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..."
So they disconnect anyone who uses a browser? (Score:3, Informative)
Telecoms monopoly (Score:4, Informative)
Here's a plan (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Here's a plan (Score:5, Funny)
Alternately, park outside his house and/or outside the Karoo offices, hack into a wireless router, and download as much music as you can.
I particularly like the idea of some Karoo tech setting some options to block a reported IP, and then asking, "Hey, did our network go down?"
Re:Here's a plan (Score:4, Funny)
Alternately, park outside his house and/or outside the Karoo offices, hack into a wireless router, and download as much music as you can.
Make sure that you download as much Hannah Montana, Vanilla Ice, Kriss Kross and Alvin and the Chimpmunks Sing Christmas Carols as you possibly can. When people see what he's been 'downloading', it should be the most embarassing mess of awful music the world has ever seen.
A right not a privilege (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:A right not a privilege (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem when requiring independent businesses to supply a basic service in any eventuallity has caused issues. Two examples of this is that the water services in the UK cannot cut you off for non-payment of your bills - the downside to this is that a lot of people know that, and simply refuse to pay anyway.
The second example is that the government recently stopped paying Local Housing Allowance to private landlords (where the person entitled to the housing allowance was in private rented accomodation rather than social housing) and started paying it to the entitled person instead.
This was done in an effort to increase the individuals ability to manage their own finances. What it actually accomplished was the situation where many landlords were not getting paid, because the person receiving the allowance was instead spending the money on alcohol, tobacco and luxury goods.
THe problem is, its a long process to evict a tenant that isn't paying, and a longer one to evict a tenant that is already receiving housing benefit. So private landlords are paying the price for the government policy change.
So now, the council register of private landlords willing to house Local Housing Allowance recipients has shrunk by as much as 90% in two years.
The phone companies can cut off your telephone line, theres no reason why your internet connection is any more special.
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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!).
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People still have phonelines?
Yes, it's the thing that carries my ADSL.
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It may not be considered an essential service now, but it damn well ought to be.
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Re:A right not a privilege (Score:4, Interesting)
Bullshit. I suppose people 25 years ago couldn't learn anything because they had no access to the internet, eh? I suppose people 10 years ago couldn't do much of anything either because the internet was small and slow, eh?
10 years ago...
* My phone company published a pretty decent phone directory, which was delivered to my door. It included listings for the entire city.
* 411 was free on pay phones and only 25 cents from my landline. (A while before that, it was free from the landline too.) Now it costs $3.49 each time we call 411. (Unless we use GOOG-411... but I found out about that on the internet.)
* I could dial 853-1212 and check the time to set my clocks.
* There were pay phones all over the place, and for 25 cents I could talk as long as I wanted to local numbers. The phones had phone books attached in many cases.
* Local businesses stocked all manner of items that were rarely needed, because when they were needed, they were the only way of getting them in the area.
* You could use a telephone to enroll in your classes at the largest public university in the largest state in the US. (A year later it was all online.)
Things have changed a lot in the last 10 years. If you have internet access (and everyone on this thread likely does) you wouldn't notice it as much... but there's a LOT that doesn't exist anymore because you can get it easier online.
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Getting from point A to point B is far more basic than browsing the web. My day-to-day life is impacted because I can't drive. Nobody's basic day-to-day life is harmed for want of internet service; hell, many people choose not to have it.
So is driving a right rather than a privilege? I should be allowed to drive even though I can't pass the vision test? Someone who has used a vehicle to assult someone, or who repeatedly risks others' lives by driving while severly impaired by alcohol, should still get t
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The question, which you ignored, is whether driving is a right.
For the record, no court took any license away from me. So apart from dodging the real issue, you are factually wrong.
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Yeah, I like that. Taxpayers are obligated to subsize unrestricted file sharing. That'll go over big in ANY country.
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.
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:Legal CYA (Score:4, Funny)
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"...hire a team of lawyers"
[looks at wallet, then dials phone] - "Hello, Lionel Hutz?"
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Yes [bbc.co.uk] although I don't know whether it applies to corporations or not.
