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ISPs to Start Throttling Pirates, More by July 12

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StarTech said:
I assume all the guys pro-piracy have the balls to go regularly to the local movie theater and get in without paying. The rational is exactly the same. It takes the same to run a movie theater for n people that for n+1, and they already made the profit on the first n.
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There's a difference. The theater has costs involved to run it and is supplying a service. Some of their costs include air conditioning, cleaning, running of the movie and so on. If I sneak in I am receiving this service and did not pay for it, so I'm sorta costing them money.

When you download a movie, you are not using someone else's equipment or services (well the end server, sure, but they voluntarily allow you to) and I'm not occupying any space that I should be paying to be in.

If piracy did not exist I would simply have not bothered to watch the movie, or listen to the song, or use the program etc... so I did not even deprive the maker of money.

Is it wrong to pirate? Yes it is, but it's not as bad as some people or the government make it out to be. It's pretty much equivalent to speeding 10 over the limit. Sure it's wrong, but most people do it, and it does not harm anyone. In fact it's kinda a bad example since speeding could potentially harm someone, while piracy does not. Oh noes, they lost a bit of money... they still made a couple billion off the movie. Nobody is ending up on the streets here.
 
Red Squirrel said:
There's a difference. The theater has costs involved to run it and is supplying a service. Some of their costs include air conditioning, cleaning, running of the movie and so on. If I sneak in I am receiving this service and did not pay for it, so I'm sorta costing them money.
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lol wut? A well-mannered individual could easily walk into a movie theater costing the owners no more than the amount of AC it would take to offset the added body heat. Leave a few pennies on the counter, and you've cost them nothing.
 
HamburgerBoy said:
lol wut? A well-mannered individual could easily walk into a movie theater costing the owners no more than the amount of AC it would take to offset the added body heat. Leave a few pennies on the counter, and you've cost them nothing.
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It's theoretical. Say I walk in there, make a huge mess with my popcorn, make a huge mess in the bathroom etc... part of my fee would have covered the cost of staff to clean up such messes, but if lot of people start showing up without paying they are receiving a service that cost money to provide, without paying for it.

Piracy on the other hand does not cost anything whatsoever and is not using the resources of the industry.
 
Red Squirrel said:
It's theoretical. Say I walk in there, make a huge mess with my popcorn, make a huge mess in the bathroom etc... part of my fee would have covered the cost of staff to clean up such messes, but if lot of people start showing up without paying they are receiving a service that cost money to provide, without paying for it.

Piracy on the other hand does not cost anything whatsoever and is not using the resources of the industry.
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Say I download an album, upload it to the internet with one of those advertizing redirect links, and throw in some bonus viruses and child porn for good measure.

Obviously, what the guy previously was talking about was using a service without being a noticeable (or even tangible) drain on the business providing the service. And guess what? It costs money to provide the service of music and movies too.
 
so does anyone have any information on how this will actually work?

does it require complaints from rightsholders?

are they being more proactive with packetsniffing?

are they being provided a list of 'verboten works' and thus if they see you torrenting something on the list they send you a warning?

are they targeting high bandwidth users and manually examining everything they download and see if they note anything suspicious?
 
Red Squirrel said:
There's a difference. The theater has costs involved to run it and is supplying a service.
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And the bands/record companies don't? It doesn't cost them money to record, produce, mix, create artwork and manufacture CDs? It doesn't cost them manhours and to pay everyone involved? It doesn't cost them to pay the band to perform the music?

So you're keeping the record company from recouping their cost, the same as a theater.

For some reason people think this is all done for free and once it's in a digital format there was no cost to produce and no lost revenue for people to distribute it for free. Doesn't make much sense.

