Virgin Media: ‘Absolutely No Possibility’ of Disconnecting File-Sharers
Written by enigmax on July 03, 2008Virgin Media, plagued by a recent flurry of bad publicity thanks to its policy of working with the music industry to warn file-sharers, has announced today that there is “absolutely no possibility” that it will disconnect its users from the Internet or hand over their details to the music industry.
As the war of words over file-sharing in the UK heats up, the music industry represented by the BPI has been seeking ways to stop an estimated 6 million British citizens from sharing music. It has been pressurizing ISPs to take responsibility for the actions of their subscribers, and demanding that they disconnect those who share unauthorized music, something the ISPs don’t want to do.
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.
Previously: ‘Heroes’ Producer Recognizes Benefits of BitTorrent
Next: Indiana Gregg to The Pirate Bay: The Internet Police Are Coming
84 Responses
Woop Woop, first post. Congrats to Virgin for this if only all ISPs grew a back bone like Carphone Warehouse…
i don’t trust them at all! however like a lot of cable customers in the uk, we have no other choice but to use them :(
they denied the disconnection rumours when they were in talks with the bpi.
they denied the disconnection threats when they had sent out the threatening letters.
I wonder if they will deny it when they start disconnecting people.
‘the disconnection of these individuals had nothing to do with a deal with the bpi’ etc
Hmmmm…is Virgin growing some backbone or are they just trying to break the flood of bad PR and trying to stop people leaving / singing up with someone else…..
Virgin have suffered from bad PR since they bought NTL. I wonder if Richard Branson intervened yesterday?
I think SxC is on to something.. !
I guess they have to say that they will not disconnect anyone or they would lose even more paying customers than they are already.
Sitting down and having a chat with the BPI has really had a bad effect on their business. Perhaps they need to cut their dealings with so-called “rights owners” and concentrate on shoring up their own business.
Yeh, you can see Virgin has done a double back, or a testing of the waters shall we say, realising it’s below zero freezing…
And it’s a good thing to… Now all we need to do is stop stuff like Phorm and we can ride the rest of this war out.
get peer guardian then they wont find u
@ Jul 03, 2008 at 12:04 by Anonymous
You have NO idea!
Virgin has had bad PR, but it keeps shooting itself in the foot. It can’t even print up envelopes without getting the wording inaccurate.
Who’d trust an “educational warning” from a company that doesn’t know if it’s coming or going? Methinks the poor users of the service could teach the company how to run itself.
The virgin bosses are the ones who need an educational warning.
VM are nothing but cockroaches. If I had a BT line (or £125 to spend on a BT line installation), I would have left them ages ago. As per #2, I am stuck with them….
U S A
U S A
U S A
Ha Ha, we dont have to deal with shitty ISP’s like VM, WE GOT COMCAST BITCHES!!! HA!!
Oh wait….
too much money in one pile. be careful plz
Comcast isn’t that great man.
Comcastmustdie.com
pretty sure he was being sarcastic about comcast you tool
I bet Virgin is going to do what 3 said and disconnect people anyways
at 12:04 by Anonymous
What world do you live in?
All peer guardian does is block the IP addresses of KNOWN forces of darkness.
If they log on with any machine through an ISP assigning dynamic ip addresses they won’t be blocked, they then join in a swarm and can note all ip addresses in the swarm AND YOUR BUSTED.
There is no absolute foolproof way of not getting caught, at best you try to keep under the radar.
Virgin are blatantly just stalling to ease the PR situation. At the moment it seems that they are still monitoring and sending out letters, as before, but for now they just aren’t acting on them.
Well, FFS, how long will it be until they decide to START acting on them?
This isn’t much of a victory to my mind. This is just their PR making promises, and likely has little impact on what Virgin will actually do in future.
“There is no absolute foolproof way of not getting caught, at best you try to keep under the radar.”
VPN tunneling is a short term solution, so is WASTE (Mac, Win & Linux) but much harder to configure small network. SSL too, but i think that will be the first place that will cave to any subpoena as its based in the US.
torrents are here to stay!!!
What? Sorry?
I can’t hear you over the sound of how awesome it is having your line maxed out by leeching DVDRs from Virgin’s free binary usenet access.
“Virgin have suffered from bad PR since they bought NTL. I wonder if Richard Branson intervened yesterday?”
