BT & Talk Talk lose Appeal

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Thank you for your informed and well thought out opinion on the matter, I can tell it took a lot of hard work and effort to put together such a concise and yet persuasive argument on the subject at hand. :rolleyes:


Actually, I reckon this calls for a ban.
 
Stupid decision. There is not a single tool that can even remotely get accurate results. Basically it's because p2p systems usually chuck in thousands of random innocent IP addresseses. A lot of innocent people are going to get kicked off. All the proof thdy have is a IP address, nothing else.
 
They took the wrong argument all together. Because it was incompatible with eu law. I would have expected more from talk talk but i would expect BT to realy only care about its own liability, not internet freedom or anything like that.

But this copyright law was written by the media industry and they paid the legislature to pass it, no doubt. Corrupt as money can buy.
 
OP needs banned for not having an opinion.

My own opinion - I'm for it, I don't download dodgy stuff but unfortuantely I know any savings made (after the costs of legal action / warning letters etc) will never come to me as the consumer.
 
Apologies, was posting at work and didn't have the time to type an opinion. I can now.
 
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BT and TalkTalk lose file-sharing appeal

BT and TalkTalk have lost an appeal over controversial measures to tackle copyright infringement online.

The internet service providers (ISPs) had argued the UK's Digital Economy Act was incompatiable with EU law.

The Act will mean ISPs will have to send warning letters to alleged illegal file downloaders, as well as potentially cutting users off.

The creative industry argues that piracy costs £400m a year in lost revenue.

The firms' lawyers said the stricter measures could result in an invasion of privacy and run up disproportionate costs for both ISPs and consumers.
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BBC and Talktalk have lost an appeal, which means they must warn users when they are caught downloading illegal material.

Personally I think the biggest issue is around non-static IPs and also around the fact that people who are stupid enough to have open networks will probably get caught for this, when they haven't done anything wrong. I'm also pretty sure, that claiming you haven't downloaded illegal material when they accuse you of doing so will be pretty sure to disprove...

kd
 
Technically it is difficult for them to prove that you were using a specific ip and then it is difficult to prove that you were using that ip to download infringing material. Any evidence they submit you could just say they created it to make money. All they could produce is log files or screenshots, which could easily be faked.

This is just more scare tactics to force ISPs to start blocking sites and start monitoring users activity. When they send letters out of infringing material they won't have to prove you are guilty, they just send three letters then cut you off. This is what they want, because they know they will struggle to prove anything.
 
groen said:
Technically it is difficult for them to prove that you were using a specific ip and then it is difficult to prove that you were using that ip to download infringing material. Any evidence they submit you could just say they created it to make money. All they could produce is log files or screenshots, which could easily be faked.

This is just more scare tactics to force ISPs to start blocking sites and start monitoring users activity. When they send letters out of infringing material they won't have to prove you are guilty, they just send three letters then cut you off. This is what they want, because they know they will struggle to prove anything.
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Its not difficult at all I used to work for a major ISP and they have a record of exactly who has what IP address at any time over the last 12/18 months. This is matched to the MAC address of your modem so little room for error. I think a lot of people would be suprised how much visibility ISP's have of the traffic over the network even down to a per customer level.

The proof that you were using it will probably be the difficult part however they will probably use the same system as speeding tickets "its your car either you were driving or you tell us who was".

All laws like this will do is motivate people to come up with even more innovative ways to circumevnt whatever methods they decide to use to prevent downloading of copyrighted material, VPN anyone? ;)
 
As above anticonscience mate, Torrents are not the Be all and end all of P2P technology. It's been mentioned games such as wow use background P2P features thru the client to update/patch.
Due to more laws/legislation and stuff like this being passed it could get to the point where the P2P traffic is blocked indefinatley, regardless of it's use.

BT Have already started bloacking sites, I;'m unsure on other providers. They also had the whole big hoohah about Phorm.
If theyve already tried that then surely they have the technology for DPI, therefore have the ability so see whats being downloaded, a bit of manipulation of this and I'm sure they could build something that acts along the lnes or the throttling system they have now but a way to flag what you would call legitimate use.
Then again, Torrents and P2P technology does of course have legit uses, who makes the call as to whats legit or not?

As also mentioned above, most ISPs dont provide static IPs but they do provide sticky ones, there have been cases int he past where people have been accused of downloading x files due to IP addresses,
which were proved incorrect, so obviously thats not a sure fire way of doign thigns either.

As for getting caught doing anything, yes your network is your responsibility, but say for ease you changed your wireless key to 1234567890,
and someone accessed your network and was using it for OMG PIRACY!
There is no way to prove/disprove this, therefore you'd probably end up with a slap on the wrist or be forced onto some educational course/knowledge buildign waste of time.

ISP's won't like the whole DEA as it does have the possibility of losing them business, I mean why go with a provider that gives you 40Meg BB when they throttle P2P to 10k
when you can go with a competitor who will ive you 20Meg BB and allow P2P thru at full speed? I know which I would take tbh.

