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Thanks for comments about the t-shirts Matt and Cory – we’re looking into this now!
WHERE CAN I GET A CHOOSE FILE SHIRT!? I WANT ONE SO HARD!
Where can I get one of those “Choose File” shirts?
You need a forum!
They complain about how ‘file sharing is removing profits’. FACE IT F**KTARDS, NO ONE WHO DOWNLOADED IT WAS GOING TO BUY IT ANYWAY! YOU PROUCE S**T THAT PEOPLE DONT THINK IS WORTH PAYING FOR.
Secondly, I just watched Panorama, the one about copyright, and Tinchy Strider, you can go die. You are totally untalented and deserve to be shot. You ripped off ‘Olive – You’re Not Alone’. Which was good until you put your hands on it.
Finally, the 1990’s had a music industry. Home taping killed f**k all, just like P2P kills f**k all.
I caught this on iPlayer http://www.bbc.co.uk…Coming_for_You/
This is a very thorny subject and most people seem to be disinterested in it and the consequences it brings to their door.
The age of innocence is over, being innocent or thinking you are is no protection if your internet connection gets hacked or someone who uses it commits a crime. You pay the bill and are responsible for what happens via your internet connection.
Don’t know anything about WiFi security; do you believe that “plug and play” makes you safe?
Think again.
I like Feargal Sharkey, he’s a very nice bloke. But his asking for time for the music moguls to get their business model right at the expense of innocent people having their internet connection messed about with doesn’t wash.
The music industry understood what customers wanted ten years ago when it brought down Napster, but has failed to learn from that experience.
I have to say that the musicians came over very well on the Panorama programme, but music industry and government representation clearly indicated a desire not only to police the internet, but to bring it under government and corporate control.
Make sure to turn off your WiFi router before you go to bed.
[...] been listening to. They would just listen to less music. As pretty much everyone who’s left a comment on http://www.dontdisconnect.us has said, actually what’s required is a re-evalulation of the [...]
The proposed bill indicates a ludite approach using a sledge hammer to inovation, old fashioned fasicm and authority wielding jobsworths to extract the maximum government revenue from the talent of others.
The shadow government NWOists have to kill the freedom of the internet to prevent the truth being told. They have to control the internet as they do the media. And make no mistake THEY WILL.
Its another step in the constant removal of civil liberties.The government do not care for you, never have never will. People wake up, unite, be the love, not the cattle
The whole notion of copyright is insane, at best. Here’s a wonderful point in question. I purchased a computer game in 1985, and it has since stopped working. I have contacted the distributor who can’t replace it, and apologises. Yet they’ve not released the game from copyright infringement – so what can I do to get a replacement? The internet offers solutions, none of which are legal by this system of insanity. If such a draconian system of cutting people off were ever going to be implemented, then an equally draconian system should be in place to allow us to get full refunds for our faulty products from the manufacturers etc. I’ve purchased countless DVD’s to replace VHS cassettes – knowing that I already purchased the right to own a copy for personal use. How do I go about getting my money back for the licence I don’t need? Like I said, its great that the government wants to help protect copyright holders, but to do it properly, where nothing can be copied from the internet, or over the internet would be impossible. IT guys will tell you that you can’t sniff an encrypted file stream and know its a film – it’s just data. So no matter what they do, it won’t stop the problem – people will just get smart. Not that I advocate that, but make a point. Let me paint one last picture for you – I man I once worked for once turned to Me and said – if over night, you changed the law so anyone caught speeding would have no trial, no jury, just get hanged by their necks from the closest tree – there would be no more speeding. But there would also be no more drivers. Hence, no more users of the internet, and users downloading at work will disconnect their companies! How’s the Government going to tackle that one? Think the economy is bad now? I’d expect everyone to get cut off, no doubt including certain offices within the government too – no one is squeaky clean. This isn’t a problem politicians can solve, they just don’t have a clue about IT.
This is maddness… like all prohibition it will lead to underground outcomes! Can you envisage scenarios where people meet up in dark alleys to exchange memory sticks.. and the ensuing police enforcment… searched on entry to public areas and all data wiped! Memory bans! they are NUTS1
One thing is Mandelson cannot be trusted and if people remind themselves of who he really is and what criminal activities of dishonesty he was about in the ninteties and in 2001 and his resignations as a direct result of to shut it all up from the general public. Just look on Wikipedia to update yourselves, And GB chose him to come back into New Labour and it was Mandelson who formulated New Labour-to our detriment-so what does that make our GB unelected PM?
