if you threaten to move to DSL -- but if you live in an area where DSL isn't an option they refuse any sort of rate deal because they know they have you by the balls.
You are also discounting the remote areas that have DSL service but are stuck with slow service because of the distance and/or provider policy. I can get DSL where I live -- at a whooping 1.5mbit/s for the same price that Time Warner can deliver 8.0mbit/s. 1.5 isn't really enough to watch decent quality video. So I'm stuck with Time Warner even though DSL is an option.
Guilty until proven... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Legal CYA (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I don't understand (Score:3, Insightful)
Copyrights to what? They don't produce music or movies. How can they hold a copyright if they don't produce anything?
Re:Legal CYA (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:I don't understand (Score:3, Insightful)
So either state in the contract that there is a bandwidth cap (and enforce it) or charge more for more bandwidth. Their policy should be bandwidth-based and not content-based. That also happens to be a lot simpler to enforce.
Re:A modest proposal (Score:2, Insightful)
Earlier today he posted this: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1313945&cid=28806481 [slashdot.org]
The flaw lies in the implementation of the HTTPD used for router's Admin Web GUI. Which is a custom rewrite by Brainslayer & the DD-WRT team.
A brief history of DD-WRT (warning: it's biased against the project): http://www.bitsum.com/about-ddwrt.htm [bitsum.com]
He complains of "the dangers of homogeny" when the software bug was from a hobbyist-type build of a custom firmware.
Then he closes with the following statement: "Just because we love Linux doesn't mean that we should sacrifice the entire ecosystem to that love. We need to nurture other implementations to prevent this type of virus from wiping out our entire networking infrastructure."
While melodramatic, he's misrepresenting the actual number of DD-WRT users. The subset of router enthusiasts with DD-WRT is smaller compared to those who use other 3rd party firmwares (OpenWRT, Tomato, etc available on Broadcom or Atheros chipsets) and those who never bother to reflash their routers at all or have routers that are unsupported by DD-WRT.
Re:I am an ISP and I support this (Score:2, Insightful)
If the quality of the content was so low, there would be no consumers of said content to squeeze money from.
Re:Sounds like they are hard up for cash. (Score:3, Insightful)
Which part of "sole provider" and "monopoly" did you choose to ignore?
Karoo are the only ISP in Hull.
Hull is not in fucking London.
What's wrong with saturating your bandwidth? (Score:4, Insightful)
Isn't that why you pay for bandwidth? If a company advertises I can buy 5 liters of Coke a week for $2, and I drink five liters of Coke a week, and pay my $2, who are they to complain that I'm drinking more than my fair share of Coke? If they cannot afford to actually provide me 5 liters/week for $2, then they should change their advertising and product offering to something more reasonable.
Re:A modest proposal (Score:3, Insightful)
Real /.ers browse with no threshold and no karma modifiers. Helps you build those nice mental filters against low temperature urination. On the plus side you also get to read some of the quite inventive trolls posted.
Re:A modest proposal (Score:3, Insightful)
DoS (Score:2, Insightful)
1) Find a list of all the IP addresses in use and file a copyright violation claim for each and every one of their subscribers.
2) They'll disconnect all their subscribers
3) Profit!
Re:i hate the mafiaa (Score:3, Insightful)
but in a world where genocides and starvation and slavery still occur, to speak about "human rights" about internet access is overly pompous
So because someone else's life sucks we can't improve our own?
Re:A right not a privilege (Score:2, Insightful)
Since government business is moving online, then the government should be the one required to ensure people have access to it. Most libraries these days has free internet access, so that issue is resolved.
Trust a public terminal for important things like government filings? Enjoy your keyloggers.
But saturation indicates a natural limit (Score:3, Insightful)
A reasonable interpretation of unlimited, in the context of a connection which has an advertised bandwidth limit (i.e. 10mbps down/2mbps up) is that you are limited to the amount of available bandwidth advertised. If I pay for 2mbps up, I'm not really paying for 'unlimited', but I do expect to be able to upload 2mbps without being told I'm consuming 'too much' bandwidth.
Such customers aren't using 'unlimited', they are using the bandwidth that was advertised and which they payed for. When ISPs bring up arguments like "using 100x more bandwidth than other customers" it's just to try to deflect attention away from the fact that they are using exactly what was advertised and which they payed for, and there's nothing wrong with that. It doesn't MATTER that it's 100x more. Other people just *under-utilize* (should that be hyphenated? Not sure) their connections.
Re:A modest proposal (Score:5, Insightful)
Not trying to belittle the problem of moderators censoring what they don't agree with, but have you tried posting on sites that use different moderation schemes? Slashdot is well above average when it comes to giving all sides a voice, probably because the relative scarcity of mod points encourages people to mod up rather than mod down. It's a lot like democracy being a horrible form a government (but the best one that we've found); Slashdot's moderation system allows for abuse and community censorship, but it is the best system I've seen on the Internet.
Re:Legal CYA (Score:3, Insightful)
Do you have any particular evidence that "It's quite likely however the people that have been disconnected were doing something wrong"?
I didn't think so. Does it matter if they could prove that they weren't doing something wrong? The article says otherwise.
You are, basically, judging people to be "guilty of SOMETHING" on the basis that somebody or other accused them and a corporation punished them. If this is an incorrect summary of your position, please tell me in what way.
Otherwise...doesn't that position look just a little *dubious* to you?
Re:A right not a privilege (Score:3, Insightful)
because the person receiving the allowance was instead spending the money on alcohol, tobacco and luxury goods.
O dear looks like you have been reading a bit too much Daily Mail [slashdot.org] . . . Be warned the link contains offensive material and on top of that has the longest front page known to man (well at least outside blogspot!).