UK 'pirates' face £20 appeal fee

I would be amazed if that goes through and if it does it doesn't get overturned at a later point.

To pay for access to justice goes against your fundamental rights in this country.
 
The users realy have no way to counter an accusation. Because the evidence is held at the ISP. What is stopping the ISP from creating fake evidence. Technically there realy is no way they could establish irrefutable evidence of copyright infringement. If they produce log files or screenshots they could easily be faked.

So it comes down to the system itself being designed in such a way that they can accuse people of copyright infringement and get a small gain from it. Thus creating a deterrent and a small revenue scheme at the same time. If anyone had the balls and time to take the accusations to court they would win because they realy have no way of proving an infringement. That is why they have the £20 fee, then all they need to do is make a fine about £60-80 and the majority of people will pay because. They don't have time to challenge it and if they say its £20 to challenge it and then if you lose you pay more. Most people will just pay the £60. Same way the blackmailing police do traffic fines and penalty notices. Extortion or blackmail or we can call it British Justice.

I can't wait too see how this will positively impact the British media industry. I can't wait to see all the new jobs these letters create. I am sure mr Vaizey made some back hand cash from the MAFIAA.
 
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This country is going to ****. I'v really had enough of it. As if ordinary people don't have enough hassle and hoops to jump though without having to deal with leeches from the music industry et al.

The government should tell them to focus on making their products more attractive, user friendly and at a reasonable price point so that people actually want to buy them and can afford them.

Our economy and spending power overall is being squeezed at the moment so it's no wonder that people are generally purchasing less non essential stuff like music/video games. That becomes especially true when the vast majority of this stuff is absolute rubbish.
 
It's getting better

The organisations that gather evidence of copyright infringement will have to submit their procedures to regulators for approval, and broadband providers must tell customers in warning letters how many times they have been observed allegedly infringing copyright.
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I wonder whether it will be acceptable for organisations such as the RIAA and the MPIA to host files on Torrents and catch anyone who attempts to download them?

[Alleged offenders] will have 20 days to appeal against accusations, to a panel appointed by Ofcom, at a cost of £20 and only on grounds specified in the Digital Economy Act, such as if someone else used their Wifi network despite "reasonable steps to prevent" unauthorised access.
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I imagine that the £20 is to reduce the costs for ISPs (somewhat akin to FoI requests).

As to "reasonable steps" to prevent unauthorised WiFi access, this would presumably mean that if you couldn't prove that at the time of the alleged offence, you were using a decent WEP or WPA key, had implemented a MAC Address filter and were not broadcasting your SSID, you would be in trouble? In practice, I suspect that the excuse that your WiFi has been accessed without your permission or knowledge will be worthless.


It seems that the legislators are getting nearer to a fair and workable approach to the growing problem of theft of music, software, TV shows, films, etc.
 
stockhausen said:
It seems that the legislators are getting nearer to a fair and workable approach to the growing problem of theft of music, software, TV shows, films, etc.
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If they made content better available in a more timely fashion at reasonable prices (not necessarily cheap prices but realistic), etc. half the problem would go away and they could deal more effectively with the people who are just freeloaders whilest increasing their revenues.

i.e. the other day I was looking at downloading a book for my phone (legally) its commonly available for ~50p in 2nd hand and about £1.50 new in hardcopy... cheapest digital version was £16.99!!! for a 20 year old book. (I just gave up in disgust haven't even bothered to pirate it).

For the record I spend over £100 on iTunes a month have subscriptions to netflix and spotify (premium), etc. and I can't even get my hands on half the content I want even if I was prepared to pay extortionate prices and theres a huge amount of content that just never gets released in the UK or you have to wait 6-24 months after its been released before you can get hold of it digitally legally.
 
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grimm said:
As if ordinary people don't have enough hassle and hoops to jump though without having to deal with leeches from the music industry et al.
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They wouldn't have to deal with the leeches if they didn't pirate the material in the first place though would they? I haven't been charged £20 for buying from Beatport.
 
groen said:
The users realy have no way to counter an accusation. Because the evidence is held at the ISP. What is stopping the ISP from creating fake evidence. ...
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I don't think that the ISPs hold the copyright or are you suggesting that one of the major UK ISPs will decide to get involved in fraudulent extortion :confused:

Yup, being groan, that will be it :rolleyes:


As to the thieving ****** who suggest that non-essential items are overpriced and they therefore have a right, perhaps even a duty to steal those non-essential items - no producer is going to buy that feeble excuse - they are going to use whatever methods they can to stop you stealing their products - get over it.
 
stockhausen said:
I don't think that the ISPs hold the copyright or are you suggesting that one of the major UK ISPs will decide to get involved in fraudulent extortion :confused:
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Technically Sky did when they allowed that dodgy 'law firm' to send out letters demanding upto £350 from people for downloading things. I worked for Sky at the time and the company had no proof but Sky were happy for them to do it.
 
I was not saying that ISP would create fake evidence, I was only saying from a legal argument perspective. The accused could argue that the evidence was fake. Then the ISP and the prosecutors would not be able to technically prove that they infringed. I thought that much was obvious from my post. Typical stockhausen misrepresents my argument and then insults me.
 
Nodes on torrents can add fake addresses to the pool, this is a known attack and has been done before by microsoft to try and reduce the speed of the torrents.
Innocent IP addresses are often added and that's why loads of people without even active broadband connections have been sent letters.
 
Rroff said:
i.e. the other day I was looking at downloading a book for my phone (legally) its commonly available for ~50p in 2nd hand and about £1.50 new in hardcopy... cheapest digital version was £16.99!!! for a 20 year old book. (I just gave up in disgust haven't even bothered to pirate it).
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In this particular instance... Is it wrong to buy the actual hard copy and then pirate the digital copy? (I assume the answer is yes, but surely there should be some way to deal with this).



What about if you pirate a game and then when you get a letter you go out and buy a genuine copy? You could then say you bought the game before... Lost the disk so downloaded a version, and then found the disk?

Edit: The annoying thing is that most torrents will allow you to watch a film from the get go... Genuine copies mean you have to sit through clip after clip on anti-piracy! /sigh
 
Zero Pope said:
Technically Sky did when they allowed that dodgy 'law firm' to send out letters demanding upto £350 from people for downloading things. I worked for Sky at the time and the company had no proof but Sky were happy for them to do it.
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I hadn't heard about that one. However, no scam that the Murdoch Media Mafia comes by with would surprise me. Glad to hear that you "used" to work for Sky ;)


groen said:
I was not saying that ISP would create fake evidence ...
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Yes you were:
What is stopping the ISP from creating fake evidence.
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I have absolutely no need to insult you, you do a more than adequate job of making yourself look stupid and paranoid without any help from me :p


RomanNose said:
Nodes on torrents can add fake addresses to the pool, this is a known attack and has been done before by Microsoft to try and reduce the speed of the torrents.
Innocent IP addresses are often added and that's why loads of people without even active broadband connections have been sent letters.
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Oh, OK, I wasn't aware of that and to be honest, I can't claim to be an authority on Torrents anyhow.

Do you have any link(s) for the Microsoft thing? Sounds really dodgy :eek:
 
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