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Virgin Media takes fight to illegal downloaders in the UK
telegraph.co.uk — The BPI is working with Virgin Media to start a pilot of a scheme that could see repeated offenders disconnected from the service.
- 412 diggs
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- askmewhy, on 03/31/2008, -0/+24Looks like I'll be reducing my 20mbs connection to 2mbs connection!
- Frost9999, on 03/31/2008, -0/+15This is what we get for choosing an ISP that has business connections and it's roots in the record industry :(
- Chris4, on 04/01/2008, -0/+1Very true...
- jamesdew, on 03/31/2008, -0/+2damnit, me too
- cardyology, on 03/31/2008, -0/+7Me three. I get Virgin cable - 10mbps and its cheap & rapid with no restricitons. I though it was a safe bet. Damn Richard Branson!
- Frost9999, on 03/31/2008, -0/+15This is what we get for choosing an ISP that has business connections and it's roots in the record industry :(
- TopHatStuff, on 03/31/2008, -0/+22*****!
- Supernova36, on 03/31/2008, -0/+7*****!
- buddamus, on 03/31/2008, -0/+6*****!
I'm guessing we all are Virgin Customers here
- buddamus, on 03/31/2008, -0/+6*****!
- thewibbler, on 03/31/2008, -1/+7*****!
- Shelby69, on 03/31/2008, -0/+6*****!
- pixeleyes, on 03/31/2008, -1/+6*****! :(
- whistlerpro, on 03/31/2008, -1/+5Shiiit :'(
- syar, on 03/31/2008, -2/+3***** :'(
- Frost9999, on 04/01/2008, -1/+1*****!
- Supernova36, on 03/31/2008, -0/+7*****!
- Acronym, on 03/31/2008, -11/+0Virgin Media? LOL
- noots, on 03/31/2008, -0/+2indeed, and when everyone leaves them because they are getting cut off and just generally pissed off at their ***** service, all of the other ISP's will "LOL" at them and continue their old service as usual.
- ukblacknight, on 04/01/2008, -0/+1There aren't any other cable providers though. ***** ADSL, it means having a BT line. It's probably cheaper to get sued for illegal downloading than it is on phone bills and time wasted trying to get through to BT.
- noots, on 03/31/2008, -0/+2indeed, and when everyone leaves them because they are getting cut off and just generally pissed off at their ***** service, all of the other ISP's will "LOL" at them and continue their old service as usual.
- Ganja420, on 03/31/2008, -4/+60***** (in this order) :
RIAA
EA
Hillary Clinton
MPAA
Creative
Virgin Media- TheFred, on 03/31/2008, -2/+21Scientology?
- cardyology, on 03/31/2008, -4/+2My mom n dad
God
myself - buddamus, on 03/31/2008, -1/+9***** the guy who keeps leaving rubbish in my garden
- ByteGuerilla, on 03/31/2008, -1/+6I think Creative deserve a another peg or two there.
- Alfredosauce, on 03/31/2008, -6/+1Obama
- sahaqiel, on 03/31/2008, -10/+131 diggs? front page? does not compute
- melat0nin, on 04/01/2008, -0/+2Internet providers policing their users is ***** RELEVANT TO A LOT OF PEOPLE ON DIGG. So shut your face.
- ZeroSumDivide, on 03/31/2008, -1/+33Somebody's about to lose a LOT of business. They'll change their minds when they see the number of subscribers drop significantly, and their profits take a nasty hit.
- xtrench, on 03/31/2008, -5/+1I didn't know UK was big on piracy.
- chedabob, on 03/31/2008, -3/+1They're the only ISP that offers binary newsgroups.
- atgmac, on 03/31/2008, -0/+9Great business strategy: Ban your best paying customers.
- neverending, on 03/31/2008, -0/+2Unfortunately they're not. Virgin Media much prefer the people who pay for their service but don't actually use it, as already evidenced by their draconian fair use policy, which nerfs the connection of the top 5% of downloaders.
- kevyn, on 04/01/2008, -0/+1Sadly I don't think a company the size of Virgin Media will notice much of a loss
- allyant, on 03/31/2008, -1/+22I am on Virgin and there service is crap, for more than have of the day my speed gets cut in half from 280kb/s to 120kb/s max.
- poidh, on 03/31/2008, -0/+6I think you mean big B, not little b (I have the same spead as you).
