ISP To Voluntarily Disconnect File-Sharers, Offers Free Usenet
Written by enigmax on March 31, 2008Virgin Media in the UK has announced that it is working with the music industry to chase down its file-sharing customers and disconnect them from the internet. At the same time, it will offer an enhanced service which will see its customers get free Usenet binaries access, untraceable by the music industry.
Anyone familiar with Virgin Media’s advertising (previously Telewest/Blueyonder) will recall their TV commercials over the last couple of years which centered round the ability to download greater and greater amounts of media, faster than ever before.
Their ‘Best Things in Life Are Free’ TV campaign, complete with eye-catching computer graphics, with movie and musical themes throughout left the viewer with a clear message: if you want to download music and movies quickly (for free), join us. Now, in 2008, the situation has changed dramatically. Kind of.
According to a report, the ISP has had a change of heart and will be working in collaboration with the British Phonographic Industry (BPI). Starting with a pilot scheme, the BPI will deviate from its stated policy of not going after individual file-sharers by targeting Virgin Media customers on P2P networks and reporting them to the ISP.
Set to go live during the next few months, and at the behest of the UK music industry, Virgin’s scheme will see them send warning letters out to customers flagged as file-sharers by the BPI. Those who do not heed warnings to stop will see Virgin disconnect them from the internet. The scheme will also be available to movie and TV studios who wish to punish Virgin’s customers.
Earlier this year the government said that ISPs should find a way to curb unauthorized downloading. By stepping up with its own plan, Virgin is hoping to side-step government enforced legislation.
A Virgin Media spokesman said: “We have been in discussions with rights holders organizations about how a voluntary scheme could work. We are taking this problem seriously and would favor a sensible voluntary solution.”
So as Virgin Media constantly upgrades its broadband customers to faster and faster connections over the last couple of years (4Mbit connections became 10Mbit, 10Mbit then became 20Mbit, 20Mbit due to become 40mb), it now agrees to punish the very people it targets when offering these super-fast connections.
However, all might not be lost for the file-sharer at Virgin Media, especially those who want to max-out their new bandwidth offering. The ISP will be rolling out a new newsgroup service for its subscribers which should be ready in the next couple of months. Using the Highwinds server banks, the service will offer 7 days retention on the all important binary newsgroups. A Virgin spokesman said: “We’re delighted to be working with Highwinds to build out our newsgroup service. Our expanded access to newsgroups will give our customers a free news feed to newsgroups with exceptional retention, providing one of the best free newsgroup services in the UK.”
Not to mention super high speed access to all the movies, music and software anyone could ever need, with no fear that the BPI, RIAA or IFPI can snoop on the transfers.
The Lord does indeed work in mysterious ways.
Previously: LegalTorrents Reopens as Community Driven Portal
Next: IFPI Demands Millions From The Pirate Bay
126 Responses
I’ve got a ton of I.P’s they can start with. Tons of blocked ip’s logged on peerguardian that were logged in torrent swarms. Where should I report these to? They should be banned from the internet immediately.
UK people = Mad
I know UK people deeply, they are mad & very emotional.
They have no brain LoL, Trust me or not, but it’s Very True ! ! !
for example: They are disconnecting Illegal File-Sharers and giving them free access to Illegal UseNet.
It’s the same shit.
Reasonable Example: UK gov have an apple and File-Sharers have an apple, Gov is taking File-Sharers apple and in return they give their apple. still File-Sharers have the an apple.
So what will be difference ? LoL
UK got Dumb Government, think + rethink, then announce something interesting.
Don’t exchange apples cause still File-Sharers will have an apple. LoL
Peace
Mr.Afghanistan
@2
You’re a complete retard.
Is it really true that downloading from newsgroups makes you untraceable?
I was under the impression that this was a bit of a myth?
VM deserve to go bust!
@ Mr.Afghanistan…
The ISP is just trying to please everyone and avoid compulsory rules that would (eventually) be forced onto them by the state if they cannot ‘control’ the ‘illegal’ downloading that their customers (allegedly) do.
On the flip side, they are giving their customers the option to d/l whatever they want without interference. Must be their retention strategy.
As I have stated in previous posts, the average ISP worker is contracted by an agency, paid minimum wage, aged between 18-25 and does a heck of a lot of d/l of movies, music & apps themselves (remember that I used to work for such an ISP and had many friends in the competitions business).
The average bigwig boss will ask the workers (who represent a fair amount of their customer base) what they think of the situation regarding P2P, etc and then consult their legal department to find ways to ‘please everyone’ whilst maximising profit and customer retention.
But you ar right Mr.Afghanistan, it is a mad situation.
Still…you got to see the funny side (and at least Virgin medias customer base no longer have to worry about the Police breaking their doors down, taking their computers and hauling them into court for ‘copyright infringment’ or whatever…)
Peace!
http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=770447
The lord giveth and the lord taketh away.
I would take a decent free USENET service over torrents anyday.
Anonymous VPN services are going to be big business in the UK soon.
@ED
Not untraceable, but you are connecting to the newsserver and not to anyone else, so the only people who can see what you are doing are the people who run the news server, in this case your ISP. and your mum.
So, in my opinion, they are doing this:
They make it hard to do P2P filesharing and offer a substitute to the subscribers. A big difference (compared to speeds) is that P2P isn’t controlled by the ISP, while the newsgroups are centralised and can be controlled.
So, what happens then? The music industry thinks that the usenet thing is getting too much and they force a shutdown.
Slippery slope anyone?
You might think that there will be an exodus of users from Virgin Media to other ISPs and that this will hurt Virgin Media but I doubt that.
You see, there are many ISPs in the UK that are offering an “unlimited” service for ever decreasing monthly fees.