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Corporations are bound by a set of laws, but the CEO of a corporation can be sued if the corporation breaks the right laws (eg. corporate manslaugher).
Not sure this really comes under human rights.. an ISP aren't the government, and have the right to supply services to anyone they like, just like a shop does.
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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 posit
I don't understand (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I don't understand (Score:4, Insightful)
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Copyrights to what? They don't produce music or movies. How can they hold a copyright if they don't produce anything?
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In the U.S. at least, a lot of cable companies are owned by content producers. Time warner for instance.
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!
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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:I don't understand (Score:4, Interesting)
Which whould you buy?
Unlimited internet £19.99*
50gb/month internet £19.99
* Subject to FUP, and we won't tell you it's 50gb/mo anywhere.
90% of people will go for the first. It's all about perception.
IMO it should be illegal to use the term unlimited when it clearly isn't, but that's the way the law stands at the moment.
Worse, what's started happening is people are complaining about the FUPs, so they're being rewritten with no cap just a vague paragraph about protecting other users. Competition is forcing the prices down to the point that it's hard to make a profit on normal usage let alone heavy usage, so you've got unlimited services with no written cap, massively oversubscribed and underpriced.
In that situation kicking off the high volume users is all they have left.. they've backed themselves into a corner.
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That might be, but half of those 10% are the ones recommending the company to the other 90.
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One big reason in some cases is the implied threat that if they dont start doing the policing themselves voluntarily, the government will step in and pass laws forcing them to do so (which will be much worse for the ISP than doing it voluntarily)
Also, if some ISPs are doing it (e.g. those that also provide subscription TV services or otherwise license big media company content and hence have a vested interest in doing such policing) and others are not, those that do not will be seen as "bad" for allowing "i
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.
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Dialup is guaranteed by the regulator through a Universal Service Obligation [ofcom.org.uk]. However pressure by BT, the dominant ISP in the UK, on the regulator prevented the universal service obligation including broadband.
Did they mean "Illegal" file sharing? (Score:4, Interesting)
At first I thought they would disconnect me for sharing ubuntu-9.04-desktop-i386.iso . Then when the summary mentioned copyright owners, I wasn't so sure. Then the summary mentioned "admitting guilt", what guilt?
Silly Karoo (Score:5, Funny)
Is this legal? (Score:2, Interesting)
Can anybody in the UK shed some light on whether this practise is even legal? How can an ISP act as a judge, jury and executioner especially given that they have spotty evidence at best?
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Because they're not throwing you in jail -- all they're doing is cutting off your service, which I'm pretty sure they're allowed to do even in the UK.
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AFAIK, it's NOT illegal to refuse to do business with someone, as long as it's not based upon race or gender or religious affiliation. I imagine the UK has similiar laws -- they might have additional laws on sexual orientation; don't have those in the US.
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According to Australian contract law, a provider can refuse to sell a service but they must provide a reason if the potential customer requests it. This reason however may be "you did not meet $PROVIDER criteria", they are required to give these reasons b
Bad summary (Score:5, Informative)
From the Summary:
"The article states that some subscribers have had their access cut off for more than two years." WRONG.
From the Article:
"The terms and conditions Karoo enforce are not new - the BBC has spoken to customers whose accounts were suspended over two years ago." In actuality, this only means that the enforcement of this policy has been in use for over two years, not that actual customers have been without internet access for that time duration.
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Except that this section of TFA invalidates your claim of bad summary: "Some customers have had their accounts suspended for more than two years." That was in the second 'paragraph'.
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Number of ISP's in their area (Hull) is one, Karoo, they have a monopoly in the Hull area, so your alternative ISP is ..... dialup with long distance rates applying
Guilty until proven... (Score:4, Insightful)
Or... (Score:4, Funny)
How about going to their office en masse and burning it down?
Horrible (Score:2)
No news here (Score:2, Interesting)
Worst ISP in the UK... (Score:3, Informative)
according to this independent ratings site [dslzoneuk.net].
