BT plans to soak subscribers to police filesharing
PROPOSALS to suspend the Internet connections of people caught illegally downloading copyrighted files will cost each UK broadband customer about £25 a year, according to BT.
The proposals are being driven by business secretary Peter Mandelson as a means of curbing illegal downloads, which allegedly are eating into the profits of the UK’s entertainment industry.
John Petter, BT’s consumer division boss, said policing downloads could cost the industry about £1 million a day.
Petter said that because broadband is a thin-margin business, there is no way any ISP, including BT, would be able to absorb the cost so it would have to be passed on to consumers.
A BT spokesman said the main cost would be the integration of new technology into the network to allow ISPs to track downloaders. Other overheads would include the costs of notifying and educating consumers on the new policy as well as enforcement costs.
“We feel that instead music labels should develop new business models,” said the spokesman.
“At the moment, they just want to outsource all their problems to ISPs. Legislation before the introduction of Digital Britain did allow music labels to go after people that downloaded copyrighted music, but they did not take advantage of it because it would have generated bad PR for themselves,” the spokesman added.
Responding to BT, a Department for Business spokesman said, "We have issued a consultation on our proposals. It is clear that the rights holders do suffer harm from file-sharing; it is also clear that tackling unlawful file-sharing will involve costs. We have asked industry for reliable figures on both the damage caused by file-sharing and on the cost these obligations will involve.”
He added, "Any decision would be based on a proper cost-benefit analysis and have to be proportionate. We hope BT will respond to the consultation and provide the information to help us make an informed decision."
No ISP has come out in support of Mandelson’s proposals, which came as a surprise to the industry given that such a move was specifically ruled out by the government’s Digital Britain report in June.
Earlier this month, the chief executives of Britain’s biggest internet providers, including BT, united to criticise the government’s latest plans.
BT’s Ian Livingston, Carphone Warehouse’s Charles Dunstone and Orange’s Tom Alexander said because the vast majority of their customers do not illegally download content, many innocent customers would suffer as a result of Mandelson’s proposals.
The Internet Service Providers Association (ISPA) also registered its disappointment with the government’s apparent U-turn. The ISPA has pointed out that policing downloads could contravene data protection laws that prevent ISPs from looking at the content of information over their networks.
Another problem that has been raised is how ISPs will differentiate between legitimate downloads and illegitimate ones. For example, entertainers and producers that want to share their content with people may risk causing the recipients to be falsely identified as copyright criminals. µ
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way to go
You're kidding right?
They're just watching their own bottom line!
I'm sure if the law is passed, that their £25 will prove to be a huge over estimation and just push their profits up even more.
This is all because Mandelson was bending over for Davis Geffen while on holiday with him. (eeeuuuwwww)
About time he considered his voters rather at this point but then he is a labour globalist so I guess that isn't going to happen
Labour long since stopped caring about the voters. They know theyve lost the next election no matter what. So now is the ideal time to railroad through all the cr4p that nobody wants - draconian "anti-piracy" measures, ID cards, and so on ad nauseam.
It can only get worse from here on in.
So why don't the two sides meet half way and have a "file sharer plan" for music fiends. For say, UKP 15 per year the user gets to legally download all the crappy mp3s they want and the proceeds get distributed to the artists (not the record companies). No policing to do, no new laws required, no criminalising of the citizenry...in short, everyone's a winner. Am I missing something?
This is just typical of the recent tactics by the archaic physical media distribution companies. Hey, I tell you what, how about I come up with a product, lets say a recipe for cookies, fail to be able to sell it, yet find some people making cookies. So I should demand that supermarkets charge all visiting customers a fee, that I want. Mmm! Okay, pretty poor analogy, but nearly there.
Look, media companies, pull your thumbs out of your ass, and wake up to how people are using the new technologies.
We want access to all, and the ability to buy it. We're not criminals, we're just lazy, and don't want to have to stand in queues with 'people'! I want to sit at home, download something of my choice, check it out, and order it's physical equivalent for delivery. Erm, in fact, that's what I do do. (!)