There is NO difference. It's a product and it's being stolen. Period. You can whine about the establishment and how words are used that you don't want to be used, but if you're going to be a thief, live up to it and be a man. It is what it is.
 
tynopik said:
so does anyone have any information on how this will actually work?

does it require complaints from rightsholders?

are they being more proactive with packetsniffing?

are they being provided a list of 'verboten works' and thus if they see you torrenting something on the list they send you a warning?

are they targeting high bandwidth users and manually examining everything they download and see if they note anything suspicious?
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http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...ee-to-six-strikes-copyright-enforcement-plan/
 
LikeLinus said:
And the bands/record companies don't? It doesn't cost them money to record, produce, mix, create artwork and manufacture CDs? It doesn't cost them manhours and to pay everyone involved? It doesn't cost them to pay the band to perform the music?

So you're keeping the record company from recouping their cost, the same as a theater.

For some reason people think this is all done for free and once it's in a digital format there was no cost to produce and no lost revenue for people to distribute it for free. Doesn't make much sense.

There is NO difference. It's a product and it's being stolen. Period. You can whine about the establishment and how words are used that you don't want to be used, but if you're going to be a thief, live up to it and be a man. It is what it is.
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Here we go again. It isn't theft. No matter how many times you call shoplifting armed robbery, it doesn't make it so. Erroneous statements don't become correct with repetition.

For the movie theatre example, it's trespassing. There's no copyright claim. If someone breaks into my house and listens to my CDs, the CDs aren't the issue. It's the breaking and entering that's a problem.
 
LikeLinus said:
And the bands/record companies don't? It doesn't cost them money to record, produce, mix, create artwork and manufacture CDs? It doesn't cost them manhours and to pay everyone involved? It doesn't cost them to pay the band to perform the music?

So you're keeping the record company from recouping their cost, the same as a theater.

For some reason people think this is all done for free and once it's in a digital format there was no cost to produce and no lost revenue for people to distribute it for free. Doesn't make much sense.

There is NO difference. It's a product and it's being stolen. Period. You can whine about the establishment and how words are used that you don't want to be used, but if you're going to be a thief, live up to it and be a man. It is what it is.
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Except pirating does not remove or use any resources from the record company. That's what lot of people seem to not understand. Pirating does not even involve their servers or anything. It is a complete separate copy made using zero resources from the record company to produce this copy. No, it does not make it ok, but it's not stealing. It's piracy. It's two different things. Stealing would be breaking into a movie store and stealing the physical media. This deprives them from one or more copies, which cost money and materials to produce and it causes damage that cost money to repair.

Most people who pirate would not have bought it otherwise. Say they do somehow manage to stop piracy, their sales are barely going to go up, if at all. People who used to pirate are just going to find something else to do. The war on piracy is pretty much the same as the war on drugs, it serves no purpose and they will never get what they want out of it.
 
LikeLinus said:
So identify theft or Stealing a person's identity isn't theft because you're not actually depriving them of a property, it's just an identity and not a physical item. You can still use your identity.
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Identity theft is in a way depriving someone of their ability to prove their identity because it calls their identity into question.
 
lxskllr said:
Here we go again. It isn't theft. No matter how many times you call shoplifting armed robbery, it doesn't make it so. Erroneous statements don't become correct with repetition.

For the movie theatre example, it's trespassing. There's no copyright claim. If someone breaks into my house and listens to my CDs, the CDs aren't the issue. It's the breaking and entering that's a problem.
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Trespassing in this case is just as victimless as copyright infringement. Nothing is physically lost, and if you don't get caught the "owner" will never realize you got to enjoy a service without paying for it.
 
LikeLinus said:
How is paying for an CD or buying an album on iTunes/Amazon/Whatever "extracting pennies from everyone". They make music = you pay for it. It's like $10-$15 max. I'm not sure that is screwing anyone over. Not that it matters, it won't change anything. lol
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Read up about:

- RIAA-type organisations around the world trying to extort money from say car garages because the mechanics have a radio playing in the workshop, or someone playing some music at their wedding reception.

- Various artists who have declared themselves bankrupt in order to free themselves from recording contracts that are extremely profitable for the record label but not at all for the artist.