- cr3ative, on 03/31/2008, -3/+4And the same grammar/spelling retardation too it seems :)
- chedabob, on 03/31/2008, -0/+5They have a download limit now. 3gb between 4pm and 9pm. You get your connection halved for 5 hours, starting from when you go over.
- kevyn, on 04/01/2008, -0/+1Sure you haven't been using utorrents scheduler?
- mrhahn, on 03/31/2008, -0/+5I get full 8Mbps (well near enough -- 800kB/s) during early morning (3-8am ish), the rest of the time speeds hover around the 5kB/s mark. This is just another nail in the coffin for one of the worst ISPs I've ever had the misfortune of using.
- pixeleyes, on 03/31/2008, -0/+9I get nothing with Virgin Media. The speed is terrible all day for me.
And I am royally ***** too, because I have a Virgin Phone line and every other damn ISP needs a BT line.
Short of changing my ISP and Phone number and then paying £105 for BT to reconnect my phone line, It looks like I am stuck with VM. - zongamin, on 04/01/2008, -0/+2*their
- IllBeBack, on 04/01/2008, -4/+1Aw c'mon, don't you know that all Europeans are far smarter than us stupid Americans? His "there" must be the correct one and you are wrong.
/sarcasm
- IllBeBack, on 04/01/2008, -4/+1Aw c'mon, don't you know that all Europeans are far smarter than us stupid Americans? His "there" must be the correct one and you are wrong.
- bosssmiley, on 04/01/2008, -0/+3Their blueyonder service has been crap ever since Mr Beardy took it over from TeleWest. All the money they should be spending on server upgrades? Going on ***** celebrity endorsements instead.
- raarky, on 04/01/2008, -0/+4i'm also on virgin and can confirm their service is crap. I consistently get lag spikes, the service seems to be throttled throughout the day at various times and the top speed is nowhere near their promised speed.
I hear they want to install phorm too.
The customer service is worse. They charge you too much money then refund it later and say this is normal.
No one know hows to deal with any problems due to each dept in virgin being seperate and dont communicate.
we've been trying for the last 3 months to cancel our account and still they haven't finalised it.
They need to pick up their modem/tv box and on 3 seperate occasions have said they would be around to pick it up a specific time and no one shows up. (it sucks waiting at home and having no shows when you've got lots of things to do)
rant rant mod me down.. whatever... I just dont want anyone else to experience the pain we've had with them.
check out this site we've found:
http://www.virginmediasucks.com/
- poidh, on 03/31/2008, -0/+6I think you mean big B, not little b (I have the same spead as you).
- KilGil27, on 03/31/2008, -1/+2f
- Ramble, on 03/31/2008, -1/+9Oh, *****.
I'm constantly downloading HD films and the like.- zongamin, on 04/01/2008, -9/+1Well start buying DVDs then you turd
- shanomaq, on 03/31/2008, -3/+12Way to go BPI this will surely get you more customers!
- lonelycoo, on 03/31/2008, -2/+32Time to get a new ISP me thinks...
- lovecss, on 03/31/2008, -0/+6Let me refer you to Be* (bethere.co.uk).
- Lorian, on 03/31/2008, -0/+1"We are expecting to enable your exchange in Mar-2008."
They don't have much time left...- troydoogle7, on 03/31/2008, -0/+1ukonline is great too ukonline.net
- Lorian, on 03/31/2008, -0/+1"We are expecting to enable your exchange in Mar-2008."
- Ganja420, on 03/31/2008, -2/+1Ok Jar Jar
- lovecss, on 03/31/2008, -0/+6Let me refer you to Be* (bethere.co.uk).
- t4m5t3r, on 03/31/2008, -2/+15lol indeed, iv been with NTL for years, virgin media took over the first thing they do? start throtteling my connection between 4:30 and 12am and i also can only download about 2gb before the take my whole connection down to30kb down 10 up, and thats "unlimited" , not much of a problem since my service get canceled next week lol. (would have been last month but i had to wait for my line to be enabled!)
And of all the people i know, everybodys dropped virgin because their service is *****, so this will just get rid of whaever customers they have left!!- Shelby69, on 03/31/2008, -0/+1I get the exact same problem, limits after downloading roughly 2gb and slow speeds at certain times. Definitely going to be looking for a new ISP!
- krg123, on 04/01/2008, -0/+1virgin media IS the old NTL. they just rebranded after they acquired virgin mobile in the uk.
