This ruling means that it’s almost inevitable that the UK’s major Internet service providers will be compelled to block The Pirate Bay in the coming months to serve the members of the music lobby group BPI.

While there can be no doubt that some users of The Pirate Bay are indeed engaging in copyright infringement, for others the site is their gateway to the world, the mechanism by which their own work can be distributed – for free – to the masses.

A block of The Pirate Bay will not discriminate – all content will be blocked, infringing or not, and artists relying on the site to reach their fans will be unjustly penalized.

Just hours ago and after working throughout the night, UK artist Dan Bull finished his latest track which was inspired by the recent TPB ruling.

“The BPI claim to represent the interests of musicians like myself and the people in my video, but the fact is that only the very elite few at the top of the music business will see a benefit. The rest of us are having our internet censored and are being ushered into an age of guilt until innocence is proven,” Dan told TorrentFreak.

“The tech sector is being damaged in order to prop up a comparatively tiny and irrelevant industry which the vast majority of musicians have absolutely no need for.”

So without further delay, here’s Dan’s musical message. ‘Bye Bye BPI’ is the follow-up to the hugely successful track SOPA Cabana which has been viewed nearly 1.3 million times. Both songs were created with material crowdsourced via Dan’s Facebook page.

Source: Pirate Bay Block Inspires Crowdsourced Song – Bye Bye BPI

A coalition of the willing, headed up by the BPI and including the major Hollywood studios, approached BT, the UK’s leading ISP, with a demand – block The Pirate Bay voluntarily or consent to a court order.

The self-styled “world’s most resilient torrent site” is no stranger to censorship. It is already blocked by ISPs in Ireland, Italy, Turkey, Denmark and Belgium but the quest to put it completely out of business continues.

“The Pirate Bay is no more than a huge scam on the global creative sector. It defrauds musicians and other creators of their wages, and it destroys UK jobs,” said Geoff Taylor, BPI Chief Executive.

“Unlike legal music download sites, it exposes consumers to the risk of viruses, theft of personal information and inappropriate content. We would not tolerate Counterfeits ‘R’ Us on the High Street – if we want economic growth, we cannot accept illegal rip-off sites on the internet either. We hope that BT will do the right thing and block The Pirate Bay.”

But at this stage PaidContent is reporting that BT will not simply roll over and comply with the demand for The Pirate Bay to be blocked voluntarily.

“BT cannot block web sites willy nilly,” said the BT source.

Voluntary action aside, BT has reportedly been given the chance to consent to a court order. If the ISP refuses it seems likely that the parties will end up in court for a mirrored re-run of the arguments in the Newzbin2 case. If there are no surprises the High Court could order a blockade of The Pirate Bay in the first half of 2012.

After a lengthy legal process the censoring of Newzbin2 finally kicked in earlier this week, but users of the site are reportedly bypassing the block by various means including the use of Newzbin2′s very own anti-blocking software.

A feature to unblock The Pirate Bay in the event that it too became blocked was already added to the client several weeks ago.

Speaking with TorrentFreak, a Pirate Bay insider laughed off the efforts to slow down the site and said that every time there are attempts at censorship the resulting publicity only gives them a boost.

“Thanks yet again for the free advertising,” they conclude.

Source: BPI and MPA Demand UK Pirate Bay Blockade

We’re not going to argue about the exact impact of piracy in this article, but we do want to balance out the music industry’s propaganda a little bit. By doing so we hope to show that the music industry isn’t doing so badly as they claim. In fact, year after year more music is being sold.

What’s changing is the type of music consumers buy, and this change is driving revenue down. The question, however, is whether piracy has anything to do with this change. We doubt it, and we’re going to show why.

Let’s start off with some key figures published by the BPI last week regarding UK music sales. Unlike some news outlets claimed, these are not revenue figures but actually the number of units sold, counting both digital and physical albums and singles.

In 2010 the BPI reports that there were 281.7 million units sold, which is an all-time record. Never in the history of recorded music have so many pieces of music been sold, but you wont hear the music industry shouting about that. In fact, the music industry is selling more music year after year and today’s figure is up 27% compared to the 221.6 million copies sold in 2006.

But, instead of praising the increasing consumer demand for music, the industry cuts up the numbers and prefers to focus on the evil enemy called piracy. By doing so they spin their message in a way that makes it appear that piracy is cannibalizing music sales. But is it?

In their press release the BPI points out that album sales overall were down by 7%. Although digital album sales were up 30.6%, physical CDs were down by 12.4%. If we believe the music industry, this drop in sales of physical CDs can be solely attributed to piracy. This is an interesting conclusion, because one would expect that piracy would mostly have an effect on digital sales.

We have a different theory.

Could it be that album sales have been declining over recent years because people now have the ability to buy single tracks? If someone likes three tracks from an album he or she no longer has to buy the full album, something that was unimaginable 10 years ago.

This theory would also fit the sales patterns of the last few years, where album sales are down year after year while the number of individual tracks sold is increasing rapidly. In 2010 the UK music industry sold 161.8 million singles (digital and physical) compared to 66.9 million in 2006. Where does piracy fit in here?

Could it possibly be that piracy is only affecting album sales and not single sales? Would that make sense?

Or could it be that the consumption habits of the average music consumer have changed in the last decade? You never hear the music industry talk about the digital music revolution where an entire generation of people have never even owned a CD. To these people the album concept doesn’t mean as much as it does to older generations.

I’d hate to break the news to all the suits in the music business but the CD is dying, and the album is dying with it. Sure, the true music enthusiast will appreciate the art that a well orchestrated album is, but the masses are increasingly spending their money on singles. The album has lost much of it’s appeal and function to the iPod generation.

And that’s the problem.

The digital revolution in music and the consumer shift from albums to singles described above is hurting the industry’s revenue. Despite the fact that more music is being sold, revenue is shrinking because consumers prefer singles over full albums. And if someone buys 6 single tracks instead of a full album, this means usually that less money is coming in.

This change is mostly being felt by the managers and employees at record labels, and not as much by artists. Since album and single sales are just a small fraction of the artists’ yearly income, and with attendances of live performances being up, the artists are doing great.

We’re not here to argue that piracy has no effect on sales at all, positive or negative, but we do want to point out that the music industry might be chasing a ghost while they ignore the big elephant in the room. The music industry isn’t dying, it’s evolving.

Source: More Music Sold Than Ever Before, Despite Piracy

As we have argued before, Google is probably the number one reason why millions of people are using BitTorrent sites today. This trend hasn’t gone unnoticed to the music industry either, and today The British Phonographic Industry (BPI) went as far as blaming Google and other search engines for being a main source for online piracy.

“Search engines are as popular as P2P applications as a source of illegal downloads,” BPI stated in a report today. “It’s not hard to see why. Key in the name of any popular artist, add search terms like ‘mp3′ or ‘download’ – both neutral terms – and typically the large majority of results that appear are blatant links to illegal downloads.”

As an example of this alleged facilitating behavior by Google, the BPI performed a few test searches. They found that the majority of the top Google search results for popular singles pointed to ‘illicit’ sources.

“In a single week in November, BPI test searches were made on Google for the UK’s top 20 singles or albums, followed by ‘mp3′. On average 17 of the first 20 Google results for singles and 14 of 20 search results for albums were links to known illegal sites.”

