03/31/2008, 2:10pm, EDT
Monday, March 31stVirgin Internet to trial piracy tracking in UK
Virgin Media today said it will be the first Internet provider to experiment with actively combat pirated content distributed across its network. The UK broadband firm has agreed to a test project that will scan for illegal copies of music and other media across the service. The monitoring will follow a three-strike rule that will see users receive a letter for a first violation; a second violation will result in a temporary suspension of Internet access, while a third will force the customer to cancel their service altogether.
The trial is being done at the behest of the British Phonographic Industry and will let the BPI perform the scans and trace them to individual Internet connections. Virgin is expected only to take part in the deal by relaying account information and halting service when necessary.
Virgin's move comes after pressure by the BPI and the UK government to institute a voluntary anti-piracy system. British officials have previously warned that they may impose anti-piracy filtering laws in response to what they have alleged is the destruction of the UK music industry by unchecked copying.
Arguments by the government are believed to come after prompts by the BPI, its international equivalent, and other music and movie groups that insist constant monitoring is necessary to protect copyrights. Critics have responded by labeling the scans an invasion of privacy and unlikely to succeed against determined pirates, who can modify or encrypt files to avoid superficial scans.
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This is gonna hit Virgin hard in the pocket. Personally, if this goes ahead, I'm gonna take all my business to Talk Talk. Their phone is cheaper, most of the calls are free and best of all their Internet is free of charge. Ok, there is a 40gig download limit but hey, who cares when you can't download.
Virgin have said that they will inform all customers before this trail takes place, I guess this will be in the same letter where they state they were gonna cut users bandwidth when downloading at peak times, a letter that was never sent.
Virgin needs to think about how this move will affect their business and their customers alike. Cool move, NOT
When I spoke to Virgin customer services and asked them to mail me a copy of their Traffic Management policy, the opperator put the phone down on me. Nice Touch
As the for hypocrisy of the statement about British people loving supervision I'll not dignify with further comment.
Not that I download anything suspect of course ;) But I do resent being snooped on..
Still, there is always encryption, right?
And there's never any catches to free service, right?
I’m not gonna get into the rights and wrongs of P2P but I will say this. Even if you are on a legal download site, downloading during peek time “4pm until 9pm” you are still gonna fall foul to their “Traffic Management Policy” and you internet speed will be cut accordingly.
If this policy is taken on by ALL ISP’s then they should expect loss of revenue, plain and simple…