- niceyuk, on 03/31/2008, -1/+13If I was a Virgin Media customer I'd take my business elsewhere.
The MPAA/RIAA are stupid if they think this would stop piracy, all that would happen is Bittorrent traffic would become encrypted and even harder to trace.- kevyn, on 04/01/2008, -0/+3but what happens when I move somewhere else... and then that ISP does the same thing?
- nandasunu, on 03/31/2008, -1/+6I guess I'll be sticking to beunlimited...
- robmcm, on 03/31/2008, -5/+2Be Rock, although I swtiched to 02 (same company now) and saved about £10 a month :) I blogged about it at pixelbox.net
- Ripplex, on 03/31/2008, -0/+3I'm on Be* as well! BeBuddies unit!
- horsepie, on 03/31/2008, -1/+0I was thinking of switching since they advertise 50mb coming soon, guess this means I'll stay with O2/Be*. Wasn't really happy with Virgin to begin with, one of my favourite musicians have had a lot of trouble with their record labels.
- raarky, on 04/01/2008, -0/+1we used to be on B before we moved house.
Best ISP i've had the pleasure of dealing with. Their speeds are great, the free router is awesome (it even a has a built in dialup server and they ask for customer feedback for new features they develop on it) and their customer service is the best i've experience in the UK.
We'll be joining once we get rid of our annoying Virgin Media shambles.
- robmcm, on 03/31/2008, -5/+2Be Rock, although I swtiched to 02 (same company now) and saved about £10 a month :) I blogged about it at pixelbox.net
- sfacets, on 03/31/2008, -2/+25Is it still illegal when everyone does it in a Democracy?
- ByteGuerilla, on 03/31/2008, -0/+6While I think this is a ***** move on Virgin's part, and dugg your comment up for making the point, yes it is illegal when 'everyone' (by which I presume you mean 'a lot of people') do it. Even if the majority of the voting population were downloading films 24/7, it would still be illegal. Laws are supposed to reflect the will of the people, but they are not meant to trample on everyone else by imposing the will of the majority. That's why legislative representatives are called representatives: they're supposed to be representative. We have the technology to implement direct democracy in a nation of sixty million people but it would be a bad move for exactly this reason.
But we don't need to make it legal, because we're showing the con-industries that their business model of taking original content and ripping the creator off for 'distribution' is not going to get them the public's money for much longer. What we've seen so far is that content producers can produce and sell their own stuff on the Internet. $1.8million in a weekend for Trent Reznor's Ghosts album. Having to pay only ~£2.60 for thirty-six tracks was awesome. I would have paid for the $10 two-CD option if it weren't for the shipping costs the site was displaying.
- ByteGuerilla, on 03/31/2008, -0/+6While I think this is a ***** move on Virgin's part, and dugg your comment up for making the point, yes it is illegal when 'everyone' (by which I presume you mean 'a lot of people') do it. Even if the majority of the voting population were downloading films 24/7, it would still be illegal. Laws are supposed to reflect the will of the people, but they are not meant to trample on everyone else by imposing the will of the majority. That's why legislative representatives are called representatives: they're supposed to be representative. We have the technology to implement direct democracy in a nation of sixty million people but it would be a bad move for exactly this reason.
- AddictedToMosh, on 03/31/2008, -3/+1that is ***** ***** man, i hope this doesnt spread to tiscali etc
- jamesdew, on 03/31/2008, -0/+1actually virgin media run a large portion of tiscalli's network
- anudeglory, on 04/01/2008, -0/+2Tiscali already trialled it last year and 4 users were suspended but the scheme was stopped due to arguments over payment lol
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/03/31/virgin_med ... - melat0nin, on 04/01/2008, -0/+2Tiscali is a ***** awful ISP, my mother has 2meg and gets max 100kb/s down, dropping to 30kb/s at night. All that and no bittorrent connectivity whatsoever (legal or otherwise).
- AddictedToMosh, on 04/01/2008, -0/+1well i get 5mb out of the promised 8 and bittorrent works for me, but agreed tiscali is terrible but cheap :D
- robmcm, on 03/31/2008, -1/+14Does that mean if you watch something like this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBGIQ7ZuuiU on YouTube, then you could get disconnected?
- poidh, on 03/31/2008, -0/+2I'd be so pissed off if I got Rick Rolled AND disconnected in the same day. Especially if 2girls1cup snook in there too.