- Record labels trying to cheat artists out of digital sales because their lawyers say the contract only specified physical sales. Variations on these stories include the label only paying the artist about 12% of the sale, despite there being negligible production costs or overheads for the record label. I guess record labels appreciate the ease and speed at which a file can be copied.

- Which US court case was it that the record label was trying to get $x0,000 per mp3 that the person downloaded? Wasn't the first case involving that person something like $262,000 per mp3 downloaded, then got knocked down to $x0,000, then way back up again? Does even $100 or $1000 per MP3 downloaded seem fair to you, let alone these amounts? Compare these fines to what a criminal might expect to be fined for more conventional crimes.

- Record labels shutting down sites with freely-downloadable sheet music / tablature. How does this equal by any stretch of the definition of lost income? If anything it encourages their future income by allowing would-be musicians to be able to practice using the music they like the most.

- Record labels having the resources to waste on YouTube video takedowns despite there being another ten to choose from.

The funny thing is that when record labels were first starting out, they had a terrible time with the publishers of sheet music, who at that time were extremely wealthy and powerful. The latter was trying to extort money from the former every time music was played based on the sheet music, using pretty much the exact same arguments the record labels now use to complain how they've got it so bad.

Please don't imply that the music labels give anyone any sort of fair deal. Of course, this doesn't automatically make illegal music downloading 'ok', but the fact of the matter is that companies will always take some losses due to the fact that some people don't want to play fair. If the record labels were remotely in financial danger despite their best efforts to adapt to 21st-Century market conditions due to rampant piracy, you might have an argument. In reality, they're making greater profits than ever.

In the UK, they want to essentially be judge, jury and executioner in digital copyright infringement cases and have the ability to boot people off broadband. Clearly they believe that their profits are more important than anyone elses' - the fact that the Internet is used for a hell of a lot more than music distribution, legal or not.

I'd be playing the world's smallest violin just for them, but I'd probably get goons breaking down my door to stop me playing unauthorised music 🙂
 
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tynopik said:
so does anyone have any information on how this will actually work?

does it require complaints from rightsholders?
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Yes. It's basically a legal compact for how the ISPs and the rightsholders will interact, what the ISPs will do about complaints, and how the ISPs will work together to keep pirates from being able to easily bounce from ISP to ISP.

are they being more proactive with packetsniffing?
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Nope. Catching pirates is the rightsholder's job; punishing pirates is the ISP's. To throw a bad Law & Order analogy in here, think of the rightsholders as the cops and the ISPs as the DA/judge.

Obviously ISPs could start network sniffing but that's not what is being proposed. It's a lot of work, liable to get the FCC involved, and is otherwise not in their best interests.

are they being provided a list of 'verboten works' and thus if they see you torrenting something on the list they send you a warning?

are they targeting high bandwidth users and manually examining everything they download and see if they note anything suspicious?
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See above.
 
lxskllr said:
Here we go again. It isn't theft. No matter how many times you call shoplifting armed robbery, it doesn't make it so. Erroneous statements don't become correct with repetition.

For the movie theatre example, it's trespassing. There's no copyright claim. If someone breaks into my house and listens to my CDs, the CDs aren't the issue. It's the breaking and entering that's a problem.
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It is theft. Precisely what it is that is being stolen, and from who, is something that could be debated, but at the end of the day you are illegally getting something for free that you should have paid for.

That's theft.
 
Fighting against piracy is like fighting against people using the bathroom at a store, complaining that its going to sink their whole business.

Do you steal toilet paper when you go to the bathroom? lol.

It's honestly a small expense for them.

I purchased the most music, dvd's, games, etc. back when I downloaded alot of music in the napster days. Its what got me interested in music.

Before the net, people were out more, so they hung out in record stores. After the net, people didn't go out as much, and just weren't at record stores as much. After napster, people became really good at naming songs, who played them, etc, and they'd go out and buy the specific songs they liked.

