The INQ: less you forget
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Does Virgin Media police itself first?
UK MOBILE TELECOM Virgin Media, the company that might be about to deploy a controversial traffic monitoring tool, also might be running a company intranet with equally dubious material on it, according to speculation on a blog.
Alex Hanff, privacy watchdog and anti-Phorm campaigner, has been all over Virgin Media since the suggestions that it might use Cview first appeared in the media. It appears that through his investigations he has found a whistleblower keen to expose Virgin Media as a hypocrite.
Today he wrote, "Regular readers will know that I have spent a great deal of time on the Virgin Media/CView issue over the past couple of months. In my work as a privacy advocate I have many strange experiences, deal with a great deal of hypocrisy and witness stupidity and an absence of common sense which often leaves me at a loss for words. But rarely have I fallen upon a story like the one I am about to share with all of you."
Now, with us firmly on the edges of our seats, he adds, "It would seem that Virgin Media, the company that want to spy on 1.6 million of their customers, are [sic] no stranger to unlawful filesharing."
Hanff said that he has been contacted by an ex-employee of Telewest, the firm that eventually became Virgin Media, who in an interview revealed that while he worked at the firm, between 2003 and 2004, workers would regularly use the company intranet to share and discuss their personal downloading of copywritten material.
Hanff quotes the interview verbatim, and we reproduce it here: "Ex-Employee: 'Telewest Broadband had an Intranet system called oneline - accessible at http://oneline.telewest.co.uk - the default homepage. Under this site employees could visit Broadtalk - Broadtalk Forum, where they could engage in discussion about the company across departments, across sites. Under this forum various topics of discussion revolved around downloading of copyrighted material - for example, employees would talk about downloading movies, music etc, along with how to transfer files to DVD media. Employees were posting links to BitTorrent sites with infringing material'."
The source left the firm in 2004, but claims to know that the bulletin boards were still running the year after, however, he could not confirm whether they still existed. He claims that while he worked at the firm he raised objections about the contents of the forums, but found his concerns swept away by senior administrators.
"One topic contained a link to Suprnova.org - at the time the biggest BitTorrent site - in relation to downloading Xbox games. I challenged this on the forum as it seemed a wholly inappropriate considering this was happening on Telewest's own internal systems. Somebody from customer service (a "CSR") replied saying they couldn't afford to buy video games, and so downloading was good for them. I flagged the topic with the forum administrators. The link was not, to my knowledge, removed."
Hanff adds, "I would like to thank my source for coming forward with this information. If any current employees at Virgin Media would like to confirm whether this internal bulletin board still exists, please do so in the comments." So far none have come forward.
In response to a call for comment from us, a Virgin Media spokesperson said, "We are unable to comment on claims made by the former, unnamed employee but we treat all of our people with an honesty and openness which mirrors how we interact with our customers. We encourage debate and discussion between our staff but any claims of activity at work that contravenes our staff guidelines will be investigated."
Uh-huh. µ
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I had my router hacked 2 times (I'm using WEP encryption because my router and laptops doesn't support WPA). So WTF should I do??? I'll end up getting fined for other people using my WiFi connection ?
I think, if Virgin Media will start using CView DPI tool, I'll cancel the broadband contract and I'll start using my neighbors Wireless connections. I'm pretty sure many people will do the same.
I don't wanna get fined when I'm innocent!!!!!!!!! I need internet and I cannot afford to replace the WiFi router and the laptops!!!!
To the article author: "copywritten" isn't a real word; the past participle of copyright is copyrighted.
Does Virgin Media still run that most excellent Usenet service crammed to the rafters with binary newsgroups?
I worked for a company that published and printed newspapers and other media. One job that we had was to publish a biweekly newspaper for the local AirForce base. The AirForce leased computers from our copany to design the paper, and every bit of software that those computers needed was downloaded illegaly!.
Someone (not I) let it be known what they were doing, and someone with the local police gave us an early warning that they would be showing up the next day. Needless to say, the next day staff were using programs like notepad to write the newspaper ;).. It was eventful!
I have a few points to make regarding this article.
1. In relation to Virgin Media's consideration of introducing this DPI spying tool, I believe it to be completely unacceptable and I don't feel this should be introduced whatsoever.
2. In 2004, it didn't seem much of a concern to anyone that people were torrenting illegitimate copyrighted material apart from the publishers of that material, however no key actions were taken.
- in 2009 and 2010 this is completely different.
You are writing an article based on a CLAIM from an EX-employee who left the company 6 years ago, and now asking others to 'come forward' and provide internal information on a company which has since merged with NTL, the other major cable operator at the time and also went through an entire re-brand.
Well, I don't know where I'm going with this but frankly I believe this article is completely irrelevant to Virgins current position on deploying the CView DPI tool.
Also, should this internal community message board have existed, what people need to remember is that it is a COMMUNITY message board, did it occur to the writer that the source may have been involved in submitting said torrent links onto the board and then been disciplined and removed from the company as a result?
Only a speculation, however that is essentially what this article entails - speculation.
J
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Signed:Fevered.
Pot, kettle, black?