Hahaha, this is kinda cool.
Yes, maybe BT exaggurated the figures… But by admitting that the BPI did so too, they now have no right of speech before they produce some real numbers :P

http://arstechnica.com/old/content/2007/02/8813.ars

Additionally, there are several studies from 2004 which reinforce this.

But more relevant, there is a much more recent study (in the last 2-3 months) that demonstrates the same is still true… I’ll post back soon if I can find a link to it.

(~1% of overall profit loss can be attributed to filesharers)

Care to give a source?

Does anyone seriously believe that the people who take out Virgin’s 50Mbit service just want to check their e-mail, book a holiday and watch a couple of YouTube videos? Hence, ISPs will be extremely reluctant to go after their biggest customers.

Actually, they’ll probably be most eager to get rid of the 10% of their consumers that only pay 20% of their revenue but eat up 90% of their bandwidth. I’m thinking that they want low-volume consumers since their packages have a higher unit price.

Except, of course, for a business package. Companies want businesses to be their customers.

Lawyers love it when evidence is improperly obtained as it makes the case for defense so much easier.

Simple. Because they know that there is no chance of winning in court as they can only identify the owner of the connection, not the infringer.

The BPI have ZERO proof that anyone downloading wasn’t allowed to do so under the fair use and fair dealing restricted acts that are permitted under copyright laws.

The BPI have ZERO proof of profit loss / actual damages.

Stopping piracy online will cost far more than the projected losses that the BPI spew at us.

In other words, fighting the pirates will damage the countries GDP and will be bad for the economy.

Defeating the pirates would save the BPI and it’s friends a statistically insignificant amount in losses/damages (~1% of overall profit loss can be attributed to filesharers)

The BPI need to stop p*ssing in the wind as the only thing they’re achieving is to get p*ss all over their legs whilst they turn filesharers into stubborn non-consumers that will boycott anything associated with the BPI.

To label BT “shameless” when the BPIs suggestions are a great big waste of time and money are retarded.

Why would an ISP shoot itself in the foot to bring nearly zero benefit to the BPI?

If the BPI think BT is shameless, the BPI is simply… retarded.

NO

But they could scan every conversation for keywords and log possible threat phonecalls.
That’s not invading privacy! That’s making the world a little bit safer!

What’s gone wrong?

“Sounds like the same thing with the US drug war. Billions out fighting drugs, where as if pot were legalized billions would be coming in from just one plant. Just saying..”

I totally agree. Some politicians in America are realizing it too.

This article on CBS news is dated may 6, 2009. Governor Shwarzenegger has talked about fully legalizing pot this year.

http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/05/06/politics/politicalhotsheet/entry4996114.shtml
“But Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has taken a significant step further, saying on Tuesday that it’s time to debate legalizing marijuana for recreational use in California.”

And earlier this year the mayor of El Paso Texas tried to get congress to at least discuss the legalization of pot, but congress basically told him to shut up about it or the city would risk losing money from the stimulus.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/01/14/drug-legalization-debate_n_157798.html

Governments, anti-piracy, pro-copyright groups, all fail to realize that spending too much money to fight something is not the way to solve the problem. The war on drugs, online piracy, and even unemployment, all have a similar outcome: it’s a losing battle and no amount of money you spend is going to fix the problem, and the more you fight it, the worse it gets. The Mexican government started cracking down on drug cartels, and look what happened. Violence escalated dramatically. Bailing out the banks and auto industry was to save jobs, and we have lost way more jobs than what has been saved or created. And the pressure on online “piracy” has gotten people to invent and use ways to protect their online privacy by way of VPN, proxies, etc. Bottom line: The more they try to fight and control people, the worse things will get. They should leave well enough alone, and eventually things will work themselves out.

Article 12

“Mere conduit”

1. Where an information society service is provided that consists of the transmission in a communication network of information provided by a recipient of the service, or the provision of access to a communication network, Member States shall ensure that the service provider is not liable for the information transmitted, on condition that the provider:

(a) does not initiate the transmission;

(b) does not select the receiver of the transmission; and

(c) does not select or modify the information contained in the transmission.

Article 15

No general obligation to monitor

1. Member States shall not impose a general obligation on providers, when providing the services covered by Articles 12, 13 and 14, to monitor the information which they transmit or store, nor a general obligation actively to seek facts or circumstances indicating illegal activity.

http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:32000L0031:EN:HTML

Please inform BPI that UK is a Member State of EU.

