BPI and Virgin Media Agree to Start Warning Uploaders
Written by enigmax on June 06, 2008The British Phonographic Industry and UK ISP Virgin Media have done a deal which will see thousands of file-sharers getting warnings. The BPI will use its resources to track file sharers and will then hand the information to Virgin who will send out their own warnings to the customer along with a letter from the BPI.
In 2008, the ‘three-strikes-and-you’re-out’ concept has been gathering pace around the globe. Get caught uploading three times, and the anti-piracy groups would like your Internet connection disconnected. Unsurprisingly, most people aren’t that keen on this plan, and ISPs who revealed to be considering such systems have received lots of bad press.
In the UK and at the forefront of this controversy has been Virgin Media. Various reports suggested that Virgin would implement the 3-strikes policy with the BPI but this proved very unpopular and it took just a few days for Virgin to deny any such deal had been struck.
Undeterred, the BPI has carried on working with Virgin who, according to a Music Week report, have now agreed to some sort of halfway-house. Virgin will not (yet) disconnect persistent uploaders, but after receiving information from the BPI about users making unauthorized uploads, Virgin Media will start sending out warning letters along with ‘educational’ advice about how to ensure that the customer’s account isn’t ‘misused’. Included in the advice will be links to authorized music sources, along with the usual fear mongering about viruses and spyware.
In this 10-week trial, along with the letter from Virgin, the subscriber will also receive a warning letter from the BPI. It will state that persistent offenders will be disconnected and/or taken to court, despite the fact that Virgin appears to be refusing to disconnect users so far.
BPI chief executive Geoff Taylor said: “Virgin Media is the first ISP to publicly address the problem. It is a socially responsible ISP and I think other ISPs will look at this and see progress. I am very encouraged they have engaged with us. They understand the rights of musicians.”
A Virgin Media spokesman added: “We want people to enjoy music online without infringing the rights of musicians and music companies. This campaign is about helping our customers understand how they can do this.”
It’s unclear what the BPI strategy will be on this but to really put Virgin under pressure, it will probably decide to put IP-addresses it collects into a database. This way it would be easy to flag IP-addresses that had already been ‘caught’ before, and put these IPs forward to Virgin as persistent users - prime candidates for disconnection. Virgin Media (unlike comparable ADSL ISPs in the UK) hand out static IP addresses, so most users will be an easy target as they display the same IP address all the time. But for those Virgin customers with a router, simply changing the MAC address of the unit will force Virgin to hand over a new IP, which then offers the user the same perceived ‘protection’ as a dynamic IP ISP.
So at the end of it all lies a very large inconsistency. If a casual uploader simply gets a warning from the BPI/Virgin and only persistent, regularly-caught users MIGHT be disconnected or MIGHT get taken to court (in a civil action, of course), why has the BPI ignored all of these things while effectively directing the police that the recently arrested uploaders from OiNK should be treated as serious criminals?
TorrentFreak knows that at least two of those accused uploaded just a single album. Persistent? Hardly. Conspiring to Defraud? Give us a break.
Where were their friendly, education-based warnings from the ISP?
Update:The Register ran a piece and are also hosting copies of the letters that will be sent out to users. You can find the Virgin letter here and the BPI letter here.
Previously: Study Reveals Reckless Anti-Piracy Antics
Next: Be Afraid of BitTorrent, Very, Very Afraid
92 Responses
If broadband isn’t for downloading content then what is it for?
So users will now have to some how check the copyright status of everything they download or play safe and stick to the BBC iplayer.
Unbelievable!
****SPAM REMOVED****
Bye virgin you cunts, getting rid of you as soon as I can and will use UK2 free dialup, slow but i can do what the bloody hell i like
So the best advice would be… Flee from this provider as fast as you can! Make them suffer! You pay them! Repeat that to yourself cause they think it’s their customers who need them and not the other way around. After all they are living good lives off the money you pay for your so-called flat-rates…!!!
Fuck you Virgin (hrhr) you’re not the police…
Fuck Branson and his coterie.
f.u.c.k. branson and his coterie.
how exactly are they going to find out what you have shared?