The record industry was annoyed people weren't hanging out in record stores like they used to, but they got the reason wrong. It wasn't piracy, just the internet in general. I don't doubt that sales fell since people weren't perusing the store as often, but they took the WRONG strategy, holy hell.

I never go to a store just to shoot the breeze now. I always know what I want researched ahead of time, or at least back when I bought music before DLC I would buy CD's with songs on them that I liked, and listen the shit out of them. DLC to me with so many restrictions really pisses me off and is not worth the hassle. I also ripped, mixed, reburned, etc alot of legally bought songs much like people did with cassettes. Until they started making CD's impossible to rip. That also pissed me off alot.

With no piracy, I just don't really research music anymore, nor buy it. Piracy is definitely DOWN since back in the day, yet sales are also DOWN. So the correlation isn't as strong as they propose. These days, there isn't a whole lot worth buying. I download nothing. I guess I'm just not aware of stuff I like thats out there.

Quality has gone down too in the storytelling aspect with movies, etc. Yet they blame piracy. The more they scapegoat piracy, and more likely they are to dance around some of the real problems (movies sucking, that $500m bomb movie, etc) and the more likely they are to deathspiral as an industry.
 
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Suing the homeless for using the bathroom would be a losing strategy for sure, all that toilet paper, air conditioning, and water that they "steal", lets add legal costs to that too. Sue the shit out of the homeless, maybe that will increase sales. Say putting the bathroom in the back of the store is "just the way we always ran our business" and then claim that the homeless walking all the way through the store stinks up the whole place, driving away all the customers.

But there should be plenty of paying customers if its a good store. I don't see how they can complain about profits so much when their legal and lobbying costs have got to be sky high.
 
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HamburgerBoy said:
Trespassing in this case is just as victimless as copyright infringement. Nothing is physically lost, and if you don't get caught the "owner" will never realize you got to enjoy a service without paying for it.
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It's not exactly the same. You can't make infinite copies of theatre seats. A couple people getting in without paying would be very similar to downloading music, but it doesn't scale at all. If the theatre gets filled with non-payers, then those that want to pay won't be able to get in; there won't be room. There will always be people who want to pay for music, movies, or whatever. The art is valuable to them, and they'll support it. Same as it's been throughout history.
 
Beautiful case of private industry doing what the government can't or won't. Finally those Somali pirates will get what's coming to them.
 
master_shake_ said:
um that says 6 strikes, but the last strike involves sending out a 7th strike??

when exactly is the subscriber supposed to lose his/her subscription??

or is the ISP not willing to cut off a paying customer?
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Dunno. It looks like ISPs have a lot of leeway in what happens. I think we'll have to wait, and see what happens in practice. Keep an eye on tech news sites to see how it ends up working out.

Edit:
According to this, they just say "fuck it" and give up after awhile :^D

What happens to those who ignore all warnings?

This is an interesting question. Public information provides no answer but the CCI told TorrentFreak the following:

“The program is intended to educate consumers, taking them through a system that we believe will be successful for most consumers. If a subscriber were to receive 6 alerts, that user would be considered a subscriber the program is unable to reach.”

“If ISPs receive additional allegations of copyright infringement for that user, those notices will not generate alerts under the program,” a CCI spokesperson told us.

In other words, nothing will happen under the program. People who receive more than 6 warnings are removed from the system. They wont receive any further warnings or punishments and are allowed to continue using their Internet service as usual.
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https://torrentfreak.com/how-scary-is-the-us-six-strikes-anti-piracy-scheme-120605/
 
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Veliko said:
It is theft. Precisely what it is that is being stolen, and from who, is something that could be debated, but at the end of the day you are illegally getting something for free that you should have paid for.

That's theft.
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Nope, it's not. You can say it 1000 times doesn't make it true. It may be illegal but it is in no way theft.
 
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