Users that use P2P use most of the ISPs bandwidth so this pact with BPI is a great excuse for Virgin Media to dump those users.
If they manage to switch the download from public internet to a Usenet server inside their network they avoid most bandwidth charges and capacity problems.
It’s a win win for Virgin Media!
“The ISP will be rolling out a new newsgroup service for its subscribers which should be ready in the next couple of months.”
this is complete and utter bullshit…
weve already got a free unlimited usenet server from virgin/blueyonder its called “news.blueyonder.co.uk” i know this because im using it right now!!!!! it has unlimited download speed but a 3 day retention..
ow well guess its time for an isp change,, i heard “Be” has a good service?
dont suppose theyve got a free usenet server thou have they?
i’m with VM, not out of choice but because i’m in a new build flat and thats my only option. there is no BT line so i have to go with VM!
and and #2 = retard
:)
No, Be do not have a free usenet service :(
I can’t see that anyone (with a chice that is #13) is going to stay with VM. I would certainly be cancelling my subscription right now if I were with them. This is dictatorial, smacks of big brother and to me marks the start of the slippery slope in filesharing as was suggested in an earlier post. I can’t believe some of the comments that have been made are for real – it sounds like a whole group of VM employees got together this morning and wrote posts to try and sell this nonsense. It’s obvious that this act will lead to the eventual closure of Usenet and the RIAA and MPAA will have got their way. The only thing that might be proven when they stop filesharing though is that p2p sharing has not led to a drop in CD/DVD sales and that this campaign has been mounted on a lie.
VM is the only provider in the UK that doesn’t slap you around with the Fair Use Policy but they do hit you with traffic shaping from 4pm to 9pm. Hence VM is the only ISP that touches the Unlimited advertisement.
Anyother ISP try DL-in 24h and you’ll allready have few warnings after witch you’ll eithe rbe dc’ed or set up on a 5Kbit/s server where you are better off on a 56k dial-up then there.
[quote comment="323982"]“The ISP will be rolling out a new newsgroup service for its subscribers which should be ready in the next couple of months.”
this is complete and utter bullshit…[/quote]
I normally make a point of not responding to abusive comments…
The current service you speak of is the ‘old’ service with 3 days retention (if you’re lucky) and, surprise, surprise, the ‘new’ service I wrote about is the ‘new’ service using the Highwinds server farm, with around 7 days retention which will be operational in Spring 2008.
“Leveraging Virgin Media’s dedicated high-speed link connecting to the
Highwinds CDN, Internet users will be able to take advantage of important new features available in the Virgin newsgroup service. These include extended 90-day retention of text articles and 7-day minimum retention of binaries, as well as a full news feed covering thousands of groups.
Virgin Media’s revamped newsgroup service will be available Spring 2008.
“We’re delighted to be working with Highwinds to build out our newsgroup
service. Our expanded access to newsgroups will give our customers a free news feed to newsgroups with exceptional retention, providing one of the best free newsgroup services in the UK,” said Alex Brown, senior product manager at Virgin Media.
“We at Highwinds are excited to be partnering with Virgin Media to improve the content delivery experience of their newsgroup subscribers,” said Robb Barkley, VP Corporate Communications at Highwinds. “Our massive CDN with
points of presence worldwide will play a key role in enabling Virgin Media to implement their advanced newsgroup service with greatly enhanced article retention, access speeds and availability.”
Now, is that enough info for you?
Hang on, if the Usenet is untraceable, would it better to use that instead of torrents+VPN? Something like UseNeXT that Mininova link to? As long as my ISP doesn’t know what I’m doing, I’m happy :-)
and i just got the business service… think im going to get D/Ced on prupose so i dont have to put up with another year of the contract with this shit, ill just get another isp, AGAIN
VM = POS
Virgin media is a poor ISP over here, only people who know nothing about the internet use it, and only cause they got like a free laptop or a discount on the Virgin Media TV package.
I believe that you’re all forgetting the first rule about usenet…
Kill the royal family they deserve it
UK = U$ colony
@ comment number 22
WTF??! This has nowt to do with royalty but rather a retarded cable ISP thats already crap
Virgin media is generally a bad isp here in the uk with proberbly the worst customer service and tech support of any uk telecom company but the only other options are adsl through a very old and crappy copper wire system which if you live more than 5 miles away from the local exchange like me and 85% of uk residents means your never gunna get more than 2-3mbs on a supposed 8mbs line. with virgin offering 20mbs (50mbs soon) on a fibre optic network if your in a cable area then there really isnt much choice….
On the Ip logging file sharing issue, anyone who doesn’t use a reliable vpn service while sharing ILLEGALLY downloaded movies/music/games/software is just asking for trouble in my opinion.
with a vpn..
1.your real Ip address is kept hidden.
2.Isp’s don’t see anything but a bunch of encrypted traffic going back and forward.
3.ALL your traffic is covered by vpn ie. surfing, torrents, ftp and even usenet.
So are Virgin going to start monitoring what you download and what we transfer between us,anyone pointed out to Virgin that under European law the cannot monitor transfered content without a courts permission,and only then if a serious crime is susspected
http://torrentfreak.com/swedish-isp-refuses-to-block-pirate-bay-080327/
@25 I dont think virgin themselves are gunna be monitoring individual lines but are working in conjuction with all the media rights companies who jump on torrent swarms with modded torrent clients with the specific purpose of logging IP address’s to report to Isp’s
Oh shit. Like #13 I’m on VM and don’t have much choice about it.
I would like to point that this company _may_ be involved in terrorizing victims in their “sue ‘em all” marketing campaign. Logo and name are too similar.
http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&rls=en&hs=rsy&q=virgin+site%3Arecordingindustryvspeople.blogspot.com
Usenet is not the solution.
