ISP Will Protect File-Sharers From Music Industry Disconnection Threat
Written by enigmax on April 04, 2008After getting an “unbelievably rude letter” from the British Phonographic Industry which demanded that ISPs disconnect file-sharers from the internet, the UK’s third largest ISP, Talk Talk, is in fighting mood. “Talk Talk rejects music industry threats and refuses to become internet police” says their statement.
The BPI has been writing to all the major ISPs just lately, on the subject of unauthorized file-sharing. The BPI wants ISPs to work with them to disconnect persistent file-sharers from the internet. Trouble is, like most music industry bodies, the BPI think that muscle flexing and posturing will get them the results they demand. Not so.
When Rory Cellan-Jones of the BBC went to see Charles Dunstone, CEO of Talk Talk owners Carphone Warehouse, he didn’t find a happy man. Speaking of the BPI, Dunstone said: “They’ve sent us the most unbelievably rude letter” . True to form, the demands from the BPI carried a threat - comply in 14 days or face legal action, something which has not been well received by one of the UK’s richest men. “Talk Talk rejects music industry threats and refuses to become internet police” said a statement.
Dunstone says he won’t tell his customers what they can and can’t do and believes that the BPI is attempting to force him to pay for their failure to adapt to the digital revolution. “The music industry has consistently failed to adapt to changes in technology and now seeks to foist their problems on someone else,” said Dunstone. “Rather than threatening us, the BPI’s time would be better spent facing up to the reality of our times and adapting its business model accordingly.”
Of course, the BPI aren’t just going to leave it at that. Hitting back with a statement of its own it said: “Talk Talk either seek to misrepresent our position or just doesn’t get it.”
The BPI says that it doesn’t want Talk Talk to become the internet police, rather it wants the ISP to act on evidence it supplies about file-sharers. “It’s not true that we are threatening them or asking them to become the internet police” said the BPI. “In fact, what we are looking for is a progressive partnership that will ultimately create new services for their customers. But clearly they must begin to address problems of illegal downloading on their networks.”
Dunstone says he will fight any attempts to force him to cut his customers off from the internet. “I cannot foresee any circumstances in which we would voluntarily disconnect a customer’s account on the basis of a third party alleging a wrongdoing.” he said.
Labeling them as “unreasonable and unworkable”, Talk Talk has responded in writing to the BPI, rejecting their proposals in full.
So, well done to Charles Dunstone - this should further increase your profile and boost Talk Talk’s popularity somewhat. Now, if you could please stop throttling P2P traffic, that would be wonderful. Get in touch - you can break the news here on TorrentFreak…
Previously: Virgin Media Denies Doing a Deal to Disconnect Pirates
Next: Legal and DRM-free Movie Torrents from Sweden
64 Responses
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Wish we had companies like this with balls over in the states. Not that it matters anymore… I live in the philippines now! he he
tbh i think this is a media stunt and the letter said more like ‘yes ok im sorry we will comply in full please dont hurt me’
“The BPI says that it doesn’t want Talk Talk to become the internet police, rather it wants the ISP to act on evidence it supplies about file-sharers.”
LOL yeah, because acting on evidence and enforcing laws isn’t what the police do, right? Talk about a contradictory statement…
BPI must attract the dumbest of the dumb employees. Usually this type of stupidity only comes from gov’t institutions.
The funny thing is, they are causing sales losses with dumb shit like this. The herd sees this type of aggressive corporate action against consumers and it’s the last time they ever spend a penny on product (me included.)
In short, fuck the recording industry, they’re a bunch of right-wing crackpot authoritarians, so don’t give them a fucking penny.
Thats a good news. Actually if you think of that the main rule of a ISP is to connect users to internet, and they just want ISP to do the opposit, its insane.
These BPI demands just show how out of touch they are with reality.
Let’s assume for this moment of argumenting that copyrightinfringement via p2p is comparable to stealing/shoplifting.
Sure the shop where you stole that crappy BPI member CD can tell you you are not allowed to come back to that shop for some time.
But they can’t tell you to never ever go in any other shop to do legal things like buying food for example.
Exactly that is what BPI/IFPI wants to force upon the public when they demand the cut off from the internet.
And only because they violate privacy laws when they do illegal spying
They are so out of touch with reality It seems to be time to vote from the rooftops if they buy more politicos to fullfill their rediculous demands!
Remember Cory Doctorow’s “question” about war?!!!
Are *all* IFPI clones retarded? Sure looks like it.
@ #3
Totally agree… dumbest of the dumb and thats why they keep failing:
http://www.ezee.se/articles-blog/2008/03/31/prediction-future-failure-of-present-mafiaa-plans/
Nice bit of posturing by Talk Talk. And that’s all it is - posturing. They may inherit a few customers from ISPs who are volunteering to work with (for?) the BPI, but we all know they’ll end up doing the same as Virgin and Tiscali. Talk Talk just wants to turn this drama into profit. Talk Talk WILL hand over the details of suspected file-sharers, but only if the BPI pays them for that info.
“Talk Talk either seek to misrepresent our position or just doesn’t get it.”
Excuse? What you try to saying?
It seems the BPI is too busy suing people to learn English.
That sentence makes no sense and should read ‘Talk Talk either seeks to misrepresent our position or just doesn’t get it.’
Not that that statement makes anything clear…
Not to mention that the method of obtaining this information on ‘ilegal’ file sharing would itself be illegal as it is spying on Internet users so the BPI can get fucked
[quote comment="330962"]“Talk Talk either seek to misrepresent our position or just doesn’t get it.”
Excuse? What you try to saying?
It seems the BPI is too busy suing people to learn English.
