IFPI: ISPs Should Block BitTorrent and The Pirate Bay
Written by Ernesto on December 26, 2007The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) is trying to convince European lawmakers that ISPs should take extreme measures to fight piracy. They suggest that ISPs should block access to websites such as The Pirate Bay, and block filesharing protocols, no matter what they’re being used for.
The IFPI - the anti-piracy organization that represents the recording industry worldwide - sees ISPs as one of their biggest enemies. “ISPs often advertise music as a benefit of signing up to their service, but facilitate the illegal swapping of copyright infringing music on a grand scale,” they said previously. In an attempt to restrict the Internet, the anti-pirates have sent a list of three absurd recommendations to the EU parliament.
Earlier this year the IFPI won a case against the Belgian ISP Scarlet. In this case the judge ruled that ISPs can be forced to either block or filter copyright infringing content on P2P networks. At the time, IFPI Chairman and CEO John Kennedy said: “This is a decision that we hope will set the mould for government policy and for courts in other countries in Europe and around the world.” That’s exactly what they are trying to do now.
None of the measures below are overly burdensome or expensive, or cause problems for regular services to customers, says the IFPI. Here’s what they recommend:
Content filtering
The IFPI suggests that ISPs should identify music files on their network and check them against a reference database of “audio fingerprints” to check whether the files are infringing copyright. This might work on Kazaa, but it is not clear what methods the ISP will have to implement to distinguish between copyright infringing and legal content on P2P networks, such as BitTorrent. That will be a tough job, if not, impossible.
Protocol Blocking
According to the IFPI, an easy but effective solution is to simply block all P2P protocols and forget about all the indie publishers that use it to share legal content, for free. If customers can’t use BitTorrent or any other filesharing protocol piracy will decline, and that’s basically all they care about.
Blocking access to infringing websites
What better way to censor the Internet than to block entire websites, especially The Pirate Bay. The IFPI tried to block websites before - last year they convinced a Swedish ISP (Perspectiv) that it was a good idea to block allofmp3. However, after The Pirate Bay decided to block all Perspectiv’s customers from its site, they backed down, re-enabled access to allofmp3 - and apologized.
These recommendations might seem absurd, but Heise.de reports that the IFPI has already convinced several European politicians to support these measures. Next month, The Committee on Culture and Education from the European parliament will discuss if these recommendations should be turned into European policy.
There is little doubt that it will cause quite a stir if they are.
(via P2P Blog)
Previously: Christmas Brings Freedom and Hope for Jailed BitTorrent Admin
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You can’t win, entertainment industry. If you strike us down, We shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
[quote comment="248946"]First, piracy simply isn’t for everyone. Only the elite. I don’t need every idiot on earth participating in order to get anything I want.
Second, the media companies don’t care if people download something for free. The high numbers of downloaders of free content is because of the demand curve. The quantity demanded for free is very high. The overwhelming majority of those people would never pay for what they download, so the media companies do not lose anything. Perhaps the demand curve shifts left in the presence of high piracy rates, though.
The true threat to the business model of large media corporations is that P2P removes the extraordinarily high barriers to entry. Their oligopoly is at stake.[/quote]
That is a very good point, maybe the crusade against piracy is indeed misdirection.
Up until a couple months ago, I suspected this was why the recording industry didn’t shut OiNK down. By banning freely available content, it actually perpetuated the high barriers to entry that existed before BitTorrent.
But now they have shut OiNK down, and maybe they don’t see it that way. Such rules (which persist on Waffles and What) do definitely benefit the recording industry, though, at the expense of competition.
I work for an ISP and there is no way we are gong to block bittorrent. Not a chance in hell. How else am I supposed to find windows ME iso files and the billions of free (read legal to download) software packages out there. I NEED torrents to do my job faster. Blocking ANYTHING at all is just a bad idea. If you tell competent internet users they CAN’T do something… they’ll just find a better way to do it.
I have an idea.. lets assault their offices steal some hard drives and dig some dirt.. then they will be the ones suffering for their stupidities.
or lets kill them all. that works too..
I’m still an advocate of free-everything. Eventually I’m going to be a multi-have-all-the-F**king-money-aire, so that I can afford to purchase everything that my heart desires. But until that day, I’m just going to do something very legal, boot up my PC, get onto the internet, and download and/or stream it from where ever I can find it. Internet radio stations have evolved such that you can use Winamp to both play and record the streams, thus making your own library of music for little to no cost. I personally bought a Pro license of Winamp, even though I realize that it is partially owned by AOL I don’t really care, it’s worth it.
Besides that point, making ISPs do something to limit their users really isn’t all that “bad in their eyes”, they do it every day, limiting bandwidth unless you want to pay more for your monthly service. In my opinion, the government should step in here in a few years (i.e. American) and take over control of the entire ISP problem, whether that be putting one company in charge of everyone, making all connections wireless or incorporating a fiber-optic network for each state, either way I think it’d be a bigger improvement.