The music&movie industry probably already have their own subscription to Virgin Media, and are preparing to take the Usenet binaries issue to court, and most likely win the right to view the download logs from the binaries server.
This is centralized filesharing, which is SO much easier for the content industry to deal with.
Makes it much easier to sue people for copyright violations.
Dump Virgin and get another ISP, or start your own.
If there are thousands of ISPs in each country, it’ll be completely impossible for the content industry to deal with each of them. It’s much, much easier with just a few large ones.
There should of course be a coalition of ISPs, so if one gets attacked(sued) by the content industry, they join forces against the attack.
Start at http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/02/29/phorm_roundup/
Virgin have been heavily involved in trying to push this illegal monitoring technology for the purpose of serving targeted ads. From there, it’s easy to start monitoring usenet usage, especially if they provide the access.
Besides, do you really think they’ll offer all the binary groups?
@29
Most professional services don’t keep download logs.
@ Someone else
Unless you have the traffic of usenet encrypted your isp can see what your doing.
@ Person calling VM crap, they obviously haven’t tried BT Broadband or, in particular, Tiscali.
Few pointers:
1. UK is still in 18th century. Fibre for end users will be available only when the rest of the world moves to brain wave transmissions and discovers worm holes in space.
There is plenty of fibre around in UK but unfortunately, it is all used for CCTV, so that police can laugh while you are getting mugged.
2. UK is rip-off, which basically means, sign up for 50Mb and get 0.5 down and 128K up. On top of that 90% of your traffic will be filled with ads and footie goal replays.
3. You will not be able to establish more than 1 VPN connection at a time without spending £££££ on a VPN concentrator. But in regard to that, see points 1 and 2.
4. British record industry are so influencial (keep in mind the Virgin’s main business) so that they can wrap anyone around their finger.
5. Brits do not care about EU, but do as they please.
With all that in mind, maybe it is best to move out of there as I have done last year?
And I don’t regret for a moment…
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! Vigin media are the best; 20meg now 50meg later! How could they do this!!!!!!!!!!!! They were fast becoming the most popular isp in the and now they do ths. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!! Save yourself, Vigin Media, or end up like comcast!!!!!
I’m wondering, how would the media companies have any knowledge of whether offenders have actually been disconnected?
Couldn’t Virgin just assign a new IP address and be done with it?
Could Virgin use the system as an excuse to disconnect subscribers that are deemed undesirable to their interests?
Who’s the objective authority; judge and jury? Is there any accountability?
Im a Virgin Media customer, and im not very clued up when it comes to newsgroups etc, If i want to continue sharing files via BitTorrent should i be worried yet? And should i be looking for an alternative ISP?
Im a bit confused by all this.
hehehe, finally. i wan’t to see you cry
#35 I wouldn’t worry about it, chances are it’ll amount to effectively nothing. If, on the otherhand, they do start freaking out kicking everyone then you’ll know about it and can make a decision from there.
P.S. I wouldn’t pay much attention to the newsgroup angle, it’s just fluff thrown in in an attempt to lessen the impact of the real news.
This whole affair is just stupid. 7 days retention is ridiculous. I feel sorry for Virgin subscribers.
Virgin Media? That sure sounds like a bunch of pedophiles to me. Where’s the good ol’ British mob when you need them?
suddenly something like relakks 5 euros a month VPN sounds quite attractive.
bring on the conservatives!!!!!!!! :)
@24
What VPN service do you use/suggest?
just a small enhancement, Telewest/Blueyonder > NTL > Virgin Media
PKZip – Virgin no longer own music industry companies. Virgin Records is owned by Guy Hands and EMI, V2 was sold to Universal and Virgin Megastores was bought out by mgt and renamed Savvi. This is just more hype from Virgin. Basically Branson looks saintly, VM get one in before SKY so take the moral high ground and as an earler poster mentioned they don’t want the big downloaders anyway. Of course the big question for me is – will Peer Guardian help at all. Otherwise I’m off to another ISP. VM are cheeky anyway. Tried selling up to the new HD box for another £30 odd without mentioning they have bugger all HD channels. Shysters. But thats Dickie B for you.
very very simple solution that can be easily implemented by tracker operators is ipfiltering. employ an ipfilter to stop the evil anti-p2p peers from connecting to the tracker
disable dht in the client and no evil peer can connect to you and log your activity
http://www.h33t.com is such a tracker that uses ipfiltering to keep evil peers off the network
be warned: a multi-tracker torrent that includes non-filtered trackers lets the evil peers back into the swarm. do not use multi-tracker torrents in combination with a ipfiltering tracker
h33t, the intentions sound reasonable but I doubt you’ll be able to identify all but the most obvious addresses they use.
agreed the defense is not instant because it relies on blocklist updates, accuracy and timing
however, tracker ipfiltering goes a long way to complicate the business of tracking swarms. all of the IP’s found in the MediaDefender email leak were already known to the blocklist specialists and in the level1
i disagree with the statement that all but the most obvious addresses will remain hidden. to work effectively the logging operation will be on a massive scale and the presence of those evil peers will be highlighted in the networks
once the logging operation is discovered, who they are, where they are, how they enter the network, then all their IP’s will be known. that is as incontrovertible as the fact there is no such thing as internet anonymity
get BTGuard NOW I THINK IT HELLOS
btguard.com/
i’d have more confidence in btguard if their site didn’t look like it had been designed by a 6 year old with some crayons
sounds a bit over the top to me
no actual solid announcement of what they’re going to be doing, when they’re going to do it and how. it’s just an article full of speculation.
I’m not denying virgin will do something; after all they may well be the only ISP that will gain from cutting pirates off due to their major link to the record industry.
and the newsgroups goes straight against the concept of piracy.
I’ll be surprised if anything happens any time soon.