- zongamin, on 04/01/2008, -1/+1*snuck
- poidh, on 04/01/2008, -0/+1Actually, "sneaked" is the correct form. "Snook" is an Americanism. I was wrong anyway however.
- poidh, on 04/01/2008, -0/+1I mean, "snuck". Aaaaagh.
- poidh, on 04/01/2008, -0/+1Actually, "sneaked" is the correct form. "Snook" is an Americanism. I was wrong anyway however.
- zongamin, on 04/01/2008, -1/+1*snuck
- rohanch, on 03/31/2008, -0/+6Haha, using a Rick Roll as a legitimate example, excellent!
But it's a serious point. Where do they draw the line?
After all, most music videos/clips/TV on YouTube are illegal copies uploaded without permission, and that means you are technically infringing copyrights every time you watch them. Are people going to get disconnected for that? - ramshaw, on 03/31/2008, -0/+1Most definitely.
- poidh, on 03/31/2008, -0/+2I'd be so pissed off if I got Rick Rolled AND disconnected in the same day. Especially if 2girls1cup snook in there too.
- ArrakisDune, on 03/31/2008, -1/+11The BPI are *not* a legal entity in the UK, so I'm very surprised to see VM working with them. Its in their best interests to keep customers, not piss them off.
Not that it will make a difference to 128-bit encrypted Newsgroup access :)
Even when people get disconnected, It'll just mean people sign up to another ISP and potentially move their telephone line over to BT to do so.- raarky, on 04/01/2008, -0/+2"Its in their best interests to keep customers, not piss them off."
i'm guessing you haven't been a virgin media customer then. It's like they try *really hard* to piss off their customers.- ArrakisDune, on 04/01/2008, -0/+1Yeam, I'm a VM customer. Problem with VM is that the service differences are huge depending on where you live.
Thankfully I have no issues......yet......
- ArrakisDune, on 04/01/2008, -0/+1Yeam, I'm a VM customer. Problem with VM is that the service differences are huge depending on where you live.
- raarky, on 04/01/2008, -0/+2"Its in their best interests to keep customers, not piss them off."
- drewpost, on 03/31/2008, -1/+5Switch to BE - Great prices, 24 Mbps connections with static IP for £18/month. I have had them for about 2 years and they never throttle, get great speeds and are an all around quality ISP
- robmcm, on 03/31/2008, -2/+1Swtich to O2, same company, same service, lower price :)
- Adil786, on 03/31/2008, -0/+2Longer contract.
- ByteGuerilla, on 03/31/2008, -1/+1And awful customer support. O2 once phoned me up to ask me to answer some questions about how happy I am with my mobile phone service. It consisted of the guy on the phone reading out statements and then I would have to indicate whether I "Strongly Agree" "Agree" "Neither Agreee Nor Disagree" "Disagree" or "Strongly Disagree". They could have sent me a ***** email with a link to that questionaire.
- Adil786, on 03/31/2008, -0/+2Longer contract.
- over900000, on 03/31/2008, -6/+1My friend has it. It's not as great as you make it out to be. When he is wired to the router he gets 10 but when he uses wireless which is what he does, he gets 4. He's bought a third party DSL router from Linksys but doesn't know how to set it up.
- daveyt, on 03/31/2008, -0/+2How can local wireless access have any effect on the WAN/DSL side? And 10 what? Mbps? How does he know? Are you by any chance looking at the speed of the connection to the router on the LAN side? Your WAN link doesnt just drop in speed because you're using wireless on the other side. His perception that the line is slower when it isnt. As for the D-link? What he needs to do is *learn how to setup his d-link*.
- ukblacknight, on 04/01/2008, -0/+2Needs BT phone line. no thanks.
- kevyn, on 04/01/2008, -0/+1You forgot to add on the cost of a BT phone line
- robmcm, on 03/31/2008, -2/+1Swtich to O2, same company, same service, lower price :)
- naughtyboy, on 03/31/2008, -0/+2Here's a solution for ya
http://www.strongvpn.com/- makenshi, on 03/31/2008, -0/+2Sending traffic to a country where spying on foreign citizens is legal? No thanks. Since Virgin Media is a British ISP, how about using a British VPN service, i.e. http://www.vpntunnel.co.uk/
- Chris4, on 04/01/2008, -0/+2Virgin Media = British
StrongVPN = American
- poidh, on 03/31/2008, -1/+5Hmmm. That's just spurred me to download even more stuff. ***** idiots.
