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.
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140 Responses
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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/
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