The search results are just one part of the search engine problem though. In addition, the BPI points out that services such as auto suggest and Google’s instant service may drive people towards ‘rogue’ or ‘illegal’ sites.

“The predictive search tools offered by some search engines go further by actively directing users towards free illegal downloads by auto-completing artist searches with additional phrases like ‘torrent’, or providing specific references to unlicensed sources like Mediafire or mp3raid.”

Although the BPI is right in their analysis, they also know that the search results are merely the result of a set of algorithms. Piracy related searches float to the top and are suggested because that’s what people tend to search for. Google has no active role in it.

This is what the BPI hopes to change. They suggest that search engines should actively censor their search results, and move links to ‘authorized’ music stores higher up. According to the music industry this would be a very effective tool to decrease piracy.

“The music industry continues to press search engines to help consumers stay on the right side of the law and has suggested concrete solutions such as prioritising music search results in favour of legal online services such as those highlighted by the Music Matters campaign,” the BPI writes.

In part, these lobbying efforts have already been successful. Two weeks ago Google announced several upcoming changes that would benefit copyright holders. Among other things the search mogul said that it would censor ‘piracy’ related words for appearing as auto-complete suggestions.

For Google this is a slippery slope to be on, and the next step could very well be the sort of commercial censorship the music industry is suggesting. And if the music industry is successful, other industries will soon follow. The question is, however, if that will solve the piracy issues or just hide them.

Source: Record Labels Blame Google For Piracy, Hint At Censorship

Yesterday Techdirt asked the question: Is BPI Trying To Setup Google For Copyright Infringement Lawsuit?

The article centered around a June 11, 2010 takedown notice sent to Google from the UK’s BPI. Groups such as the BPI, IFPI and MPAA send these notices on a regular basis and in a normal set of circumstances they’re so prevalent that they would hardly make news. However, Techdirt noted an interesting angle to this particular takedown demand.

Rather than supplying very specific URLs where infringing material could be located as is the norm with these type of requests, the BPI provided whole site URLs such as http://megaupload.com, http://sendspace.com and http://hotfile.com.

“My guess is that this is trying to set up Google, so that Google is officially ‘on notice’ that these nine sites host infringing content, and while Google will almost certainly take down the links to the specific files listed, it’s quite likely that similar files will quickly be found elsewhere on those sites — and BPI may then try to claim that Google should automatically know how to block those other files,” wrote Masnick.

Now, in a June 10 takedown request sent to Google, it seems the IFPI could be trying a similar tactic with the search giant, but being rather more clear about it, this time in connection with The Pirate Bay.

In a fairly lengthy preamble, the IFPI describes The Pirate Bay as “an internet-based service that facilitates copyright infringement on a massive scale” and one which provides access to “several hundred thousand infringing content files, including movies, games and software as well as copyright sound recordings owned by IFPI.” It also describes the guilty verdict handed down to the four Pirate Bay individuals in their 2009 criminal trial and references legal action to have the site blocked in Denmark and Italy.

A huge list of specific URLs which link to torrents is attached to the request and Google is asked to remove these from their search results – but IFPI goes further.

In light of the serious violations of copyright facilitated by The Pirate Bay service, and in accordance with Google’s policies (see http://www.google.com/dmca.html andhttps://www.google.com/support/websearch/bin/answer.py?answer=58&ctx=sibling) we are asking for your immediate assistance in removing from your index, or otherwise disabling access to via your search engine, URLs linking to the website for The Pirate Bay including but not limited to the URLs specified in the attachment to this notice. [emphasis ours]

IFPI continues with:

In sending this letter we are seeking to ensure that infringing content is made inaccessible or removed from the Internet as quickly as possible through your cooperation. However, please note that we do not admit that we or the IFPI Represented Companies are responsible for detecting infringing material and notifying you of it.

Could this be similar situation to the one Mike Masnick referred to in his BPI article, but this time laying the ground for The Pirate Bay?

“Part of the DMCA safe harbors is that you need to remove content if you have ‘specific knowledge’ of the content,” he wrote. “This is at the center of the Google-Viacom lawsuit. Google claims it needs to know the specific files that are infringing, while Viacom claims that once Google knows that ‘content x on YouTube’ is infringing, it should be required to find and block all such content x’s, even if Viacom has not informed Google where they are.”

It remains to be seen how Google responds to this request but since attempts to take down The Pirate Bay have been an almost complete failure, removing it from the world’s most important search engine could be the next best step.

Source: Music Biz Wants Google To Stop Linking To The Pirate Bay

Although so-called “educational letters” will be sent out to those suspected of illicit file-sharing towards the end of this year and “technical measures” (throttling/account suspension) imposed if illicit sharing isn’t reduced by around 70% in the next 18 to 24 months, Taylor says that the music industry will probably have to start suing people again in the meantime.

Due to the fact that ISPs will have to keep lists of those subscribers who have received the greatest number of educational letters, ultimately the music industry will be able to identify, they say, those who are being most stubborn to change.

Armed with this information they will be able to proceed to court to obtain their real-life names and addresses. Taylor says that there is a possibility that even at the early stages of the letter sending campaign, the music industry will use this information to start suing the “most egregious infringers”.

Taylor insists that the BPI will take this action reluctantly, and would have preferred that the problem be solved through the early introduction of technical measures, but that wasn’t to be.

“Government disagreed with us, regrettably, and decided not to bring the technical measures into effect immediately and has said to us that it expects us to bring legal cases and that it will take that into account when it looks at whether or not to introduce technical measures,” he explained.

To this end, Taylor said that the BPI may well have to sue people “at some level”, a course of action that he claims the Government expects of them in advance of its decision to implement technical measures.

Of course, suing file-sharers is something that the BPI did before back in 2004. Taylor admitted that they were unable to carry out that campaign on a level which would become a deterrent to the masses but said at least this time round they will be able to target those who have offended the most and failed to change their ways.

This approach raises another interesting situation. Rather than just about anyone being a target for litigation – potentially for downloading a single album for example – the BPI is now saying that only the worst offenders will be targeted for action. Since their legal resources are limited, this could only conceivable aimed at the top 1 or 2% of aggressive file-sharers.

So, since many file-sharers download a hell of a lot more music than they’d ever really need, it could be argued that by only downloading the stuff that they really want, their chances of ending up at the top of the heap are very slim indeed.

This would of course result in a sizable reduction in file-sharing transfers, but would it drive people into music stores? It seems unlikely.

Source: Music Industry Warns That It May Sue UK File-Sharers

Of course, there will always be a way to acquire media free of charge, the last few decades have shown us that. But the media industries are now having to find new ways to defend their corner. There has always been talk of Big Movies or Big Music ‘owning’ politicians and lawmakers, but while this is true to the extent that their immense lobbying power allows, there has also been another more serious threat on the back-burner.

If the RIAA or MPAA owned – literally – all the major ISPs, they could affect the piracy landscape quicker than ever before. A simple rewrite or tweaking of subscriber’s Terms of Service would ensure that anyone proven to be a pirate could be ejected from the Internet in an instant, no laws needed. While this is unfeasible right now, there are easier ways of encouraging the same, like business partnerships and promises of profit.