Hey assholes in the media business - start giving us what we want (fairly-priced downloadable films) and stop forcing us to use pain-in-the-arse discs which can get scratched and which change format every couple of years, and maybe people won't need to fileshare.- zongamin, on 04/01/2008, -3/+2*****. Complete *****.
- Sqlawl, on 03/31/2008, -1/+1I can see this being a big fail on their part. Once one way of downloading is stopped, people will find another way to do it. Great way to waste a lot of money VM!
- AddictedToMosh, on 03/31/2008, -1/+9creative community??? more like fat ***** wanting more money
- TheWhiteOtter, on 03/31/2008, -2/+5This is fantastic news! I've been trying to get my dad to change our ISP for awhile but he refuses; now I can get our ISP onboard! Cheers Virgin. :)
- adrian67, on 03/31/2008, -0/+4Oh ***** this is my ISP - looks like my BitTorrent days are over - damn!
- daveyt, on 03/31/2008, -0/+7my ISP too. Until, i discovered www.vpntunnel.co.uk - cant cut you off if they dont know what youre up to. Hell i get so much kiddie porn now its not even funny.
(Jus kidding...)- ByteGuerilla, on 03/31/2008, -0/+8We need a digg.co.uk so we don't need to put "Just kidding" after jokes.
- daveyt, on 04/09/2008, -0/+0excuse me for not being a ***** like you.
(not kidding)
- daveyt, on 04/09/2008, -0/+0excuse me for not being a ***** like you.
- kevyn, on 04/01/2008, -0/+1Problem is they charge £10 per month -but you only get 50GB traffic. I only just downloaded a 40gb file yesterday... this would cost a small fortune if you accidentally went over the limit
- ByteGuerilla, on 03/31/2008, -0/+8We need a digg.co.uk so we don't need to put "Just kidding" after jokes.
- daveyt, on 03/31/2008, -0/+7my ISP too. Until, i discovered www.vpntunnel.co.uk - cant cut you off if they dont know what youre up to. Hell i get so much kiddie porn now its not even funny.
- DigginTuesday, on 03/31/2008, -1/+2Their service has been awful, I'm suffering hour/day long losses on an almost weekly time. Their CS is actually quite good as long as you get the Scottish, but it takes time to get to and they won't escalate even based on privious mess ups.
Their TV is barely comparable to Freeview (Free to air digital for Americans). The few tiny advantages get stamped on thanks to top up tv and the internet.
I'm ditching them at the end of my contract (two months?) I can't wait. - Buzzby, on 03/31/2008, -2/+1Looks like there is more to it..still annoying though
http://digg.com/tech_news/ISP_To_Voluntarily_Disco ... - over900000, on 03/31/2008, -1/+1Noooooooooooooooooooo... I just recently had my connection upgraded to 10 Megs as well. I am a serial downloader. And the trouble is there aren't many other cable broadband providers in the area.
- Darrelc, on 03/31/2008, -1/+6Am I the only one who thinks this is pretty good? People in america have been sued for sharing 5 songs, we got 3 warnings then a disconnection before getting sued? it's like an early warning system!
- gudnbluts, on 03/31/2008, -0/+0Gawd. I hope this crap doesn't come to New Zealand. We have enough trouble with our crappy ISPs, without them making our internet connections even more useless. All connections here are capped. The average home connection is capped at 6 to 10GB a month.
- raarky, on 04/01/2008, -0/+1i still can't believe NZ internet is crap!
I thought the whole unbundling was suppose to fix this and move NZ out of 3rd world internet services.
- raarky, on 04/01/2008, -0/+1i still can't believe NZ internet is crap!
- powatom, on 03/31/2008, -1/+4Virgin has been screwing us over with their crappy internet speeds for ages now, this just looks like one more reason to drop them.
- zbarsky, on 03/31/2008, -1/+4Cancelling my virgin subscription as of now.
- Ignitedude, on 03/31/2008, -0/+3Who's the best ISP to use?
- ByteGuerilla, on 03/31/2008, -0/+2ZenBroadband are pretty good, as are Be. Can't recommend Orange (worst ISP I've ever had), nor do I have great things to say about any of the big providers to be honest.
- ByteGuerilla, on 03/31/2008, -0/+1Edit timer broke -_- I was going to add: "But I'm just a random guy, so shop around and get some reviews: http://www.ispreview.co.uk/
- ByteGuerilla, on 03/31/2008, -0/+2ZenBroadband are pretty good, as are Be. Can't recommend Orange (worst ISP I've ever had), nor do I have great things to say about any of the big providers to be honest.
