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Every Click You Make, Every File You Take, We'll Be Watching You

Parents to be punished for children’s net piracy - Times Online

Parents whose children download music and films illegally will be blacklisted and have their internet access curbed under government reforms to fight online piracy.

Households that ignore warnings will be subjected to online surveillance and their internet speeds will be reduced, making it very difficult for them to download large files.

The measures, the first of their kind in the world, will be announced today by Baroness Vadera, who brokered the deal between internet service providers and Ofcom, the telecoms body.

Internet users could find themselves the subject of “traffic management”, meaning a sudden curtailment of their internet speeds, and “traffic filtering”, a careful monitoring of the media files downloaded to an account to check whether they have paid for them.

Britain’s six biggest service providers - BT, Virgin Media, Orange, Tiscali, BSkyB and Carphone Warehouse - have signed up to the scheme. In return, the Government has abandoned a controversial proposal to disconnect broadband services for users who had been caught out three times.

The joys of monitoring our internet access - it's for the musicians now, but how soon before it is for inappropriate websites that promote terror, hate, racism, xenophobia, not saying very nice things about the French and disrespectful thoughts on our Glorious Leader.

Time for a refresher...Hiding Your IP Address, Anonymous Internet Surfing HOWTO

Blog Post Dated: July 24, 2008 6:27 AM |

Comments

Oh, and brace yourself for an extension to the TV licence, now that the iPlayer is such a success.

Posted by: nbc | July 24, 2008 10:23 AM

I'm sure the BBC will be thrilled to learn that anyone who uses a file-sharing network (and there is, whether the entertainment industry believes it or no, plenty of non-copyright stuff) will never be able to successfully use their video services.

"More than 700,000 viewers download BBC programmes every day through the iPlayer service, which was launched at the beginning of this year. The corporation is concerned that the service could undermine support for the licence fee."


How about other "legal" downloads? iTunes? Perhaps add to "terms of service" that the buyer must not also use any P2P service?

"and note the IP addresses of those who use these sites. These identify a unique internet connection, but not the subscriber’s name and address.
The BPI passes on the IP addresses to the relevant internet provider, which in turn links that information to the household and sends the warning letter."


Sure, I can believe that, especially since we have all been told (and no-one over the age of five who uses a computer has believed) that an IP address cannot be traced when those schemes to attach tracking hardware to all ISPs is proposed - but hey, that is commercial interests, not government, and would never be used for anything else, right? Right...

"All the cases in the UK have been settled before they have come to court, with people paying an average of £2,000 to reach agreement."

Because that is substantially cheaper than going to court, even with a proveable (or "show me the evidence") case. This was true in the US also until recently when a couple of easily-proven "I dashed well did not, and indeed could not, have downloaded or uploaded or 'shared' these files" cases were funded, fought, won, and indeed resulted in lectures from the bench to "entertainment" lawyers.

_____
Yes, it is theft. But passing a "voluntary" regulation equivalent to allowing a purse-snatch victim to strip-search everyone encountered from that point on seems unwarranted (oops, did not mean the pun about no warrant being needed, did I?).

Posted by: teqjack | July 24, 2008 6:45 PM

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