According to a new study titled “Is There A Commercial Argument For ISP Music Services” commissioned by the BPI on behalf of Universal Music and carried out by industry analyst Ovum, if the UK’s most prominent ISPs all more or less immediately launched subscriber packages that included bundled music, they could generate new revenues of £103 million by 2013.

The BPI say this figure is based on a ‘medium adoption scenario’ and is an amount equal to 41% of the total 2009 digital music market. In an ‘accelerated adoption scenario’ the study says that the revenues could nearly double to £203m.

Aside from the profitability implied by these revenues, the report seems keen to offer other incentives to the major ISPs – Virgin Media, Sky, BT, O2, Orange and TalkTalk – to get involved in the music business. The study suggests that the inclusion of a music element to bundles would reduce subscriber ‘churn’ – the rate at which customers cancel their contracts. The example given is that an ISP with 3.5m customers could save £20m if the bundling of music cut churn by 10%, although there is no information to show that it actually would.

While suggesting good business is to be had in getting a little involved in the music business, the BPI is keen to point out that for ISPs, the more involved they get, the more they can make.

“The revenue prospects for bundled ISP music services would be substantially increased if services were offered to consumers in tandem with meaningful action to tackle illegal music downloading,” say the BPI.

We approached TalkTalk, an ISP referred to in the study, for a comment.

“TalkTalk thanks the BPI for its strategic business advice. Though some may question the value of such insight from an industry which has failed to acknowledge the impact of new technology on its own business models and is pressing the Government to criminalise its biggest customers,” a spokesperson told TorrentFreak.

Clearly TalkTalk doesn’t want to do the music industry’s dirty work for them, but if other ISPs got heavily involved in the music distribution business it might be considered natural for them to try and protect their revenues. That said, the leap from simple common carrier to having a vested interest could complicate their position.

Nevertheless, another issue the report highlights is that heavy competition is driving down the price of broadband services while consumer desire for bandwidth continues to increase. In any business working in plain commodities, the desire to bring in more profitable “added-value” products is strong.

“It’s increasingly clear that it isn’t smart to be a ‘dumb pipe’. This report shows that the revenue potential of digital music services alone makes sound economic sense for ISPs,” said BPI Chief Executive, Geoff Taylor.

So let’s imagine that the ISPs want to get involved in this market, offering bundled music for an extra £6.49 (the price level suggested in the report) – what would be so wrong with that? It’s pretty affordable after all, so why not give it a chance?

“With the right service platform, user experience and merchandising strategy, ISPs have an opportunity to reach a green-field digital music market that mainstream download-to-own services such as iTunes do not reach today,” explains report co-author and Ovum’s principal analyst, Adrian Drury.

So these suggested services aren’t of the “fill up your iPod” type, but of the “can only be used sitting-at-your-computer streaming services with limited download allocation” type. Surprised? Us neither.

Trying to convert those currently using file-sharing services over to paid models is already a big challenge. Trying to switch them to an inferior product whilst being hounded by their ISP on behalf of the music industry is a different matter altogether, and something TalkTalk refuses to be drawn into.

“Perhaps there is a goldmine for ISPs in legal downloads but that will not alter the fact that the copyright protection proposals being proposed threaten human rights,” their spokesperson told us. “They will penalise innocent broadband customers. They are expensive, unwieldy and utterly futile.”

If the record labels really did own your ISP, this is the type of environment subscribers would be pushed into. And you’d still have to fill up your iPod elsewhere at additional cost.

Source: Music Biz Hopes To End Piracy By Tempting ISPs With Millions

Carried out in November, the study found that while P2P use remains constant, usage of other other methods and techniques for acquiring music are on the increase.

Sources being exploited by the 16 to 54 year-old respondents include blogs and forums which publish links to music stored on so-called ‘cyberlockers’, a generic term for hosting sites such as Rapidshare. These showed an 18% increase in usage by respondents during the last 6 months.

Other non-P2P sources enjoying increased usage from respondents during the same period include MP3 search engines such as SkreemR (up 28%), and newsgroups which show a big leap of 42%.

While the BPI’s Chief Executive Geoff Taylor points out that there are as many as 35 legal digital music services in the UK for Internet users to acquire music from, the biggest gaining ‘alternative’ source with respondents is not a free mechanism such as BitTorrent.

During the last 6 months, overseas MP3 pay sites (such as those listed here) enjoyed an increase in usage of 47% with the respondents who admitted to getting their music from ‘alternative’ sources. This seems to be an indication that people are willing to pay for music, just not at the levels being demanded in their home market. While these sites are labeled as ‘unlicensed’ by the BPI, they maintain they are completely legal in their own countries.

Rather than focusing on the usual P2P/BitTorrent bogeyman, this report puts emphasis on other methods of acquiring music, in the hope that the UK government will indeed grant itself the power to introduce new laws quickly to deal with these ‘new threats’, as mentioned in the Digital Economy Bill.

Source: British Music Industry Sees Piracy Threat Beyond P2P

Petter said he fears that the anti-piracy process could cost ISPs a staggering £365m a year – £165m a year more than the £200m the BPI says the industry will lose to online music piracy in 2009. The BT boss went on to label the BPI’s losses assessment as “melodramatic.”

Geoff Taylor, chief executive of BPI, is now hitting back, claiming that Petter has exaggerated his figures too.

Taylor also claims that since February the group’s anti-piracy tracking company (most probably Denmark-based DtecNet) has harvested the IP addresses of 100,000 BT Broadband customers alleged to have been engaged in illicit file-sharing.

The BPI CEO, who says that his group handed the information over to BT, notes that the ISP has done nothing about the problem.

BT says that if the industry wants action against these individuals it should prosecute them, but BPI said that the ISP is shirking its responsibilities.

“It’s shameful for a company like BT to know that a high percentage of the traffic it carries is illegal material but do nothing,” Taylor told The Mirror. “If you operate a commercial service and know it is being used to break the law, taking steps to ensure it is used legally is a cost of doing business.”

However, Taylor’s comments don’t really hold water. BT has hosted more communications in its past and present forms than any other company in UK history, and for many years held a monopoly on telephone communications. BT and every other communications company provides infrastructure which people can use to break all kinds of laws and so far, no-one apart from the entertainment industries feels that carriers should take the responsibility for the actions of others.

The British music industry frustrations are only too clear. They don’t want to take the path of the RIAA and start taking legal action against alleged sharers, so are pressuring ISPs to take action against them instead. ISPs don’t want to be judge, jury and executioner, particularly since there is no legal basis to do so.

So now all eyes are now on the government which will soon have to decide which action to take. Smart money right now is on throttling the connection speeds of file-sharers as an absolute last resort, but this won’t be enough for the music industry, who want outright disconnection or at least a temporary suspension of Internet access.

Source: BPI Decries ISP Inaction Against 100K Music Pirates

Yesterday, speaking with the UK’s The Mirror, John Petter, boss of ISP BT’s consumer division, said that measures to tackle Internet piracy will be costly.

Noting that ISP profit margins are already small, Petter said he fears that the process could cost ISPs a staggering £365m a year.

However, according to Jupiter Reseach, whose figures the BPI uses when trying to convince others how much money they lose, the British music industry will lose £200m worth of business to online piracy in 2009.