- unitedkronos, on 03/31/2008, -1/+2Although I don't download that much through BitTorrent (just the occasional American TV show and album to see if it's worth buying) I disagree with Virgin's stance on this. The sad thing for me though is if I wanted to move away from Virgin (which I'm seriously considering) I would need to spend £125/$250 on installing a BT phone line in order for me to use another broadband service.
- Supernova36, on 03/31/2008, -1/+2Anyone know another good cable broadband company in the UK?
Don't VM have a monopoly on cable broadband?- unitedkronos, on 03/31/2008, -1/+1I consider BT to have the monopoly on broadband services in the UK, Virgin's the only other company that uses non-BT phone lines.
- neverending, on 03/31/2008, -0/+2VM do indeed monopolise cable broadband. However, I would still recommend switching to an ADSL service.
Be Unlimited is a good 24Mbps service that is reasonably cheap, if you can get it in your area. Otherwise, I hear good things about Zen Online, which is quite expensive, but consistently rates best for reliability (you get the speed you paid for!) and customer service- kevyn, on 04/01/2008, -0/+1why ADSL over DSL? - Cable worked great for me, and I didn't have to pay for a phone line
- PR1811, on 03/31/2008, -0/+8Nothing to worry about, if the BPI's experience of contacting Virgin Media is anything like mine they will be passed from one wrong department to another before claiming they have never heard of you and leave you no choice but to hang up!
- jb312, on 03/31/2008, -1/+2Im with Virgin Media and its simple, you try and disconnect me, i just get another ISP, it hardly affects me, youre the ones losing money, we (the customers) are what makes the companies.
Its bad enough that on my 'UP TO' 20mb connection that right this very second, when im not downloading anything im getting 400kb/s. I suppose i would be better off getting rid of them anyway.- ramshaw, on 03/31/2008, -0/+1I'm on the same service and get roughly the same DL speed.
- moxley, on 03/31/2008, -1/+2First off...Encrypt. Do things right and no corporation should be able to tell what you're downloading (whether it's legal or illegal, most of mine is legal live music ,but I digress to say: "***** YOU IN THE ASS (ARSE?) VIRGIN AND BPI.")
Secondly: Blow me Virgin.
- wheeze, on 03/31/2008, -0/+13If Virgin go ahead with this they wont be able to call themselves Virgin anymore because they'll be *****.
- o6uoq, on 03/31/2008, -0/+2Dugg for being such a brilliant one liner. Have you been waiting all year to use that one?
- bonjourmr, on 04/25/2008, -0/+1Why do ISP's comply, they're getting money no matter what?
- zongamin, on 04/01/2008, -0/+2Because if they don't they will risk being sued themselves.
- Georgy, on 03/31/2008, -5/+3Haha, you guys think you have a right to be downloading stuff illegally
as soon as a company decides to make a move against piracy which is a smart decision(would you sit back and watch while your work gets stolen) the hate begins
the truth is that illegal downloading is wrong and if you buy your stuff legally there's nothing to be worried about and there's no need to boycott them- o6uoq, on 03/31/2008, -1/+2Let me guess, you never do anything illegal. Not even swear in public?
- Georgy, on 04/05/2008, -0/+1i never said i didn't, i'm just accepting its wrong to download illegally...
- zongamin, on 04/01/2008, -2/+2An excellent point - the truth is no one has a right to illegally download music of films - we do it because its easy, fast and free.
There ARE plenty of legal alternatives - check out emusic.com for starters - DRM free and no ***** major label crap.- Karkian, on 04/04/2008, -0/+2Easier said than done. I like the theory, but in practice I've got largely unconventional taste in music and not being able to search a site that I know a lot of labels don't like until after I've payed? Not so much.
I download music, sure. I still buy CDs too, but I'm not sure that I'd be buying any more CDs could I not download. I think my taste in music just wouldn't be as diverse. Not everyone has the money and I know plenty of cheap ***** who'd just go without owning any and stick to radio.
It's the industry that's the problem not the audience. Can you imagine a small start-up company trying to dictate to their customers what they should and shouldn't want? Then why should a big company think they can get away with it? Our only real choices for digitally distributed music at the moment are DRM laden or DRM free but with a tiny selection and in either case usually lossy and often not much cheaper than a physical CD with much higher production costs. They're not doing a great deal to earn anyone's favour.
