What is Digg?233 Comments
- MacBookForMe, on 07/26/2008, -8/+139Big Brother at work...
- meshman, on 07/26/2008, -8/+105"will send letters to hundreds of thousands of prolific downloaders warning them their activity is being monitored"
Wow, your right to privacy is blanketly denied if you download copyrighted material. Does that mean they'll have all your internet banking passwords, know what other sites you visit... They bust you for downlading music and just happen to mention to your wife about all the porn you've looked at... including the one with a 17 year old model instead of 18 and now you're guilty of child porn posession and...
I'd get out of Britain. - Surferess, on 07/27/2008, -1/+53I would like to see one of these letters. I wonder if one of our downloading Digg Britons will be able to get us a copy.
- JordanE, on 07/27/2008, -1/+45Money money money.
- badfish0116, on 07/27/2008, -4/+42Well they can't mess with me. I have Norton. Plus I am behind 7 proxies.
- Zain123, on 07/27/2008, -4/+40Sometimes question marks are unnecessary?
- Zincyams, on 07/26/2008, -18/+54Good thing I don't live in Britain then?
- inactive, on 07/27/2008, -11/+45Ya you thought america was getting bad. Britain is *****. Never living there.
This kind of enforcement is ridiculous and impossible. ***** countries like that. - inactive, on 07/26/2008, -3/+35yikes
- charm803, on 07/27/2008, -2/+35I can't remember the last time I bought a CD or MP3 but hey, if they were to stamp down on it here in the US, guess what? I still wouldn't buy it.
Why give them the satisfaction of giving them my money? - hutchy, on 07/27/2008, -1/+34easy solution, change isp
- umbrellainabin, on 07/27/2008, -5/+34***** THE RIAA
***** THE MPAA
***** THE IFPI
***** THE BFI <
***** VIACOM
***** COMCAST
***** MEDIADEFENDER <
***** AT&T
***** THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT <
***** BUSH
***** DRM - fithanee, on 07/27/2008, -4/+31Oh Noez a letter !!
That'll stop me form downloading 60gb of midget porn a day.. /sarc - topbob, on 07/27/2008, -3/+29!!!EXCLAMATION MARKS!!!
- dsmx, on 07/27/2008, -0/+26I'm not sure it's worth worrying as the uk government is so incompetent on anything to do with computers that the chances of them catching anyone is about the same as finding the fountain of youth.
- SwedishNinja, on 07/27/2008, -0/+26And I have curtains and a dog.
- MattBD, on 07/27/2008, -1/+21We just need MORE downloaders so it becomes utterly impractical. If there were several million people downloading regularly, then they won't be able to do a thing about it since those people would represent a huge proportion of customers.
- Zain123, on 07/27/2008, -2/+23Well I have 3 PS3's.
- GalacticRerun, on 07/27/2008, -0/+20Yes, makes people sound like Australian teens?
- Lewiji, on 07/27/2008, -1/+19I got a letter from Orange (unrelated) saying that my 54gb usage over 2 months broke their fair usage policy. Thus, they're limiting my 8mbit connection to a 0.6 one at "peak times" for a month.
I'm sorry, but in an age of iTunes rentals, youtube and iPlayer, this is a load of bollocks. I've written them an email to that extent and they replied grovelling, asking for a copy of the letter sent so that they can rectify the problem.
That's why this isn't going to work. If these ISPs send letters to all filesharers, they're going to lose a huge amount of customers. They won't survive that kind of hit. - kevdotbadger, on 07/27/2008, -0/+17Time to move away from Tiscali, their service is crap anyway.
- downloadsuk, on 07/27/2008, -0/+16Don't forget we had exactly this before they let us on the net.
Fidonet, asynchronously connected bulletin boards calling each other remotely.
Took 4 days to get an fidonet email to Australia but it was totally outside government control, using modems calling each other from any telephone anywhere.