F U :)
the scissors are on the virgin line… snip
@4 do some research - they track you by connecting using a bittorrent program. Your ISP shows up as participating in sharing a given file, they grab the ISP and send it to VM who then forwards the letters to you. They avoid the Data Protection rights issue by not informing the BPI of who you are… although it is arguable (in law) about whether we have the right to privacy given issues of legality in the first place.
> how exactly are they going to find
> out what you have shared?
Hmmm, let me think. By doing the exact same thing people who download from you have to do? Are you really that clueless or just trolling around?
And in other new BPI and Virgin Media shares plunged sharply following a sell-off by investors, realising fears that customers would dump the ailing companies.
SELL! SELL! SELL!
i’m glad i didn’t go with virgin :) i nearly did. there’s gonna be some fucking exodus going on right there.
Bye bye Virgin Media.
“Get caught uploading three times … ”
In reality, uploading has virtually nothing to do with getting a copyright infringement notice.
You can get an infringement notice if your IP address gets harvested off a torrent tracker or ED2K server. If using a “classic” P2P network, revealing a shared file list (even if you aren’t actually sharing any of the listed files) can also land you an infringement notice.
So in many situations, you can get hit with these infringement accusations without even sharing or uploading anything.
Virgin have a monopoly on the cable network, thus some people will be incapable of changing ISP if they live in an area where ADSL is particularly slow.
Well its simple…
Everyone who downloads stuff will just go to another Internet provider.
Virgin Media loses crap loads of money, no other internet provider will do the same as they wouldnt want to lose customers.
Virgin Media dies, everyone else lives.
Happy Days!
If you can’t switch and have VM, you’re really fucked. I hope LOTS and LOTS of people dump their VM line so they will notice what the hell they are fucking with. VM, they are your main customers ffs!
Next will be other major UK providers; Pipex, BT, Talktalk, AOL etc. I hate to admit defeat but it’s my honest belief that filesharing will soon have no place in the UK. This really sucks…
ADSL isnt ‘particularly’ slow in many areas of england, apart from out in the sticks. Cable users are just greedy :D.
Virgin do have a bit of a monopoly though so i can see them losing a lot of business over this…
Well, I have been a happy customer with Virgin for well over 3 years now and will be cutting the cord as soon as this hits the public.
Sorry virgin but I won’t be dealing with people who fold in to every request any fool throws at them.
@14
I don’t think this is true, I’m sure someone will bring out new technology to mask incoming/outgoing I.Ps it’s just a matter of time.
@14
carphone warehouse have already said they won’t give customers’ details over, therefore talktalk should be safe for the moment.
if they do sell out to the BPI then
there are bound to be smaller ISPs who will pop up to offer unrestricted uploading… until there is legislation to stop them.
Lol, Virgin Media is gonna go dooowwwnnnnn the drain.
They’re hugely failing with customer service right now, and they’ve decide to start doing this? WOW, they’re actually TRYING to be failures.
Virgin Media can’t even get Caller ID in all areas yet, the only thing they have going for them is that they’re still using the ineffective Nagravision 1 to encrypt their second rate TV service.
Listen as long as prices for any product big company make are that big ..ppl will keep downloading/uploading stuff. Filesharing will never stop nor do the companies have a fair chance of stopping this.
If products were lowered in price ppl would of course buy the real product instead of downloading..its common knowledge. After all having a real product with cover and everything is much better than have to download something via p2p. Wake up and lower the prices on products you money greeding cakeboys..you’re disgusting.
Ill share till i die…!
What about users of VM’s Usenet server, which hosts music, films and warez?
@ 7 & 8
well they either have to break the law themselves to find out what files I am sharing or look at the typical patterns which filesharing leaves on their network
so if they do it the legal way, how can they claim i am not downloading from say the revision tracker?
i think virgin does this because they also happen to be in the CD-selling business, so let’s just use their methods by boycotting their other businesses like not flying Virgin America anymore …
If Virgin gets stuffed they will just come back to provide an alternative service to users under another name, and people will be sucked in once again. What a wonderful world!
@18: BS; don’t be such a wimp
so people will rent anonymizers or seedboxes and setup vpns… problem relocated
First virgin capped the “unlimited” connection.
Now this,
I was already concidering changing, but now I definatly will.
Presumably encrypting your torrent traffic will get around this problem.
Even if it does, however, people should still leave virgin, as using a work around will give them license to continue to implement new and more vicious anti sharing methods.