Is it a legal admission of guilt? (Score:2, Interesting)
No Safe Harbour in UK (Score:2)
Something that seems to have been missed in all this fury, it that British ISP are vulnerable to the threats of large copyright owners because there is no safe harbour provision as provided for by the DMCA. Large ISP's like BT or Virgin have the financial resources to fight, medium sized ISPs like Karoo or small scale ISPs cannot afford to spend millions defending themselves in the high court.
Re:No Safe Harbour in UK (Score:4, Informative)
It's not quite as simple as that.
We don't have a DMCA and as far as I am aware, the ISP cannot be sued by the content provider for allowing copyright infringement.
So, why does the ISP police its users like this? Simple. The content industry went to the government and said "waah waah piracy is costing us billions every week!" and the government came back with an ultimatum to ISPs: "do something about it or we'll pass a law forcing you to".
Now we have a situation where instead of this policing following a law (which at least generally has the good grace to deal with such things as providing a due process and an appeals procedure), it's based on your contract with your ISP which they can rewrite on a whim.
I think I'd have preferred the law.
It is evident, yes. (Score:4, Informative)
"It is evident that we have been exceeding the expectation of copyright owners..."
Sit!
Fetch!
Good boy!
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Devil's advocate (Score:2)
There is no other ISP.
Yes there are. One can switch to dial-up or move house.
</devils-advocate>
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Nice reading comprehension.
> Karoo is the only ISP in the area.
How do they switch when there is only one choice.
From the Fine Summary... (Score:2)
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.
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You must have missed the "Karoo is the only ISP in the area" part.
That's the part that really stinks. I'd say there's a nice opportunity for a competing ISP here.
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It is because since 1902, Kingston-upon-Hull has had its own local monopoly. It's one of those weird local wrinkles like Berwick-on-Tweed still being at war with Germany. Hull's telecoms firm has traditionally been surprisingly good but evidently they are now scared of being sued out of existence.
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-1, overrated.
But if I owned a ISP in a neighboring community I know where my next expansion would be.
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The UK isn't like the U.S..... The UK is very big, so local monopolies are very common.
Yeah I know. The U.S. is so small. ;-)
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Check your English history! (Score:2)
The practice of creating polyopolies (local monopolies) started in the UK about the time people figured out how to build power looms.
There should be a similarly rich history of how the English dealt with the problem.
--dave (he who knows not history is doomed to repeat it) c-b
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AFAIK it's pretty much a Hull only thing, back when the various phone systems in the UK vere taken over by the General Post Office (who's phone division became BT), Hull's system was the only one to stay seperate, originally run by the local council, and now by Kingston Communications (who own Karoo). I don't think any other area in the UK has the same situation, and with BT exchanges you usually have a fair number of broadband ISP choices.
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All other parts of the UK are served by BT
I hope BitTorrent becomes an ISP in my area too!
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The UK was so big in 1910, that the sun never set in the empire. In the last years, the UK politics seem so dim that many people ask themselves if the sun now even glimpses on the remaining isles.
I for one mark all these stories with a "crazykingdom" tag. Not because of the Brits, but because of their politics and their leaders. They hit rock bottom a decade ago but kept on digging. Really, a megalomaniac ISP disconnecting suspected filesharers at the first hint of trouble, is among the least of Britains pr
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In the U.S., you typically have both the cable company and the phone company vying for Internet business.
You'd have to go pretty far out to find an area that only had dial-up, much less only one dial-up ISP in the area.
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.
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Typically, maybe, but this situation isn't typical either. In my area of the US, there is a town of 20,000 with Cable and no DSL. In another nearby town of 671 people, where great DSL is available. The bigger town has a national phone company as its carrier.
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Um no I can point you at many MANY Suburban and Urban areas that have only 1 high speed internet provider.
Some places the telco is the only choice, others the telco ignored their 60 year old infrastructure and only choice is the single cable company.
High speed internet service is a Huge monopoly in many areas.
Re:A modest proposal (Score:4, Informative)
Or you could try to make a comment that is interesting, insightful, and/or informative like everyone else who wants to maintain their karma. It isn't really that hard, and that goes for everyone looking to get the karma bonus. The biggest thing is to be patient and wait until you have something interesting to contribute, rather than feeling like you need to comment at every opportunity.
