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UK ISP bows to record industry, to send P2P warning letters

arstechnica.com — British ISP Virgin Media has come to an agreement with the BPI, which represents the record industry, to warm filesharers on its network about the dangers of copyright infringement.

Who dugg this? Made popular Jun 7, 2008

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  • Harrison88, on 06/06/2008, -4/+97Virgin Media. The new AOL.
  • Buzzby, on 06/06/2008, -3/+66So how are they going to tell who's downloading what? Just send a letter to anyone with high traffic?
  • ChrisWalkr, on 06/07/2008, -6/+57Screw Virgin.
  • WellDigga, on 06/07/2008, -2/+47first speed cap letters, then illegal downloading warning letters, then comes phorm. bunch of tossers if you ask me
  • Ksg89, on 06/07/2008, -3/+47ANOTHER reason to move from Virgin Media
  • drewpost, on 06/07/2008, -1/+30If you are in the UK, get BE. I push hundreds of GBs a month via torrents and slingbox streaming all for £18/month for 24Mbps. Best ISP I've ever had
  • widgetmaker, on 06/07/2008, -2/+29There goies my plan to take over the virgin contract, of my uni house next year, that the current tenants have.

    aside from that..***** THE BPI!!
  • aliguana, on 06/07/2008, -3/+29they're not sending "warning letters", they are sending polite reminders that sharing and downloading of copywritten material is illegal. Virgin said it would not cut off or take further action against these people. Apparently.
  • zephyr42, on 06/07/2008, -3/+29This is a really really dumb idea on the ISP's side.
  • unitedkronos, on 06/07/2008, -2/+27I don't pirate anything other than TV shows that aren't available to buy/download in the UK but now I'm determined to leave Virgin when I move out of my family home. It's a shame Virgin's decided to go this route but this is an invasion of privacy of the highest order.
  • DirtyRoboto, on 06/07/2008, -1/+25So they warn you about the dangers of file sharing.
    Will they also included warnings about STD, drugs, prostitution, pyramid schemes, crossing the road without looking?

    I am going to put in a bid for Virgins ISP range now as I think they are on the right track to loosing hosts fast.
    If my ISP sent me a mail offering advice on how i should use the service I am paying for then I would tell them to ***** off via moving my subscription.
  • 321george, on 06/07/2008, -1/+23Bit Torrent through TOR, you're kidding me?
  • ubercow13, on 06/07/2008, -0/+17Of course when using bittorrent, you are rarely confined to one of those groups.
  • Nayson, on 06/07/2008, -0/+15Im a Virgin customer. I dont really download a lot of torrents but ill probably change my ISP on pure principle.
  • BRODEL, on 06/07/2008, -2/+16They aren't facilitating piracy... they provide a connection to the internet. If I buy gas at the gas station and use it to set fire to a church, is it the gas stations fault for providing the gas? They didn't monitor what I did with the gas!
  • fluxboxuk, on 06/07/2008, -2/+15Speed Caps THEN Illegal Uploading Warning Letter NEXT WILL BE Phorm, no offence but please stay the hell away from my Internet traffic you nosey bast***s... your having enough trouble keeping the connection live as it is, let alone doing traffic sniffing at the same time !

    Above sentance sums up Virgin Media's decline over the last 2 years... Sorry to say, but since Virgin re-branded NTL and Telewest their service has sucked, their customer service has sucked even more and now their policies are seriously bordering on invasion of privacy ! Might be a case of being welcomed back to BT with open arms (not to mention port numbers)
  • Dominicc2003, on 06/07/2008, -2/+15I see what you did there.
  • DalamarArgent, on 06/07/2008, -6/+18In related news Virgin Media has had a 60% drop in customers in the last 2 days.
  • Dopefiend69, on 06/07/2008, -0/+11***** 'em, plenty of other ISP's to choose from.
  • yaveznodo, on 06/07/2008, -0/+11Cancelled well ahead of this latest crapola. Traffic shaping from 10am - 9pm every day cuts your download almost to nothing. They're partnering with Phorm spyware. Their CEO called net neutrality 'bollocks'.... and now warning letters because they're cosy with one arm of the Copyright MAFIAA. And it isn't even that cheap to begin with.