I guess everyone should always use the safest ISPs, and act as if they are using the most dangerous (by encrypting & anonymising). That way we will always be protected and ISPs will stay safe to use.
Hmmm nice! No letters for Oink uploaded, I got 2 plain clothes DCs turning up and my door and carting me off to the nearest nick for interrogation. Nice BPI, way to go you fkin morons.
(uploads) and (at) lol.. ooops :) Still very odd different approaches from the BPI, oh but thats right Oink was a “Criminal Gang” after all. :o/
sky is the best and they are in disbute already with virgin over itv so i think the best bet is sky
The beggining of the end im afraid. bring on the darknet!
This is no different that what almost every other ISP, including Virgin, already do. An infringing party passes the details of the infringement onto your ISP and your ISP sends you a leter saying so and so allegeges copyright infringement. This isnt anything new, Telewest and NTL did the same thing back before there was ever a twinkling of VirginMedia.
If their action on this is anything like their customer services, we have very little to worry about.
What a joke. Bye bye Virgin, you’re going down in flames!
Gonna find someone decent to switch to, preferably someone who doesn’t throttle my internet when I download too.
Its good to be in India..though we have sucky speeds we dont have any of this BS
yea im sure that other isps will look at virgin and see “progress”
bullshit
isps are businesses like any other. the purpose of a business is to make money, and you dont make money by fucking over your customers
Well i will not get this problem at the moment because i am with BE* but only thing i can say is this SUCKS.
Get caught uploading 3 times.. lol I would get caught uploading 3.. thousand times a day.
Theres not enough paper in the world to send me all the warnings.. bitches.
“They understand the rights of musicians.”
Musicians do not have a right to censor my private communication. It’s as wrong as when the chinese communists do it.
End of story.
Surely this seems counter-intuitive for VM. I have been a customer for a long time (back to NTL) and am happy with their 20meg service (i get ~18meg).
But if they send me one of these letters, I will just leave. Even worse if they disconnect me. Thousands of people ever month with feel threatened by their ISP. This is not the way to go. Its the whole consumer vs supplier thing again. They are making us their enemies and eventually they will have to pull out as they disconnect 6.5 million customers (they only have 8 million).
It doesn’t even help them. They have nothing to gain by disconnecting or warning filesharers. They will just lose money.
>I hate to admit defeat but it’s my
>honest belief that filesharing will
>soon have no place in the UK.
Then the Brits will have to switch to something like the OFF System. There, you dont download/upload to single persons, but to a large distributed and encrypted virtual hard disk, and the chunks of data are so small, that they cant be covered with copyright. Additionally, they are mixed with random data chunks.
At the moment, OFF suffers from to few shared files, which will change, once the UK copyright nazis install a surveillance and censorship system even north korea and china would be proud of.
Fuck so called “intellectual property”, the modern day censorship engine.
Well this is the nail in the coffin for me, appaling service, crap like this & the net neutrality crap. They can get stuffed.
I will not stop downloading illegally until there is an option to buy FLAC without DRM, movies in xvid without DRM, Tv shows in avi without DRM!
Which i cannot see happening so they don’t get a penny, i’m not intrested in fancy artwork, boxes cluttering my room. I want it all on my pc & be able to do what i please with it. I use all my stuff as personal, i do not sell!
loads of people are unable to switch from VM. Its not a matter of choice. In a lot of new build flats, cable is installed and no BT line is. This pretty much forces you to use VM.
well guys the adsl route is not so good in the uk anyway, i used to be with VM (cable) but moved now, im with BT, and they cap BitTorrent and other p2p protocols during peak times, i can now no longer download i get 10k! but the main thing which is killing p2p in the uk is DATA CAPS which they now call fair usage policy. these policy’s
are very miss leading and dont give u a solid answer as to how much is ‘fair’. since i’ve been with bt i’v been on the bad boy line capped @ 40k (http)
Gay
Still waiting for the speed upgrade on my 2mb to 10mb. ( taking forever )
BUT with all the news about Virgin Media checking downloads I might as well not bother waiting for it.
What’s the good of a faster speed with nothing worth downloading.
I have their Phone, TV services and Broadband , which they can have back.
Disgruntled of London.
