Views on Internet Piracy & Blocking of content

[abillybob]

Ok so I'm sure many of us are aware by now that the Government and ISP's have teamed up and are now blocking access to popular torrent websites and even getting them shut down. The first case was MegaUpload and the next was the conviction of the two creators of the pirate bay and more has followed with mininova taking down copy protected torrents and EZTV now being blocked and their servers being slowly taken down.

Ever since broadband hit the shelves as a child I will admit I have always downloaded copy protected content and it was part of every day life for a long time, but now it's getting increasingly difficult and after a year of thinks being blocked and having to go through advert after advert of using proxy websites to get around it I have now stopped. It's too much effort.

 

Now they are announcing a VCAP scheme where ISP's will watch your online usage and send you warning letters in the post if your downloading copy protected material for free. I think personally that the entertainment industry has some responsibility over all this, I mean c'mon £12+ for a film or £30+ for a video game I think is stupidly expensive and if they reduced their prices they'd see a lot more legitimate downloading of content.

 

I'm quite interested in the subject and how things have changed over the past few years as it wen't from virtually no restrictions to throttling broadband connections to now having letters through your door if you get around their security systems, do you really think piracy will stop due to these? Do you think the public or the entertainment industry is to blame? What about online privacy, does it make you feel worried they will be watching your online daily usage?

 

It's all starting to get on my nerves we are supposed to be a free country yet where will the restrictions end will it come to a point where they watch what your emailing and sending across social networking sites to make sure your not sending films or copy protected content, I mean how far can they go? Will we start to have letter through the door after quoting a reference from coca-cola's advert as it's copy protected?

 

Hmmmm makes you think if all of this is right to do just to protect the multi-billion pound entertainment industry so they can have a little bit more money.

[Oaktech]

Ok so I'm sure many of us are aware by now that the Government and ISP's have teamed up and are now blocking access to popular torrent websites and even getting them shut down. The first case was MegaUpload and the next was the conviction of the two creators of the pirate bay and more has followed with mininova taking down copy protected torrents and EZTV now being blocked and their servers being slowly taken down.

Ever since broadband hit the shelves as a child I will admit I have always downloaded copy protected content and it was part of every day life for a long time, but now it's getting increasingly difficult and after a year of thinks being blocked and having to go through advert after advert of using proxy websites to get around it I have now stopped. It's too much effort.

 

Now they are announcing a VCAP scheme where ISP's will watch your online usage and send you warning letters in the post if your downloading copy protected material for free. I think personally that the entertainment industry has some responsibility over all this, I mean c'mon £12+ for a film or £30+ for a video game I think is stupidly expensive and if they reduced their prices they'd see a lot more legitimate downloading of content.

 

I'm quite interested in the subject and how things have changed over the past few years as it wen't from virtually no restrictions to throttling broadband connections to now having letters through your door if you get around their security systems, do you really think piracy will stop due to these? Do you think the public or the entertainment industry is to blame? What about online privacy, does it make you feel worried they will be watching your online daily usage?

 

It's all starting to get on my nerves we are supposed to be a free country yet where will the restrictions end will it come to a point where they watch what your emailing and sending across social networking sites to make sure your not sending films or copy protected content, I mean how far can they go? Will we start to have letter through the door after quoting a reference from coca-cola's advert as it's copy protected?

 

Hmmmm makes you think if all of this is right to do just to protect the multi-billion pound entertainment industry so they can have a little bit more money.

 

I stopped downloading when the squeeze started on Napster in the early 2000's I've never really bothered since. It's too risky and too much grief. I stick to physical media mainly.

[Vasriel]

I agree that the entertainment industry is greedy and films/video games are overpriced. However no-one is forcing the public to buy the products, its a choice whether to purchase or not.

 

If people feel that they don't want to pay these prices, fair enough, don't buy it. But it doesn't give people the right to download illegally because the product is too expensive for them or they don't want to pay.

[synaesthesia]

I also pretty much stopped with the demise of Napster. I have been known to "acquire" software and films if I'm not sure about quality, if it's any good it's always bought, if not it's deleted. (only the case if trailers/demos are no good or as in recently when noone seemed to have the ruddy film in stock!)

