Virgin Media and BPI join forces to attack illegal filesharing

[dalar]

Virgin Media will launch a campaign against illegal downloading next week, when it'll begin firing off warning letters to to subscribers that the BPI believes are sharing copyright music files.

The move is being billed by the cable firm as an "education campaign". At this stage there will be no "three strikes" process; customers who continue to fileshare illegally will not be disconnected.

Accounts identified as being used for illegal music sharing by the record industry will receive two letters: one from Virgin Media and one from the BPI. Investigators will monitor copyright-infringing BitTorrent swarms and log Virgin Media IP addresses, which will be passed on to the ISP to identify the customers.

Source: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/06...edia_bpi_deal/

Whilst I can understand the need to tackle illegal music downloads, I really don't like where this company is heading, bandwidth throttling, more throttling, BPI - Not gonna say much else as I have already recieved a warning about my swearing in a previous post (out of sheer frustration with VM).

All I can say is next tuesday will be a sweet day for me when my O2 ADSL2+ line becomes activated, no more VM!

[Badger0-0]

Hmm, I don't consider myself as an illegal downloader as such and doubt very much that I'd be targeted.

But, by the same token, I wouldn't say I've never D/Led the odd track either

Which has usually led to me buying the original

I totally agree with what you are saying though.


I really don't need much of an excuse to leave VM, so just one of these letters would probably push me over the edge

[camBB]

I wonder if they will monitor the newsgroups as well?

[Rygar]

Originally Posted by camBB

I wonder if they will monitor the newsgroups as well?

Not in the way this happened. These warnings are being led by the BPI (or insert whatever other copyright representatives you wish here). So the BPI join a bittorrent swarm or download a file from emule etc. In this way they can gather the IP addresses of people sharing the file. They then pass the IP addresses onto Virgin.

Downloading from newsgroups is totally different. The BPI have no easy way of getting IP addresses of anyone uploading/downloading from/to newsgroups as they are private servers often based in the U.S.

Whos to say what may happen in the future with newsgroups but for the time being they seem to fly under the radar of the likes of the BPI et al.

[Lee]

get an encrypted SSL link to Giganews and sue the **** out of them if they send you a letter.

Originally Posted by camBB

I wonder if they will monitor the newsgroups as well?

[Neongirl]

Well at least this trial only lasts 10 weeks. I am pretty worried about how far our internet monitoring will go though.