    In the UK? Want a good service? Then lose your Virginity now, it's well worth it :)
  • MrBabyMan, on 06/07/2008, -1/+11"Warm" is a relative term. It'll actually be 450° Fahrenheit over an open flame.
  • chedabob, on 06/07/2008, -0/+10They should warn themselves considering they provide a Usenet server with terabytes of warez.
  • chris9902, on 06/07/2008, -0/+10I 150% back this. BE (www.bethere.co.uk) is by a looooooong way the best ISP.

    No adware (like Phorm) and no ***** caps for people who actually use the bandwidth they paid for.
  • Ramble, on 06/07/2008, -0/+10Bring back the old NTL, when they had a cap but were too poor to check usage let alone enforce it.
  • waydee, on 06/07/2008, -0/+9What have Virgin done? before they bought it Blueyonder was the best ISP in the country, lightning fast, no caps, great cable network - now it just seems like any other crappy ISP in this country.

  • jeffthejiff, on 06/07/2008, -1/+8Well, this sucks. Virgin Media are turning into an ugly ISP, especially after calling network neutrality "bollocks". http://www.boingboing.net/2008/04/13/virgin-media- ...

    I guess I should move ISP, but the problem is BT lines are pretty expensive compared to Virgin...
  • fluxboxuk, on 06/07/2008, -0/+7two people who have recently been taken to court in the Oink P2P case were arrested for downloading only 1 album of music... so much for only going after persistant downloaders eh ! and where was their nice warning letter !
  • dullnation, on 06/07/2008, -0/+7I moved from Virgin around a month ago. Thank goodness I did too!

    I moved to Be Unlimited www.bethere.co.uk 24mbit and it's cheaper than Virgin's packages too. No throttling, shaping, caps, limits or monitoring.

    When I was on Virgin, they were literally throttling me to 75kbit week after week and they claim to only do it to top downloaders on their network. How the heck could I be a top downloader if they never stopped throttling me?!
  • DaleoftheUK, on 06/07/2008, -0/+6I use virgin, the service is AWFUL and then to top it off the decide to do this and phorm.

    loads of diggers moaning about virgin, there's some irony there.
  • kapi, on 06/07/2008, -0/+6Completely agree with you. Just got rid of virgin media and got BE.
  • dullnation, on 06/07/2008, -1/+7AOL used to be quite good here in the UK. I was with them for about 2 years. I didn't use their crappy software however, I was with them for the sole reason that they were one of the few ISPs that didn't have any limits on your connection. That changed last year and now they're as ***** as everyone else. Then I moved to Virgin which are even worse than AOL!

    Then bailed out of that just in time. I urge anyone with Virgin Media to demand a MAC code and move elsewhere to teach them a lesson over this breach of privacy.
  • mamboboy, on 06/07/2008, -0/+6The Death of an Internet Service Provider.
  • yumekage, on 06/07/2008, -0/+6Virgin media is perhaps one of the worst ISP's in the UK. I've used blueyonder pretty much since it's introduction (being one of the first adopters of broadband in the UK). I have always been happy with the serving and blueyonder in general was pretty cool. Ever since the merge with Virgin the service went to utter *****. I think the first prompt was the unannounced bandwidth throttle (and a very hard and dirty one at that). Using their mid range package if i went over 700MB during that day my internet speed was cut to about a megabit or less. Not just a drop in speed but stability as well (massive packet loss, constant loss of the cable modems connection and it's inability to re-establish the connection). Now they are spying on their users and reporting them. What next? Perhaps you could also start monitoring bittorrent/p2p traffic and blocking that as well. Seems more than fitting to me.

    Seriously though. You pay ~ £30 for 4Mbits down and 0.4Mbits up (and they are on special offer now so it's only £15 for the first year. Don't forget the £30 installation charge. So you pay all that for a 4Mbit mediocre internet connection where your daily transfer limit is about 700MB and your being monitored and reported for any 'copyright infringement'. Errm. Right. I'm with BeThere. I'm getting 24Mbits down and 2.5Mbits up with no bandwidth cap or throttle of any kind. There is no restriction of my connection friendly customer service staff that knows what they are doing and a free wireless modem (with rx/tx telephone ports and everything). I pay £22 a month. No installation charges.