Virgin did not buy NTL, NTL/Telewest brought the rights to the name when they got Virgin mobile.
This company is full of lies, I wouldn’t believe anything they tell anyone. So glad we have Sky/.be coming to my house soon!
“VPN tunneling is a short term solution, so is WASTE (Mac, Win & Linux) but much harder to configure small network. SSL too, but i think that will be the first place that will cave to any subpoena as its based in the US.”
This is true to a certain extent, and with the use of anonymous proxy’s.
I have a contact in BT’s data centre who have successfully traced packets through VPN’s and anonymous proxy’s to the end user’s ip address.
At the present time it is very time consuming and requires an awful lot of number crunching, and as such they will only actively carry out the procedure if really pushed, and certainly not on a routine basis.
Hence my comment about staying under the radar.
I was extremely sceptical of this until I agreed to do a p2p download (of non-copyrighted material of course), I used an isp who assigned me a dynamic ip address, and an high-anonymous proxy server. The download took less than 3 mins.
I was later shown a list of IP addresses in the swarm which listed amongst them the anonymous proxy server address I had used (as expected).
I was then shown a second list (how it was generated I was not told) and the dynamic ip address and ISP I had used was amongst those listed.
How they did it I’ve got absolutely no idea, but they said it would also work with VPN’s.
Dont trust em, its a trap, simple as that.
i’m glad i’m with Carphone Warehouse. although i don’t think it’ll last. we’ve just got to wait until BPI offer them enough money to bribe them to go after file sharers
@9
I think people who use Peerguardian feel that they are completely safe. Really this is not the case. If one of these organizations were to join the same swarm as you, they could see your ip address. But Peerguardian does help for sure, it’s just not 100% safe. Just be aware of this.
Just a thought, With VM using /planning to use Phorm and DPI, How long do you think it will be until we get into an encryption cold war with ISP’s?
Number of sites are offering SSL already, Waiting for encrypted private/public trackers?
Virgin will deny all knowledge and say it wont happen…. then they will prove themselves wrong by doing it. Its happened before, it will happen again. Its standard NTL operating procedure.
Too bad Virgin DSL sucks so bad with speeds after they took over NTL infrastructure. Virgin cable may be better, I can’t comment.
Virgin like totalyl ROCKS doesnt it!
JT
http://www.Ultimate-Anonymity.com
Spying on what you are doin’ on-line is only the beginning… next thing you know – they will start listening to your phone conversations… spying on me without my permision is illegal… the’s the data protection act 98′ as well… i think only police is allowed to spy on people(after they fill in two zillion legal forms and risk and health and safety assessments and get the GO AHEAD from big boys in blue).
Stay Safe Everybody
nice post
chk out my blog
http://flowtationaddvice.com
I hope it’s too late for Virgin Media and noone who has any sense left gives a damn about what they say.
They are interested in making money and now that they realized this may be bad for business they are trying to convince people that they are the good guys? Screw them… Make them suffer… Change ISP if possible…
If this article is true then how do they explain this…
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7486743.stm
The obvious question to ask if that, if the language “your broadband will be disconnected” is a George Orwell class “mistake” then … why would “under no circumstances” also not be retconned into a mistake? Why would anyone believe it when you can’t trust something in writing?
absolute load of bollocks!! Virgin pass customers details on to solicitor firms and get them to do the dirty work. people are then supposed to think that Virgin are not responsible for the threats of disconnection and court action. the story above is an attempt to relieve all the bad P.R. dont get taken in by the bull shit!! the anti-piracy agencies wont be happy until they have destroyed the internet, dont care who they use to help them achieve that or the consequences to anyone else. all they will gain, hopefully, is contempt, fewer customers and fewer sales.
THANK GOD (or perhaps teh interwebs) FOR THIS. MAYBE I WON’T LEAVE VM NOW!
Yeah but wait till they implement phorm – then they will be spying on EVERYTHING you do!
http://www.badphorm.co.uk
but they have already handed over my details to davenport lyons????
are we supposed to trust them??
#22 Jul 03, 2008 at 14:55 by blah
You know jack sh1t. I was on the V.Mobile IT Support team from startup. They’ve absolutely _nothing_ to do with NTL/Telewest…
Please acquire cl00 before poasting further…
Virgin losing customers already? F U Virgin and any ISP that tries to invade our ship.