Of course, now that internet is in virtually every home and used daily either at work or at home, it’s time to start controlling it; free speech is the last thing they want.We have the technology to fight wars from space, send Hubble millions of miles, but we can’t control who downloads what? Don’t make me laugh! Its just another excuse to control our lives…..
People power may be growing, but it is no match for these tyrants working to an international agenda.The internet will be gagged and resemble pay-tv and very soon.
If we just stop buying music, films etc., it won’t take long for a truce to emerge. Lots of people complaining, but are you actually doing anything about it?! A lot of what is produced is a load of rubbish anyway, main stream dribble polluted by politics of one sort or another.
As for the proposed bill, well…. you can guarantee one thing…it’s not in the best interest of the people.
People power is gathering pace now. There is a lot of information coming out and the government doesn’t like it. Mandy is there to protect them – and himself.
iTunes is a file-sharing site. I dare say it is one of the biggest file-sharers around.
So if I complain it is infringing my copyright, under this Bill its connectivity provider would be obliged to warn it.
And if enough people complain that iTunes is infringing their copyright, its internet connectivity provider would have to cut it off.
Same for Virgin, Sony, and all the other online music providers.
This Bill would seem to give musicians who feel they have not been properly paid by record companies get the online music suppliers shut down.
There is a large corporate engine powering this movement and I don’t see much stopping them unfortunately. A very greedy bunch indeed. I could go on about how over priced media is these days or how hard it is to get digital media legaly in a reasonable unrestricted format or how a large amount of music these days is created for the sole purpose of making a small group extremely rich but I would like to point out a group who has set out to bring fear uncertainty and doubt or FUD to governments all around the globe. A group called the International Interlectual Property Alliance has set out to banish any form of sharing or distribution of materials across the planet calling Open Source a form of piracy. If thats not rediculous enough they are calling for the end of free and open resources deeming them evil and against the interests of the corporate movement. Have a read of this article => http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2010/feb/23/opensource-intellectual-property and then read some press releases on their site http://www.iipa.com
Simon Cowell’s stance is no surprise given he works for Sony. However, he forgets the role copyright-contravening YouTube videos uploaded by UK viewers played in Susan Boyle’s US rise to fame.
Great campaign and I like to see our own national hero, Stephen Fry, is involved. I really don’t understand where the record companies are coming from. They need to focus on their flock rather than the one that got away. Rather than spending millions of pounds challenging file-sharing sites and consumers, they must rethink how to extract value from their core competencies. When you consider what core competencies and assets record companies have, it is shocking how they haven’t benefited hugely from this trend. Record labels have a monopoly of the talent, the artists. They must focus on leveraging these “assets” in live music promotion rather than simply letting concert promoters reap the benefits of this industry shift while they pump money into a lost cause. Please see my full rant at http://bit.ly/cmbzDZ
Further to my comments on Twitter. Once Three Strikes fails, as it surely will, I’m convinced a Tax is inevitable.
As long as it was instead of the current £30 extra a month we’ll be paying as opposed to on top, I’d grudgingly accept it if it put an end to the threat of being sued or disconnected.
The only problem is, I fear this could be the thin end of the wedge. Photographers, Artists, Writers, even Knitting pattern makers, etc could all claim they’ve lost out due to illegal file sharing and the Tax would exponentially increase…
Music is was to expensive to start with, i’ve been new albums out for £15+. I’m a student and I can’t afford that; the music industry folk are rolling around in their money and saying “hey someones downloaded my album! I need that extra £10!”. If you download and sell it on I completely understadn but if it’s for personal use thern whats the point! Almost everyone is guilty of downloading a song they didn’t pay for! The people who don’t shouldn’t be punish either, this is just a porrly thought through policy the goverment ETC. are going to try put in place and hope to god that it works.
Well, as it stands, the proposed bill already requires all Broadband users to pay £25 extra a year and 50p extra a month. I have no doubt these fees will increase once the measures to tackle filesharing inevitably prove to be ineffective.
