UK anti-piracy action set to begin

[aj101202]

Quote from BBC today:

"The email warnings form part of a larger scheme that aims to highlight the value of the UK's creative industries

People in the UK who persistently pirate music and movies will soon start getting emails warning them that their actions are illegal.

The warnings are part of a larger scheme that aims to educate people about copyright and legal ways to enjoy digital content.

Starting next year, up to four warnings annually will be sent to households suspected of copyright infringement.

But if people ignore the warnings, no further action will be taken.

The warning system is the result of four years' wrangling between internet service providers (ISPs) and industry bodies representing music and movie-makers.

The original enforcement regime was outlined in the Digital Economy Act 2010 and called for persistent pirates to have their net access cut off after a series of warnings.

'Difficult to protect'

In addition, rights holders wanted warning letters to mention the potential penalties people would face for copyright infringement and access to a database of known illegal file-sharers.

The years of talks brokered by the government have led to the creation of the Voluntary Copyright Alert Programme (Vcap) that uses warnings via email or post.

The UK's biggest ISPs - BT, TalkTalk, Virgin and Sky - have signed up to Vcap. Many smaller ISPs are expected to join later.

In addition, the UK government has pledged to contribute £3.5m to an education campaign that will promote legal ways to listen to music and watch movies.

Introducing the three-year educational scheme, Business Secretary Vince Cable said the initiative was all about supporting the UK's creative industries.

"It's a difficult industry to pin down and it's also difficult to protect," he said. "But unless you protect it then it's an industry that cannot function."

'Persuading the persuadable'

Government estimates suggest the UK's creative industries contribute £71bn to the UK economy and support about 1.68 million jobs.

Geoff Taylor, chief executive of the BPI, said it had been a "long road" to produce the Vcap agreement. He said that though it lacked punitive action it could still help bring about change in people's habits.

"It's about persuading the persuadable, such as parents who do not know what is going on with their net connection," he said.

"Vcap is not about denying access to the internet. It's about changing attitudes and raising awareness so people can make the right choice," he said.

As well as taking part in Vcap, the BPI and other rights holders were working on other fronts to tackle persistent pirates, file-sharing sites and to suppress the economy that supported them, said Mr Taylor.

These initiatives included issuing notices to Google about links to pirated content, action in the courts to shut down websites that offer links to infringing content, and working with advertisers to limit the funds that flow to file-sharing sites."

What's does everyone think of this will it help or is the government wasting money as usual

[BonBon Scott]

It's great and all, but I'm sure people will be able to find a way around it. They always do.

 

Personally, I think we have more important issues in the UK, but that's just me.

 

EDIT - Linksy: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-28374457

[fojacko]

To clarify, the "reminders" are being sent to file sharers. At least, that's what i heard when i was listening to the radio.

 

To add to the discussion, I think they need to do something about the price of digital content, as someone who only watches tv shows and movies once, I'm not going to spend £20 for half the season of adventure time. I use netflix for the shows that are on there, if they aren't i will check amazon/itunes to check the price, if it is ridiculously overpriced (and incomplete in adventure time's case), then ofc i'm going to pirate it, i'm not made of money.

 

The warnings will help people who legitimately think what they're doing is fine, my cousin streams film, but he insists that it's not illegal, and i cant be assed to argue with him. So an email from BT should put him in his place.

[Loe]

Why do I get the feeling that this law is shady and misleading?

Edited July 19, 2014 by Loe

[mr moose]

Cue in the all the posts about piracy not being an issue and all the BS justification for it. 

[jaggysnake57]

yeah i read this and thought whats the point....instead of hitting it head on and failing....hard. why not change the buissness models so that piracy becomes more hassle than its worth it. this is bollocks they give letters but if you ignore them there is no recorse....whats the fucking point! what a waste of money this shit law was.. 

 

office 365 is the best example of this for me. its just plain better to pay the £8 month and get all that storage and the apps for 5 people than it is to pirate it for free.......and ms still make a boatload out of it

[Toxic Tom]

It just sounds like more bullshit, like that law about how websites have to have obnoxious "WE USE COOKIES LIKE EVERY OTHER WEBSITE" popups.

[deviant88]

Idiots what are they doing letting this happen.Anti piracy isnt bad but in order for them to know that a file you downloaded they have to scan and record every single thing you do online.What the hell man screw privacy i guess?

This will ruin internet if it goes worldwide too.

I cant stop thinking of this scenario, someone copies music from original source reencodes,encrypts and shares it with friends online in password protected archives now,will these Anti-piracy agencies get hold of your files from your computer? break the archives and listen to the music to see if its copyrighted lol? thats imposible if you ask me,doing it on such a large scale.In other words all they can stop is mass piracy like thepiratebay torrents,but in the begining years of internet i remember there were no torrents since speeds overdistance was very slow,and we were using private software like DC++ to share data between users,all that will happen is we would go back to those types of piracy but stopping data sharing is imposible unles > communism really.

Are they planning to break the privacy laws and scan our computer files and data sharing over internet in order to stop us from breaking copyright laws, genius, "fight fire with fire" used wrong.

