Britain moves against illegal file sharing
CBC News out of Canada is reporting that British ISPs are making an aggressive move against illegal file sharing by implementing a program designed to discover copyright violators, who will be sent warning letters and may potentially have their internet connections disconnected.
For more on the article, read below.
The article states:
Under the agreement announced Thursday between the British film and music industries, telecommunications regulator Ofcom and the country's six biggest ISPs — BT, Virgin Media, BSkyB, Carphone Warehouse, Orange and Tiscali — people who illegally share copyrighted files over the internet will receive weekly letters warning them that they are being monitored.
The program will be tested for three months while the parties discuss how to best take action against the estimated six million Britons who illegally share files.
So what they are planning to do with people caught is pretty interesting. The article states that they may consider implementing a "three-strikes-you're-out rule" where violators would have their service terminated after three warnings. They've also considered other options, including traffic throttling violators speeds as a number of ISPs in the good old US of A are already doing.
The article states:
Britain's goal is to reduce illegal file sharing by up to 80 per cent over the next two to three years, according to The Guardian.
It's an interesting topic, but I don't think anyone's seen a major decline in file sharing as a result of these laws. I still wonder how much of it is people wanting to steal their files, and how much it is people liking the convenience and freedom of file sharing. I personally by all of my music off of iTunes now, but I hate the fact that if I'm listening to something, I can't easily send it to one of my friends for him to check out. I think this actually hurts some bands. For example, my favorite band (which has sense broke up) is Dispatch. They're were a band that I never would've heard about if not for file sharing with other user's who had similar music interests. Guess what? I own every Dispatch CD, DVD, many T-shirts, and since the band has broken up, I've purchased every CD from each of the band member's new projects. I would say the band should be pretty happy that I had a friend share their music with me... maybe file sharing is not so terrible?
By the way, thanks to Dave Lewis from Liquidmatrix Security Digest for publishing enough good stories out of and about Canada to make me add a few Canadian sites to my RSS feeds for some decent stories.
-Nate