If we have to pay another tax on top of that to be distributed among rights holders, I can’t see it going down well.
I’m not actually sure the music / movie industry is in bad shape anyway. Despite file sharing, Digital Music sales have increased dramatically. How can any industry where a single film (Avatar) makes $2 Billion profit in three months during terrible weather and a global recession possibly be suffering?
The old school wants the Internet to be glorified television.
LONG LIVE PIRATE BAY
as i said on twitter, theres no way this can be distributed fairly and evenly, how do we decide how much each label gets? how do we decide how to pay small artists no ones heard of? and if then, how can we stop someone recording 2 mins of guitar noise and claiming to be an artist to get some of the fund. Can we even trust labels to divy up the money for artists, considering the % they take and the whole compilation scandal, and most court cases artists recieve nothing. A tax will just be fed to the big 4 labels, and theyll still push anti piracy and gain money from cd sales.
I fully agree that it is the right of a person to have a trial in court before any punishment is handed out. I think the government are trying to impose a police society onto us the British people through little legislations. If wwe do not stand and fight on the little things we will have no freedoms left at all before long. Even if the government manage to force this legislation through, I for one would be willing to to test it against the Human Rights convention to see if it has any legal standing. WE ARE INNOCENT UNTIL PROVEN GUILTY BEYOND REASONABLE DOUBT! Any court has to aquit you if there is a reasonable doubt that you are not the person responsible for the crime and with computer file charing it is almost impossible to prove guilt unless you have the files on the hard drives to show.
I don’t think that a TAX should be used as a fee to pay copy-right holders to share for illegal downloading. The are many people that would not like this as they may not want to use there internet in this way. One of the biggest problems I have found is titles (music/films/TV shows, etc) that are not available to buy via CD/DVD/download. So maybe there is a need for a system where a licence for these titles downloaded could be bought, but then saying that also releasing them via a download service like i-tunes can’t be that big of a problem for copyright holders.
I don’t think this is fair at all. Levies are already paid on the sales of blank audio CDs and cassette tapes etc, even though there are plenty of non-piracy uses for these things. Broadband is the same, why should everyone pay for something that not everyone wants?
If we are going to pay for the policing of this legislationg through a tax on our connections then why dont we just do away with it and pay a nominal fee each month which can be pooled and spread between right holders. Ok this is a little simplistic but in theory it is shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted file-sharing is not going to go away so why not pay for it through your connection.
I think what this really boild down to is the fact that the Entertainment Industry doesn’t like the idea of being forced in to changing the business model that has served them so well for so long. Illegal file sharing is a problem because no one is giving the people what they want, which is fast and easy acces to music and video. You only need to look at how popular free ad-supported services such as Spotify are.
It is a fact today that the young are not willing to pay for recorded music, but they are willing to pay vast amounts of money for live music, the industry needs to work this out and support it. They should not be waisting their time trying to have bills such as these pushed through.
I find this difficult to fully support. Fair enough, your broadband could get jacked, but I suspect the vast majority of us are downloading illegal music and video we don’t own. For which we should probably be punished for?
The file share fiasco starts with VCRs and ends in a car crash but fundamentally this is a distraction from the real issue, which is the need for total political reform. We have a one party state in the Establishment that is incompetent, unrepresentative, unaccountable and incapable of reform. We need greater social democracy.
The digital economy bill should REALLY be called the “Entertainment Industry Revenue Protection Bill”
@Peter
I know what you are saying about law firms dropping cases because the proof is hard to establish, but the point of this new ruling and law that the government are trying to push through is that they no longer need any proof that you are illegally file-sharing, and that is what is so wrong with it. Who needs law, when you taxation?
People keep going on about wireless security, wireless this, thats how the pirates do that etc etc. yes people are right wireless security is a problem but so is a hardline connection. Ask any IT expert, given the enough time a hacker can brake into any system? my view yes to hackers something thats hard to brake is worth braking into just to say you have (unless your a blackhat then the force shall not be with you darksider…there the bad hackers if noone gets the Star Wars reference). At the end of the day your system may be torrenting right now and you might not even know it, your system could be helping to brake into fort knox and you wouldnt know it but it seems they would do you for it anyway.