I’m on VM. and recentley they gave us all better usenet. So i gave it a go and discovered i like it better than BT. Got myself a decent newserver and no problem. goodbye p2p hastles (for the time being)
Used to be a Virgin subscriber but quit months ago over the throttling crap. Now on ADSL2, getting massively better bandwidth (usable, not the headline “max” crap that you never get close to) at about half the price. No usage limits, no throttling, proper techical support people…now can’t think why I ever stayed with Telewest.
What if …someone… combined this story with the last one and started spoofing connections to “illegal” trackers from every Virgin subscriber IP address, then they end up sending these warning letters to their entire customer base. I’d expect carnage, and the experiment never being repeated.
Just a thought ;-)
Boycott their products … the world is full of excellent musicians who would prefer you listen to their music. The “Big 5″ or “Big ?” (depending upon where you live) sell a lot of crap…. so why bother with egotistical popstars who need help in the studio to keep in key when they sing.
They’re just spoiled children… who really don’t care about you. (ft)
Its very important that people follow through and change ISP’s
AS FAST AS POSSIBLE!!
Theres no gain for Virgin by allying with the BPI, and their supposed deal will fall through very fast when Virgin starts losing money.
I’ve been a cable user since it was still blueyonder(going back a while)..
Anyway, VM internet sucks, both quality wise and the amount of throttling that goes on.
And oh yeah….losing sky one meant that the TV side sucks as well.
Time to start looking for a new ISP I think.
Guys, I have tv+phone+broadband from these VM motherf***ers and I am now past the 12 month contract so I am free to move. Can anyone recommend a decent provider of all three things? I pay £35 for 4Mbps+XL TV+phone. I never had a problem though but this BULLSHIT now pisses me off. Please recommend.
VM are f**king scum! I walked away from them about 3 months ago. £20 for a 2MB cable! I went to Sky, £10 for 16MB ADSL, alright I only get 6MB, but Christ, 3 times the speed for half the cost!!!
Oh and VM want to put Phorm, so for that they can Ph*ck-off too!
Oh shit…
I wander how effective they’ll be though lol… well might find out soon enough…havent stopped me yet so maybe some hope..
don’t they realise all they are doing is alienating the people that use their highest broadband service. Why the fuck do they think people want faster connections - its sure as hell not so they can open their email quicker, its because people want to download (typically copyrighted) music, video, games, whatever. Im not saying that downloading copyrighted material is right, but this makes no buisness sense and are just pushing out towards their competitors.
I wonder if I will ever read this second word in the BPI acronym properly…
Okay with this surely the point is that they want you to stop using limewire / ed2k and other network type p2p apps. With bit torrent I’d still bet that its mostly sharing on public trackers that will get you in trouble as these have no ratio limits a far more people will download from there.
Usenet with 7 days retenetion is offered by VM which will give you all the mp3s movies and warez that you could desire. Since it is a closed connection between you and the Highwinds server in Amsterdam is not going to be monitored by bpi, mpaa, etc.
Protocol encryption in bit torrent DOES NOT hide what you are sharing. It is there to help you avoid traffic shaping where your isp limits all bit torrent traffic, the encryption hides that its bit torrent. If they join the torrent swarm they can still see your IP.
I would hardly say Sky were a safe bet! One word from the mpaa that lots of their users are downloading illegal movies and its bye, bye sky movies! I expect they’ll be kinda quick to say “how high?” when told to jump.
And someone said they were leaving because their 2mb was taking forever to upgrade to 10mb, well that upgrade IS NOT HAPPENING so you’re gonna be waiting a long time. If you stump up some more money for 4meg then you’ll get upped to 10.
I don’t really have a problem with the STM policy tbh. As they say themselves say you could still download 134GB in 24hrs on 20meg ( thats 4TB a month!). All you have to do is schedule your torrents or usenet to download at off-peak times and self-cap during peak times so you don’t get STM’d.
Most of these people won’t really leave as they’ll find out the shitty dsl speeds available in their area and come running back.
Lmao well that’s the last straw as soon as possible I’m switching thinking about 02 atm so we’ll see how that goes.