It's the first step and could be utilised incorrectly, it's a foot int he door ready to push more crap thru as "law" or "legislation" just because the big
media companies dunno wtf to do witht their sales/services and they don't seem to understand that us, the punters don't just want Yank remakes of foreign films that were released a year ago.

It'll end badly if tey go trying to push more and more ridiculous "laws"/"legilation" as all that will happen is you have people like Anon ready to hit back for the smallest
"injustice" (well for the yanks anyway) and it will just drive piracy and things deeper into the net. They'll have spent millions and what will they end up with?
Their main "enemy" that they deem to be Piracy=P2P wll be harder to locate/pinpoint and do anything about.

They need to stop being as close minded as they are now where "Piracy=P2P" because that model simply does not work,
yes that are people that use it for illegitimate means, as with anything tbh

I think it's a shame that theyre falling back onto bullyboy tactics but tbh expect nothing more,
the coming years will be interesting to see just how much they end up censoring the net or even offering us tiered services like sky do with TV...

So sir what would you like the net for?
Games? Thats £25
Oh you want to read news as well? Thats an addition £7
aah And Email? thats an extra £5
What you want acces to 3rd party websites? Thats an extra£10 sir.
 
Djwayne said:
Its not difficult at all I used to work for a major ISP and they have a record of exactly who has what IP address at any time over the last 12/18 months. This is matched to the MAC address of your modem so little room for error. I think a lot of people would be suprised how much visibility ISP's have of the traffic over the network even down to a per customer level.

The proof that you were using it will probably be the difficult part however they will probably use the same system as speeding tickets "its your car either you were driving or you tell us who was".

All laws like this will do is motivate people to come up with even more innovative ways to circumevnt whatever methods they decide to use to prevent downloading of copyrighted material, VPN anyone? ;)
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Ok so they keep a record of dynamic ips given to customers, news to me. But ok if they do that, that does not prove anything. That just proves you used that ip. if you ignore the argument that someone else could be using the ip. They would not be able to prove that you were accessing a specific site. All they could produce is log files if that. Even if they saw a lot of bandwidth of one customer and then specifically monitored that person more, all they could produce is packet logs, like wireshark packet dumps. This would not be proof that you were downloading illegal material. It would just show the use of specific services. They would have to be on the same illegal torrent and then pull off logs based on that, but this is where they could just fake it.

All they would see in the packet dumps is http headers etc and connection to specific ips which will just be peer addresses. Unless they have signatures of all the illegal content to compare against, they won't know what you are downloading. Plus most people force encryption on their torrent clients so they won't even get anything in packet dump. Just encrypted packets.

Even if they did have a signature based comparison and could decrypt the packets they would still be left with the having to prove that you, one completed the download and two that the content was infringing a copyright.

So in some ways the ISPs can not realy do much to prevent illegal downloading of copyright material. Accessing a website that hosts illegal material is not illegal, is only when you have the illegal material on your pc that you are infringing copyright. This technically difficult to prove from the isp perspective. This is why the media industry has invented software that sits on torrents and sends fake data and monitors all the ips and creates logs etc. But they know that these logs are not permissible in court because like i have already said, being on a torrent does not prove that you completed it.

They could make lists of seeders of illegal material but then they would have to prove than the material was actually infringing, which they will struggle to do. They could use md5 finger prints. But then this is not something that ISPs could do, this is something that copyright holders would have to undertake.
 
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I don't think the issue is whether they can monitor / prove who is downloading illegally its a case that the ISP's dont want to do it as there is no benefit for them in doing so.

The media companies are attempting to mould the law around their outdated and overpirced business model and in turn attemtping to restrict the freedom of people on the internet. In amongst that I am sure you will find the burden of proof required will swing in favour of the media companies so the arguments that certain things are not admissable in court or there is no way to prove X will become less relevant.

I personally think they are totally barking up the wrong tree with this supply a quality service with a suitable amount of choice at the right price and people will use it i.e Itunes (although not a fan). The media companies have the collective power to create an awesome online service they just choose not to do so to protect their revenues and in the process alienate their customers with these restrictive practices.
 
Djwayne said:
The media companies are attempting to mould the law around their outdated and overpirced business model and in turn attemtping to restrict the freedom of people on the internet. In amongst that I am sure you will find the burden of proof required will swing in favour of the media companies so the arguments that certain things are not admissable in court or there is no way to prove X will become less relevant.
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Yes that was my point, although I didn't make it very well. All they are trying to do with the legislation is removing the requirement to prove that someone is infringing. All they will need is for someone to download a torrent file and not even download or seed it and they will have enough evidence by their standards to seize your property and ban you from the internet. Well that is the direction that they are trying to go. Because as i described they don't realy have any means to prove that people are infringing. Which is why copyright infringement is so common on the internet.

It would be like the traffic police banning and fining someone from driving because they drive a car that is capable of breaking the speed limit and they said to a friend that they want to drive fast.
 
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