If the pirates are determind (trust me we all know they are) they will always have a network and due to this messure innercent people suffer. there is no quick fix, no magical cure and taking away a fundermental right of innocent befor PROVERN guilty will change that.
In the online world copyright holders need to do one thing, free download. i dont mean everything they give out should be free no. my exsample is simple. given the option by “random TV company” would you go for:-
a. Free download of Show1, low quility, no 5.1 no HD and no bonus stuff (in other words its crappy but watchable crappy) can only be downloaded once.
b. show1 with all the trimmings cost say 2.99, can be downloaded as meny times as you like though say your account on the site but can only be watch on say generic player1 and can not be copyed onto any other media (brings up DRM i know i dont like it but i would accept it if it didnt kill your system just pervented you from copying what its ment to openly with no hidden installs and crap).
chances are you’d go for option a and if you like it go for option b. anyway thats my long rant over with, i know meny stoped reading befor the end. Meny might complain at my grammer and spelling (i blame my mother, dam defective dyslexia gene haha).
So befor i run off into my hole i leave this last thought, is one a pirate if one miss’s an episode of a TV show they watch so they go off and download that episode (but not keeping or copying it) to catch up?
I laughed hard recently.
ACS Law dropped a large proportion of thier cases as they couldnt prove them over the xmas holidays.
If they are dropping them like flies now what chance do we have in being confident that any information provided regarding potential disconnection will actually be of quality to stand up in a court of law…
…hopeless…
@Paul
With regard to blocking MAC addresses, in theory that is a good suggestion, in practise it is well known that they actually are not unique despite how they are meant to be manufactured.
I have had personal experience of this, when working in a minor support role at an internet hosting site, we discovered a customer’s server would not respond correctly to commands and was refusing to accept traffic from the public. Upon investigation, we discovered that the two network cards installed had matching MAC addresses, which was a surprise to me, but the technician who figured it out informed me that it was a lot more common than you would think.
So they want to bring back the Star Chamber, eh? Declared guilty and punished without trial? This is just simply an utterly appalling proposal – but par for the course for this government who have no concept of their duty to uphold our Constitution.
Thanks Ben – we might have to sort one of those blog badges out!
This campaign might have some good points, but blocking a single IP isn’t practical. The world’s already running out of assignable IPs and most home broadband connections get a new random IP every time they sign up – would you like to be randomly assigned a blocked one?
This would only work if people were assigned fixed IP addresses, and then only if that was going to be theirs for life (which they’re not).
The sentiment has the right idea, but it would help if someone who knew about Ip assignment had been consulted before any plan was put into place.
I’d go a step further and directly block the server’s MAC address, which is unique to each device.
Great site, if you made one of those 80×15 blog badges I’d happily stick one on my site!
@Matthew – to be honest considering the way this whole new 3 strikes rule came out,I dont think they really wanted intel (government is trying to fight a battle without any intel. ). They did try it with intel and recommendation was the opposite – the digital britain recommended no such thing, instead it took mandelson’s trip to whoever-it-was’ villa and came back with a new tune. Intel and actually working is something not on the agenda of Mandelson at all. In my opinion he is just doing what he was told so that he has a job reserved if he is to lose his place in the office.
The record companies want it because it is so damn hard to provide solid evidence that a win in the court is not guaranteed. (This coincidently is the exact reason why it wont work either).
I can’t remember who said it but this quote has never failed – “The only thing that does not change is the resistance to change”. It is a new world we live in – those who want to stick to the old ways will die out those who innovate will prosper.
RS
irony of ironies
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/12/artists-lawsuit-major-record-labels-are-the-real-pirates.ars?
nice lol
Andrew,
I would like to extend my thanks to you for sticking up for our tradional values or privacy and innocent until proven guilty.
I heartedly applaud your efforts and you can consider yourself one subsciber better off for your backbone and willingness to stand up for what your customers believe in
Kudos and Thanks
Peter
Thanks for your comment Josh. Filesharing of copyrighted content can be a criminal offence under certain circumstances. Given we have to potentially cover both types and also we want to make the subject understandable and accessible to non-lawyers I think it is better to use the word ‘illegal’ which most people understand – I don’t think it is misleading. Do you?