If the BPI’s ‘losses’ figures are to be believed (and we have to go along with the ridiculous premise of 1 download = 1 lost sale in order to do so), saving £200m worth of business will end up costing ISPs almost double that amount.

“Their [music industry] claims are melodramatic and assume people would buy all the music that is illegally downloaded, which is nonsense,” said Petter, adding that laws are already in place to deal with illicit file-sharing, but the industry doesn’t want to use those particular ones because it would hurt their public image.

Petter’s final point is possibly the most important one. He believes that the war against file-sharing will lead to a technological arms race as Internet users find new ways to hide their activities.

Indeed, by spending a measly £3.00 per month on a cheapo VPN service from the likes of SwissVPN, it’s possible for any user to tunnel right out of the UK and no-one in the country will have a clue what they are doing on their connection. Not the BPI, not ISPs, not the government.

That’s around 10p per day to defeat a £1m a day system that isn’t even in place yet. Something doesn’t add up.

Source: UK Anti-Piracy Plans Cost More Than Music Industry ‘Losses’

Not everyone in the music business agrees with this assessment though. When the indie rock band Barcelona saw one of its latest tracks featured in a viral video with nearly a million views, they responded quite differently. They claim that the clip below actually boosted their album sales and concert visits.

So, instead of demanding that YouTube pull the video, the band posted a response to the ‘Kuroshio Sea’ video on the site, thanking their new found fans and the uploader who posted the original video.

“We’re so flattered to learn that it features one of our songs called Please Don’t Go,” Barcelona’s lead singer Brian Fennell says in the video response.

“We want to let you know that it’s been affirming in the last week to watch in the iTunes store a correlation with the sales of our record ‘Absolutes’, growing in the rock charts as a result of having the song placed in the video,” drummer Rhett Stonelake added.

Aside from the boost in record sales, the band says that they’ve also met some new fans who came to their concerts after seeing the video on YouTube. It is a great way of promoting music online, especially when it’s coupled to a great video.

Unfortunately for most artists, anti-piracy outfits such as the RIAA, BPI and IFPI are increasingly policing YouTube to get all copyrighted music taken off the site. One such artist to suffer recently is the unfortunate Calvin Harris, who clashed with the music industry lobby group BPI.

“IT’S MY FUCKING SONG YOU ABSOLUTE BASTARDS,” Harris wrote on Twitter when he found out that YouTube had removed a clip he uploaded himself, following a copyright complaint from the BPI.

“FUCK YOU ‘The BPI’ what have you ever done for anybody you useless shower of cunts,” he added. As if that wasn’t enough Harris labeled the BPI the “worst organization to ever walk the earth” and their online employees “massive retards.”

Like many other artists, Harris just wants his music to be heard, and he believes that putting a clip on YouTube might in fact introduce new people to his music. If people like what they hear, they might even buy his album or visit his gigs, much like what happened with Barcelona.

YouTube is free promotion for bands and artists, it has the potential to drive revenue instead of killing it. It is time for the major labels and anti-piracy outfits to listen to the artists for once, and perhaps ask them if they actually want to have their content removed or not.

Source: ‘Pirated’ Youtube Clip Boosts Band’s Album Sales

Now, according to information leaked to TorrentFreak, one of the most prolific music release groups around has suffered a significant setback after police quietly started arresting members during the last month. The latest arrest came yesterday, as police and BPI investigators conducted an early morning raid on a senior member of the group.

At this stage we cannot publish the group’s name (see update at the bottom of this article for group name) but we believe that they are responsible for more than 3,000 single and album releases. The group was relatively young and had a membership of less than ten individuals, although they aren’t all based in the UK.

The first arrest happened mid-May and the most recent yesterday, conducted in a similar fashion to earlier raids against those involved in the TV Links and AradiTracker cases.

In early morning raids, officers from the Metropolitan Police’s Hi-Tech Crime Unit backed up by senior investigators from the BPI took the suspects by surprise. Sources close to the investigation told TorrentFreak that as many as 15 officers conducted searches on the target addresses, arresting suspects and taking them away for questioning.

Hardware was of great interest to the police as they seized large amounts of electrical equipment including all computers, cell phones, various CDs and MP3 players, bank statements and sundry other items from the addresses.

After hours of questioning by police in the presence of BPI investigators, in common with the OiNK uploaders the suspects were charged with Conspiracy to Defraud (the music industry), bailed and ordered to reappear at later dates.

According to sources, all remaining group members have gone into hiding, all servers are now offline and topsite accounts have been deleted.

More on this breaking story as we get it.

Update: Our sources have agreed to let us name the group – it is DV8. Their latest release was Brokencyde-Im_Not_A_Fan_But_The_Kids_Like_It-2009-DV8 – time will tell if it will be the last.

Source: Major Scene MP3 Pre-Release Group Busted By Police

This wasn’t enough for the music industry. What they really wanted was a “3 strikes” or “graduated response” – a warning for the first offense, slowing of the offender’s Internet connection on the second and on the third, disconnection of the user from the Internet.

Eventually, the government appeared it was about to get tough if the ISPs and music industry couldn’t come to a voluntary decision, with Culture Secretary Andy Burnham threatening legislation. Through the Department for Business Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (BERR), the government commissioned a public consultation last year into illicit file-sharing, and how to deal with it. In the end, no consensus was reached between the parties.

However, according to The Times, the “3 Strikes” option is off the table. In an interview with Intellectual Property Minister David Lammy, it was indicated that disconnecting users from the Internet in such a manner was fraught with legal difficulties. “I’m not sure it’s actually going to be possible,” he added.

This week the ‘Digital Britain’ report will be released. According to information leaked last week, Communications Minister Lord Carter will call for a new ‘Rights Agency’ to be overlooked by Ofcom, the independent regulator and competition authority for the UK communications industries.

It’s suggested that the agency would be financed by both ISPs and rights holders, and will assist in maintaining any new regulations. There are even suggestions that an additional charge on a customer’s Internet bill could be added to enable contributions towards the music industry.

The final report, due for publishing later this week, should clarify the picture, but since Lord Carter has a drive for everyone in the country to have broadband by the time the Olympics come to Britain in 2012, anything that could detract from that will be viewed with caution.

Source: No ’3 Strikes’ Disconnection for UK Pirates

The RIAA will now be working with DtecNet, a Danish anti-piracy tracking company which employs largely the same techniques as MediaSentry, but the aims will be slightly different in the majority of cases. The new tactic for the IFPI-headed music industry is to target ISPs instead, lobbying governments to implement the dreaded “3 strikes” or “graduated response” scheme reported so often in recent months.

Interestingly, DtecNet is far from an objective investigating firm. In fact, it originally stems from the anti-piracy lobby group Antipiratgruppen, which represents the music and movie industry in Denmark. There are more direct ties to the music industry though. Kristian Lakkegaard, one of DtecNet’s employees, used to work for the RIAA’s global partner, IFPI. Unsurprisingly, the RIAA has now chosen DtecNet to gather the evidence that will cost alleged filesharers their Internet connection.

One country in the thick of the “3 strikes” proposals is the UK. Led up by the BPI, the British music industry signed a MoU (Memorandum of Understanding) with the country’s six largest ISPs. They agreed to send out letters to alleged pirates on behalf of the music industry, warning them that their illicit sharing habits had been monitored and they should discontinue their actions.