That sentence makes no sense and should read ‘Talk Talk either seeks to misrepresent our position or just doesn’t get it.’Not that that statement makes anything clear…[/quote]
this bothered me too
“When Rory Cellan-Jones of the BBC went to see Charles Dunstone, CEO of Talk Talk owners Carphone Warehouse, he didn’t find a happy man. “They’ve sent us the most unbelievably rude letter” said Dunstone of the BPI.”
I though that sentence was talking about the Talk Talk CEO. The BPI guy said that the rude letter was sent to them?
This needs to be proofread.
good move based on the virgin media report the other day. I’m sure it’ll see a few people moving over. Unfortunately, until ANYONE can offer cable to my house other than virgin, i have no choice :(
My girlfriend got a TalkTalk account just befre i moved in - I would have probably advised against it. Being someone who cares about these things, I knew the limitations.
I have to say that the free TT broadband has been utterly and consistently fantastic. They have never throttled me, according to netmonitor thingy I exceed the 40GB allowance all the time and I have had one minor outage.
And its totally, and utterly free. I recommend it.
(unlike the VM “20Mb” account I also (foolishly) got which is pure and utter dog sh1t). Or at least was, until I got vpntunnel.co.uk to run over it, now = no throttling on that either.
talk talk will get loads of new customers now, they are not stupid!
if my isp causes me trouble i will be off to talk talk to download download!
Im not sure if they know what ISP means..
INTERNET.. SERVICE.. PROVIDER..
can someone tell me where it says they do anything but provide internet?
Fucking morons.
But you have to expect the beast to make a few cries before it dies, its almost over people hang on.
Gosh I wonder if o2 received any bullying and what their response is going to be.
I hope all the other ISPs follow suit and try to defend their customers. I love my current ISP, which is owned by o2, and they’d better have the guts and enough business savvy to do the same as this guy.
“They’ve sent us the most unbelievably rude letter” said Dunstone of the BPI. True to form, the demands from the BPI carried a threat - comply in 14 days or face legal action”
Sounds like Davenport Lyons - I wonder if the BPI are pirating DL’s letters
“In fact, what we are looking for is a progressive partnership that will ultimately create new services for their customers. But clearly they must begin to address problems of illegal downloading on their networks.”
I think clearly they are the one’s who don’t get it. They outright claim no no we aren’t trying to police the internet, we’re trying to “move forward together” with our telecom “friends” but yeah still, you better do what we say. Lol
<3 my ISP
pwn’d by talk talk..
but tbh its kinda wierd that theyve taken this stance considereing that they themselves filter and block bittorrent traffic…
Charles Dunstone is a very intelligent man and knows what hes doing… Disconnecting his clients would only cost him money and clients… As disconnecting people will only lead to people refusing to pay their bill. LoL and I do stress the LoL. BPI along with all the other anti piracy groups only serve for one thing… Wasting peoples time and money.
No ISP wants to lose customers these days specially with all the competition out their. Like Mr. Dunstone said, They either focus on creating new business models and work on advancing to the digital age or they will be like the music they protect, EXTINCT.
If I may reference a couple of parts;
CPW: “Rather than threatening us, the BPI’s time would be better spent facing up to the reality of our times and adapting its business model accordingly.”
vs
BPI: “In fact, what we are looking for is a progressive partnership that will ultimately create new services for their customers.”
I’ve wondered for some time why the media companies haven’t struck deals directly with ISPs for content distribution. My thinking is media companies obviously have the content, and ISPs have the ultimate distribution network already up and running and the consumers. ISPs could distribute content directly to their subscribers and take a cut of the takings, with the rest filtering back to the media companies. Subscribers could be billed for content they consume directly through their already-established ISP billing accounts. Give the content compelling prices at least up until well established (and competitive services are still challenging, e.g: piracy), and don’t piss around with artificial release delays and biased regional distribution policies. If the ISPs have the potential to make decent money from a system like this then they’re going to be much more interested in fighting piracy. They could of course do the obvious and progressively hamper the competitive file-sharing protocols (as is often already done though with less incentive). They could do the obvious and exempt their own content services from traffic/bandwidth regulatory policy whilst retaining decent control of subscribers habits through use of global bandwidth caps. They might also be more inclined to work with government to enact more forceful regulations so they don’t risk being seen in subscriber’s eyes as the big bad ISP… risking loss to competing providers. Any ISP revealed to be taking anti-file-sharing initiatives these days gets fried pretty quick online. No company wants that unless all companies are bound by the same governing policies… cue government protocol…
That’s kind of my thinking anyway. It’s undoubtedly poor in many ways, laughable maybe, but I still don’t really understand why it seems nothing like this has ever come about? It seems to make some sense to me, more sense than what’s happening now anyway as it seems the media companies are just going to go down in a ball of flames if they don’t start acting more amicably.
[/bullshit] ?:)
[quote comment="330974"][quote comment="330962"]“Talk Talk either seek to misrepresent our position or just doesn’t get it.”
Excuse? What you try to saying?
It seems the BPI is too busy suing people to learn English.
That sentence makes no sense and should read ‘Talk Talk either seeks to misrepresent our position or just doesn’t get it.’Not that that statement makes anything clear…[/quote]
this bothered me too
“When Rory Cellan-Jones of the BBC went to see Charles Dunstone, CEO of Talk Talk owners Carphone Warehouse, he didn’t find a happy man. “They’ve sent us the most unbelievably rude letter” said Dunstone of the BPI.”
I though that sentence was talking about the Talk Talk CEO. The BPI guy said that the rude letter was sent to them?
This needs to be proofread.[/quote]
You must be from the US because you did not read it correctly. The sentence said:
“Speaking of the BPI, Dunstone said: ‘They’ve sent us the most believably rude letter.’”
It was Dunstone that said he’d received the rude letter from the BPI. The author of the article has written it at a level that you have yet to attain, so get back to school and learn the English language.
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