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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 pr
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Interesting? Insightful? Informative?
From BadAnalogyGuy? His sole purpose is to give us witty analogies, which, true to his name, are terrible – although it sometimes requires a bit of inspection to find what is so glaringly wrong (thus their brilliance: what should be glaringly obvious is not always so obvious at first). They're puzzles... brain teasers... just like his post here. His insight lies not in his straightforward posts, but in the bad analogies themselves!
Asking for interesting, insightful
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.
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Disclaimer: I currently have no mod points and as you can see my karma is pretty good, so yeah, burn it down...
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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.
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A 'fair' trial isn't a basic human right, it isn't necessary for life
Due process has been considered a basic human right for at least 800 years [wikipedia.org] now. The US constitution (I know, not where the article takes place) also enumerates it as such.
I don't know about you, but I'd consider not being arbitrarily locked up in a prison a right. It seems very basic to me.
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Public utility (Score:2)
Since when does the 'fair trial' clause extend to the private sector? I can form an opinion of you without ever granting you a 'fair trial'.
Since certain services provided by the private sector became regulated as public utilities.
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As much as some people wish it so, "a fair trial" or is not applicable to "ending a business relationship". You might try for "tortious interference of contract" by the MAFIAA which is part of common law and should apply in the UK, but that's about it. The circumstances where you can demand anyone continue to offer you service are slim indeed.
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Government granted monopoly? (Score:3, Interesting)
Generally, I agree with you. Government should not unduly interfere with business relationships. Businesses should be, mostly, free to decide who they do business with.
But, when you talk about utilities that have government granted monopolies on running cable through rights-of-way to all the buildings in a geographic area, and no one else is permitted to compete by running their own cables, then its a different story. Such a business should be subject to government regulation, including reasonable regulatio
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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?
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For the millionth time, file sharing is not stealing. Shouting the same lie from your noise hole over and over again will never make it true.
Content creators are not owed a living. The quality of the vast majority of content is low, and the price is too high. However, content creators have got it into their heads they deserve massive remuneration for very little, low quality, work. They are trying to have the government use force to squeeze money out of consumers, in a manner little different from racketeer
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If the quality of the content was so low, there would be no consumers of said content to squeeze money from.
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Is the ISP legally obliged to ensure its users don't do illegal things? If so, I'd have expected more ISPs to run similar operations.
Re:I am an ISP and I support this (Score:5, Informative)
"IP2P is used exclusively to STEAL"
Wrong. True, a lot of people use it to steal. That's unfortunate. But there *are* legitimate uses of P2P technologies. I've used BitTorrent to download perfectly legal ISO's of Linux distros (Ubuntu provides links to the torrent right on the Ubuntu website, though you do have to hunt a little bit to find them). Same with OpenOffice.org. IIRC, Fedora also provides a torrent of the Fedora ISOs.
There was an HD 'tv' show, a couple years ago, called MariposaHD. The producers of the show distribute it exclusively by BitTorrent (it's still available if you care to check it out - it's mostly eye candy - some guys going to different South/Central American countries and taking HD footage of scenery and chicks - lots of chicks lol). The reason I mention it, is that I think there is real potential, in the future, for using P2P technologies to legally distribute HD content. I'd like to see more online video services perhaps adopt more P2P technologies - there's no reason a for-profit company couldn't potentially use P2P to increase their market reach and profitability.
Blizzard uses BitTorrent to push out updates for World of Warcraft.
There is a LOT of potential for P2P data distribution to be used both legally and productively. Unfortunately, so many people have the mindset you do, that they fail to realize the potential of P2P. It can dramatically reduce an online publishers costs in terms of how much bandwidth they have to buy in order to provide content to huge numbers of customers. It scales well with demand (the more people downloading in a P2P network, particularly with BitTorrent, but other protocols as well, the more other peers there are to download from).
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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.
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 argu
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That depends, did you actually download anything NBC would consider illegal downloading, or were you just getting the latest WoW update?