Of course, even without individual prosecutions, an anti-piracy company still has to do the tracking, but despite our requests the BPI refused to tell TorrentFreak how they were achieving this. Some months ago we put it to Matt Philips of the BPI that if their system was robust, there should be no problem in revealing it to us. Unfortunately he wouldn’t tell us who they were using or how they carried out their tracking. But of course, we found out in the end.

It turns out that in common with the RIAA and IFPI, the BPI are also using DtecNet. However, there appears to be no particular magic behind this company’s techniques. Just like most (if not all) anti-piracy outfits, they simply work from a list of titles their client wishes to protect and then hunts through known file-sharing networks to find them, in order to track the IP addresses of alleged infringers.

Their software appears as a normal client in, for example, BitTorrent swarms, while collecting IP addresses, file names and the unique hash values associated with the files. All this information is filtered in order to present the allegations to the appropriate ISP, in order that they can send off a letter admonishing their own customer, in line with their commitments under the MoU.

DtecNet is also active in Australia. Hired by Hollywood studios, DtecNet helped to build the case against ISP iiNet, by gathering evidence which they say proves that iiNet authorized the copyright-infringing activities of its own subscribers.

It is unclear why the RIAA finally dumped MediaSentry, but the fact that its techniques were heavily criticized in court couldn’t have helped. Renowned P2P expert Prof. Johan Pouwelse labeled RIAA expert Doug Jacobson’s reporting as “borderline incompetent”.

The switch to DtecNet is unlikely to prove any more fruitful, since no anti-piracy company is capable of identifying uploads to anyone but itself, which makes mass-infringement almost impossible to prove. It might be some time before DtecNet’s evidence is scrutinized in court but when it is, it will be a big surprise if it’s of a greater ‘quality’ than the data provided by MediaSentry.

Meet the new boss…..

Source: Meet DtecNet – RIAA’s New Anti-Piracy Partners

Most people seem to be interested in what happens after a letter is received, but who decides who gets a letter in the first place? Well, that’s the self-appointed job of the BPI (the British Phonographic Industry), a completely commercial organization set up to serve the interests of the music business and they don’t want you to know (in any detail) how their file-sharing tracking systems work. The same systems would’ve been used should they have been successful in their demands for “3 strikes and you’re out” yet there is zero transparency – everyone is supposed to blindly accept what they say as truth and that simply can’t be healthy.

In recent comments, a Carphone Warehouse spokesman further indicated that it is expected to take action against its customers based purely on the ‘evidence’ provided by the BPI. “What we have agreed to do is to write to our customers and advise them there’s been an alleged infringement,” he said. “We’re very clear that we don’t know if that’s the case or not, we’ve just been told there has been and we want to advise them of that.”

So in a nutshell, the BPI provide all the ‘evidence’, and the ISPs have to blindly believe it and take action against their own customers. To think that a commercial organization like the BPI is allowed to provide its own unchallenged allegations in such a completely non-transparent manner is the real outrage in all of this. If the BPI is to be trusted with such power, it has to be held accountable. If it is to remain credible in its role as the “UK MP3 Police” its systems must be opened up to public scrutiny. Once they are proved to be accurate by a panel of independent experts, then all well and good, but the fact remains that the BPI only give a vague indication of how they operate and have no intentions of elaborating.

Matt Philips, Director of Communications at the BPI refused to tell TorrentFreak how they gather their evidence, so any right-minded individual with an interest in this issue might find themselves asking: “What exactly are they afraid of?”

Clearly, it should be possible from their detailed records for an ISP to confirm or deny the technical evidence provided by the BPI. However, they aren’t in a position to do this since it would be a massive breach of customer privacy. Instead, the word of the BPI is taken at face value.

In a response, some Swedish ISPs have voiced their opinions too. “We don’t want to act like police and feel that a system similar to that in the UK is a deep invasion of privacy,” said Annika Kristersson of Tele2, adding: “It would entail us having to spy on our customers.”

Everyone makes mistakes and no system is flawless so it’s essential to have a verification process before throwing accusations around. Until then, take comfort in knowing that the file-sharing equivalent of home-made, untested, uncalibrated police speed cameras of unknown design and ability are operated by people with a vested interest and are passing judgment on you, your children and potentially (should the BPI get its way) your whole Internet future. A little transparency to inspire confidence isn’t too much to ask.

Source: UK “MP3 Police” Evidence Unchallenged, Not For Public Consumption

The report states that the deal was agreed by six of the UK’s most prominent Internet Service Providers following intense government pressure. It’s estimated that these as-yet unnamed ISPs will send out hundreds of thousands of letters to suspected uploaders of music. The ISPs – thought to include Virgin Media who already did an early deal – are BT, Orange, Tiscali, Carphone Warehouse (AOL, TalkTalk) and BSkyB.

Demands from the music industry to disconnect uploaders from the Internet have not been met by the ISPs nor insisted upon by the government as Culture Secretary Andy Burnham had already stepped back from a government implemented ’3 strikes and you’re out’ policy. One ISP, Virgin Media, already indicated that there was “absolutely no possibility” of them disconnecting alleged pirates from the Internet.

However, it’s being reported that other measures may be taken against alleged file-sharers, including traffic management techniques being deployed to punish persistent offenders. As we reported earlier, this element is likely to be negotiated by the UK telecoms regulator, Ofcom.

The Times is reporting that other steps may be taken by the government such as the introduction of an annual £30 ‘download tax’. Peter Jenner, a music industry player who has been supporting such a plan said that the tax could bring in enough turnover to support the music industry: “If you get enough people paying a small enough amount of money you can turn around the wheels of the music industry” he said. Although UK citizens are used to this type of charge with the current TV licensing system, this type of tax seems unlikely to succeed in the current environment.

A Memorandum of Understanding drawn up by the Department for Business, Enterprise & Regulatory Reform (BERR) and signed by all six ISPs states that not only must the ISPs commit to a “significant reduction” in music file-sharing in the UK but they must also help develop legal music services too. One can see how this might be attractive to certain ISPs, such as BSkyB who just days ago signed a deal with Universal to set up an online music service “to rival iTunes”.

All this will be backed up by an educational campaign to ensure that every customer knows that it is illegal to upload copyright music.

More on this breaking news as we get it during the day.

Update: Geoff Taylor, chief executive of the BPI says reports of a levy are incorrect: “A levy is not an issue under discussion. It has not been discussed between us and government and as far as we are aware it is not on the table.”

Source: ISPs To Send “Hundreds of Thousands” of File-Sharing Warnings

To its credit, one ISP, Carphone Warehouse, has refused to comply. Others are working with the music industry and at the forefront of that group is Virgin Media.

Virgin has been receiving quite a lot of bad publicity recently after it was revealed that it agreed to work with the music industry to send out so-called ‘educational warnings‘ to its customers the BPI accuse of file-sharing. Virgin has sent out hundreds of these at the behest of the music industry and they have been dropping through mail boxes up and down the country. The letters come in an envelope and printed on the outside are the words: “Important: If you don’t read this, your broadband could be disconnected” so recipients could be forgiven for coming to the conclusion that, frankly, if they don’t read it, their broadband could be disconnected.

However, Virgin Media told has told Jim over at Newsbeat that the printing on the envelope was “a mistake” and there is “absolutely no possibility” of legal action or disconnection for any recipient of these letters. Nice to know.

