Internet Service Providers Cut Down On Illegal Downloading

[Phreedom]

Why don't they worry about shutting down the sites that allow us to get this stuff illegally?

[awelsh]

why dont they get off our backs and find out that £15 for a cd is theft. if i paid for the music i downloed i would be in wel over £3,000 worth, also what about the music that you cant buy on cd's such as the couple hunder DJ tracks out there. That isnt copyright theft isit. Why does it have to be virgin who enforce this just my luck im with them. Ahh well ill carry on till i get my 2nd letter if it even comes and then ill change to AOL

[Jordy]

You have a good point, but 30GB per week isn't even that much.

Yeah I guess if your on the 20MB connection you could download much more than that in a week. The average home user that obeys the law would find it difficult to wrack up 30GB though, unless they're restoring from an online backup it would be difficult to justify

Why don't they worry about shutting down the sites that allow us to get this stuff illegally?

Because they can't, they've almost gave up doing that. Take The Pirate Bay (TPB) for example, it's located in Sweden and in Sweden it's not illegal to link to copyrighted content, though in nearly every other country it is. TPB owners have been arrested many times but they can't charge them for anything as all they do is link to content, they don't actually host the content, companies are always claiming their content is on TPB when all they're doing is linking to it. If Microsoft claimed they owned something on TPB, that would be like my saying I owned every hyperlink on the Internet. Till Sweden changes it laws, nothing major can happen.

This gives smaller companies a chance, then the bigger companies will start losing customers and then they'll think "not good - forget this we need money too" and it'll be fine, plus I'm fairly certain the TOS when signing up to an ISP doesn't say they are allowed to cut you off for downloading copyright material

It's actually the smaller ISPs which are doing more, many of the very small ISPs have cut people off, not to long ago someone from Hull on here got sent a letter demanding they removed copyright content from their computer and they'll be cut off. Most the larger ISPs have been putting up a fight, especially TalkTalk so you'll be safe with them. But Virgin Media has been practically forced by the government to enforce some sort of policy otherwise the government will just submit harsh laws.

The bad news is Virgin media aren't actually looking for the file sharers, the BPI are voluntarily doing it for them. The BPI look at torrents and can see people IP Address's and ISPs and then report them to Virgin Media. The BPI is the British Phonographic Industry, AKA the Music Industry which is backed by all artists. It's getting difficult to stop but if the ISPs look like they're doing things and you don't attract too much attention it'll be okay.

I would buy music if it was priced properly, my problems are that the majority of it is DRM protected which is a pain to convert and it's also illegal and poor quality. It's also not priced fairly, iTunes songs in the UK cost much more than they do in the USA, 49p there compared to 79p over here and it's usually cheaper throughout Europe too.

It's like most people won't use public transport till it's safe, reliable and cheap, it's not that they're not prepared too.

[EVICTION]

One thing for sure, I won't be stopping or even paying for any songs! Its not our fault we download FREE music, its those who offer this service.

[FrozenWhisper]

I download music, but am with TalkTalk so should be alright yer?
Tbh, I wouldn't, if some of the artists I want where actually sold in Zavvi (ONLY music shop near us), and wheren't nearly 15 quid for one album, I remember when 10 pounds for an album was pushing it.
It's stupid, they want the money? Put DOWN the prices, and then people will buy and not download, and they'll GET the money [=

[N!ck]

Yeah I guess if your on the 20MB connection you could download much more than that in a week. The average home user that obeys the law would find it difficult to wrack up 30GB though, unless they're restoring from an online backup it would be difficult to justify

I've consistently done over 30GB per week on a 2Mbps connection before and people I know do way more than that not on a 20Mbps connection.

If you're transferring large amounts of data there can be perfectly legitimate reasons.

[cocaine]

whats the status of o2 (bethere) on the illegal downloading front?

[Tom-743]

I doubt ISP's will spend money trying to tackle this issue, if they cut your internet for downloading illegal programs/music ect your just going to swich ISP's and they loose money. It must be about 70% of people who use the internet have done something illegal on it, if ISP's were forced to stop this then there would not be much point in the internet