As for the heart, file-sharing should never be illegal, I don’t give a flying hoot about whether you own the rights to distribute anything. If it is digital data that can be transmitted over a telephone line then it’s just the same as the government tapping phone lines and having surveillance on any number of things. Public access is key. If it is there, there is always an exploit, if it’s digital, we can take it, usually within your knowledge. Don’t fight it, we won’t sell it(or at least the smart ones won’t). Blocking is not right, nor will it be tolerated. I’m not the only one who believes so. Stand together and we might see this battle won.
zer0-Kill
freedom again supressed. david icke is on the agenda them all try to implement. it’s already happening, step by step.
we better stop lettin ‘em
How about we block the IFPI from the net. What you don’t know can’t hurt either… right?
how about someone hacks into the IFPI homepage and deletes its content? We can’t block it but surely we can make hell of a mess ^_^
remember this..
when freedom of speech, and sharing of information is restricted by greedy, power hungry tyrants, the inevitable outcome is civil war.
in their eyes, the internet is a device by which they can suck you dry, electronically, without the need for stores, paying wages to staff. by pumping advertising 24 7 into our homes and providing us all with credit facilities, that allow our asses to grow as fat as their wallets, they ensure maximum profit of minimum effort.
all the time they do this the global economy groans under the weight of ever increasing debt, and they then milk the interest for the rest of our lives, then take the house when we die.
products get shittier, and prices get higher.
if a cd album ( which costs about 20p to mass produce) cost a fiver in the shops, instead of 12.99 , i would spend more time in record shops ( which i actually enjoy)
‘take what you can and give nothing back?’
who are the real pirates here?
[quote comment="249663"][quote comment="248946"]First, piracy simply isn’t for everyone. Only the elite. I don’t need every idiot on earth participating in order to get anything I want.
Second, the media companies don’t care if people download something for free. The high numbers of downloaders of free content is because of the demand curve. The quantity demanded for free is very high. The overwhelming majority of those people would never pay for what they download, so the media companies do not lose anything. Perhaps the demand curve shifts left in the presence of high piracy rates, though.
The true threat to the business model of large media corporations is that P2P removes the extraordinarily high barriers to entry. Their oligopoly is at stake.[/quote]
That is a very good point, maybe the crusade against piracy is indeed misdirection.
Up until a couple months ago, I suspected this was why the recording industry didn’t shut OiNK down. By banning freely available content, it actually perpetuated the high barriers to entry that existed before BitTorrent.
But now they have shut OiNK down, and maybe they don’t see it that way. Such rules (which persist on Waffles and What) do definitely benefit the recording industry, though, at the expense of competition.[/quote]
is it not also in the interest of the united states of microsoft, to prevent distribution of linux, by stopping p2p networks?
If they block anything, I shall cancel my internet connection, so they can stick their laws up their backsides!
I’ve downloaded programs, so I can try the full version properly and consequently purchased them… this is so I don’t waste money on crap products… moreover… Ive tried some programs I would not have normally brought, but like them so much as to purchase them.
Actually, Linux can be quite easily downloaded from sources besides BitTorrent:
http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/downloadmirrors
And Microsoft probably depends on Windows being pirated. If everyone really paid $200 for it, a lot more people would seriously consider Linux, as it would save them a couple hundred bucks. Here’s a long but well-reasoned article to that effect:
http://articles.tlug.jp/Windows_Is_Free
-> to the porn popes over there:
$uCKK mY MF D]CKK :)
thank you TPB
xxx of death you criminal fukers
#110 Linux is cool and all, except if you want to play videogames…………………………………………………
The more they block/ban things the more we expand.
you put 1 torrent site offline and all the members simply move on to the next.
You attack us and we multiple… !
This kind of news does nothing to discourage piracy. It makes me want to pirate more. It’s a satisfying feeling, knowing that every album I pirate is money taken from douchebags like the IFPI or the RIAA.
i agree. the more they try to stop it the more i want to do it.
It’s hilarious reading what people say about CAPITALism vs. SOCIALism.
By torrenting, we the people are taking control of the CAPITAL (movies, etc) for ourselves. Mmm, sounds an awful lot like socialism?!
Hitting ISPs and webhosts is really the only decent tool the authorities have. We’ll get round it.
Viva La Revolution!
Actually, it is indeed called capitalism (or perhaps “corporatism”).
In fact, capitalism needs the state in order to survive and to enforce their rules, which they call their “property rights”.
Capitalism is a system, where it is free to exert violence on anyone. The so-called “market forces” (usually represented by more superior weapons) decide the outcome. That is the basis of “freedom”. If you want to have a just system, a system based on justice, you need socialism, since it must be a system that will not only be able to enforce the rules against the abovementioned “market force”, but also guarantee the equal participation on the whole election process, on the process to make your choice.
Basically, capitalism is the freedom to shot an innocent victim. Socialism is the freedom to carry out the decision over the capitalist, arrived at by the jury made up of all the people who see themselves fit for such a thing.
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