Copyright is a hot-button topic in the UK right now. Between the proposed EU copyright extension and the anti-piracy agreement between the BPI and ISPs, it has been all over newspapers in the UK.

Many have condemned these actions, others have supported them. The depth of public feeling in this is great, as are the potential risks and rewards from these actions – both directly, and indirectly through function-creep and precedent.

The ISP/BPI deal has been characterized as being ‘forced” onto the ISPs by the Department for Business, Enterprise & Regulatory Reform (BERR). Now, in what could be a classic example of ‘closing the stable door after the horse has bolted’, the government has opened a public consultation on file-sharing.

The government wants to know from the public how it should deal with illicit file-sharing. Is it really that big of a threat to the entertainment industry? Should ISPs be obligated to police the Internet? Is it a good option to block P2P traffic, or install piracy filters? Answers to these and more questions will help to shape future anti-piracy legislation.

Perhaps most critically, the documentation does state that any proposals for government intervention should be “evidence based”. Queries to the BERR asking if claims cited as evidence need to be substantiated had not been returned at press time. Unlike many consultations, this is open to the public, so if you posted one of the 200+ comments we’ve had on this topic, perhaps submitting your thoughts to the BERR would be something to think about.

It is consultation season though, so if you’re more interested in television than file-sharing, there’s always the Public Consultation on Implementing the EU Audiovisual Media Services Directive, which could impact how many British programs appear on our weekly Top10 lists.

The deadline for responses is October 30, 2008. For those that have yet to see the memorandum signed by the 6 ISPs, it’s included in annex D of the PDF.

This is an article from: TorrentFreak

UK Government Opens Filesharing Consultation

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UK Government Opens Filesharing Consultation torrent downloads.

On Thursday, every type of media outlet in the UK - newspapers, Internet, radio shows, TV and teletext all bristled with the same news. Six major ISPs had agreed to start sending out warning letters to alleged file-sharers after the government ordered action to decrease online piracy.

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. To think that a commercial organization like the BPI is allowed to provide its own unchallenged evidence in such a completely non-transparent manner is the real outrage in all of this. If the BPI is to be given 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, so the BPI ‘evidence’ stands on its own, completely unchallenged.

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.”

In the meantime, take comfort in knowing that the file-sharing equivalent of speed cameras - actually, make that home-made, untested, uncalibrated cameras of unknown design and ability, operated by people with a vested interest - are passing judgment on you, your children and potentially (should the BPI get its way) your Internet future.

This is an article from: TorrentFreak

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

torrentlog.com - Full movie downloads (dvdrips and divx)

UK “MP3 Police” Evidence Unchallenged, Not For Public Consumption torrent downloads.