THIS STORY IS FAKE HERE THE REAL ONE
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2008/03/30/cnvirgin130.xml
[quote comment="324067"]Kill the royal family they deserve it
UK = U$ colony[/quote]
well thats completely the wrong way arround, go learn some history
and on topic, this could be an interesing story to watch, as virgin essentially have a monopoly over cable in the UK, and if they are sucsessful then it could lead to a rise in the number of BT line type customers, meaning that there would be even more pressure on BT to finally get round to installing fibre to the home. It will also be interesting to see if any kind of privacy laws (data protection act mabye) could interviene in the plan.
the other side of it is that the BPI will loose what respect it had withing sociotey as it had previously said it would turn a blind eye to joe average downloader, and target the people that sell bootlegs instead
THIS STORY IS FAKE HERE THE REAL ONE
THE BIT ABOUT Free Usenet IS A LIE
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2008/03/30/cnvirgin130.xml
Why do i have to use Virgin Media, this blows balls, looks like im getting disconnected haha
i would never buy my internet service from a company so involved in the record industry like AOL or Virgin. you’re asking for trouble.
well, if one of these VPN tunels is secure and private, £4 isn’t too much to pay a month for piece of mind if you download a lot that you shouldn’t. Still unfair though..
Seems to me its quite good thinking from VM (from their point of view). They can be seen to acting against p2p…while at the same time making sure people can still access music/films etc.; not only that but by caching these files closer to home they cut down on transatlantic traffic.
@Mr Thoughts
@Daydreamer1
@greylion
I agree.
This scheme can be used to discredit the Usenet in a big way. Give it a spin like “child porn and pirates are on the Usenet” and public opinion would certainly agree something must be done about it. As soon as the content MAFIAA is allowed to send cancel messages through the Usenet that can become very ugly. Or they just flood the storage with useless crap and flush the copyrighted material out of existence. Or they might try to close down the alt.binaries tree altogether. Well, not before many file sharers gave up on bittorrent and switched to download.
I bet the MAFIAA has these sorts of strategies laid out and ready to implement in their drawers. That’s one main weakness of corporations, especially big corporations. They have to plan ahead so they can justify large investments. And because they need to earn money to satisfy their shareholders it’s easy to predict the general direction they have to move in.
I believe it’s better not to put too much stress on the Usenet and keep using bittorrent, even thought it’s more risky for the individual. The evolution of a network of peers is much harder to predict and control than the Usenet. I think P2P flexibility is one major advantage over the five-year plans of the corporations. The content MAFIAA has already lost the initiative to P2P networking and we shoud stay ahead.
I just had the greatest idea.. Why don’t the copyright holders go together and offer a Usenet for all of us? We get access to the real stuff asap, we get high speeds, the ISP’s don’t have to chase us around and the copyright holders get money!
Win for everybody!
If you connect to a newsgroup via your home isp connection, it’s easily traced, if your ISP feels like logging it.
There are various methods to “hide” yourself online and what you are doing, but unfortunately, there are no 100% fool proof methods IF your isp is tracking you.
You can’t use their service and expect to be hidden, always hack your friends wifi, ALWAYS!
OMG for bittorrent just install Asureus and turn on the RC4 encryption and run peerguardian 2 and then you wont get caught its as simple as that.
Anyway virgin media are shite because of the traffic shaping. If you want a good isp go with Be there adsl2 connections are 24MB (not available everywhere yet.
^^^^
the only people “protected” on newsgroups would be seeders on torrents, as you aren’t downloading from a person, you are downloading from a server bank your isp is leasing, you can still be tracked for downloading, but no one can really be caught for uploading. The original poster could technically be ‘tracked’ but it’s a grey area, he’s making it available, but not actually providing it to the users, the ISP is doing that :)
Silly limeys
What happened when Tiscali tried the same (shitty) stunt:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/02/15/tiscali_bpi_agreement/
This little venture has “doomed to fail” written all over it. On top of the fact that many subscribers will leave in disgust before it’s even implemented, the BPI is lobbying for a three-strikes system that warns “offenders” via email.
Which, naturally… Will work in practice as nothing more than huge, blaring klaxxons screaming “LEAVE THIS ISP NOW” the instant they arrive in your inbox. Not as a deterrent to stop using P2P.
Also, let’s not forget that the moment somebody recieves a Cease & Desist email for torrenting a perfectly legal file(and mark my words, they will), the whole thing will come tumbling down. Messily.
In a word, Virgin Media is fux0r’d. They’ll learn too late that eagerly riding the British MAFIAA’s dick while tossing their own customers to the wind makes them a shoe-in for the Darwin Awards.
@Mr Thoughts
@Daydreamer1
@greylion
I agree.
This scheme can be used to discredit the Usenet in a big way. Give it a spin like “child porn and pirates are on the Usenet” and public opinion would certainly agree something must be done about it. As soon as the content MAFIAA is allowed to send cancel messages through the Usenet that can become very ugly. Or they just flood the storage with useless crap and flush the copyrighted material out of existence. Or they might try to close down the alt.binaries tree altogether. Well, not before many file sharers gave up on bittorrent and switched to download.
I bet the MAFIAA has these sorts of strategies laid out and ready to implement in their drawers. That’s one main weakness of corporations, especially big corporations. They have to plan ahead so they can justify large investments. And because they need to earn money to satisfy their shareholders it’s easy to predict the general direction they have to move in.
I believe it’s better not to put too much stress on the Usenet and keep
using bittorrent, even thought it’s more risky for the individual. The
evolution of a network of peers is much harder to predict and control than the Usenet. I think the flexibility of a peer network is one major advantage over the five-year plans of the corporations. The content MAFIAA has already lost the initiative to P2P networking and we shoud stay ahead.