Hopefully enough people will leave so that they back down or better yet die.
if every one laeves virgin no one will join there for we have won
most people already get virgin media tv for nothing so when they start disconnecting everyone from the net how are they going to make any money lol
Well seen as how i cannot force my parents to change, then ill have to use a different source, and i have a few, but this just takes the fucking piss tbh, 10weeks though, lets hope it doesn’t stay on after that!
Virgin Greedia are CUNTs, and they Arse lick the BPI.
What a load of Boll8x that they now think they can be police to public.
Richard Brownshit thinks he’s God,
B.O.Y.C.O.T it.
It’s time for evey virgin customer to download and upload every single linux iso they can find to fuck this idea up. It will also be benificial to the Opensource community and will also make Virgin aware that Bittorrent isnt all about piracy!
bye bye virgin you cunts!
ive had a letter off virgin about my down/uploads but all theyre trying to do is suggest i have faster broadband!
fook branson though…im off!
This is particularly worrying for legitimate users as there are oh so many people using CLONED modems (possibly 100s of 1000s, judging by forum activity). When using a cloned modem the mac of a registered user from another area is duplicated which means the IP will be traced to the registered user of the original subscribed modem. This would mean that innocent users would have the near impossible task of explaining that they are innocent when getting one of these letters. This probably happenned in the Davenport Lyons case when customers had no knowledge of downloading games were none the less falsely accused.
Virgin Media know of this problem and should sort it out before doing this (mind you it gives a good defence). TF ought to look into this , I am surprised this issue has not been raised before regarding court cases for unknowingly downloading involving Virgin Media customers.
Virgin Media
I can’t believe Virgin a somewhat DEAD/DYING Inet and TV provider is going to risk there customers, if i recieve a warning letter i’ll leave.
Alot of there modems are cloned, i know because i have mates who do it and i pay because it’s a half decent service…
PS. changing your Router MAC probably won’t help as and nslookup will show your linked to the same modem
they want your money without providing a service just like gorden brown does.
it was he who told isps to stop downloaders and branson being the girly glovepuppet he is obeys. gorden brown is intent on destroying this country.over 60 percent of web trafficis p2p not only is it the end of the web. who wants a pc that does,nt do owt. i say fuck gorden brown {and local councils too}.
to the response of the “iso of linux software” i myself have an sftp and a ftp server with all linux iso cd and dvd images to aid and help have about 3 groups and me the network admin…we run mirrors and i have the vm line 20mbps+ i also have a vpn with tunelling to connect from work for certain tools with linux, ive just spoken to virgin about this BPI bollocks(sorry moderator) and cause i encrypt the traffic im asked them about anymore info they could give me? and there response?? they didnt have a clue????all they said was we dont do uploads? what crap is that? and said if i get a letter i will kick off! so im a little concerned about the “letter” and “disconection” it also has links to mirrors that are on bittorrent! if i get cut off from seeding “”"legal”"” yes virgin “”"legal”"” software to help and aid new users of software than i need a new m.a.c code or just go to a new isp provider! whatch this space!!!!.
Tooootaly cancelling my contract with virgin
Bye bye VM. Hello Be*.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7444390.stm
That’s a very article from the BBC on this very matter. I’m glad the journalist is on our side. As a virgin media customer I’m not at all happy. You’ll be happy to know this is part of a 10 week ‘education’ scheme, so I wouldn’t expect disconnections or law suits. Still, if this gets adopted by more ISP’s (which I doubt) then we’re going to have to move to new technologies.
As much as i wouulike to ditch virgin i live miles away form an exchange and the best i can hope for is a 2mb line compared to my current 20mb. Will have to wait and see how it all pans out.
Just switch to Be* 24mb only £18 pounds honestly it’s worth it i switched a while ago and it’s amazing
Virgin might have been pressured into doing this,even so they are heading down the pan….how many customers do they think they will lose?
Naive? Why do they think people pay for a 20mb connection? Not to just browse the net, thats for sure.
I’m a virgin customer (until they go tits up), but i’ll keep using my encrypted newsgroup downloads thanks.
[Quote] This is particularly worrying for legitimate users as there are oh so many people using CLONED modems (possibly 100s of 1000s, judging by forum activity). When using a cloned modem the mac of a registered user from another area is duplicated which means the IP will be traced to the registered user of the original subscribed modem. This would mean that innocent users would have the near impossible task of explaining that they are innocent when getting one of these letters. This probably happenned in the Davenport Lyons case when customers had no knowledge of downloading games were none the less falsely accused.
