Unlawful downloads

clv101 said:
Having some legal content on an index site or tracker server does not excuse the illegal stuff. 100% legal index sites and trackers are fine, when they start carrying illegal then they should be blocked.
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Once this is implemented, what happens? YouTube's gone. So's Metacafe and all those video sites. MySpace/Facebook and any of the social networking sites too (hm, not much of a loss there though :p). Not to mention almost every search engine on the planet, what with all those naughty links to unlawful downloads.

What's left? Maybe they should just do a Saudi or China jobbie and just give you unlimited access to BBC news and DirectGov and leave it at that :p
 
clv101 said:
It's no work for the ISP, they wouldn't be the police. They just have to use a DNS blacklist provided by the third party. The same way they do already for other things.
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You should know what a bunch of heavy handed idiots the companies which run some of those lists are, I had a furious row with one a few weeks back about one of our mail relays being listed.

They perform an arbitrary test which says it can be used to send spam (it can't, we're just clever about blocking it) and add it to a blacklist. They won't even consider listening to what we have to say, truly unbelievable arrogance.

I'm very wary of all but the most reputable blacklists.
 
clv101 said:
Just because there's plenty of legal content on Usenet does not excuse the illegal. Why not block any server found to have illegal content?
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because it's not hosted that way
it would be like an ISP filtering EVERY email they had come though for content
 
Slam62 said:
that would be all the servers in the whole world then
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Start off in a pragmatic way - just block the top dozen BitTorrent index sites. That would be dead simple and dramatically cut down on unlawful downloads. Most folk wouldn't know where to find the .torrent files without these index sites.

I'm not saying that's the whole answer but it is the low hanging fruit, the thing that should be done first before bothering to match users IP address and send out letters.

VeNT said:
because it's not hosted that way
it would be like an ISP filtering EVERY email they had come though for content
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No it wouldn't, it's easy to identify which newsgroups have illegal binarys. Just block any server hosting that newsgroup.
 
No as if they did you wouldnt get any :D

Its an impossible task for the ISP anyway as they would loose a lot of money and they aint going to do that!
 
clv101 said:
Start off in a pragmatic way - just block the top dozen BitTorrent index sites.
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Wouldn't they pop up with new sites faster than the ISPs could agree to ban them?

I'm an ICT teacher, and the schools/council are always working hard to block the likes of hotmail, facebook and myspace from kids, but you can bet your bottom dollar, any computer room you walk into, a kid will have a new proxy site open with hotmail etc showing. Close one hole, another 10 appear.
 
Chris1712 said:
Exactly, SSL usenet access is really the norm now so all they can see is that your downloading from usenet, not what it is. Theres plenty of legal content on usenet.

My house of 13 (!) students go through about 500gb a month through virgin media, no letters yet!

If they really crack down on it, people will find another way. 0-day FTP's will come back in fashion (not that they arent now, but they'll become more easily available) and what can ISPs do about that?
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SSL is a waste of time, they don't monitor what you download.
 
I could be wrong but at a guess every newsgroup on every server in the world hosts stuff that has been uploaded with out permission.
 
dan653 said:
we need censorship? can we not make our own decisions. if that's the case why dont we tackle some bigger issues such as poverty and hunger, 1983 style

like it or not piracy may not maximise a company's profits, but is a catalyst for innovation, just take a look the work going on with photoshop elements & express or things such as bbc's iplayer. who'd have thought any of these things would have even got off the ground a few years ago without them identifying huge new user demographics that they could target with their software and other intellectual properties
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http://www.thersa.org/events/vision/vision-videos/matt-mason
 
I'm just finishing off a dissertation largely on this topic so let me summarise why.

Bit-torrent sites: Most comply with DMCA take-downs/whatever is an appropriate take down in whichever country. If you remove sites that list any illegal material then you'd have to take down google - which also lists torrents. Selectively banning certain sites is generally a bad idea from a censorship point of view. If only some ISPs did it then people would just move to other ISPs (as has been seen in Denmark (IIRC without checking my dissertation)).

Usenet: much of the content of usenet is very legally - simplified forums etc. In addition, to access usenet you need to use a usenet provider - almost all of which operate a take-down notice procedure and specifically state that it's a breach of terms and conditions to pirate.

In conclusion it's thus near impossible to shut down usenet, whilst its bad policy to shut-down bittorrent. If you look at the bittorrent sites that have been shutdown in most cases (such as elitetorrents) its actually because the owners were uploading material aswell (and thus got done for that) or they got frightened of the RIAA (like torrentspy).
 
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fini said:
Usenet: much of the content of usenet is very legally - simplified forums etc. In addition, to access usenet you need to use a usenet provider - almost all of which operate a take-down notice procedure and specifically state that it's a breach of terms and conditions to pirate.
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The usenet feed size is 4TB per day, perhaps 1% of that is legal. You may not be able to shutdown usenet but DMCA notices have been successful when sent to specific providers.
 
clv101 said:
Start off in a pragmatic way - just block the top dozen BitTorrent index sites. That would be dead simple and dramatically cut down on unlawful downloads. Most folk wouldn't know where to find the .torrent files without these index sites.

I'm not saying that's the whole answer but it is the low hanging fruit, the thing that should be done first before bothering to match users IP address and send out letters.
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Pragmatic? Low hanging fruit?

/me plays buzz word bingo
 
AbsenceJam said:
The usenet feed size is 4TB per day, perhaps 1% of that is legal. You may not be able to shutdown usenet but DMCA notices have been successful when sent to specific providers.
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I said DMCA's work in taking down content - they're just useless as a solution because the content pops straight back up.

Usenet by volume might be more legal than not, but if you count each file as a single file and each post as a single post the numbers will start looking a little different. non-binary usenet is still very active.
 
fini said:
Usenet by volume might be more legal than not, but if you count each file as a single file and each post as a single post the numbers will start looking a little different. non-binary usenet is still very active.
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That's not right either, even if you count each complete binary posting which consists of many posts as just one 'post' the text groups are still completely outnumbered. Fetch the group list from Giganews and have a look. This is also before you consider spam which is more prevalent in text groups and the only thing in some.
 
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