Furthermore, Asam Ahmad from Virgin notes that they cannot be 100% sure that the person they send the letters to has actually committed any offense at all. “It is important to let our customers know that their accounts have been used in a certain way but we are happy to accept it may not be the account holder that’s involved.”

He goes on to highlight the problematic issue of incorrectly accusing someone due to a lack of solid evidence: “It could be someone else in the family or someone living in a shared house. It could even be someone stealing wi-fi. We are not making any form of accusation.”

Virgin Media has also stated that it will not hand over the personal details of anyone accused by the BPI “under any circumstances”. This is a good start by Virgin and all credit to them for taking this stance but the reality is that Virgin hands over its subscriber’s details in the blink of an eye when faced with a court order to do so. We know for a fact that they hand over the details of petty file-sharers to the likes of lawyers Davenport Lyons for the alleged sharing of one cheap game costing little more than a single album. However, the BPI has said in the past that it doesn’t want to start taking legal action against individuals.

Source: Virgin Media: ‘Absolutely No Possibility’ of Disconnecting File-Sharers

Next month, France will be the chair of the European Union, and Christine Albanel, the French Minister of Culture said that they will take this opportunity to encourage member states to take on piracy as well. Albanel further said that the “three strikes” law aims to change the behavior of the “average downloader”, not the hardcore pirates.

Albanel does not mention that the French law goes directly against the European Parliament who, this April, condemned state plans to authorize the disconnection of suspected file-sharers from the Internet. The European Parliament said that disconnecting petty file-sharers would be “conflicting with civil liberties and human rights and with the principles of proportionality, effectiveness and dissuasiveness”.

However, recent developments indicate that anti-piracy outfits don’t need a law to threaten pirates. Since most countries are hesitant to adopt such laws, organizations like the BPI and BREIN are now looking to make deals with UK and Dutch ISPs, to establish a “three strikes” policy, without having to change the law.

The BPI already managed to convinced the British ISP BT to work with them. Earlier this week, the Register reported that a BT customer received an email, stating:

BPI will monitor for further infringements of copyright and, if further evidence is obtained of infringement via your internet connection, then further action is likely to be taken against you. That action may include litigation against you, as well as the suspension by BT of your internet connection.

A few days later, the Dutch anti-piracy outfit BREIN said they would like ISPs in The Netherlands to do the same – forward letters to alleged offenders, and threaten to terminate their Internet connection. In France, this is already happening as well, without the “three strikes” law being officially passed, with at least one ISP having agreed to work with an anti-piracy organization, to combat piracy.

So, while claiming they need such a law, they are working with ISPs to do the same thing anyway. This will be a huge problem, not just for the customers that may lose their connections, but just because people are being hit with, in many cases, baseless accusations. Until something is done to hold organizations accountable for false or inaccurate claims, the industry will continue to use shoddy data gathering techniques, pointing the finger at as many innocent net users as may be guilty.

This leads us to believe that the disconnection threats, are nothing more than an attempt to scare people, who often didn’t even commit the “crime”, as we pointed out before. Sad but true.

Source: 3-Strikes Law Not Needed to Disconnect Pirates

Suspects were taken to their local police station for questioning and required to provide DNA samples and fingerprints. Sources close to those arrested confirm that most accusations relate to the uploading of a single album by each suspect but despite the fact that uploading music is not a crime in the UK if done for no profit, somehow this civil issue had been transformed into allegations of serious crime, with police paying close attention to donations the suspects made to the site, presumably in an effort to find some financial motive.

Rather than the organized crime ring, they were told to expect, the police ended up questioning six regular people, terrified and mortified at being in trouble with the police for the first time in their lives. Eventually all six were released, and bailed to report back to police on July 1st. Alan Ellis himself is due to report on the same date, after his bail was extended not just once, but three times already.

Sources close to case have informed TorrentFreak that those arrested will report to the police next Tuesday and told that their bail will be extended. They will be ordered to reappear before police on Monday 28th July. No reason will be given for the delay in either releasing or charging those accused, but it is likely to increase speculation that the evidence in the case isn’t anywhere near as strong or as damning as the police were led to expect.

Source: Arrested OiNK Uploaders’ Bail to be Extended

The government previously set a deadline of April 2009 for the parties to reach an agreement but according to sources, pressure is intensifying to deal with the issue sooner. A “top-level executive” gave an indication of the level of pressure stating: “The British government just put a gun to our head.”

According to what DMN describe as “top-level” and other “executive” sources, the music industry and major ISPs including BT, Carphone Warehouse, Tiscali and Virgin Media are now involved in “serious negotiations” over how to deal with what they perceive to be a serious threat to their business model.

Andy Burnham, Culture Secretary and Labour Member of Parliament is said to be playing a prominent role after tough comments earlier in the year: “Let me make it absolutely clear: this is a change of tone from the government,” Burnham told the FT. “It’s definitely serious legislative intent.”

At the London Calling event last week – billed as ‘the UK’s premier international music business event’ – sources confirmed meetings between the music industry and ISPs. It’s believed that ISPs are being negotiated with individually, rather than as a group. “All of the ISPs are at the table meeting with the rights holders, but it’s not a roundtable,” said a source.

Current CEO of British Music Rights and former pop star Feargal Sharkey said he was optimistic at the discussions between the music industry and ISPs: “At this moment, I am completely optimistic. Three months ago these guys wouldn’t even get into the same room.”

It’s unclear what could happen if the music industry and ISPs fail to reach an agreement, as Culture Secretary Andy Burnham has already stepped back from a government implemented ’3 strikes and you’re out’ policy.

For their part, ISPs are only too aware of the profit they make from file-sharers. If the latest reports are to be believed, around 6 million Brits use their internet connection for file-sharing. Alienating them could be a huge strategic error.

Source: Government “Holds a Gun to the Head” of ISPs Over P2P

In the UK and at the forefront of this controversy has been Virgin Media. Various reports suggested that Virgin would implement the 3-strikes policy with the BPI but this proved very unpopular and it took just a few days for Virgin to deny any such deal had been struck.

Undeterred, the BPI has carried on working with Virgin who, according to a Music Week report, have now agreed to some sort of halfway-house. Virgin will not (yet) disconnect persistent uploaders, but after receiving information from the BPI about users making unauthorized uploads, Virgin Media will start sending out warning letters along with ‘educational’ advice about how to ensure that the customer’s account isn’t ‘misused’. Included in the advice will be links to authorized music sources, along with the usual fear mongering about viruses and spyware.

In this 10-week trial, along with the letter from Virgin, the subscriber will also receive a warning letter from the BPI. It will state that persistent offenders will be disconnected and/or taken to court, despite the fact that Virgin appears to be refusing to disconnect users so far.

BPI chief executive Geoff Taylor said: “Virgin Media is the first ISP to publicly address the problem. It is a socially responsible ISP and I think other ISPs will look at this and see progress. I am very encouraged they have engaged with us. They understand the rights of musicians.”

A Virgin Media spokesman added: “We want people to enjoy music online without infringing the rights of musicians and music companies. This campaign is about helping our customers understand how they can do this.”