[LAwLz]

Cue in the all the posts about piracy not being an issue and all the BS justification for it. 

Alright here comes one.

 

This won't solve anything. People already know that piracy is illegal, and many of them already know about the legal alternatives.

 

Want to know why I pirate? For a few reasons. For example I hate, absolutely loathe DRM. I often pirate stuff I got legal and free access to, just because I don't want some bullshit DRM that makes it impossible to easily watch it. For example I got a ton of TV channels and NetFlix, and yet I still pirate some movies because I don't want to stream it since the bus I take to school goes through long distances where my cellular data connection just dies. I want my media played in my video player of choice, and stored locally so that it's fast (no buffering or waiting required) and doesn't eat up my limited data plan. Other times I literally can't get some content without moving to a different country. A lot of the anime I watch are not released outside of Japan so the only choices I got are to either pirate it, or move to Japan. I pick the first one and then support the creators by buying licensed goods (slightly NSFW).

 

I wrote a fairly long post about piracy a few years ago (brings up that "baww piracy is hurting the industry" is pure bullshit) and I think it still holds up.

Telling people that piracy is wrong is just a waste of money. What they should do instead is use that money to support and come up with new services that are better than piracy. I have no doubt in my mind that services like Steam, Spotify and NetFlix have reduced piracy, because a lot of the times they are better than piracy. Removing region restrictions (Swedish NetFlix sucks compared to the US one for example) would be a great way to reduce piracy. I see piracy as a solution to a distribution problem. Trying to stop piracy will not fix this problem, it is just a waste of money.

[mr moose]

Acceptable rant removed.

 

 

That's fine, My issue is with these kiddies in places like America/Australia that can buy their movie online for $1 and stream it with their uncapped internet, or walk two doors down and buy the dvd for $15, yet still pirate it and sit behind their keyboard justifying their actions with geo-blocking or distribution issues.  Neither of which affect them.    If you lived in nth Korea or Rwanda with a dictatorship government blocking all your abilities to view content then fine, or if the content creator won't allow the sale of their content in your country then by all means steal it, they have given up the rights to it in that country anyway.

[fojacko]

That's fine, My issue is with these kiddies in places like America/Australia that can buy their movie online for $1 and stream it with their uncapped internet, or walk two doors down and buy the dvd for $15, yet still pirate it and sit behind their keyboard justifying their actions with geo-blocking or distribution issues.  Neither of which affect them.    If you lived in nth Korea or Rwanda with a dictatorship government blocking all your abilities to view content then fine, or if the content creator won't allow the sale of their content in your country then by all means steal it, they have given up the rights to it in that country anyway.

 

In the UK, we can't purchase the entirety of season 5 of adventure time. Piracy is the only way to watch the entire thing.

[Ruostunut kokis]

I know this law's meaning is somewhat good (note the word 'somewhat', good in legal perspective, bad in pretty much any other perspective), but in all honesty they're just wasting tax payers' money on nothing / making things even worse.

 

Kinda makes me think how in the flying f*** have the people in the UK government gotten there and managed to stay there? I think it's just too stupid to be true, just by looking at the laws UK government has set recently / is planning on setting.

[kuddlesworth9419]

If there is no consequence then no will will stop doing it. And besides how will they know if you are infringing on content because I download music and videos legitimately from Youtube such as fan made songs and remixes as well as podcasts does that make me infringing or stealing content.

[VirtualNinja]

That's fine, My issue is with these kiddies in places like America/Australia that can buy their movie online for $1 and stream it with their uncapped internet, or walk two doors down and buy the dvd for $15

 

Where did you hear that?

Here in Australia we have crap internet and the few unlimited providers are even worse than crap. Regarding the $1 movies nope would like that but we have nothing like that no netflix etc. Any new DVD movie release is easily $30+. The sole pay TV supplier in the country will cost you $124pm to get all channels hell just to get the basic and sport package is $74pm. The classic video stores have gone the way of the dodo here.

 

Content delivery in this country is stuck in the dark ages, hence we are quite prolific in piracy. It's not an excuse it is just the way it is here.

[yurihellsing]

 

But if people ignore the warnings, no further action will be taken.

 

Am i reading that right?

[ZeroBreaker]

Agree 100% with Lawlz. In the UK, the situation is absolutely bizzare. The only things I torrent are anime and foreign movies, which are otherwise unavailable full stop over here because netflix, funimation, hulu etc. either contain nothing at all (the first two) or are unavailable full stop (hulu). I used a vpn for a while, and went through loopholes to get access to american sites, because they don't accept uk debit cards and don't allow access to uk ip's at all in any popular services, and gave up when i realised how much time and effort i was wasting when I could just torrent what i liked and get it there and then. It's stupid how it is more difficult to get stuff legally than to get stuff illegally in most cases, at least here in the UK. Services like steam and, to an extent crunchyroll (though it isn't really successful, it seems to be doing alright) work well because the problem with piracy has always been about effort rather than cost. People buy on amazon without a second thought, because you never physically hand over the money - it feels like you are clicking a button and in comes your product. The same should apply to digital content but most of the time it doesn't. Pirates will always pirate, but the problem is the people who would otherwise buy legitimately are actually being forced to pirate because there is no other way to access the content without a huge amount of effort and a disproportianate cost.