Virgin Media know of this problem and should sort it out before doing this (mind you it gives a good defence). TF ought to look into this , I am surprised this issue has not been raised before regarding court cases for unknowingly downloading involving Virgin Media customers.
Virgin Media [Quote]
The IP’s are different the MAC’s are the same but not the IP’s. if they had the same IP VM’s DNS servers wouldn’t know which PC to send the data too.
trust i know i flashed many modems!
I undersatnd your point but they could trace the fake IP on a cloned MAC but it would take to much time and monry for them to justify it!
Yeah VM are aware of the problem exactly like the tv theft but how long as that gone on for. i’ve had a dbox2 for 3 yrs!. I pay for 20mb tho so not a complete theft
PS going back to this again, why are VM and BPI and everyone else not focused on shutting down child porn sites or targeting these users traffic!
What about all the stupid radical suicide bombers too.!!!
Oh yeah PHORM makes you cash stopping child porn and terrorism does not!
VM taking a running jump!
Virgin really do want to lose customers, I’m already fed up with them for capping me for downloading 6 gig in a week(i’m on unlimited),so they said. These fools lowered my speed to 64kbps for a whole week! without even a warning,i couldn’t use my net for jack shit at that speed,it was like going back to the stone age! now they have come up with this bright idea, I’v go 5 months left & i’m out of there! i’ve been looking around for a good isp & see that O2 have some good reviews, So virgin can kiss my ass.
vm are tossers
Is there anyway to make Vuze safe to use against VM?
I need to get my Lost fix ;- >
Or anyone point me to a guide to use encryption and not let them track me?
Ta!
i’ve had one of the warning letters for downloads and now i’m thinking of dropping virgin, don’t want the bpi on my case.
funny how these company’s think they can stop all p2p sharing when country’s that are not within there realm of governing cant be charged with a crime. i mean there is no U.N. front on the crimes of piracy and if there is and im just not informed, they should serously think of something better to spend are money on then this shit. I.E. the price of fucking oil. i just spent 48 dollars on 11 gal. that didnt even fill my truck
Interesting comments,
I would honestly say that VM are not that bad! (shoot me now if you please).
Like most ISP’s problems do occur.
The whole P2P and copyright issue is complex. Personally I do download, but only to see if I like the movie etc, then either buy or not. I guess its a bit like trialing before you buy.
I really do not see though how they can track your IP address if you play a bit clever, for example some firewalls will hide the last octet of your IP address, therfore you cannot be traced. Also there is other programs available such as peer guardian though I am not overly familiar with it.
An interesting situation would be for a court summons for downloading a movie .. what if you then went out and bought it …… I dont see how the average downloader could be brought to book as a backup is quite legal, there is of course also the point that your orginal and paid copy could be damaged. The actual physical DVD might be unplayable but you as the customer still own a right to watch and keep the movie for personal use .. so would it be illigal to then download ….?
In my opinion this is a minefield that simply cannot be managed, it is time for reform in both the law and of course how services and products are distributed!
I only donw load movies and TV am i currently at risk ?
Hi All,
Yep good ol’ days of Blueyonder
cable have gone… Virgin are here!
If you’re looking for an excellent
ISP to change from Virgin… then
i would highly recommend Plusnet.
Check out there dealS!
In the past i have used BT, Pipex (terrible) and Blueyonder…
PLUSNET is everything you want &
expect from a good ISP.
COMPLETELY TRANSPARENT….
No small print! No Throttling!
No bull-crap! You get what you see!
VM thoughtfully provide their own binary newsgroups at no extra cost - get your illegal downloads straight from VM’s servers and avoid the BPI.
cya virgin i have a ASDL line so bye bye, hope you burn and die.
bit of a stupid idea i mean your advertising Optic Fibre whats the point of TRUE 16mb internet if you cant use P2P, which i think the bbc iplayer use’s. with ADSL i can still download Ubuntu ISO’s
FUCK U VIRGIN
been with virgin media fir 3yrs now!!
Well let me tell you VM suck my donkey balls all ready rang up and cancalled.
have fun trying to keep your customer base dik heads!!
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