It’s unclear what the BPI strategy will be on this but to really put Virgin under pressure, it will probably decide to put IP-addresses it collects into a database. This way it would be easy to flag IP-addresses that had already been ‘caught’ before, and put these IPs forward to Virgin as persistent users – prime candidates for disconnection. Virgin Media (unlike comparable ADSL ISPs in the UK) hand out static IP addresses, so most users will be an easy target as they display the same IP address all the time. But for those Virgin customers with a router, simply changing the MAC address of the unit will force Virgin to hand over a new IP, which then offers the user the same perceived ‘protection’ as a dynamic IP ISP.

So at the end of it all lies a very large inconsistency. If a casual uploader simply gets a warning from the BPI/Virgin and only persistent, regularly-caught users MIGHT be disconnected or MIGHT get taken to court (in a civil action, of course), why has the BPI ignored all of these things while effectively directing the police that the recently arrested uploaders from OiNK should be treated as serious criminals?

TorrentFreak knows that at least two of those accused uploaded just a single album. Persistent? Hardly. Conspiring to Defraud? Give us a break.

Where were their friendly, education-based warnings from the ISP?

Update:The Register ran a piece and are also hosting copies of the letters that will be sent out to users. You can find the Virgin letter here and the BPI letter here.

Source: BPI and Virgin Media Agree to Start Warning Uploaders

Would OiNK users really become a target for the police, despite the presumed civil status of sharing music on P2P networks? If so, why?

Right from the start, there has been a concerted effort by various elements of the music industry to portray everyday citizens using OiNK – presumably including the likes of Trent Reznor – as hardened criminals out to ruin the industry. At the time, BPI Chief Executive Geoff Taylor called OiNK a “closed criminal network” and unfortunately this type of comment set the general tone for many follow up news articles.

In reality, OiNK offered no music of its own but was the venue of an unofficial virtual party, where a limited number of people listened to music without fees or charges, in a modern take on pirate radio – but with a twist. If people had some music to share with others then so much the better, they could bring it along, add it to the index (and that’s all OiNK was, an index) and everyone could listen, to see if they liked it too.

Of all things, it was certainly not about money and a large proportion of the members wouldn’t even have considered that sharing music would result in police knocking on the door, any more than as a result of them using YouTube. But knock they did.

Last week Cleveland Police arrested a user of OiNK in the Cheshire area, who was questioned and later released on police bail. It is alleged that the individual – a normal user of the site who has no previous involvement with the police and no criminal convictions – uploaded a solitary album in early 2007.

Furthermore, information suggests that the police will be arresting and interviewing more users in the course of this investigation but at this stage it is unclear exactly who they are targeting and why. A one-off album uploader seems an unlikely target, particularly as legally in the UK, the fact that the album was allegedly pre-released – as opposed to released after retail – means little.

Going on previous cases, uploading (sharing) would be a civilly actionable offense – lawyers Davenport Lyons in the UK are happy to send out bills to those it claims uploaded its client’s games and the police aren’t interested. But for reasons no-one seems to fully understand, the police are involved in this case and have sent a car full of officers to make an arrest at the individual’s place of work, all for sharing a few minutes of music.

Another issue up for debate is the big question mark sitting over the usefulness of site logs. Stats are manipulated all the time for one reason or another and trackers have to rely on a user’s torrent client reporting data correctly. To be anywhere close to proving infringement it is necessary to track the transfer of data from within the swarm by directly receiving data from the uploader. This is fairly trivial, does not require the site logs and importantly should’ve been done at the time the album was uploaded. Why there has been such a huge delay in taking further action is unknown.

Last year saw an unexplained shift in the way copyright actions are dealt with in the UK. Out of nowhere, both OiNK and the popular TV-Links sites were taken down by police action where one would usually expect a civil lawsuit, leaving prominent legal experts intrigued as to the legal basis.

Uploading one album is not the world’s most heinous crime, in fact, unless the UK legal system changed overnight, it’s not a crime at all since there would’ve been no commercial gain for the user. So what route is this investigation taking? What is the significance of arresting this individual and investigating others over a seemingly small civil issue, and why has it taken so long to do so?

As usual, there are more questions than answers. The arrests have started, but it is unknown how many people are involved. We contacted the Police department that was responsible for at least one arrest, however, they did not respond to our inquiries. If you have any information, please contact TorrentFreak here, as we will post an update of the arrests later this weekend.

Source: OiNK Investigation: Police Start Making Arrests

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…

Source: ISP Will Protect File-Sharers From Music Industry Disconnection Threat

A Virgin Media spokesperson said: “There is no pilot in place. There are no details to confirm as we haven’t come to any sort of agreement with the BPI. The BPI wants the Government and ISPs to adopt the three-strikes system, we don’t want to go down to that level as it raises questions about privacy and funding.”

Under the suggested proposals, those caught sharing unauthorized files would be disconnected from the internet, should they fail to heed warnings to stop. Virgin is right to be cautious about privacy issues. Anti-piracy outfit Logistep ran headlong into operating illegally in Italy recently, when it was ruled that they illegally spied on P2P users.

When quizzed, the BPI said it was unable to talk about its discussions with ISPs: “We can’t talk about the pilot and can’t give out details but we have outlined plans with Virgin and do have a dialogue with them. But there is no confirmation of a pilot.”

Source: Virgin Media Denies Doing a Deal to Disconnect Pirates

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.

Source: ISP To Voluntarily Disconnect File-Sharers, Offers Free Usenet

Now, according to Silicon, the BPI is teaming up with the IFPI to develop systems to track down unauthorized music sharing on the Internet.

Jollyon Benn, an Internet investigator for the Anti Piracy Unit of the BPI, said that more people than ever are sharing their music collections online because BitTorrent clients are becoming so easy to use. He said: “The latest version of LimeWire includes a BitTorrent client in it and the user interface has got much more friendly. It is opening it up to a lot of people, it all comes down to how easy it is to do these things.”

I’m not sure that the LimeWire implementation of BitTorrent is any easier to use than that of say, uTorrent’s, but it’s certain that the BitTorrent community would only expand when an outfit such as LimeWire introduces its millions of users to the protocol. As more people get introduced to BitTorrent and move away from networks such as Gnutella, the mysterious anti-piracy ‘systems’ being developed by the BPI and IFPI come into play, which in reality are likely to be regular file-sharing clients with enhanced logging abilities.

According to Jollyon Benn, the BPI isn’t deviating away from its earlier position of not going after petty file-sharers, setting an informal threshold of around 200 tracks before chasing the sharer. Instead, Benn says that the BPI will be concentrating on “networks sharing hundreds of thousands of tracks” which immediately throws up some questions. Most BitTorrent trackers are located outside the ‘jurisdiction’ of the BPI, i.e not in the UK. Granted, this didn’t stop them working with the IFPI to shut down OiNK in the Netherlands, but of course they managed to convince the British police that some criminal activity had been taking place on the site, in order to obtain the identity of the administrator, Alan Ellis.

Since the authorities still haven’t found anything to charge Alan with – many months after his initial arrest – one has to wonder if the BPI will be so lucky in getting home address details so quickly in the future.

There certainly aren’t many UK-hosted BitTorrent trackers and the number of British BitTorrent administrators running sites located outside of the UK is unclear, but it’s unlikely there are that many. So as everyone scratches their head thinking of who on earth the BPI are talking about taking down, the battle continues, physically and more often than not, psychologically.