 

TL;DR Maybe if content was actually f-ing available and for reasonable f-ing cost and effort, piracy would be as much of an issue as physical theft, i.e. not something most of the population is involved in or remotely interested in.

 

 

 

Am i reading that right?

 

Our government have this thing about following through, i.e. they don't. While in this situation it's beneficial to the population, it's telling that the government won't pursue something they have flagged as a problem, nevermind something that the public think is a problem. We tend to follow in the footsteps of america for most things, which is scary.

[WelshDdraig]

Am i reading that right?

I was about to put the exact same thing. Even though people will have warnings, there's nothing to stop them from doing it. There isn't even a fine, or internet removal. just a slap on the wrist basically and away you go to do it again. 

Basically, I'm reading this as a waste of money that could have been used somewhere more, how do you say it?, relevant, perhaps better services that offer people what they want at a decent speed. 

[yurihellsing]

Our government have this thing about following through, i.e. they don't. While in this situation it's beneficial to the population, it's telling that the government won't pursue something they have flagged as a problem, nevermind something that the public think is a problem. We tend to follow in the footsteps of america for most things, which is scary.

 

 

I was about to put the exact same thing. Even though people will have warnings, there's nothing to stop them from doing it. There isn't even a fine, or internet removal. just a slap on the wrist basically and away you go to do it again. 

Basically, I'm reading this as a waste of money that could have been used somewhere more, how do you say it?, relevant, perhaps better services that offer people what they want at a decent speed. 

 

Something else a friend of mine pointed out to me

 

 

In addition, the UK government has pledged to contribute £3.5m to an education campaign that will promote legal ways to listen to music and watch movies

 

In other words a Government funded advertising campaign.

[mr moose]

Where did you hear that?

Here in Australia we have crap internet and the few unlimited providers are even worse than crap. Regarding the $1 movies nope would like that but we have nothing like that no netflix etc. Any new DVD movie release is easily $30+. The sole pay TV supplier in the country will cost you $124pm to get all channels hell just to get the basic and sport package is $74pm. The classic video stores have gone the way of the dodo here.

 

Content delivery in this country is stuck in the dark ages, hence we are quite prolific in piracy. It's not an excuse it is just the way it is here.

 

There are several online movie options in Australia (In America they are $1( here they are $5.99 (bigpond for example for the latest dvd release).  you don't need subscription tv and I am not too sure what brochure you are reading but there is more than one option and the packages usually start at $50 a month.  However that is irrelevant as I am talking about online content.  New release movies from a shop can be anything from $12 to $30 they are not ALL $30.   Please check your facts.  Average land-line internet connection in Australia suburbs is 15Mb/s and median speed for Aus. is 9Mb/s.  Don't believe all the whining and bullshit about Australian internet. 

 

Scroll down to distribution:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subscription_television_in_Australia

 

I can see at least three options for you in Sydney.

 

For internet speed read this, this is from 5 years ago, and speeds have increased since then:

http://thebernoullitrial.wordpress.com/2009/03/17/median-adsl2-broadband-speed-in-australia/

[Trik'Stari]

Dear governments of the world, please listen. Ahem,

 

YOU

CANNOT

FIGHT

THE

INTERNET

YOU

WILL

ALWAYS

LOSE.

 

That is all.

[LukeTim]

[BalloonZaptor]

If this works I reckon it will be very beneficial as many people pirate just because it's too difficult to access legally. I dislike piracy and I think this'll hopefully be good

[gatecrasherlok]

I think this is a very good idea in trying to clamp down persistant pirater's and a good warning to the upcomin generation. However the underlying problem seems to be brushed aside, the absurd prices of Movies, films etc. I have a hefty collection dating back from way back when but it has dwindled somewhat over the last 3-4 years as the asking prices of New movies, tv series is just insane in the UK.

[LAwLz]

If this works I reckon it will be very beneficial as many people pirate just because it's too difficult to access legally. I dislike piracy and I think this'll hopefully be good

I don't get this logic. If people pirate because of a distribution problem, why not spend money solving that instead?

Things like piracy and AdBlocking exists because there exist problem with the current model. You should not ignore these issues and punish the people trying to fix them. What you should do is try to correct these issues so that people have fewer and fewer reasons to pirate to begin with.

[BalloonZaptor]

I don't get this logic. If people pirate because of a distribution problem, why not spend money solving that instead?

Things like piracy and AdBlocking exists because there exist problem with the current model. You should not ignore these issues and punish the people trying to fix them. What you should do is try to correct these issues so that people have fewer and fewer reasons to pirate to begin with.

What I'm referring to is the fact that they're going to spend money (Can't get exact quote) to promote services(I thought it was make) that are good for accessing this stuff legally. And I meant in the way I imagine it should work based on what they've said