[quote comment="324060"]I believe that you’re all forgetting the first rule about usenet…[/quote]
Whats the point about being so secretive? It’s just security through security. Sure, the riaa and mpaa leave usenet alone, but only because few people use it – and if few people are using it, then whats the point?
So look everyone, you oughta know: There is a place called usenet. Its more than just a big fucking discussion forum… people have hacked it to store files on “binary” groups. You can download stuff there at top speed, and you are encouraged to leech, but I should warn you that the selection is not as broad as bittorrent. It’s harder to find rare stuff on usenet. You also need to have good usenet service – most webhosts offer free usenet access, but only retain data posted in the last few days.
Out of interest, how will this work?
Will the BPI have access to Virgin’s logs, or will it work the other way round – the BPI connect to swarms and just whois a lot of IPs, reporting Virgin owned IPs back?
Wish they would voluntarily disconnect Spammers.
Bastards.
It’s “Internet” — not “internet”, you stupid piece of shit.
http://www.anontalk.com/
lmaooooooooo
who cares …
after 10 + years of d/l.. its got boring anyways….. and 20mit, my ass.. its all shared just like bulldog was.. Waste of digging up ur garden to lay a cable.. VM sux, Richard Branson needs to give his public a break not just maddy mccanns parents..!!!!
btw.. APRILS FOOL LMFAO
“arsehole at AnarchyNowQuote AnarchyNow
Kill the royal family they deserve it
UK = U$ colony
@ comment number 22″
if you knew anything, you would know the royal family had their power taken away by the house of commons long before you and your half breed father were even born.
you really want to stop this, then use the law of the land.
its there for you to use as well, its not just for the UK companys to profit from.
OC, you need to understand what your doing, and be able and willing to write and send a registered letter for two…..
can you bring yourself to make even that small effort ?
or are you forever going to type crap about the RF you know nothing about…
send your Data Protection Act Notices to the VM data controller.
your MP and MEP letters about the Phorm deep packet inspection kit,invation of privacy,RIPA,DPA,and even copyright, yes thats right VM are using your clickstream copyright and selling it to Phorm.
Hell , if you have the balls, you could learn how to make a valid court injunction, stopping any and all these actions Virgin media have put in place.
clue, you dont need a lawyer to do it for you, READ UP on it and send the letters.
VM’s etc argument is suspected torrent copyright misuse is wrong, but its OK to use your clickstream copyright so they can profit from it.
(see theregister Phorm stories and cable forum co uk threads)
so read up ,understand what you need to do , and fucking do it halfwit, or just mong out here typeing crap rather than good advice and effecting the outcome.
if your not actively part of the solution,, you are the problem, your sitting there laughing at posts,typeing crap about the RF, and pissing in the wind.
if you have the balls write the letters as others are doing.
make a difference and write that registered post letter, make them work for their money and make it non cost effective for them.
that means get off your fat arse and post your official notices removing their right to process your data as is YOUR RIGHT under the DPA.
but they think your all ASBO hoody infested sheep that cant be arsed right?, and your just going to piss in the wind, and get wrecked because you cant be bovered!
are they right, are you to dumb and aperthetic to really do SOMETHING REAL like write that letter and send it?
Forget about the slippery slope, this is business as usual. As soon as a filesharing service reaches a critical mass, big business takes action against it, and most users take a long time to find the next thing that works. But never fear, there will always be another option that works, because big business always targets the biggest outlet…
VPN + UN = nirvana
I don’t know whether TorrentFreak has written anything about this topic yet. The Pirate Bay was recently sued by IFPI for 1.621.045 Euro. Read more…
http://gnalkit.blogspot.com/2008/03/pirate-bay-sued-for-200000-dollar-by.html
Usenet is a useless pain in the arse offering low quality (non-scene) releases, which frequently are broken.
Bittorrent has amazing community spirit and the best releases on the net.
Hmmmm, let me think…
I think Virgin Media can blow me, my seedbox and my hacked modems.
If you’re really worried about these corporate facists disconnectiong you from the internet there are plenty of things you might do, I already mentioned one of them.
@Mr Thoughts
@Daydreamer1
@greylion
I agree.
This scheme can be used to discredit the Usenet in a big way. Give it a spin like “child porn and pirates are on the Usenet” and public opinion would certainly agree something must be done about it. As soon as the content MAFIAA is allowed to send cancel messages through the Usenet that can become very ugly. Or they just flood the storage with useless crap and flush the copyrighted material out of existence. Or they might try to close down the alt.binaries tree altogether. Well, not before many file sharers gave up on bittorrent and switched to download.
I bet the MAFIAA has these sorts of strategies laid out and ready to implement in their drawers. That’s one main weakness of corporations, especially big corporations. They have to plan ahead so they can justify large investments. And because they need to earn money to satisfy their shareholders it’s easy to predict the general direction they have to move in.
I believe it’s better not to put too much stress on the Usenet and keep using bittorrent, even thought it’s more risky for the individual. The evolution of a network of peers is much harder to predict and control than the Usenet. I think the flexibility of a peer network is one major advantage over the five-year plans of the corporations. The content MAFIAA has already lost the initiative to P2P networking and we shoud stay ahead.
better than nothing i guess
these fckuers deserve to get shafted on the dodgy cable boxes!
As the Telegraph story says, “The government said in February that it would implement legislation by April next year unless ISPs came to a voluntary agreement with the music and film industries.”
Virgin Media is *volunteering* because it doesn’t want to be controlled by the govt. VM probably thinks its press release makes it seem like a “respectable” anti-pirate ISP, but the announcement can only lead to a shedding of users. It is perfectly entitled to close accounts for whatever reason it likes (if bandwidth is restricted, profits can to a certain extent rise). Other ISPs will surely follow VM’s lead. This is bad news for file-sharers in the UK. While the instant reaction of a torretophile on VM might be “I’m leaving”, there soon won’t be anywhere else to go. Virgin wouldn’t be announcing this if it didn’t know for sure that its competitors are going to do the same thing fairly soon. The Usenet thing might be coming on stream soon, but it’s not going to be anywhere near as free/useful as torrent sites.