On the other hand, this is a part of the process initiated since 2005 by entertainment majors to circumvent the principle of mere conduit AND impose 3-strikes worldwide. See 2006 CMBA position http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/policy/ecomm/doc/library/public_consult/review_2/comments/cmba.pdf

Information-based industries are pissed that they’re fast becoming obsolete due to modern information technology and, in knowing this, are attempting to forge a continuation of existance online by having the technology controlled in their interest, irrespective of detriment to others.

The containers they used previously to create a product that they could market – CDs, DVDs, newspapers, broadcast networks, etc. – have been rendered obsolete by modern information technology. And now, knowing that they haven’t a viable container to encapsulate the information to create a marketable item, want I.T. reshaped to become a replacement mechanism so they can continue business as usual. For this they need control of distribution, which means they need to control the flow of information, which means they need to control the technology, which means they need to control the access providers, and all so they can control the people by denying them its use.

It’s a big ruse by obsolete industry to take control of modern technology for its own gain.

Whoa! Talk about hypocrisy…

I sincerely hope that BT will find their claims just as laughable as I do. :-)

seems to work :)

If you receive a letter from your ISP folks ask them to verify the organisation making the claims are registered with the data protection commission, if not call the police as a crime has taken place and these media industry criminals must face the full penalty of the law.

Riff
http://www.total-privacy.net.tc

I’m sure that the vast majority of “infringers” are underage minors, all of whom can’t be charged with any crime anyways.

The reality is that all they are doing is sharing 0′s and 1′s, and those 0′s and 1′s are likely not even the EXACT patterns of 0′s and 1′s that are the original part of the copyrighted medium to begin with (lawyers please note the last sentence).

Yes, disconnect all of the infringers including innocent bystanders such as parents, grandparents, grandchildren and sibling so the ISP can lose 100,000 customers and all of the income from them, and all they will have left are customers that don’t care about music and will never buy music, but disconnect the music lovers who are more likely to pay for licensed content now or in the future.

YES! This makes PERFECT sense. DISCONNECT them ALL!

*banging head on table*

Nice idea.
Also a nice idea would be to actually try to see what the “evidence” is. Really – what is it? They say they got IPs. IPs what? Where did they get them from monitoring – what? Torrents? There is a lot of legal information on torrents – free software, creative commons artwork. How can they prove WHAT was downloaded? Filenames? Pfff. You can name a legal file britneyspears.mp3 though in reality it is some ambient by your neighbour. What kind of evidence is that?

I think that the evidence is very weak.

Hold your ground BT, and your customers will back you. A company shouldn’t be forced to change it’s practices to suit another company.

Did u swear or post a website link? Thats proberly why…

Or they can try and destroy the internet and take away our freedom at the same time making us resent them.

Thing is though, who owns the internet?

I believe it should be the customers because we are the ones who invested in expensive broadband connections. Without us, the internet would be slow and would never have taken off as much as it has.

Ive spent 35 Uk pounds a month for about 4 years now on my internet. So now Ive personally have spent 1600 UK pounds.
Only to have some Dickheads throttle my connection, shut down my favorite websites and while this is happening UK Television has turned to shit. (Commercial music was already shit)

Strictly come dancing, Britians got talent, Deal or no Deal — Thats what TVs become – U get me?

The BPI argument is just lol. Seriously, if a murderer uses a certain brand of knife do they go after the knife manufacturer or the people that actually commited the crime? It’s not up to BT to decide who should be punished and who shoulden’t be, they just provide a service. Like they said, if the BPI were so peeved off why don’t they do something about it instead of whining to BT like little bitches.

If I even get a whiff of a letter coming to me i’ll just use my VPN connection for any downloading, as it stands at the moment I just have it as a backup / if I want to watch hulu etc.

great going BT …. stuff the riaa….

Why.

Would like you to “misuse” your power to call for a type of worldwide boycot against the musicindustry, like stop paying for CDs/DVDs or downloads for like a week.

BT do not offer static IP’s.

And beside 100000 x £20.54 = £2,054,000 a month is lost sales, which adds up to a staggering £24,648,000 over the year in lost sales. Doubt BT will do anything.