Karoo Won’t Disconnect Pirates Without a Court Order
Written by enigmax on August 10, 2009Last month ISP Karoo in the north of England found itself in the middle of a storm when it said it would disconnect its subscribers upon an allegation of copyright infringement. Under pressure it quickly backtracked to a “3 strikes” regime but now they have told TorrentFreak that no-one will be disconnected without a court order.
At the end of July it was revealed that Karoo, an ISP serving the Hull area of northern England, was effectively operating a one-strike-and-you’re-out policy to deal with alleged copyright infringements.
After a mountain of bad publicity, the ISP released a statement admitting that it had been “exceeding the expectations of copyright owners, the media and internet users.” Announcing a change in policy, Karoo said in future it would provide customers with three written notifications before their service was temporarily suspended.
Although this rethink was fairly well received, at TorrentFreak we wanted to find out more. How does Karoo – indeed any ISP – know that it is acting on accurate information from the copyright holders when it chooses to accuse its customers of acting illegally on their behalf? How does an ISP know that the anti-piracy companies haven’t made a terrible mistake?
We put this question to Karoo and after a few back-and-forth emails, finally received back a rather interesting statement, which included the following paragraph:
“Going forward, we will provide customers with three written notifications to make them aware that a copyright owner has alleged that their internet account has been used to infringe their copyrighted material. These letters do not accuse the customers of any wrongdoing and will offer help and support so that those customers whose internet access is being used unknowingly are able to address it.”
So far so good, but what about the earlier threat of 3 strikes and disconnections? What about the accuracy of evidence from the anti-piracy tracking companies?
“We will no longer suspend a customer’s service unless we receive a court order from a copyright owner taking legal action. As a result it is the responsibility of the legal system, not Karoo, to ensure the accuracy of the information provided by the copyright owners.”
Common sense prevails. Well done Karoo, you got there in the end. But we still haven’t had our question answered.
How does an ISP know that they are acting on accurate information when passing on copyright warnings to its customers or threatening disconnections?
If any ISP anywhere in the world is prepared to answer this important question, please feel free to get in touch. We’ve asked a few already with no success – we’re starting to think this issue is a very delicate one indeed, judging by the apparent reluctance to answer.
Previously: 14-24 Year Olds Pirate 8,000 Music Tracks Each
Next: Top 10 Most Pirated Movies on BitTorrent
41 Responses
thankyou karoo from a customer stuck in your monopoly in hull!!
Way to go Karoo!
First?
well done, karoo!
a sensible ISP at last!
hopefully BeThere will follow but judging from my experience with them, they may already be doing it!
One ISP turned good. :D
@redmarine and GF:
This isn’t good and it isn’t sensible. It’s common sense. A five-year-old could have come to the conclusion that this would never have worked.
JUST DISCONNECT THEM YOU INCOMPETENT FOOLS.
Grow some balls Karoo.
Presumption of innocence and a required order from the court for disconnection is fair, and good legal practice.
Besides, when the majority of the cases pass muster and the accused are convicted and disconnected, now there will exist a legal and very valuable court order upon which there can be fines levied and disconnection charges assessed, invoices for pilfered music can be billed by the rights holders, legal actions can be taken against the most egregious infringers and reconnection fees can be collected by the isp that will help compensate them for their trouble and to help reduce the costs to the industries monitoring the infringement of their products.
Or, if you prefer, convicted infringers can avoid the reconnection fee by just staying off the network. That would be my preference.
Court orders, I say!
Reasoned Mind, for once, I agree with you. This is fair practice.
“How does an ISP know that they are acting on accurate information when passing on copyright warnings to its customers or threatening disconnections?”
———————
Exactly… But I seriously doubt that any abusive ISP as Karoo can respond to this question.
too little too late, damage has been done. I hope everyone moves isp and they are out of business within the year
How does an ISP know its sending the monthly invoice to the right person?
How does the ISP know it can trust on the information provided by cops?
Guess it’s s similar to pirate life. It’s all based on trust
;-D
If all that happens is my internet gets disconnected after 3 warnings to give me the hint to either:
1. Chill out with the downloading
2. Hide my connection in some way
3. Use someone elses connection
I can live with it! Il just end my service, and either sign back up under a different name or someone else in the household or just use another service for a while.
In the end, its pointless and useless.. but if it makes them feel like there doing something.. im all for it.
Im all about paying and buying.. but the industry will never rip me off again.. ive watched enough commercials to last a lifetime and ive overpayed for crap movies more than I ever want to count.. I will pirate until I die and I still wont be ‘even’.
I don’t care about your greed or your monopoly, all I care about is what matters to me. You may disagree, but in the end im still here and im still downloading.. so get used to it.
File sharing – Deal with it or get a different job.
@hmm,
If people living in the Hull area actually have a choice….. Karoo have a monopoly in the area, you want telephone, or internet over phone line, you have no other choice.
“If people living in the Hull area actually have a choice….. Karoo have a monopoly in the area, you want telephone, or internet over phone line, you have no other choice.”