Blah you need to get your facts sorted before you start making assertions. I was with Telewest who got bought out/taken over by Virgin. I was a Telewest customer I am now a Virgin customer. Virgin sucks.
Wait wait wait, isnt Virgin a record company itself?
Anybody remember the Iraqi Minister of Truth?
Virgin Media is starting to sound like him..
what if you download from usenet is this the same because your not actually sharing with anyone else
To protect my connection I force encryption between bit torrent clients(using utorrent), and use isohunts ssl site. I then use an anonymizer to create a swarm for myself of dynamically assigned ip addresses that have nothing to do with me. The only way I could be found is if they trace my ack packet somehow by breaking encryption and grab my MAC address out of that, in which case I will spoof my MAC address or change my network card/hardware.
wasn’t it the VM head honcho whob said “this net neuality things bollocks”.
that gives you a little wink to what type of company those unfortunate not to have a choice have to deal with.
“SSL too, but i think that will be the first place that will cave to any subpoena as its based in the US”
Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) is a method of encrypting traffic between a client and server – a method based on well-documented mathematical principles. Public domain mathematical principles are not subject to subpoenas nor are they constrained to geographical bounds.
* * *
BitTorrent Encryption ONLY prevents against ISP traffic shaping and does NOT reduce your chances of being caught sharing. Your IP address can still be obtained from the tracker by absolutely _anyone_ on the internet.
‘Encryption’ is NOT anonymity.
Furthermore, data can _always_ be decrypted using brute-force attacks. Employing stronger degrees of encryption merely increases the time it takes for an adversary to decrypt your data. Organisations and governments have built large-scale grid computing networks that have the capacity to do just that.
* * *
Also, People seem to forget that P2P means peer-to-peer, i.e., users connecting directly to other users. It is 100% impossible to have anonymous P2P, whether the data exchanged is enciphered or not. Obviously, in order for data to be exchanged the destination and source both need to be known.
* * *
The only future for public file-sharing is to route everything over anonymity networks such as Tor and have zero resources outside of these networks. However, this would require huge amounts of bandwidth which relatively small scale networks (such as Tor) cannot provide.
Also Virgin are a bunch of shitbags:
# They own 100% of the UK residential cable market
# They cap connections after ‘unlimited’ usage limits have been surpassed
# The Virgin Group has a vested interest in the success of its own record label Virgin Records (now part of EMI)
# The Virgin Group has a vested interest in the success of its own high-street cd/dvd/games retail company, Zavvi.
# Virgin Media are against net neutrality. The CEO says it’s “a load of bollocks”
[chemical_ali]“absolutely no possibility”[/chemical_ali]
Don’t believe their lies for a moment. This is a public relations showpiece by a healthy selection of the worst service providers in the country.
I’d like to know, is there any alternative to Virgin with out using ADSL?
Yeh i think everyone looks to VPNs as a solution but truely it isn’t. It’d be better if someone came up with a combinded solution that use torrent style connections with VPN like protocals.
This might have already been said but I can’t jump on Virgins ass for handing out customer information when a court orders them to do so. Especially as a big corporation it would be in their best interest to comply with the government and adhere to court rulings. Just my 2 cents.
As far as Virgin working with the BPI and sending out disconnection threats… that’s GAF (Gay As Fuck). Hopefully they’re telling the truth when they say they aren’t disconnecting anybody but as some posters already argued it’s probably just PR bullshit. Give it time.
cant we just dump everything into
teh internetz bins !
If they are slimy enough to send those warnings per request of the MAFIAA, why should we believe them when they promise not to disconnect us.
I think VM sense a mass exodus, which is why they’re making some feeble attempt to say otherwise. I think post 49 from the blob sums up why no one should use VM.
I only know 1 person who uses VM and they don’t seem to care too much about VM snooping, which I think sadly is the general attitiude from the majority of the population of internet users.
They love Microsoft, hate filesharing etc.. But don’t even know why they hold this view or understand how any of the tech they use works.
Virgin media are playing both sides of the fence, do not trust them, if you have a viable alternative get rid of them ASAP.
DO NOT TRUST VIRGIN MEDIA
The more people who phone virgin and complain about what they are doing the better they will soon get the message
not trust them
easy, someone at the proxy’s company told them.
