BPI Crackdown Planned as BitTorrent Becomes ‘Too Easy’
Written by enigmax on March 28, 2008The British Phonographic Industry (BPI) is said to be planning a BitTorrent clampdown. The trade association, previously heavily involved in the shutdown of OiNK, says that BitTorrent has become “too easy” and is taking aim at what it refers to as ‘larger networks’.
Industry associations such as the RIAA and IFPI grab most of the anti-piracy headlines in the music world. The UK’s British Phonographic Industry (BPI) has a lower profile, but one which was significantly raised due to its involvement in the shutdown of the OiNK BitTorrent tracker.
Now, according to Silicon, the BPI is teaming up with the IFPI to develop systems to track down unauthorized music sharing on the Internet.
Jollyon Benn, an Internet investigator for the Anti Piracy Unit of the BPI, said that more people than ever are sharing their music collections online because BitTorrent clients are becoming so easy to use. He said: “The latest version of LimeWire includes a BitTorrent client in it and the user interface has got much more friendly. It is opening it up to a lot of people, it all comes down to how easy it is to do these things.”
I’m not sure that the LimeWire implementation of BitTorrent is any easier to use than that of say, uTorrent’s, but it’s certain that the BitTorrent community would only expand when an outfit such as LimeWire introduces its millions of users to the protocol. As more people get introduced to BitTorrent and move away from networks such as Gnutella, the mysterious anti-piracy ’systems’ being developed by the BPI and IFPI come into play, which in reality are likely to be regular file-sharing clients with enhanced logging abilities.
According to Jollyon Benn, the BPI isn’t deviating away from its earlier position of not going after petty file-sharers, setting an informal threshold of around 200 tracks before chasing the sharer. Instead, Benn says that the BPI will be concentrating on “networks sharing hundreds of thousands of tracks” which immediately throws up some questions. Most BitTorrent trackers are located outside the ‘jurisdiction’ of the BPI, i.e not in the UK. Granted, this didn’t stop them working with the IFPI to shut down OiNK in the Netherlands, but of course they managed to convince the British police that some criminal activity had been taking place on the site, in order to obtain the identity of the administrator, Alan Ellis.
Since the authorities still haven’t found anything to charge Alan with - many months after his initial arrest - one has to wonder if the BPI will be so lucky in getting home address details so quickly in the future.
There certainly aren’t many UK-hosted BitTorrent trackers and the number of British BitTorrent administrators running sites located outside of the UK is unclear, but it’s unlikely there are that many. So as everyone scratches their head thinking of who on earth the BPI are talking about taking down, the battle continues, physically and more often than not, psychologically.
Previously: Iceland’s Largest BitTorrent Tracker Wins in Court
Next: Norwegian ISPs Refuse MPAA’s Request to Disconnect Pirates
48 Responses
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@22 Yes, only if they knew I was uploading to someone (which they can’t find out unless they get logs off a tracker which in my case is very unlikely). They can only track me uploading to them, which in my eyes is ok as they have the right to that file otherwise they would be breaking the law by downloading off me and therefor render a case against me useless.
Why don’t these big companies just get over themselves. Embrace the technology. Instead they have to find ways of suing people. Get over your old fuckind ways already. It’s getting old. If Hollywood can’t use this technology then go fuck yourself and leave the rest of the bittorrent comunity alone. At least CBC a canadian tv network is embracing the technology.
NO.2 Thats only cool when I say it
the 1984 police state continues…
Welcome to the UK police state.
So the BPI thinks it can close down Piratebay, Mininova etc, after all they said they are targeting larger networks. I wish them good luck, as they sure wont achieve anything, except try to ensure the artists and consumers pay through the nose for this limp-wristed organisation.
http://www.fileprompt.com
@26
GTFO
So Bittorrent has become “too easy” well why don’t you put your own adverts on those sites and generate revenue, or a DRM free bittorrent client endorsed to get every new release free, with adverts, so the people who like certain content can still goto cinema etc, less money generated - less actors earn 35 million a film, so what? Think about the set painters……
Nice. When you can’t innovate, litigate….
everyone is waiting for the outcomes of TPB and Ellis trials. the creation of a new crime of technological facilitation is not expected but there is a long pause before they begin that apparently needs to be filled with gas
the battle for filesharing is won. the battle for diminishing anti-p2p budgets has just begun (April 1 is the start of the new business year in the UK when annual budgets are decided)
if any BPI employee afraid for their jobs needs career advice then i suggest you send your resume to Robert Mugabe. if you are looking for work closer to home then better leave your work experience out of it …
I have a list of organizations that are involved in terrorism against the United States. I have verified the evidence and found out the RIAA is a legalized terror organization, but they have been doing illegal stuff too.
Check here: http://www.news.com/2100-1028_3-5073817.html
How would he know there was child porn?
I’ve seen the RIAA hacking into peoples computers and the website torrentfreak popular searches list contains beastly porn keywords, child porn type keywords a lot even though their sites have no child porn, so they have automated bots sending child porn suggestions, and child porn searches to make the P2P Networks look bad.
Some of the people convicted of child porn may have been set up by the RIAA to be arrested and as a statement against p2p filesharing networks.
Also someone has been promoting child porn on p2p and when I tried to report it, it never got removed which means the RIAA may have bribed our law enforcement to keep that on there to make the filesharing networks a living child porn target.
Yes I am a corporate whisleblower, and have investigated into the RIAAs illegal and beastly tactics to get the Filesharing networks shut down so they can illegally maintain their corporate music monopoly and have no amateur artists.