I think the only way file-sharing can stay alive in the UK is if a case goes to the European Court of Human Rights and finds that collecting IP addresses and file information is illegal, just as the authorities in Italy decreed in the Logistep case.
we don’t speak about usenet, shhhh!
UseNeXT is a SCAM!!! Check it out for yourself by googling. UseNeXT does NOT provide Usenet access. It is a scam, plain and simple. The torrent sites are being paid to link to UseNeXT.
we do now
April 1st ?
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060224-6253.html
how quicky we forget………
MPAA turns attention to USENET, takes on Torrentspy, Isohunt, others
By Ryan Paul | Published: February 24, 2006 – 08:56AM CT
You just fucked the first rule right up the ass.
AND your showing vigin how stupid they are being so I wouldn’t be surprised if they re-thought their usenet plans.
It’s one of those moments, when you think your being smart, but your really just showing them the flaw in their plan before they commit.
This scheme can be used to discredit the Usenet in a big way. Give it a spin like “child porn and pirates are on the Usenet” and public opinion would certainly agree something must be done about it. As soon as the content MAFIAA is allowed to send cancel messages through the Usenet that can become very ugly. Or they just flood the storage with useless crap and flush the copyrighted material out of existence. Or they might try to close down the alt.binaries tree altogether. Well, not before many file sharers gave up on bittorrent and switched to download.
I bet the MAFIAA has these sorts of strategies laid out and ready to implement in their drawers. That’s one main weakness of corporations, especially big corporations. They have to plan ahead so they can justify large investments. And because they need to earn money to satisfy their shareholders it’s easy to predict the general direction they have to move in.
I believe it’s better not to put too much stress on the Usenet and keep using bittorrent, even thought it’s more risky for the individual. The evolution of a network of peers is much harder to predict and control than the Usenet. I think the flexibility of a peer network is one major advantage over the five-year plans of the corporations. The content MAFIAA has already lost the initiative to P2P networking and we shoud stay ahead.
Hopefully people will continue to download via p2p, and then lets watch the ISP ban 2/3 of their customers. That would be funny :)
Don’t take the free Usenet deal, I’m sure they will remove the top groups such as boneless, dvdr, xvid, and probably all the porn groups. Just move on to another ISP or use IRC.
its april fools.. i’m telling you’s lol
I see a lot of mis-information and unfair opinions posted about Usenet in the comments. I’d like to set the record straight;
Usenet is *HUGE*. It averages at least 3-4TB a day, probably more, since those figures are quite old by now.
Almost all scene releases get posted to the newsgroups. All TV shows, all DVDrips, all games, etc. It’s rare that I can’t find the latest release of something posted to one group or another. The only thing is that the newsgroups continuously cycle off the oldest stuff to make room for the new. Even so, if there’s something specific you want, a polite request will often get it reposted for you.
It may seem like newsgroups are more work at first, but once you get the hang of them, it’s no big deal.
As for being monitored, I don’t know what VM does, but most newsgroup providers don’t keep download logs. If you have a set quota, they will keep a running tally of how much you’ve downloaded, but they don’t care WHAT you download. If you UPLOAD to the newsgroups, you can be traced, but unlike P2P networks, when you download, that’s ALL you’re doing. You don’t upload unless you specifically go out of your way to post something.
Also, contrary to what the media says, the music and movie industries don’t sue DOWNLOADERS. They sue UPLOADERS. When you use P2P software, you’re both and it’s the uploading that they get you for. No company is going to waste the time and money it would cost to take someone to court for downloading a song or movie. Whatever they might win wouldn’t even cover them getting out of the bed in the morning.
I’m not saying that downloading from the newgroups wouldn’t get you kicked off VM, IF they monitor what you download, but you’re not going to get sued over it.
You can always get an account with a professional Usenet provider too. Most have 30-120 days of retention and close to 99% completion rate for posted files. If you find one that supports SSL, even your ISP won’t know what you’re downloading.
The only downside to Usenet is that you usually have to pay to get good access. Astraweb sells blocks of credit and has unlimited accounts for $15 a month ($10 if you can accept a slower donload speed).
http://news.astraweb.com
Anyone ask themselves why virgin want to do this ? Nothing to do with their record stores by any chance ? Would this not be a conflict of interest !
@24: Can you provide some examples or reliable VPN? Are we talking TOR here?
Thanks!
The new Usenet service (which has been in ‘beta’ form for a while) is in certain ways better than the old (ex-BY) when it’s working, most of the time it’s either dead or very slow.
I’ve done a quick search through the responses and couldn’t find STM (throttling) mentioned. It’s all very well to pay for 20Mb, but half the time you won’t be getting it. STM now kicks in earlier, from around 1PM to 9PM – That nice 20Mb becomes 5Mb for 5 hours should you download over 3GB within the allocated time frame.
So in summary: 3 strikes your out, STM & Phorm – Not looking promising for VM is it.
http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=distributed+computing+P2P+&btnG=Google+Search&meta=
They’re trying to prevent a global network from forming.
They’ve been watching too much sci-fi & they’re scared Skynet is going to take over.
bring on the conservatives!!!!!!!! :)
R u on crak u frikin monkey. Fuk the conservatives and David Cammeron. Stoopid Twaaatin moron.
