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Crackdown On Illegal Downloads


totaltrials

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If your still wanting things to download use online filestores like rapidshare over torrents. The reason for the huge costs with torrents is that they charge based on the fact that your sharing it with thousands of people. If you use a direct link... theres no sharing. The only thing they can do is charge you for damages to the artists/publisher which would be the cost price for a film/song.

If you use an unsecured wireless router i'm not sure how that one works either. Its negligeable for you to leave it unsecure yes... but you've not actually comitted an offence so it'd be hard to find someone to take to court for it. I know my dad got out of paying a speeding ticket because the camera didn't show it was him driving and he regularly lets friends/family use the car. It was something along the lines of them having insufficient evidence to prosecute him so they sent a letter of apology.

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So basically wearing a Bill Oddie will make you immune from prosecution for speeding?

Back on topic though, I think this is more to show that the ISP's are socially responsible if you can call it that. Been discussed over here, everybody was worried for a brief moment and that was it. The police did however raid a dormitory last year to check student's hard drives for illegal software. The result of that was that many people just threw their PC's out the window. A few months later somebody made a prank call to a different dormitory saying that there will be a police raid and again lots of computers were thrown out of the window.

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Intresting that you bought up University Alex, I understand this is one of the hot spots in the 'crackdown', students making the most of a high speed connection and downloading movies.

Another theory in all this, what happens if its a shared computer without a specific owner, or if a friend downloads it on your computer? Or do you think that it would be whoevers name is on the internet bill that gets the bumming?

Personally, I do download the occasional film or song, however, after downloading I always go out and buy it if the film is any good - just because I want it in higher quality, and I know for a fact I'm not the only person who does this. I know it doesn't really justify downloading, but downloading is good for sampling.

If they seriously want to crack down on this, lower the price of CDs, DVDs and games! They can't have it both ways I'm afraid.

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It's not a massive crackdown on illegal downloads.

For hundreds of thousands of UK net users it will mean that they get a letter from their ISP telling them that their account has been identified as one used to illegally share files. At the moment that is all it will mean.

Will it ever go further than just a warning letter?

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The letter we got from NTL said something like "we understand that you might be using an unsecured wireless router - consider this warning an opportunity to improve your internet security" and next time there's no excuse.

I dunno, I doubt they would do anything with the police, but they might cut you off.

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but downloading is good for sampling.

Exactly there have been so many bands that i've downloaded one album cause i wasn't sure if i would like them enough to buy it, played it and then bought all there albums after.

Just some people will take it too far like my friend who will hear one song and download their discography yet never listen to it.

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So basically wearing a Bill Oddie will make you immune from prosecution for speeding?

Not all the time, but on a once off and if you let others drive your car regularly... more than likely. As its a civil law thats been broken they can't just pass it off as being you because you own the car. Owning the car is not against the law, letting other people drive it is not against the law (provided insurance is covered) and not keeping a track of where you were or who was driving is not against the law either. They are the ones prosecuting, so they need sufficient evidence to prove its you who's committed the offence so as not to cause a massive injustice.

Similarly...

there's an exception in the CDPA for someone acting as a 'mere conduit' (what I and many others call the ISP exception). Basically it says that if you're just passing data on (which you will be doing if your router's serving data to an unknown person) then you are not infringing.

The idea with turning off encryption is then anyone can make use of your internet connection. You thus do not know who was using your router at 8:32 last night as it does not having logging turned on and thus you were passing data on to an unknown person and are thus covered by the exception.

Its the reason why service providers don't get sued for copyright infringement whilst they have people downloading illegal material through their connections. They aren't using it themselves and so haven't comitted an offence.

I tell you what does irritate me though. Te adverts that say "you wouldn't steal a car.... movie pirating IS stealing!". It isn't theft, theft is defined as requiring an intention to deprive a person of their property, so that the owner nor anyone else can use it. If you copy an album or a movie the original owner can still use it and do what they want with it. Thats why new legislations had to be written and put in place specifically for copyright infringement.

At the end of the day its the big companies that are funding and pushing for these crackdowns because they are the ones that will lose out on the most money. They're blaming it for an all time low in bands receiving payment for their music. The RIAA's own records show this as not being true at all. Music industry profits are just as big as ever, its the sales of CD's that are going donwhill. The problem lies in the fact that rather than updating the music industry and cutting down on the numbers of cd's produced, they are blaming the decline in CD sales on ilegal downloaders. They aren't taking into account stores like itunes where people can buy single songs without needing a cd and without having to buy the whole album to get the one song they like.

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My friend had a letter though about a month ago, saying that "he had downloaded 4GB's of songs illegally, and that this was the final straw" bla bla bla. He downloaded 4GB's of free copyright free loops from bit torrent. The original company saying; "We don't mind if you pass this around, just make sure they know it's from us." .

He sent a nice rude letter back to them on the subject, and hasn't heard a thing since.

The fact is, they can't crackdown until the laws change, or software upgrades, to allow them to see and hear what you've been downloading. I believe before too long with the way this society is going, they will soon have those capabilities.

*sorry for possibly bad spelling in this post, I've just woken up with a bad hangover*

edit: btw - law currently stops them from knowing what we download etc. If they say they know, and have proof, they're breaking the law. UNLESS - new rules have come into place while I haven't been looking.

Edited by Hendrix
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All this does is give me piece of mind, I shall keep going until I recieve the letter, then move ISPs. Pity we just got connected to tiscali about 5 days ago, and they are one of the 6.

Still, they gave me a nice, free, wireless router.

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