Source: BPI Crackdown Planned as BitTorrent Becomes ‘Too Easy’

They also condemn the police forces for allowing the presumption of innocence to be discarded, in that the domain of the website, has been effectively hijacked, and replaced by a page insinuating guilt on the part of the site owner. The ‘Presumption of Innocence’, better known as “innocent until proven guilty” is a cornerstone of law both in the Netherlands and UK. Surely, if anyone should have put a temporary website under the Oink domain, then it should have been the Cleveland police, or the Dutch police, not the record label owners union.

This violation of what should be standard practices brings into question the ethics and procedures of the forces involved. Cleveland police have yet to respond to inquiries, however.

Of further interest is the apparent investigation on the Dutch side by the Investigation Service of the Tax and Customs Administration (or FIOD-ECD for short). This would appear to be in relation to the claimed monies that were paid by users for access to the site, which are known to us here at TorrentFreak as “voluntary donations”, but then we do our homework. The question does come to be how these criminal investigation groups manage to execute these raids, without first having done any investigation; undoubtedly heads will roll.

Timing is another interesting aspect to this case. Reportedly, the IFPI are upset that the Pirate Bay has acquired ifpi.com. However, it’s a domain they’ve not had control of (at least according to archive.org) since early this year at the latest, and so it’s hard to see how they will be able to have anything done about it, legally. Could this raid then be a retaliatory action on their part, targeting another site rather than the Pirate Bay, who are/were probably expecting some sort of backlash like this?

Whilst claims in the various press releases (BPI, IFPI, Cleveland police) all state that the site was notorious for pre-release music, it’s also relevant to consider the source of that music. According to a 2003 study by AT+T labs into the movie industry, the majority of early releases came from insiders, and its unlikely that the music industry is any different. Indeed, according to ‘apathy’, a moderator at music site Economy of Sound, several pre-releases have come from the record companies direct, where they have had the view that “you just cannot buy that kind of publicity.” Claims that pre-releases hurt sales are also not found to be based in fact, the Meshuggah album “Nothing” was leaked onto the internet, and became their best-seller.

However, perhaps the biggest thing to remember is that private sites store information. Thats how they work, and there is always some saved, in order to run ratios etc. In the end, we’re right back to the question, “Are Private Torrent Sites Safe” and it would appear that they are becoming less so as time goes on, irrespective of the law.

Source: Why Are The IFPI and BPI Allowed To Hijack OiNK?

Many of OiNK’s users have been enquiring if their details are safe on the site. The message: “A criminal investigation continues into the identities and activities of the site’s users” will not exactly fill them with confidence.

However, everyone in the BitTorrent world will be familiar with the propaganda put out by anti-piracy organizations and many will be familiar with a similar situation a few years ago when the LokiTorrent tracker was closed and seemingly none of the users were tracked down. Fear, uncertainty and doubt – it’s all part of the anti-p2p strategy but it’s hugely doubtful that 180,000 users will be pursued, it’s just not cost effective and most are scattered around the globe.

According to whois.sc, the visitors to the site are split: United States 50.7%, United Kingdom 7%, Canada 6%, Sweden 3.2%, Germany 2.7% and Netherlands at just 1.9%. Although of questionable accuracy, these figures should give at least an idea of the trend on the site.

Clearly the statement on the homepage is designed to scare all the ex-OiNK members back into the record shops and not let them think it’s safe to join another tracker. That strategy has been tried before (You Can Click But You Can’t Hide) and it doesn’t work. Additionally, more and more people are choosing to protect their privacy with VPN services such as VPNTunnel and Relakks, finding that a small investment is worth the peace of mind in the long run.

So who are the players in this OiNK takedown?

Most people know about the IFPI – The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry. This organization says it represents the worldwide interests of the recording industry with the backing of nearly 1,500 record businesses in 75 countries. Its main aim is to fight piracy.

The BPI – British Phonographic Industry is similar to the RIAA in the US. It’s made up of hundreds of music businesses and fronted by the ‘big four’ – EMI, Sony BMG, Universal and Warner. Created in 1973, its stated main aim is to combat piracy.

The FIOD-ECD – Fiscal Investigation Unit of the Dutch Police is a worrying inclusion to the list of people involved in the closure of OiNK. FIOD-ECD is a Dutch government agency dedicated to chasing down people alleged to be involved in fiscal, financial and economic fraud – usually major criminals. With these people involved, getting access to records from hosts wouldn’t have proven too difficult – FIOD-ECD are not just another BREIN, they have some serious powers.

People familiar with the ShareConnector and Releases4u cases in the Netherlands will remember the involvement of FIOD-ECD. The case took over 2 years to come to court and the result was a complete failure for them. The admin of ShareConnector got off completely and a couple of small fines (around $350) were handed out to the admins of Releases4U for uploading copyright material. Additionally, FIOD-ECD failed to provide enough evidence to prove ShareConnector was involved in copyright infringement nor enough to prove that either organization was criminal in nature.

Many people will be keeping their fingers crossed that the progress against OiNK mirrors this.

Following a 2 year investigation (or 3 month investigation, depending on the source) which involved Interpol, Police are insisting that OiNK was a pay site. Members were given the option to donate but this insistence that OiNK was some sort of criminal network where people paid to be a member is clearly untrue but it’s likely that this is the reason the real police (as opposed to the ‘copyright police’) and FIOD-ECD are involved.

Jeremy Banks of the IFPI said: “This was not a case of friends sharing music for pleasure.”

Yes it was Jeremy.

Source: OiNK Investigation Seeks Identities and Activities of Users

And the BPI doesn’t like being “mild” at all. Earlier this month the BPI banned 12 year old from the “school kids music chart because her record label refuses to sue music fans.

The BPI now demands action against CD pirates. 37 million pirated CDs were sold in the UK in 2005 says the BBC, quoting a recent survey by the research firm Ipsos.

Car boot sales and markets accounted for over a third of pirated CDs, while a quarter were bought from friends, the survey found.

On the other hand, 2006 has been the most succesful year in a decade for the UK music industry, thanks to the internet (despite of all the pirates online). And as we’ve seen before, the less popular artists actually profit form these “new” technologies.

New acts are selling more albums, more quickly, than ever before, according to the BPI. It attributes the success to a rise in the quality in new acts

It’s time for the BPI and its clients to acknowledge the power of the internet and filesharing. Embrace, and use these new technologies, instead of chasing pirates.

As Joel Waldfogel, a business and public policy professor at the University of Pennsylvania puts it:

They are alienating their customers with their traditional ways of distribution and the traditional outlets are dying.

Source: BPI: stricter financial punishment for pirates

Source: A middle finger

The Inquirer writes:

Amy had been chosen as one of ten young artists to feature on the My Music chart that launches in October across 1,400 UK schools. But her inclusion was blocked by the BPI after its snoops discovered she is signed to Flowerburger Records, an independent record label which is running an online petition drumming up opposition to the BPI’s policy of suing music fans who use p2p websites.

Amy and a group of sympathizing children protested against this outrageous decision yesterday by holding balloons with supporting messages in front of the BPI office in London.

The BPI sure does begin to look a lot like the RIAA, their US counterpart.

Source: Anti-Piracy lobby bans Kid From music chart