Somthing seems to be missing?
http://www.bpi.co.uk/index.asp?Page=news/press/news_content_file_1134.shtml
i hope the government does the legislating because what a holly cock up it will be.
them people wouldn’t understand technology or Internet if it jumped up and bit them
with government imposing their version i cannot wait for the knock on effect.
in effect it will change the rules of time for everything i.e post offices
if the law states they have to check every single packet for copyrighted.
then the post office would also be required to open every single post/letter too.
it would then role down to other company’s/businesses that operate online.
soon as anything you legally own copyrighted gets through you can sue then.
if you get spam/viruses anything that harm the pc then the ISP is at fault for
not checking the packets and the data to also see if its safe/copyrighted.
oOh the mess this is going to cause world wide is out of this world.
isp’s going to be shutting their doors, media companys will go bust.
as people who get kicked offline will start world wide boycotts of the media industry
i mean if you get your net cut off, you really think your going to go give money
to the shop on purchases that goes back to the industry who screwed you over? ha
look at the mess creative labs is in world wide now over daniel_k a normal user
making the drivers work for vista OS and creative has stoped all his hard work.
Shops all over the country will not now sell the X-FI creative cards boycotting it.
this happened in just 2 days flat, creatives stock has now fallen 6.7 % in a day!
Next hard-drive makers will go out of business pointless having 1tb or more drives.
pointless even having 600gb or less drives since there is no content to mass store.
optical media companys will also be put out of business no point having burners
or even blank media to store mass content on as backups as their would be nothing
legal to warrant buying or using mass storage since its sole purpose is to “store”
This will then hit graphics card makers, DivX Company and DivX players/hardware.
what legal company or service allows you to downloads DivX format AVI ???
All your mp3 makers will also go out of business as their wont be anyway to
download bare DRM free media Amazon and other Stores will go back to DRM content.
Millions on millions on millions of devices sold world wide will be no longer needed.
they make DivX players in their millions and to this day i fail to see what legal store
you can buy to play your DivX player??? nothing exists but funny enough
companys keep making millions of these players when in reality if you look at it.
all these DivX Content is Pirated content,
Welcome to the World of the Screwed up .. cannot wait
I’m a Virgin Media customer and they are gonna lose my business due to this . I’m sick to death of all these companies trying to destroy people’s civil rights & privacy. all in the name of making a buck. they have No-Right to spy on me, or to sell my usage data to f**cking data-mining marketing companies (another top idea from the virgin posse). Our Government and many just like it all over the world are in the pockets of Corporation’s and it stinks when they bend over backward (for the RIAA MPAA and other mob run frontends) which then leads to ISP’s imposing restrictions on one of the greatest inventions mankind ever created. Until we have complete transparency rooted deeply inside the governing body then they will continue to oppress us however they see fit.
I’d rather pay a freaking £5 tax a month and get to download everything I want then pay a £5 charge so the ISP can implement a big-brother technology that they don’t want to foot the bill for.
Creative Commons / Open Source / Freedom of Information-Sharing FTW!!!!
so what ISP should I go for next… that is the burning question. Wll any ever be OK??? Will the internet be taken down so easily, I feel if it ever gets to that point then the revolution will come knocking so fast the fat-cats won’t have time to take off their smoking jackets and hide the mistress in the wardrobe.
oh and lastly Mr.Afghanistan. You my kind sir are a complete and utter tit. to generalise that all British people are idiots is worthy of a damn good thrashing. I think you’ll find it’s a lot easier saying that it takes stupid (mad & emotional?!) people to let stuff like this happen here in the UK, when in actual fact actually trying to halt policies that are forced in like this thanks to corruption and $$$-hungry bottom-feeders, then you’ll see it’s not as cut&dry.
the new world order dawns. That’s what uneductaed masses have done by tolerating weak-spined greedy stupid puppet politicans
haha misspelled uneducated… irony :)
Just one small question …. does anyone actually know when this will take effect?
does no one read any one elses posts?
http://www.bpi.co.uk/index.asp?Page=news/press/news_content_file_1134.shtml
its NOT happening
Virginmedia (formerly Blueyonder and NTL) has always had free Usenet. Otherwise known as news.blueyonder.co.uk or news.ntlworld.com, with binaries. The only thing that is new is they are changing their servers host, increasing binaries retention and adding more groups. But the fact they offer binaries access is nowhere near ‘new’.
And….
There is no 40mbit tier, planned or otherwise. There is a 50mbit tier that will be offered as a standalone product. It is not an upgrade from 20mbit. Also, there has been no official statement from Virginmedia that this is going to start at all and the BPI has released a press statement saying they have not reached a deal with Virginmedia on this yet. Man this story is so full of holes its not even funny. At least check your sources first Torrentfreak.
http://www.bpi.co.uk/index.asp?Page=news/press/news_content_file_1134.shtml
The blueyonder binary server has been stopped today (1/4/08) and all ex-blueyonder customers are to use news.virginmedia.com .
ex-ntl areas still have their own dedicated server but can access the new server too. They haven’t finalised a date for the ntl migration.
The new server has all the main groups and if you’ve been used to 3 days retention then 7 days is excellent.
If you want to read more on this point your news reader to:
virginmedia.support.usenet
ps the blueyonder text server: text.news.blueyonder.co.uk is unaffected by these changes.
“Virgin Media today played down reports it is planning to cut off subscribers it believes are downloading copyright material illegally.
The Sunday Telegraph said Virgin was working on a pilot with the British Phonographic Institute which could have seen users sent warning letters, suspended and ultimately banned.
The prospect prompted an angry reaction from some subscribers, including on the Digital Spy forums, and came as the government put pressure on service providers to act against pirates.
However, Virgin today said there was no such plan.
“We have not agreed to the three strikes scheme, not started trials with the BPI or any other rights holder, and not decided to snoop on customers and inspect their data,” said a spokesman.
”
Virgin denies this….