@evian
make that & gt ; resp. & lt ;
“andlowerthensemicolon”
“andgreaterthensemicolon” to have the htlm sourcecodelike symbols displayed
<:chemical_ali>”absolutely no possibility”<:/chemical_ali>
shit typo!
: instead of ; at the lower then place
but you got the idea
oh and the three caracters mustbe together without spaces between them of course!
omfg lol
printing mistake my ballz
BT Suck, people DO have a choice. You don’t rely on cable, stop your subscription.
Losing a few channels is worth it to take your money out of their pockets.
@ the person who claimed SSL can be broken.
Theoretically yes, practically no. Get your facts right before posting such bullshit. Idiot.
@the claims that anonymisers can be broken.
You’re an idiot too. Either the people running the proxy told your ISP or you’re a n00b and didn’t set it up properly in the first place. Wanker.
VM suck donkey balls. So do all of you.
excuse me, I english not so gut!
is
“Absolutely No Possibility”
the englisch translation for
“Niemand hat die Absicht, eine Mauer zu errichten.”
:-|
I am not very good at website design, but I have attempted to create a pledge for people who are willing to struggle for a cause, so that there might be a chance that we could take action collectively.
It is at http://www.28chan.org/pledge.php
What do you people think?
six million file-sharer’s? that’s 10% of the UK’s population. i think tht is a big portion. there will not be enough jail space to hold everyone, lol
“Virgin: We Rat On Our customers”(TM)
Nice business slogan there, Richard Branson.
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Or join uploaders/mod groups
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good for you virgin media, now lets see all the other isps follow suit and tell these assholes to f-off
they are all traitors in my eyes! if anyone hands over you details its an invasion of privacy on your own behalf so shouldn`t we sue them as reguards to human rights??? talk about taking the piss and trying to take control of everything in this world! let us be we do no harm go catch some real criminals!!!!!
I wouldnt trust virgin media, I heard back from them the other week, they had a court order to give davenport lyons our i.p address to which they then have accussed us as the bill payer of downloading two worlds, which we havent done and nobody else has done , so I shall have my day in court with them and intend to sue them all.
It’s interesting that they threaten to disconnect you if you download copyrighted music, but not if you download royalty-free child pornography.
Yes Ed that is a very good point.
I walked away from Virgin as soon as they started Traffic Shaping, If I was with Virgin now I would run away. When you see a Virgin van in the street, well need I say it. And if anyone asks you, I didn’t tell you to dump on it, Richard told you to do it while you were asleep.
Do NOT do nothing.
God so many people talk such rubbish.
Do you people not know that the goverment has said they will legislate if the industry do not do something themselfs. Nobody wants that!!!!
This is VM’s attempt at keeping the BPI happy while avoiding the goverment bringing new laws in.
I use torrents, actually not for music, If I receive a letter, I will leave Virgin Immediately, Period.
There are millions of valid torrents.
The music industry should police there own policies.
If this is not a European policy we in the UK are discriminated against.
Im prepared to take virgin to the small claims court <£500 if we all do it I wonder what will happen?
If the Government want to legislate, go ahead…Some 10 yrs old downloading a music file….
While outside another person is stabbed…
its true the goverment needs to start worrying about real crime and not people downloading. Use newsgroups, like giganews with ssl. no torrents, no p2p. Just downloads at max speed. so much faster than torrents and p2p. p2p is pathetic anyways, why get busted for downloading a few crap quality songs at a slow speed, when you can get a better quality, whole album in the same time and not get busted.
The real funny thing is, i bet that a good few of virgin employees’ use p2p and probably share the most illegal shit because they can get cheap high-speed internet access from a favor with their mate at work lol.
THIS SHIT WILL NEVER WORK!!! THERE WILL ALWAYS BE ANOTHER WAY !! ALWAYS!!!
x
…now they are blocking specific URLs…VM no access but proxy ok…..
to 31
all phone calls wether mobile or landline are monitored.
but only for keywords like bomb and a lot more too.
so you need to watch what you say all the time. GCHQ do it and do it all the time.
even satalite phones are monitored.
so you cant have a silent fart in peace.
to 49.
virgin records was sold by richard branson and is no concert to him or vm.
he sold made the money and left the building.
In the June of 1992 Branson sold of Virgin Records to Thorn EMI for an estimated $1 billion deal.
hes not arsed one little bit.
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