News - UK ISPs and entertainment industry agree on piracy letters

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Naughty individuals will be sent 'educational' letters suggesting the use of Netflix, iTunes.

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Read more.

So…if its just an education letter, the ISPs could just send one to every customer and say they did their part.

After all, if theyre being sent to "suspected pirates", most homes probably have at least 1 person that might have possibly downloaded something they werent entitled to, even unintentionally.

Waste of time, waste of money, waste of paper.

ISP's shouldn't be responsible for policing the Internet.
Should we ask the Royal Mail to police what is sent through the post, or telecoms companies for how people use the phone, should other suppliers of services be responsible for how people use it.

Or.. shock Horror.. the media industry could stop butt raping us all all do the following.

a) Allow you to purchase and watch a film in the medium that you see fit.. If I want to watch the latest blockbuster at home why can't I... I would pay for it..

b) Stop manipulating release dates. Games on the first Friday in the UK but 2 weeks before in the USA

c) Allow people to purchase a service from anywhere in the world. I would subscribe to HBO if I was able for example

d) etc

I think a more interesting study would be how much piracy is down to availability rather than the avoidance of paying. A good start would be the metric of download count of a game available via Steam or Origin vs one that's not available. Or a game that is released in one country before all the others..

My brother got one of the scaremongering letters over a year ago from BE.....I told him to ask them to prove his Wifi was not compromised as he had no knowledge of the downloads in question.....

They tried a couple more times to scare him into giving them a fair amount of money but eventually gave up.

I guess a lot of people did the same and they realised they had no ground to stand on.

Do the letters come as a scroll??

LOL... such a novel way of 'curing the pirate downloads' in the UK...education letters that may get upgraded to 'warning letters'. I'm sure ISP's will put up a huge fight to keep the 'heavy downloaders' from their networks - why upgrade their infrastructure when they can just get rid of the ones clogging the pipes....

Now IIRC most pirates would use legal options if they were there. So what do the super intelligent anti piracy people do... that's right instead of fixing the issues with current download/streaming sites. We currently get netflix/amazon exclusives, delayed viewing, limited availability (bbc iplayer is perfect example) and/or restricted viewing based on country so in some cases there are no other options but to download illegally.

Media companies need to get with the times, artificial delays/restrictions are not suitable with the current viewing habits of internet savvy users (high percentage these days), not to mention forums, social media etc 'ruining the episode' for those in a location that's got the episode delayed.

GoT is a perfect example here in that it's delayed outside the US yet it has one of the highest pirate rates going because of the dealy, people basically don't want their episode ruined by online spoilers...

And I forgot another reason some people might pirate, they can't stream an episode well enough due to the poor state of UK internet or the streaming sites so instead just download it instead.

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Originally Posted by shaithis

I told him to ask them to prove his Wifi was not compromised

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considering just about every wifi security can be broken now that's going to be fun for them to prove lol

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Originally Posted by LSG501

considering just about every wifi security can be broken now that's going to be fun for them to prove lol

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I could be wrong as i don't know much about the subject, but isn't it difficult to prove a certain film/series/game/software was downloaded at a specific property ? Can't IP's be spoofed, wouldn't the recording industry or TPTB need to prove beyond all reasonable doubt that a copyright infringement actual took place.

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Originally Posted by Corky34

I could be wrong as i don't know much about the subject, but isn't it difficult to prove a certain film/series/game/software was downloaded at a specific property ? Can't IP's be spoofed, wouldn't the recording industry or TPTB need to prove beyond all reasonable doubt that a copyright infringement actual took place.

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I'll admit I'm not 100% on it completely myself but I know that if your wifi is hacked (router) your internet IP is compromised because it's linked to the router (in most cases) and the mac address on a pc network adapter can be spoofed so using that as a 'pc x did this' is hard to prove too. The internet IP can be shared if you're not on a fixed IP but most IP's keep logs of who gets what so that isn't really an 'excuse'. It's not like they'll be physically scanning your data because it's illegal (invasion of privacy or something like that) to the best of my knowledge not to mention very hardware intensive/expensive although they could be monitoring the type of traffic.

I suppose really the only way they can truly prosecute without reasonable doubt is to get evidence you actually downloaded file x from location y and find it on your pc, then they have to prove 'who' actually downloaded it if the pc is used by more than one person.

I'm sure theres some more security conscious users on here who will know more than me but you can see it's quite a weird one, it would be cheaper to focus on giving better options than trying to catch people downloading illegally...

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Originally Posted by LSG501

LOL... such a novel way of 'curing the pirate downloads' in the UK...education letters that may get upgraded to 'warning letters'. I'm sure ISP's will put up a huge fight to keep the 'heavy downloaders' from their networks - why upgrade their infrastructure when they can just get rid of the ones clogging the pipes....

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As little as a couple of years ago this was still true, but legal streaming options have become so popular now that it's probably a safe estimate that legal heavy downloading has surpassed the illegal downloading. On top of that most people watching things online legally will all be using it at peak time around whereas illegal downloads will tend to be ran during the day or overnight. So now the pirates are the lesser burden on ISPs network capacity.