I just see more and more steps backwards by businesses and now governments, can they not see they have become the old men that held their generation back when they where younger?
As the internet becomes more understood and better developed its changing the way in which everything works. I can see a future where to be without internet is the same as being without ANY form of transport.
What the government proposes here is basically if your naughty with your internet it gets taken away. Just like if your naughty in your car your rights to use a car get taken away, the thing is there is a points system in place on the car license, not to mention viable alternatives in which to transport yourself from a to b, what the government is going to do with internet is completely cut of a whole household for one persons naughty antics.
Then you have the argument that all file sharing is illegal?
I’m sorry to say that is not the case, many games online for example use torrents and file sharing tools when releasing updates to their content, file sharing can be used to help distribution of freely published content, shareware and trials, its a delivery system and a dam good one at that, however its only being eyed up for its negative aspects the positives to file sharing outweighs the negative.
I think what it really boils down to here is that the government is trying to fight a battle without any intel. The people in charge of these schemes and ideas are people with a complete lack of knowledge or understanding of what the internet is and how the internet is used.
The internet is free domain, it should remain free. Attempts to limit the internet, harness it for financial gain, destroy certain communities will be met with hostile resistance and unfortunately for the government most of the cyber lords are on the other side.
The government needs to take a step back and not get so involved in corporate issues. The internet piracy movement is mixed response between extortion and easy of use. Instead of resisting change these entertainment companies need to start listening to the demands of their consumers and supply accordingly, isn’t that true business supplying to meet demand? Knowing the cd and packaging costs pennies marking a new dvd release up for £35 when distribution costs are known to be not even 1% of the price is just insulting. £5ish to go and see it in a cinema but your sitting often in a cramped space not to mention you have to sit through 20 minutes of advertisement. Adverts enable itv to stream their shows free of charge over the internet. BBC’s Iplayer has no ads. If these companies that produce movies and digital content where to embrace the internet instead of constantly fighting against it they could be making alot of money alot easier. An example would be “steam” by valve, now one of the only ways I personally gain by gaming content. I could buy from the store, but cd’s get scrached and lost and the travel means I have to plan a trip into town just for one game. I could mail order it however that takes time, costs delivery in most cases and I want to play sometime this week. I could purchase a digital copy but if my HD gets wiped I loose all my content and CD-Keys so I loose all my money. Purchase by steam however and I login to a user interface, it has a nice in-built store for all the latest games, I can see requirements, game style, reviews, and trailers. I can then click to purchase with a variety of methods such as paypal and then a download starts within the program all secure, the game requires steam running to be usable. The download speed is faster than 99.9% of most other services on the net and the best part, you can login anyway and download what you have paid for and view/play anywhere in the world on any machine. Your account is linked to what your able to download and install and if someone else uses the same account as you they get disconnected from steam, 1 person per account active at a time. Movies and other digital content need to learn from steam and provide services securely and to such a high standard that the alternative methods such as illegal downloads are the secondary choice in peoples minds, they could download for free but it will be 100x slower, less features, you have to convert file formats and so on OR you can use “Steam-movies” which is 100x faster, fully featured, easy to use and burn, assessable from anywhere basically evolved into the modern age apposed to its current attempt of trying to cling on to the stone age.
I agree with what the Don’t Disconnect Us capmpaign stands for, but I’d like to point out a mistake. Filesharing is not illegal, it’s unlawful. Filesharing is not a criminal offense, only civil. Please correct this mistake.
Why isn’t there a “Three Strikes” law in place for people who are real dangers to society.. Paedophiles sharing indecent images or terrorists discussing plans on where to strike next? Surely they’re far more important than a teenager sharing three Britney Spears tracks with his friend?
If I mislaid my wallet three times and irrationally suspected that a random man passing by stole it, could I have him imprisoned without trial? Of course not! But that’s what our Government are proposing. Why are the laws for intellectual theft so different from other types of theft?
Does the music industry seriously think that disconnecting their most avid consumers will actually increase their profits? In the long run, it will just put even more people off from buying their product.
After all, if i’m disconnected for downloading three Kylie Minogue songs, I’m hardly likely to go to HMV the next day and buy her back catalogue, or indeed, any album ever again…