I know there was a minor backlash at Radiohead for offering a whole album for free, not everyone can do that, but what's wrong with how NIN did it with Ghosts I-IV? 36 lossless tracks for $5? I'd take way more chances on purchases were they all like that.
- Karkian, on 04/04/2008, -0/+2Easier said than done. I like the theory, but in practice I've got largely unconventional taste in music and not being able to search a site that I know a lot of labels don't like until after I've payed? Not so much.
- o6uoq, on 03/31/2008, -1/+2Let me guess, you never do anything illegal. Not even swear in public?
- reginaldino, on 03/31/2008, -1/+3***** VM. They keep screwing me over. ***** connection. Lying about speeds. Slow upload speed. Don't know why i went with them for a 2nd year.
- Ukspudnie, on 03/31/2008, -1/+2The web is starting to become not so much of a level open field, this is the start of the walled garden model, you wait till they start blocking certain websites, unless u pay for a platinum account etc, as long as there's money to be made / protected the big boys will enforce us to play by their rules.. damn u virgin
- linuxtim, on 03/31/2008, -1/+0Another VM customer. I'm changing my ISP as soon as possible. Throttling was crap but now this?
So, what recommendations do people have?
So far - 1 vote for BE - any others? - ricerfuel, on 03/31/2008, -0/+2I've got virgin media, guess im switching like everyone else
- kotatsu, on 03/31/2008, -1/+3Here's the comedy - Virgin are going to go after people illegally downloading stuff, such as perhaps, episodes of LOST, which cannot be viewed on Virgin's own cable TV service because of their spat with Murdoch/Fox/Sky a year ago. So the message from Virgin is - move to a different service provider if you like entertainment.
- o6uoq, on 03/31/2008, -0/+3Technically + legally this cannot be done. Hence why they mentioned several times that a team are working 'outlining legal measures' - think about it - imagine if Virgin tracked all data, of all users, 24/7 - that's a hell of alot of IT infrastructure, hardware + expenses to put in place, only to then disconnect users and loose more money. Data is essentially 0's and 1's - if they monitor every single packet and confirm that it is from an illegal source, then there would be a massive legal liability for invasion of privacy. If you send a letter and someone opens it up and inspects it, generally that is deemed illegal and an invasion of privacy. There is NO legal grounds for them to do this, and it is scare tactics pure and simple - all it will take is one person to stand up and take them to court, that's where the fun will be at.
The only way I can see this working is if they randomly scan users who are visiting web sites to download illegal material, or if they are going to invade your privacy (illegally) then it would mean monitoring unencrypted data - if they do monitor all your traffic, that may mean updating their T&C's - saying yes, you can monitor, and I ok it. If you don't, back to invasion of privacy - illegal. The only other method is if these anti-piracy agencies recognise an IP from Virgin Media, report it being used to Virgin, Virgin hand over customer details and bang - warning + disconnection.
Maybe someone should IP hijack the Virgin Media subnet and smash it at every dodgy site possible, heh. - spiderdijon, on 03/31/2008, -1/+1Virgins non cable service (8mb) is absolutely *****. Between the hours of and 6pm and midnight the speeds are literally sub dial-up. Latency is also insanely big 900 - 1200ms to ping BBC website between those hours. This even happens with virgin media's own file mirror site. Was planing to upgrade to their 20mb cable service so I didn't have to pay the 50 GBP cancellation fee, but with this news about teaming up with the BPI, screw them, I'm dropping them.
- syar, on 03/31/2008, -1/+3If Virgin Media are going to cut me off my internet beacuse I am downloading TV shows and Movies, then where the hell am i ment to get them from. iTunes has ***** of what i like, no Mythbusters on there for a start. Also we have no movie section like you yanks do. Sure I can get a DVD but I like to have mine downloaded. Looks like I am changing provider
- zongamin, on 04/01/2008, -1/+1You already said it DVD - who cares if you 'dont like it' does that give you the right to steal it?
- syar, on 04/01/2008, -0/+1I didn't say I wanted to steel it. I would buy it off iTunes, but we have such poor selection of TV Shows that i am forced to download it
- zongamin, on 04/01/2008, -1/+1You already said it DVD - who cares if you 'dont like it' does that give you the right to steal it?
- ramshaw, on 03/31/2008, -1/+2This blows.
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