Mandy gets tough

[Rik]

Totally unjustifiable. People will be made to fund BT's network, whether they use broadband or not, in order that BT can carry out an upgrade it should be doing for commercial reasons.

[john]

What's the betting that it will start at 50p a month but it will also be regularly increased in the budgets 

[Rik]

It had crossed my mind, John.

[dujas]

UK Anti-Piracy Plans [could] Cost More Than Music Industry 'Losses'

[Rik]

It's like everything else in the UK, it stinks, it's ill thought out and it's money grubbing. 

[Simon]

Shouldn't BT be paying this out of their profits?

[glen]

What's the betting that it will start at 50p a month but it will also be regularly increased in the budgets 

Well you know what, don't pay it then , and if everyone doesn't pay it they'll have to scrap it. What they going to do put everyone in prison ?

[axisofevil]

Why not have a graduated payment which is inversely proportional to the length of copper/aluminium used by your phone line.
That way, people far from the exchange would pay virtually nothing.

[Rik]

Nice idea. 

[talos]

Just another tax, like road tax this will go to the government not to upgrade the phone lines.   How about a window tax, haven't had one of those for a few years

[Rik]

I thought that went to Microsoft, Bob.

[talos]

 

[john]

Well you know what, don't pay it then , and if everyone doesn't pay it they'll have to scrap it. What they going to do put everyone in prison ?

Because the majority won't want to risk being cut off for non-payment (deducting the 50p tax would probably still constitute non-payment).

I think the best we can hope for is to express our disapproval at the next election.

[Rik]

It's the only thing we can hope for, John. As it's not separately billed, withholding it would be a gigantic mess.

[dujas]

The BPI respond: BPI slams "shameful" BT

After BT made the claim that getting tough on Internet piracy would cost around £1 million per day, the body representing the music industry has launched a counter-offensive. BPI boss Geoff Taylor says broadband companies have seen their revenues rising while those of the record business have gone the opposite way because of piracy – and that the ISP's stance is "just about protecting profits."

Newspaper The Mirror has emerged as an unlikely battleground in a war of words between senior BT and BPI figures – with the latter now having launched a counter-attack. "It's shameful for a company like BT to know that a high percentage of the traffic it carries is illegal material but do nothing," Taylor told the paper. "If you operate a commercial service and know it is being used to break the law, taking steps to ensure it is used legally is a cost of doing business."

A BT Spokesperson told ISPreview:

"BT and other ISPs agreed to send 1,000 notifications alleging copyright infringement a week for a 12-week trial period, with BT picking up the bill for this activity for our own customers as an act of goodwill. However, it was understood that at the end of this period, we would need to take stock and have further discussions with the rights holders about costs etc.

During this period, the BPI sent us around 21,000 alleged cases, but less than two-thirds proved to be properly matched to an IP address of a BT customer and not a duplicate, so this could indicate that the true extent of this activity is much lower than the 100,000 number the BPI claim since February. In addition since none of the customers we wrote to during the trial were subsequently taken to court by the BPI, we don't know whether they were actually guilty of infringement.

We definitely do not know the extent of illegal file sharing on our network. Many peer to peer applications are perfectly legal, such as World of Warcraft, BBC iPlayer and Skype. To investigate the exact nature of each peer to peer packet would involve an intrusive level of inspection of people's traffic and customers would rightly complain about BT infringing their privacy where we to do it."

[Rik]

And the BPI knows that a high percentage of the traffic is illegal how, exactly?

[dujas]

Seems to me it would sent every niche ISP out of business.

[Rik]

It might well...

[glen]

You have to laugh at the fear mongering again.

[Rik]

Or is it greed?

[glen]

Both.