    Users of virgin are the broadband equivalent of users of Norton. Your both getting a mediocre service, your both only getting an illusion of the product your paying for and your both being ripped off.
  • BeowulfGrimbly, on 06/07/2008, -0/+6Let's not forget that it was BT who conducted the trial of Phorm software on thousands of users without their knowledge, very likely illegally - although this is going to have to be shown in court (we hope).

    Get the line rental from BT, and the broadband from Be.
  • PaddyD, on 06/07/2008, -1/+6I'm on Virgin and as soon as I recieve a letter like this I'm moving ISP. What a way to kill their own brand.
  • baldgye, on 06/07/2008, -0/+5to be fair they have made it pretty clear that they don't intent to actually try and tackle the 'problem' at the source, and instead just punish as many random people as possible so they can profit from it, and make money from people who would never pay for ******'s album.
  • adamsetzler, on 06/07/2008, -0/+5The real motive is a substantial decrease in network traffic, thus a higher profit margin. The excuse is the compliance with the BPI. "Sorry, dear customers, we're just being socially conscious." In truth, a corporation (at least in the U.S.) cannot legally do anything that isn't tied to profit. I guess, in this case, VM has determined that the potential lawsuits from BPI adequately outweigh the opportunity cost.
  • armo, on 06/07/2008, -0/+5BE are probably the best of the big players. Many of the entanet resellers are superior though, adsl24 for instance are fantastic.
  • inactive, on 06/07/2008, -1/+6I forsee a domino effect.
  • synthesis811, on 06/07/2008, -0/+5Yes they are as good as they say they are. Best ISP in the UK.

    The ONLY issue I have had (and many others as well) is that the router they give you is pretty crap at times (however I've noticed its been a lot better since I upgraded the software on it) so make sure you do that. I have had quite a few problems with the router including DNS not working and random reboots etc. The forums however are very helpful there.
  • SSUK, on 06/07/2008, -0/+5I have Virgin because I was once a Blueyonder customer. Now, I LOVED Blueyonder, it was awesome back in the days of 1.5MBit, even better when 4MBit came along and they gave away Blueyonder PC Guard (all in one security and anti-virus for PC) for free to customers. When NTL took over, customer service dropped a bit, but it was business as usual. Now Virgin is here... ***** hell it's *****. They keep ***** up their DNS, they promise to upgrade my 4MBit connection to 10Mbit, but it's been 5 months now and all I get from them is "To be decided". When it was Blueyonder, they told me the speed would increase, within WEEKS, it WAS increased. None of this "Oh, it will be... Someday." bollocks.

    Now, Virgin are trying to ***** all over Net Neutrality and ***** with our privacy. I've had it. I'm really considering switching to another ISP just because I'm tired of their weak customer service, let alone all this extra ***** which may or may not affect me. ***** you Virgin Media, shove your £6 billion+ debts up your arse.
  • Markpdotcom, on 06/07/2008, -0/+5Thanks Dullnation, also on virgin here, there are loads of ISPs in the UK.

    ***** you Virgin, I'm moving as quick as another can connect me!
  • Cyberdogs7, on 06/07/2008, -0/+5Stupid record labels, when will they learn.
  • bluntphallus, on 06/07/2008, -1/+6It is very rewarding, he gets over 9000 people bitching at him daily and he simply sits on his throne, laughing at them. What's not to love?
  • fandyboy, on 06/07/2008, -0/+4But you don't get 24Mbps though do you? I was with them and got 4.
  • qetuo, on 06/07/2008, -0/+4Plus we had sky one, and the equipment worked, and you could get a techian out the same or next day, and not have to wait a week!
  • Kanaka, on 06/07/2008, -0/+4I was looking to switch ISPs recently and considered Virgin but after hearing about this a few weeks ago and their bandwidth throttling policy (read more about it below) i promptly looked elsewhere. I dont download torrents (except Linux distros occasionally) but HD podcasts from iTunes which means i need my full bandwith at all times hence throttling is just NOT an option

    http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/3073-virgin-med ...
  • Stavrosian, on 06/07/2008, -0/+4"As good as good?" Ignore that, I'm clearly retarded.
  • donnydarko, on 06/07/2008, -0/+4Anyone have an alternative to Virgin Media cable service, i.e. those who don't have a BT land line?
  • gritta, on 06/07/2008, -0/+3Same situation here. Hopefully "Be" Broadband will be available here by the time I have to renew my internet.
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