According to Tom Jennings inventor of Fidonet it still runs in oppresive countries over the phones and radio modems from the the jungles of cambodia and Vietnam he gets support requests.
If we can do GNU / LINUX we can do this. - FeargusMcDuff, on 07/27/2008, -5/+22Ha! This is just rhetoric. Virgin has already stated it will 'never disconnect users based on what the download' (or something like that). Media companies enjoy the same freedom of speech as pirates themselves, its just they're not actually going to do anything about it. Open source always wins.
- SpiritOfRock, on 07/27/2008, -5/+21*sigh*
When will people learn? You can't control what goes down on the internet. It's the new land of the free. There are NO RULES over the web. It takes extreme technology to track people down through the web, and even then, anyone with basic knowledge of computers can avoid it. If you want to control the internet, you'll have to illegalize use of the internet, and create a new, moderated internet. And if that happens, NOBODY will use it.
Sorry, guys, I know you're unhappy with stuff getting stolen, but nothing is going to change. Seriously. - cgbspender, on 07/27/2008, -3/+18Well, get a VPN out of your ***** up country and download as much as you want ;)
- thePTS, on 07/27/2008, -1/+14ASL?
- inactive, on 07/27/2008, -1/+15You sure paid attention in headline-writing school!!!
- Handonam, on 07/27/2008, -3/+16***** ME
***** YOU
***** HIM
***** HER - downloadsuk, on 07/27/2008, -0/+13As the text of the letters has come out it is clear they are complete lies and falsehoods.
Downloading is 100% legal in the UK, always has been always will be.
The only possible way you can infringe copyright is to make a copy and publish it.
It requires uploading for there even to be the possibility of copyright infringement.
The letters mention Bittorrent as being illegal and state categorically that downloading from unauthorised networks such is illegal.
What utter and contemptous lies.
English and Scottish law is absolutely clear on this a copy must be distributed.
So bittorrent is completely legal in leech only mode.
The letter clearly states that all use of bittorrent is illegal, presumably including BBC iplayer, Blizzards Warcraft Distribution Model, Steam and Team Fortress 2, the Democracy Player, UK University Ubuntu Distributions, and millions of self publishers around the world.
Notwithstanding an ignorance of the law and being almost entirely wrong about technical matters - the purpose is to threaten.
Total Internet Disconnection of your entire household with the full sanction of your ISP and the UK Government is the threat.
Total disconnection if if happens two more times.
No matter if your housebound or rely on the internet, no exemptions for teleworkers, no appeal for the self employed working from home.
No evidence, no appeal no court. Just the BPI disconnecting you.
No habeaus corpus.
The accusation is that someone, perhaps a child, perhaps a clever wireless intruder or even yourself unknowlingly via a virus or use of an 'unauthorised' and 'illegal' network' has downloaded something copyrighted by someone.
The evidence of this crime is not given.
If the standards of evidence are anything like in The USA where MediaDefender simply finds lists of IP addresses using bittorrent trackers or with a shared folder containing an offending title, then they believe you are guilty and are quite prepared to send cease and desist letters to University Printers easily framed by Competent Academics (as referencede in this paper).
The researchers note that no transcript of the file or MD5 checksum is collected a standard of evidence akin to hearsay.
But the UK BPI will not reveal the evidence nor what sort of evidence it posses beyond your IP address which led them to accuse you and slander you to your ISP.
The close the letter with the warning that your account is on a list, it is actively being watched and all large downloads may be curbed if you continue downloading music.
The letter conflates downloading with sharing and uploading thus lying to the British about their rights, which are clear:
IT IS 100% LEGAL TO DOWNLOAD ANY MUSIC IN THE UK.
Neither do they inform you you have certain rights to copy such as timeshifting and transcoding or for personal use under Fair Dealing.
You can copy a certain percentage of any work for personal use or criticism or education, the letter omits this fact.
It also omits to inform you of the public domain, the creative commons, the internet archive full of copyright free movie and music downloads. It can hardly be called educational.
