The End of The Internet?

[Dazbobaby]

3 strikes and your out proposals from the Government aim to end illegal downloading.
This is truly frightening for various reasons and has enormous security overtones.
Who is going to monitor the usage within the ISP?

Let's not forget that the massive increase in pc sales during the 90's was due to mp3 and video downloads from the internet, as well as use of the internet itself. The majority of users do use the internet for illegal use? So will the ISP's who are forced to kick and ban users going to go out of business?

If you download dvd rom drive firmware to make the region free, or downgrade firmwares for psp's etc... are these illegal? under the rule of law, they are.
Browsing images on the internet is take for granted, but a great majority are likely to be copyrighted material, is this illegal?

[Rik]

Linky?

[Broadback]

Another ill thought out sound bite? To go the way of housing only for the employed?

[Noreen]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7240234.stm

[Inactive]

Worrying, when you consider some of the shady characters running some ISP's.

[Rik]

Thanks, Noreen. I can't help but wonder why the Govt is so keen to appease the music industry while not acting to bring prices paid here into line with prices paid in the States, say.

I can't see how this will work. File-sharing is not, in itself, illegal. How is an ISP to determine what content is legitimate and what is not?

[Noreen]

I think that this just another idea being aired to see what the reaction is.

[madasahatter]

How is an ISP to determine what content is legitimate and what is not?

Ah - there's the rub. So many services use p2p these days (Sky,4OD etc). Is the technology around yet that can distinguish between legal and illegal p2p traffic? The trouble with all this is that the ISPs will need to invest more money, pushing prices up, and while all this packet sniffing or whatever is going on with every single packet that passes through (if that is even possible), traffic will be slowed down to such an extent that we'll be back to dial up speeds before you know it.

To be honest, I think this smacks of the record companies having failed to curb piracy, so they are now just wanting to pass the buck and make it someone elses problem while they sit on their backsides raking in the money.

[Rik]

Yup. 

[Azazel]

yay for stupid ill thought out policys published by the red tops!

Well thats one for the really really dumb laws box, lets just penalise those people not tech savvy enough to use encrypted peer to peer traffic!

[Inactive]

To be honest, I think this smacks of the record companies having failed to curb piracy, so they are now just wanting to pass the buck and make it someone elses problem while they sit on their backsides raking in the money.

Agreed, they are just greedy bar stewards.

[Malc]

It's taken this money grabing gvnmt and the US 6 years to not find Bin Laden, what chance finding 6 million p2p users?

It's another let's get up the backsides of the big companies and make as much profit for them, the share holders, fat cats and gvmnt as we can.

And to hell with street crime, NHS, schools etc

[Inactive]

Indeed Malc, cannot argue with that.

[Philip]

Once again a huge fuss is made about people who download movies and music, which only affects those who already have massively inflated wallets, yet nothing seems to be done about all the sick websites and those people involved with them.  Bizarre.

[Rik]

Money talks, Philip - apparently directly to the Government.

[Inactive]

Nor the ar*eholes that send out Trojans etc.

This looks like a case of greedy music industry leaders, telling our naive government just what they should be doing, clearly there is nobody within government that is capable of giving this serious thought.

[Rik]

Isn't 'Government' combined with 'thought' an oxymoron, In? 

[Inactive]

Indeed Rik.. 

[madasahatter]

The problem is that the industries with pots of money will always have more influence than anything else. The whole thing stinks - at the end of the day, if the money grabbing recording industry had changed with the market, as every other industry has had to do, they would be laughing now - but they just sat back and expected everything to carry on as it was, and now they want everyone else to pay for their massive mistake.

[Rik]

If they want to stop piracy, they could start by looking at equitable pricing. 

[madasahatter]

Yep - the answer is in their very own hands, but they just won't accept the fact that the public knows how much they are being ripped off, and are reacting to it. That's not even mentioning the cr*p that is DRM etc.

[Sebby]

I read about this on the way home from work. In some ways I can see the reasoning behind it; it'll certainly scare a number of users and probably stop them doing it. But, like most things the Government do, it doesn't really tackle the problem. If we got a good deal on music downloads in the first place (like other countries already do) I think a lot more people would be willing to buy.

[bob_s]

This is definitely a bad idea from the uk government.  But as mentioned above, what will they stop at if they start this.

I know downloading movies and music hurts the industries.   But with so many other things on the internet why is this the thing they are looking at locking down.  And where would it stop, listening to international radio, watching international tv. 

We will end up with internet access like China.

Also to provide this service, it will surely cost the isp's twice.  Once to do the work for the government , then with the loss in trade as some users shift to lower usage packages.

[Noreen]

There's more about this here. http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/3403-illegal-music-downloaders-to-face-internet-ban.html

[somanyholes]

Hey All

http://torrentfreak.com/illegal-downloaders-will-not-face-uk-ban-080212/

if you want a really good laugh look at this proposal

http://gizmodo.com/353847/riaa-wants-your-anti+virus-software-to-screen-your-downloads-for-pirated-content