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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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.
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