TV show episodes should be available for cheap for 50p and should be available next day in the rest of the world. Not 6 months later in the UK e.g. Suits' latest season
Game publishers should uphold quality of their games. Many pirate games as they no longer trust certain publishers and are not comfortable parting with their money when they release new games. e.g. EA, Activision's COD
Music studios should get people who can actually sing and drop anyone whose songs need electronic voice enhancements. I prefer 90's for the quality of music back then

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Originally Posted by OilSheikh

TV show episodes should be available for cheap for 50p and should be available next day in the rest of the world. Not 6 months later in the UK e.g. Suits' latest season
Game publishers should uphold quality of their games. Many pirate games as they no longer trust certain publishers and are not comfortable parting with their money when they release new games. e.g. EA, Activision's COD
Music studios should get people who can actually sing and drop anyone whose songs need electronic voice enhancements. I prefer 90's for the quality of music back then

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that being the decade of
"The Rednecks - Cotton Eye Joe"
"2Unlimited - No"
"Wonderman - Doop"
"Steps - Tragedy" (and it was)
"Vanilla - No Way No Way"
"Mr Blobby - The Blobby Song"
"Celine Dion - (any)"
"Sean McQuire - argggggggghhhhhhhhhh"
"Chumbawumba"
"The cheeky girls - touch my bum"

Not everything 90s was good. But at least there wasn;t xfactor.

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Originally Posted by LSG501

I'll admit I'm not 100% on it completely myself but I know that if your wifi is hacked (router) your internet IP is compromised because it's linked to the router (in most cases) and the mac address on a pc network adapter can be spoofed so using that as a 'pc x did this' is hard to prove too. The internet IP can be shared if you're not on a fixed IP but most IP's keep logs of who gets what so that isn't really an 'excuse'. It's not like they'll be physically scanning your data because it's illegal (invasion of privacy or something like that) to the best of my knowledge not to mention very hardware intensive/expensive although they could be monitoring the type of traffic.

I suppose really the only way they can truly prosecute without reasonable doubt is to get evidence you actually downloaded file x from location y and find it on your pc, then they have to prove 'who' actually downloaded it if the pc is used by more than one person.

I'm sure theres some more security conscious users on here who will know more than me but you can see it's quite a weird one, it would be cheaper to focus on giving better options than trying to catch people downloading illegally...

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"Beyond reasonable doubt" is the standard of proof required in criminal cases. In civil cases, it is "balance of probability", which is a MUCH easier hurdle to get over.

Copyright infringement can be either civil or criminal, or indeed both. But the situation were talking about here is the rights owners taking legal action against infringement of their intellectual property, and by definition, that's a civil matter, not a criminal one, so the standard wood be whether, on balance of probability, it could be proven that an individual had infringed copyright.

That said, yes, there is some merit to the point about clearly establishing who did what.
Just not to the "reasonable doubt" bit.

The difference between civil and criminal?

As a copyright holder, I own the right to control a number of aspects of my work. One of those is the right to copy it. If a work is copyright protected, you either need my permission to copy it, or the copy needs to dall into one of the statutiry exemptions (like time-shifting). Otherwise, you have breached my copyright and I can sue you. If I win, I can get a seizure irder for infringing copies, and/or a court injunction preventing you from making further copies, and/or damages for my losses. And that's about all.

If, however, you break the criminal copyright provisions, such as infringing copyright in the course of a business, then you can end up with some heavy fines, or even several years in jail. And get sued.

It's the civil bit in issue in these letters.

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Originally Posted by OilSheikh

TV show episodes should be available for cheap for 50p and should be available next day in the rest of the world. Not 6 months later in the UK e.g. Suits' latest season
Game publishers should uphold quality of their games. Many pirate games as they no longer trust certain publishers and are not comfortable parting with their money when they release new games. e.g. EA, Activision's COD
Music studios should get people who can actually sing and drop anyone whose songs need electronic voice enhancements. I prefer 90's for the quality of music back then

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No. TV episodes should be available when and where, and indeed if, the rights holders decide, and they get to set the price. You only get to decide whether to pay it or not.

Just like physical property, he who owns something sets the price he'll accept to sell it. He who wants to buy can make an offer, but can't set price. Don't like the price? Don't buy.

People that make and own, for instance, a TV series, are businesses seeking to make money. Why are some shows not available here for months? Who knows, but it'll probably be a marketing decision. Suppose, for example, a major US channel wants a show, and will pay $x million for it, but ONLY if they have a worldwide exclusive for 6 months. Without that exclusive, the next best offer is $1/2x million.

I own copyright to several thousand works. All have been licenced at some point ....mwell, almost all. For some, I sold FBSR ( First British Serial Rights), but for others, all UK rights, and for yet others, all rights. Guess which paud best? Yup, all rights earns me more right now, but it's a one-off payment. FBSR, on the other hand, pays less but I can sell further rights in the US, or Australia .... or even in the UK providing it's after the FBSR publication.

The point should be obvious. Any rights I sell, and sometimes timing, are determined by other contracts. And as the person holding the IP, it's MY decision as to when, where, at what price and even if, I sell a licence to use, in a given location, or format.

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Originally Posted by Saracen

The point should be obvious. Any rights I sell, and sometimes timing, are determined by other contracts. And as the person holding the IP, it's MY decision as to when, where, at what price and even if, I sell a licence to use, in a given location, or format.

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It sure is. But in that same vein you're just begging to have your IP infringed when you ignore real world economic demand.