5 Reasons Why Downloaders Will Not Face UK Ban
There’s been a lot of buzz about a story The London Times ran this morning under the headline “Internet users could be banned over illegal downloads,†which also appeared on the BBC website under the even more alarming headline “Illegal downloaders ‘face UK ban.â€
The Times says “people who illegally download films and music will be cut off from the internet under new legislative proposals to be unveiled next week.†Actually, this story is complete balderdash. But the fact that this nutty proposal is getting anywhere at all illustrates how ignorant the powers that be are about downloading.
Let’s get a couple of things straight –
1. This proposal was a draft consultation green paper, defined as “a proposal without any commitment to action.†The government receives many of these on a daily basis. They are like junk mail at Number 10 Downing Street. The Prime Minister’s toilet paper is more important than most green papers, and both are usually filed in the same place.
2. This proposal is totally and completely unworkable in the real world. ISPs will not accept liability for the contents of packets (nor should they), and it would be impossible for them to open and check if every single download and upload was legal or not without the entire Internet grinding to halt. This isn’t in the best interests of the government, the ISPs or the voters. Banning customers and exposing yourself to billions in liability isn’t a good business strategy. Criminalizing six million citizens and inconveniencing the rest is not a vote winner.
3. It would be impossible to tell the difference between illegal downloading and legal activities such as downloading software patches, using torrents to share stuff legally, playing online video games, using VoIP, photo sharing, telecommuting, and many others. The resistance from the private sector would be as strong as it would from the general public.
4. The very idea of this goes against the ruling of the European Court, which says EU member states are not obligated to disclose personal information about suspected file sharers. It would also fly in the face of Article 10 of the European freedom of expression laws, which gives every European the “freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers.â€
5. WiFi piggybacking and encrypted packets make it impossible to tell who is downloading what in the first place. These techniques are only getting more sophisticated, while for the most part, the content industries collectively remain as dumb as a box of hair.
So in summary:
<Toilet Flushing Sound FX>Paper on Banning Downloading</Toilet Flushing Sound FX>This idea makes as much sense as trying to ban people from singing ‘Happy Birthday’ to each other over the telephone network, or burning down libraries to protect the publishing industry. But what’s frightening about such ideas is that they are still taken seriously all over the world by powerful decision makers in government and industry who have absolutely no clue about how the Internet actually works, or the damage such laws could do to democracy.
Before there is any more discussion about this, the music and film companies need to definitively prove illegal downloads cost them millions of dollars in lost revenues. CD sales are falling because nobody uses them anymore, and Hollywood is in rude health despite the pirates. There should be no more talk about changing laws and spending tax payer’s money on this ‘problem’ until someone proves there really is one.
Furthermore, if there is a problem, tax payers shouldn’t have to pony up in the first place. The content industries need to stop braying at governments to protect inefficient business models and look at the real solution that’s been staring them in the face for ten years.
Originally written for Torrentfreak, I also did another piece today on that solution for Internet Evolution.
February 13th, 2008 at 11:31 am
on the subject of packet inspection (DPI) I point you to an israeli company called allot.
Specifically this product line of theirs http://www.allot.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=45&Itemid=44
Their DPI offerings can manage traffic on a per application per user basis.. While this can be defeated by encrypting your packets, I’m pretty sure the battle would then move to shaping and monitoring specific ports that appear to be generating the signiture usage patterns that are obviously p2p traffic.
You’re also ignoring that the government has actually issued a statement that if the media industry and the ISP industry don’t reach an agreement, then the government will have to step in and legislate it – this gives the green paper a little bit more creedence than the usual flood.
The next item is the dark spectre of the trusted computing model, pretty much most modern laptops and desktops are being shipped with a TPM on the motherboard, the support for the control can be found in pretty much most modern switches and routers employed by ISP’s. AT&T in the us recently got a get out of jail free card from the us government to allow them to snoop on the traffic on their network.
I would love to know what kind of dirt the music and movie industries have over the uk and us governments because for such a small industry (considering that a company like apple is worth more than the music industry as a whole) to be able to get their own way against the rest of us is quite astounding.
The music, movie and even tv industries are undergoing seizmic changes to their industries, predominantly fuelled by the evils of price extortion, format limitations, withholding of materials because they are “not economically viable to release” and artificial regionalisation. Effectively, they control what we get our hands on quite a bit.
Today, we want to all be able to see a show the moment it is released, not several months after one territory got to enjoy it. Whenever we want to watch it and whatever we want to watch – on demand back catalogues allow us to choose what we wish to consume, no longer bound by “that 1970′s made for tv special won’t sell in enough volume to warrent a dvd release” restrictions and we can watch it on the myriad of devices we have in our lives.