I think that’s the real issue, the news about Karoo’s plans made people living in that area question their right to a monopoly, and i suspect Karoo dont want people digging too deep in that direction – so they back off.
How does an ISP know that they are acting on accurate information when passing on copyright warnings to its customers…
I wouldn’t think they’re particularly interested in knowing whether the information is accurate or not as I wouldn’t have thought it in their interest to involve themselves in the dispute any more than absolutely necessary as the middleman trapped in an unfortunate situation. Seems like a pretty hands-off neutral approach to me.
…or threatening disconnections?
Well, that’s a different thing, isn’t it? Maybe they feel under pressure to act that way. The Government, seeking action, has the power to make their lives more difficult if they don’t, that is, if they’re not seen to at least be trying to correct the issue themselves without forced Goverment interaction. You know damn well there are a lot of pressures on ISPs to *do something* about the situation.
Would be nice to hear ISPs true opinions though I’m sceptical you ever will because it probably wouldn’t be very ‘politically correct’.
More ISP’s should do this :)
“all I care about is what matters to me.”
Obviously. You are a demonstrable pig.
And posting under someone elses name here is as lame as it gets. Go back to Web 1.0 where you belong.
“How does an ISP know that they are acting on accurate information when passing on copyright warnings to its customers or threatening disconnections?”
Simple, it doesn’t.
@18 Aug 10, 2009 at 17:07 by Reasoned Mind:
If that is the reason for being a pig that guy is not alone back at the barn LoL
2 late to apologize karoo
this is a good choice respect your costumers!
karoo take a neutral position with these statement .
termination of connection only with court order is a clever move. this way karoo won’t be held responsible for early contract termination .
I doubt the MafiAA will let karoo do that
I think we all need to start sending copyright notices to ISPs.
The most obvious idea would be to report your own IP address – for maximum lulz. Although if your grandparents are online, first reporting them, then advising them on their response should work just as well.
If they record that information (you have downloaded copyright stuff) against your name and you contest it and they do not remove it then they are in breach of data protection. DPA states that only accurate information can be held against someone, so, if you demand thatprove their allegation or remove it and they dont prove it but keep the info then they are breaching DPA and you can sue the arse off them…after one or two law suites they will realise the cost of fucking those who RULE the internet…pirates!
My ISP didn’t even assign the correct hostname to me let alone knows what they are doing. I could easily tell them it wasn’t me if they sent me anything, which they wont because I am on a VPN.
Here is the next question:
How the court know it has accurate information?
WTF is going on here! Fight for FREEDOM!!!
I can not connect to TPB???
60% of broadband customers use p2p, question what isp could loose 60% of its customer base and still make a profit!!!! Someone has done the maths and shit them self’s LOL.
telstras survey showed of 1048 kiwi customers selected randomly all 1048 had downloaded music,movies or software in the last 12 months and 49% had some form of filesharing app on their computer!.So to all you haters-suck on that.Filesharing is here to stay and theres not a damn thing anyone can do about it!.@reasoned mind-your a fucking douche bag and no one gives a flying rat fuck what you and your kind think.So sit back,relax and watch us kick your collective asses pole smoker!
glad i dont live in hell…i mean hull.
reasoned mind blows douche bags all day long.
The court order in question is not a court order authorising an ISP to terminate the BB connection.
It is a court order requiring the ISP to provide contact details of the accused, a Disclosure Order.
It is one step further than an accusing letter.
It, in no way, proves guilt. Until the client is proved to be GUILTY, ISP’s should not have the right to disconnect it’s subscribers.
A troubling situation for Comcast customers in the US: Comcast incapable of accurately mapping IP addresses to its customers.
On two separate occasions I’ve called them to say their service is down. What made me laugh is that I unplugged the power to mt cable modem, & they said they could ping it. With the IP stil visible in my router I asked them what IP they were pinging. Answer? A completely different IP that I’d had a long time ago. The second was shortly after I replaced a modem after a storm.
The real problem here is that if the IP I used to have is pingable that means it’s assigned to somebodies modem other than mine, thus I would be viewed as liable for their online activity.
This represents a major credibility issue for Law firms and ISP’s IMO regarding the matching of account holders with infringement notifications.
… Erroneous* >.<
.. I tend to have the same IP for six months or so, even after a modem power cycle or reset.
Good! Its about time someone stood up to thiese idiots!
RT
http://www.anon-web-tools.net.tc
GO KAROO!!! WAY TO STAND
Reason why no ISP will answer THE QUESTION, is because providing that information would reveal that they are indeed logging and monitoring their users a whole lot more then we would even imagine to be scared of.
I know 2 top 5 Belgian ISPs are doing some draconic monitoring of traffic without any copyright owners ever having asked for it.
My guess is that the demands for this and the eventual recipient of the information they collect is for the Intelligence community rather then any copyright groups.
Google .neo.style$|nvDX Strap on dildo party tonight with bricks of butter tonight at my house!..
Yes how does an ISP know ?
DPI anyone ?
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