Nothing talks like the threat of taking your business elsewhere. If you ISP throttles your P2P activity in any way don’t renew and tell them why.
It’s obvious even rumors are scaring them!
[quote comment="325954"]Nothing talks like the threat of taking your business elsewhere. If you ISP throttles your P2P activity in any way don’t renew and tell them why.
It’s obvious even rumors are scaring them![/quote]
And talking about it publicly can back others in their decision to do the same.
…
I bet the MAFIAA has these sorts of strategies laid out and ready to implement in their drawers. That’s one main weakness of corporations, especially big corporations. They have to plan ahead so they can justify large investments. And because they need to earn money to satisfy their shareholders it’s easy to predict the general direction they have to move in.
I believe it’s better not to put too much stress on the Usenet and keep using bittorrent, even thought it’s more risky for the individual. The evolution of a network of peers is much harder to predict and control than the Usenet. Not to say that the Usenet has not paved the way for other protocols and pioneered P2P. I think the flexibility of a peer network is one major advantage over the five-year plans of the corporations. The content MAFIAA has already lost the initiative to P2P networking and we shoud stay ahead.
Is this the same company that owns Virgin records, airlines, etc.? Is it that billionaire asswipe that comes to America all the time? I hate him, and I woul;d change ISP’s if you can……..
I voluntarily disconnected myself.
I dont get what this UseNet stuff is, but if they are offering something untraceable then thats fine by me.
Also what download amount will make them send out a warning? I have no idea what is considered alot
The listed 7-day binary newsgroup retention most likely only applies to HEADERS.
People who use NZBs will be able to access the full 70-day retention range of Highwinds backend servers.
At least that’s how it is on other ISPs that use highwinds-owned servers for Usenet.
Virginmedia customers need to start responding by downgrading to the cheapest package (2mb I believe)
But like the last BPI involvement, it will peter out and die off
http://www.fileprompt.com
Virgin have offerd free usenet since they started, and they still support telewests usenet service, so its not new.
telewest has a 2 day retention and virgin has a 9 day retention.
[quote comment="328035"]I dont get what this UseNet stuff is, but if they are offering something untraceable then thats fine by me.
Also what download amount will make them send out a warning? I have no idea what is considered alot[/quote]
No data is untraceable in the forseeable future. Remember Johnny Mnemonic? He will have existed for exactly that reason. The film is on TPB and the short story by William Gibson is at: http://project.cyberpunk.ru/lib/johnny_mnemonic/
Seems, that I missed my calling as a spammer.
to #22 look into your countries presidents, barring ones connection to the Royals…all but one is descended from British Royalty(current being a third cousin of H.M!)…so whos the colony? hehehe…bow beeeatch.
true say that uk people are dum
but indian in uk arent
dude
Em, I have 2Mbit VM conection – anything internet works fine – i mean surfing, you tube, bbc player, all the tv-links stuff … it all comes down real time… If I don’t use downloads like say bit torrent why do I need more than 2Mbit – its a con the only reason we need more than 2Mbit is to do downloads. I find it funny when the BBC keep harking on about ooo people in devon can only get 2Mbit and they should have 8 – who gives a shit it’s well fast – calls for 100Mbit are a joke – thats like 12MB a sec – current HD is only good for about 30MB on a typlical setup…. can we not wait 0.6 of a sec for our BBC news page to load???? Without downloads, free software, free music etc. who wants a pc or the net – only for shopping and checking on my bank statement. They will kill their own buisness.
N.B. Intel, HP, etc dont want this – it will only mean people will have less use for PCs and then they will not sell another for a long time!
and while im hear…. I doubt virgin are gonna offer anythig “not leagle” on a binarys service – the BPI is not that dumb – if there is anything doggie on there they will be able to follow its path very very easly as its their own closed loop system….. Also all those who say move ISPs well I doubt virgin are this dumb either – they know full well that this kind of stratigie or somthing like will be employed very soon (within the year) by all major ISPs in the UK – short of the Gov. making a law like in france.
“Theft is theft, however you look at it…. the other ISP’s will follow suit with this.
As someone who only uses legal downloading sites, I welcome this.”
ok so i found this from another site comment but I just wanted to point out that when you download you do not steal as nothing is taken…. if i was to steal you car and leave it burnt out in a feild i could understand you beeing pissed, but if i walked passed your car and said thats nice ill make a copy and drive my copy then your bitching is only because you don’t feel as exclusive as you think you should…. get over yourself. copying is only enriching the masses not empoverishing the ellite – as (without copying) i would now just not listen to music or use software. so thanks to copying my life has been enriched and has not effected the profits of others – i simply would not have payed for anything i just would have lived without – as i did B4 computers and copying.
With all the recent news on what TM is doing, its no wonder why so many are jumping ship. For me, what kept me on were the LEGITIMATE newsgroups access they had to offer. With that gone now, my motivation to stay is non-existent. Luckily, I found another usenet provider, newsdemon.com that lets me access the newsgroups. Now I just have to find a new reputable ISP.
D. Linus
Who says there is nothing good on usenet? all good scene releases -movies, albums, games etc get released on usenet within minutes of it being PRE’d in the scene. If you use sites that tell you about new scene releases it will tell you what has just came out and then you will be able to just search for that and it will most definately be there.
Usenet > p2p
All you have to do is sign up to an SSL encrypted usenet service such as http://www.bitnabber.com and the ISP will not have a clue what your are downloading.
*72
You mean to say, that Data Protection and Privacy Laws won’t be superceded by this? That is promising!
And if the worst comes to the worst we switch ISP’s, or go to the EU…I do think the European Court of Rights would look dimly on these proposals!
14 references to this post
Responses are closed
All remaining responses will continue to be archived. Use the TorrentFreak forums if you want to discuss something.