As a carrot itunes is mentioned but this hardly balances the stinking stick of lies and half-truths designed to deprive British Citizens of their rights by threat and deception.
The full text is http://regmedia.co.uk/2008/06/06/bpi_letter.pdf
This will never stand up in court, it is clearly slander.
It is obvious that the Brown government is completely technically incompetent and unaware of Copyright Law that they should give their backing to these threats.
Labour should be dismissed with no confidence unless it condemns these letters immediately.
Has anybody examined any evidence ?
This is disgusting, an outrage.
- umbrellainabin, on 07/27/2008, -4/+17im deliberately gonna get one & i'll post it on digg
i used to love the uk. now i completely hate it. i hate the people, the government, its ridiculous "anti-terror/big brother regime" and most of all ITS STUPID ***** RETARDED ANTI-FREEDOM LAWS - zpchrish, on 07/27/2008, -2/+14The government and the entertainment lobbies have come up with a goal of cutting british p2p use by 80%:
http://www.zeropaid.com/news/9652/Leaked+British+G ...
Who do these guys think they are? Good luck! - inactive, on 07/27/2008, -0/+13canadia.
- makeinstall, on 07/27/2008, -1/+12Totally.
With their incompetence that every IT program runs over budget and the vast majority of them barely work or are not fit for purpose, you cant trust them to format a floppy drive.
And if you do, they'll only lose it on a train somewhere after putting half the country's personal details on it. - eigenweasel, on 07/27/2008, -0/+13Because governments use mass migration to undermine workers' pay levels for the corporations that finance their political parties and because governments want to reinforce the 'copyright' framework for the corporations that finance their political parties.
- zpchrish, on 07/27/2008, -1/+12Umm good luck
"In the UK, some 54% of children aged 11-16yo use illegal P2P and file-sharing services compared to 15% of adults."
http://digg.com/world_news/Over_50_of_UK_youth_are ... - mrloci, on 07/27/2008, -2/+13Luckily we have many isp's to choose from and judging from my own isp's (who have confirmed they will never sign) forum, we are getting loads of refugees from the gestapo isp's.
bye bye to £££ muppet isp's - luke16, on 07/27/2008, -3/+14Stay strong TalkTalk! Don't give in! Stay strong!
- transfuse, on 07/27/2008, -1/+12I'm Ron Burgundy?
- MattBD, on 07/27/2008, -1/+11Can ISP's even tell if illegal downloading is taking place? If they're just looking for filesharing protocols like BitTorrent or Gnutella, then that could be anything (Linux distros, a Nine Inch Nails album that is a legal download, even the BBC's iPlayer uses some kind of peer-to-peer technology). If they're visiting a search engine such as The Pirate Bay, again it could well be something legal.
I suspect the chances of actually getting a letter about this are astronomically against it. - MattBD, on 07/27/2008, -0/+11Sory, but Talk Talk have signed up for this as they are owned by Carphone Warehouse.
- davidbeile, on 07/27/2008, -1/+11In related new, I can't seem to get onto The Pirate Bay anymore.
- JoeBaynham, on 07/27/2008, -2/+12Looks like I'll be switching to https://www.bethere.co.uk/ Tiscali have always sucked.
- digglet08, on 07/27/2008, -1/+11ohhh /sarc, you had me there for a second.
/sarc - eigenweasel, on 07/27/2008, -1/+10***** the definite article.
- JakeW, on 07/27/2008, -3/+13In a few months we'll see an article labeled "New top 6 ISPs in Britian - Don't block traffic" haha
They're screwing themselves, to be honest. - KrazyMon2, on 07/27/2008, -0/+9I thought I had it bad because I was getting forged TCP packets inserted into my stuff. And I like how the MPAA has signed on. What does that last A stand for? O yeah, not Britain. How do they think that they are going to have any control or say in what happens?? Then again I guess they are above the law.
- Panda200x, on 07/27/2008, -2/+11Looks like it's time for me to move to Sweden.
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