The digital file is set to cripple the scam of constantly rebuying the same data but on different little storage formats – tho this will change it to the codec wars rather than the disc wars, however this would only be valid for actual improvement to the quality of the vdeo (such as a HD digital file or an SD digital file, competing SD codecs is a non-issue because you can simply re-encode the data to the new format).
Exciting times ahead, and with an equalising of the playing field it should allow indipendants to get their creations out there in a way that simply wasn’t possible generations ago.
February 13th, 2008 at 12:01 pm
Some good points Alphaxion. I still don’t think it will fly. It’s still not kosher as far as the EU is concerned, and if this kind of legislation was rolled out anyway, people would quickly switch over to even more cryptic ‘darknets’ tech and the game of cat and mouse would continue.
The solution, as you point out, is for these industries to introduce services to the marketplace that are as good as those offered by pirates.
February 13th, 2008 at 1:39 pm
I don’t think it’ll stick either, but that won’t stop them from trying to throw the mud anyway..
I commented back in 2001/2002 (along with my belief that DRM would die a death, especially when people begun to move from one PMP brand to another) that we will see some heavy casualties from this, and I’m still not swaying from that prediction.
Their existance has only been a relatively recent thing where they saw an opening to control an emerging market, they have simply been out manuvoured, blinded by their greed and lust for control.
It’s interesting that music artists are reporting that they are making far more money from gigs than before and that podcasting is bringing about a new world of independant TV and radio production on a scale that has never been seen before – their production values may be stuck in the 70′s/80′s but that is improving and they have done something that is core to the new ideal – no regional restrictions! If I want to watch it I will, if it’s in another language people will fansub it and republish.
Anyway, off to the pub for me and then it’s down to some video editing for my next video podcast
February 13th, 2008 at 7:38 pm
hello to you all, i work in the music industry both making records myself over the last 17 years and now managing acts and various other roles within the industry. I have read various comments on the site and other sites about this whole piracy and ISP issue and looked at the piece with certain solutions being suggested . The bit about a licence fee being paid by people who want music is not much different to a subscription service and within the industry alot of people think it just wont work as there are not enough people who really want that service to make it work financially. I have read many comments from people who state they will never pay for there music and thats something i accept, that they will always find a way to get it for free. This whole thing with the ISP’s and the term gatekeeper is aimed much more at the serial downloader and the middle of the road music buyer. By that i mean someone whos not hugely passionate about music but likes it and maybe used to buy one cd a month. Those people are a huge part of the market and they are the type of people who will have no problem paying for there music in future if there is a risk that they could lose there internet connection. I have no doubts that the plan the industry has is not fool proof but the fear factor alone will change alot of peoples attitudes.You have to see things from our point of view, How would you like it if i took your ipod from you, your possession, its no different to you taking my music and not paying me its theft end of story. . I dont play in a band i dont tour, i am fed up with people going on about how bands and musicians can make more from gigs, yeah about 1% of the industry if you are lucky can do that, most of us cant do that.The bottom line is if you suddenly had your living threatened like me your attitude changes very quickly the people who consatntly complain about how the industry should have come up with a solution and thats things will never be the same are the minority not the majority and i dont ever expect to get those individual to pay for there music. I have vast record collection which i have collected over many years much of it purchased before i entered the business and it never bothered me how much a record or cd was. Why are you so bitter, the record companies are there to make profit, a big profit at that, we live in a world of capitalism. Something you need to know is record companies are not as stupid as you think, i have worked with all the majors and some of the independents and within those comapnies there are very talented people. These companies invest hugely in there acts both with time and money and is £10 really to much for a cd. I really dont think so. You all hate the fact that the record company gets the lion’s share of your money but we the public get ripped off all the time in all industries. In some cases you have to accept that a band or an artist would not get where they are without a major label backing.
Anyway i could go and on but to finish i would simply say that if there is a possiblity that the industry can set up a licence fee or some kind of sub service where you pay one amount and then can get what you want they will do it, it will happen, they honestly dont want all this aggro but if they dont try to do some kind of enforcement then it will just carry on as is, its to easy to get the music for nothing and that has to stop.
February 22nd, 2008 at 10:44 am
Good post, Matt. I just posted a reply to Paul McGuinness’ ‘police the internet so that we can keep making money’ speech at midem, here: http://www.mediafuturist.com/2008/02/welcome-to-paul.html
I thought you may enjoy this
“…Let me ask you this, Paul McGuinness: do you really advocate web sites, communities and networks scanned and censored, emails read and screened, Instant Messenger conversations monitored, Skype calls supervised, USB sticks DRM’ed, hard-drives sealed, flash memory cards locked, rootkits and software locks on our computers, a read-only web, the end of remixes, and the implementation of an online police state that without a doubt will only bring us new censorship and the demise of fair use and free speech while the un-paid and unlicensed trading of music will soar to new heights in 100s of new ways that we don’t even know about today…”