Now about me suspecting them of terrorism, they act exactly like the Mafia
Here are my reasons they are like the mafia and like a terrorist organization:
1)They bribe/lobby our Senators to illegalize P2P sharing, piracy, lied to the people that sharing is stealing, when sharing is not stealing, it is copying.
2)The RIAA Bribed or made hacking legal for them
3)The RIAA has been targeting thousands upon thousands of people and they act like a terrorist organization attacking people on Social Security (SSI) that can’t afford to pay for tons of music, attacking dead people, attacking poor people, attacking college students which means many get into being illegal pornstars, and prostitution just to pay for college funds and/or RIAA settlenments.
(4)They operate illegally, Conning artists rights away.
(5)The RIAA has to be breaking some sort of law with the tactics they are doing.
(6)And I heard a rumor they have been using unlicensed investigators.
I demand you investigate into the RIAAs illegal and terrorist practices, peat the whistleblower.
We own the future…
WE WILL BURY YOU BPI/RIAA/IFPI
@I submited this to the FBI
There are federal police forces, the BKA in Germany for example, that let child porn sites continue to operate. Under some sort of surveillance of course. The police is using these sites as bait for child porn consumers. The consumers get caught, which makes an excellent case for online surveillance legislation. “Excellent case” of course only, if the public is told “We got some child pornographers, because we were able to spy on them.” The public agrees, because almost nobody likes child pornography. This sort of police work has come to light in a case where they tried to discredit the Java Anon Proxy, an anonymity network. The police is not interested in child pornography per se. Although the individual policeman probably is. Their right to exist is to protect a system, be there criminals or not.
But it is still worthwhile to let the FBI know what you think should be done.
Bittorrent is going into more mainstream networks such as Limewire and Ares but I don’t know if I like that. Oh well, the pvt trackers I’m on don’t allow those clients and you rarely see them on public trackers anyways.
havent you guys seen the news ?.
looks like many UK based TV and other torrents will stop now.
http://www.ispreview.co.uk/news/EkpylyVFEVprNOiCbo.html
The UK’s largest residential broadband provider, Virgin Media, has announced its intention to introduce a warning system for those caught engaged in illegal downloading”
that means torrents now, and later news servers, looks like the 3rd party usenet providers will be loosing a big chunk of cash soon.
Yeah we know who they are talking about dont we?
It’ll take bullets to get through all the layers of skullbone and inform these people about that they’re not in control anymore.
i don’t quite get it, even if they shut down the tracker, most bittorrent clients support DHT and you would still be able to share the file. so would it matter if they close the trackers?
@I submited this to the FBI
There are federal police forces, the BKA in Germany for example, that let child porn sites continue to operate. Under some sort of surveillance of course. The police is using these sites as bait for child porn consumers. The consumers get caught, which makes an excellent case for online surveillance legislation. “Excellent case” of course only, if the public is told “We got some child pornographers, because we were able to spy on them.” The public agrees, because almost nobody likes child pornography. This sort of police work has come to light in a case where they tried to discredit the Java Anon Proxy, an anonymity network. The police isn’t interested in child pornography per se. Although the individual policeman probably is. Their right to exist is to protect a system, be there criminals or not.
But it is still worthwhile to let the FBI know what you think should be done.
They can never win we are more connected then at any point we have ever been in P2P history. Its like Bush throwing rocks at the Borg…
Good lcuk with that retards…
You can join us or fight us.
If you do chose to fight good luck with stopping BT you can cut off all the heads and the Hydra would just grow again as it always does. It has to many legit uses so ya…
Even the tack of trying to ban people in submissive Nations, that requires so much invasion of privacy to do its dirty work its a bigger threat then p2p. This will ultimately change democracies and how they view spyware and privacy. As well as cause countless amounts of costs in legal fees. Hope its worth it to extort as much cash as possible instead of embracing the digital age. It will be a shame tho if pirate parties break your lobby ways tho wont it. And not every nation will be as submissive as the the USA is to the corporations.
As your empire gets older and older and withers and begins to die, you will be lucky if you have such a advanced medium to take care of you… You cant depend on your dvd rentals/overpriced popcorn/etc forever… Sooner or later digital will win just as Tivo won over TV.
Nobody wants to walk to the middle man for every piece of crap they toss out.
@I submited this to the FBI
There are federal police forces, the BKA in Germany for example, that let child porn sites continue to operate. Under some sort of surveillance of course. The police is using these sites as bait for child porn consumers. The consumers get caught, which makes an excellent case for online surveillance legislation. “Excellent case” of course only, if the public is told “We got some child pornographers, because we were able to spy on them.” The public agrees, because almost nobody likes child pornography. This sort of police work has come to light in a case where they tried to discredit the Java Anon Proxy, an anonymity network. The police is not interested in child pornography per se. Although the individual policeman probably is. Their right to exist is to protect a system, be there criminals or not.
But it is still worthwhile to let the FBI know what you think should be done.
I’ve got something the BPI can clamp down on. :P
[quote comment="323160"]…
I demand you investigate into the RIAAs illegal and terrorist practices, peat the whistleblower.[/quote]
There are federal police forces, the BKA in Germany for example, that let child porn sites continue to operate. Under some sort of surveillance of course. The police is using these sites as bait for child porn consumers. The consumers get caught, which makes an excellent case for online surveillance legislation. “Excellent case” of course only, if the public is told “We got some child pornographers, because we were able to spy on them.” The public agrees, because almost nobody likes child pornography. This sort of police work has come to light in a case where they tried to discredit the Java Anon Proxy, an anonymity network. The police is not interested in child pornography per se. Although the individual policeman probably is. Their right to exist is to protect a system, be there criminals or not.
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