An easy way to prove a point if the gov do put this through would be to cut off gov internet connections for illegal filesharing. No doubt it goes on, with that many employees, it has to.
I'm going to laugh when the British companies realize that by doing this, less people will know about their products, less will have then tried their products, and watch their sales plummet.
Piracy is actually good, not bad. It drives demand. Without it, demand, and the synergy of demand among a group of people, will lower demand.
They're going to praise the piracy laws, until they realize their piracy laws are actually hurting their bottom line.
What people don't realize is that the more people that have tried your product, the more word of mouth, and more information about the product is out there. Which drives demand.
I don't know how many times I've seen people pirate one thing, then buy the next version coming out because they were introduced to the series through piracy. Then when the next one came out, they go, yeah, 'i liked the first one'.
If you don't know what the product is, you won't tend to buy it.
That and again when you remember the study that those that pirate are the ones who buy the most music, go to the most theater movies, and buy the most video games. It just stands one to think, that all these laws are going to bring down demand first, and then the company.
Don't think it will happen. Well money is about to start getting very tight, and if people can't try things out first, or earlier generations, they won't put the money down.
Trust me, this will be a HUGE issue when you consider a falling currency (majorly...the U.S. dollar, and perhaps british sterling...versus other currencies over the next few years.
Buy your chips now, before the dollar or pound are worth so much less, a 100 dollar processor will cost you 300. Under such a climate, if you can't try, people won't buy. Expect lots of software failure AFTER such laws are passed.
Entertainment is not a very high concern or at least it shouldn't be. Entertainment falls under the catagory "WASTE OF TIME". Perhaps the best thing this world needs is "WASTE OF TIME" to go bankrupt and stop "WASTING MY TIME!" and then all those media content maffia time wasters can go out and find real jobs that actually contribute to society.
Thank you, :P
the industry makes out that the artist is 'betrayed' by piracy but in reality, the artist only receives about 5% from revenue so they actually suffer the least.
the real victims of piracy are the corporate fatcats who live in mansions, have chauffeur driven bentleys and light big cigars with £20 notes.
dont be fooled by the whinging idle rich!
Sharing copyrighted material is a crime, file sharing is not. The tax needs to be on the law breaker not the whole community. It's called restorative justice. Part of forgiveness is restitution.
Let's take movies as an example.
Studio spends $100mil producing a movie.
Movie hits the theaters and makes them over a Billion it's first 3 days. Studio got paid big time.
Movie gets released on DVD. Retailers purchase upteen thousand copies.
Studio gets paid.
Smartypants makes a copy and shares it on the internet. Who's loosing money? Is it the studio? NOooo they already got their money. It's the retailers that loose in the form of lost sales.
If a movie hits the net prior to making it to the theater then they need to find out which theater had the "leak".
But Nooo that would be too much like work.
Therefore the "industry" is only loosing money due to what they pay their supposed "Legal Experts" that couldn't even make it as ambulance chasers.
On another note. If I were to download a movie or song off the internet am I a thief? No I didn't put it there. I therefore should only be hit for being in possession of stolen property? What's that? $50-$100 fine, Paid to the courts. LoL!!!
To call Mandelson a c*ck-sucker may be stating the obvious, but let's do it anyway.
So this will be a pissing contest to see who can pull the biggest numbers out of their ass. The record labels have had years of practice.
If the legitimate user is now being charged 25 quid a year to counteract the 'financial loss' due to piracy does that now legitimize the act of piracy? If I am forced to pay good money that should now mean that I can 'illegally' download copyrighted material? I am paying for it, right?
After they install all this equipment and spend all this money how are they going to tell what is inside all of the encrypted traffic? Which if this goes through will likely be close to %100 of what they want to look at.
Can anyone tell me if its ok to download movies from sites linked via megaupload and rapidshare.. I mean I know it pirated but does BT (British Telecom) holds any law for these downloads. Please advice.. hatake_hok@yahoo.com