However I disagree that £12 for a film (nearly always a fiver after a year!) or £30 for a game is overpriced. £50 for a typical XB/PS game slightly, but the 30 for PC games, definitely not. However that depends on the game a bit. No EA game is worth double figures, some of the games that cost £30 yet aren't actually complete until you've bought 3 sets of DLC for another 30 a shot is ludicrous. Other than those, and some with the "it's our data whether you like it or not" titles, £30 is good value for the life of the product, as is £12 for a film. (where are you shopping btw, I always only ever seem to pay 10 from Tesco/Asda!)

[abillybob]

Hmmm ok I didn't mean it in this way, it's more so about what ISP's and the government are now doing to block and fight against piracy, do none of you think it's a bit over the top and extreme?

[mats]

Pirated content: No restrictions on what you can play it on or from, no irritating trailers that you have to sit through, no anti piracy message you have to sit through, no limit on when you can play it.

 

Legit content: Almost none of the above.

 

Talk about an industry intent on punishing its consumers - one can understand why people might choose to download stuff.

 

As for the way this government has introduced a universal filter with little or no oversight (think of the children!), and started to police what we download - we used to criticise places like China for that kind of behavior.

[Bananas]

Encrypted VPN to Usenet, lets see you monitor what i'm doing then

 

I've been buying secondhand from Zoverstocks on Amazon I got loads of old classics for pennies:

 

The A Team series 1 - 66p + £1.20 postage

The A Team Series 2 - 80p + £1.20

Knightrider series 1-3 - 8p + £1.20

 

Loads of other stuff too and all of it was in mint condition. My 5 and 7 year old boys are now addicted to The A Team.

Edited May 9, 2014 by Bananas

[Michael]

If you view illegal downloads in the context of someone who uses illegal drugs, the way to tackle it is to take down the dealers rather than the end users.

 

When a site is blocked, a mirror pops up very quickly. The Government in the UK and abroad should focus more on hosting providers, getting them to check content hosted on their physical servers or at least take it down very quickly, rather than simply blocking it.. plus as we all know, the likes of VPN or DNS filtering are easy to implement and get round the restrictions.

 

As far as I know, most of the western world acknowledges the existence of Copyright, so surely these laws should also apply to the hosting providers?

[featured_spectre]

The trouble with the "should take out the hosting"...well how do you stop it. Hundreds of thousands of legitimate sites use torrents for downloading, as it is often cheaper than physically hosting files. Torrent files are generally link files which then go to a torrent program (utorrent for example), which then accesses the downloaded file from another persons machine, who could be in russia, or spain, or america, or india etc, and it becomes a global download as it doesn't come from one place. Individual components of a movie, could come from several hundred different places, so stopping 1, you still have many many more to get it from.

 

Also, they will only be doing it based on volume of content from what I've read. I would be screwed if I had to reload my machine for any reason. Steam, Origin and SkyGo would sap up easily over 300GB in downloads in a few days!

[mats]

If you view illegal downloads in the context of someone who uses illegal drugs, the way to tackle it is to take down the dealers rather than the end users.

 

Unless you treat drug addiction as an illness (like we do tobacco addiction) and try to treat the users. No users = less crime (to pay for drugs) = no market for dealers.

 

With that analogy, you work out what would stop people illegally downloading content. Making good streams / downloads cheap, user friendly and free of DRM or limits on what you can play on would be a start. Thing is, the dealers, sorry, studios still think that the 'control everything' approach is best.

[Pottsey]

Pirated content: No restrictions on what you can play it on or from, no irritating trailers that you have to sit through, no anti piracy message you have to sit through, no limit on when you can play it.

 

Legit content: Almost none of the above.

 

Talk about an industry intent on punishing its consumers - one can understand why people might choose to download stuff.

 

As for the way this government has introduced a universal filter with little or no oversight (think of the children!), and started to police what we download - we used to criticise places like China for that kind of behavior.

Copy protection is half to blame for the amount of piracy. I got into a situation where the only way to get some software to work at home was to download an illegal copy without copy protection even though I owned the software legally. 3 times I had to strip away the copy protection this year to get a film I legally owned to play. Another bit of software that I had problems with was PowerDVD stopped playing Blu-rays but still plays DVD's as they decided they didn't like the cable I was using to my projector and had used for years. My main Media PC can still not even play Blu-ray via PowerDVD even with the correct HDMI cable. Then they wonder why we start pirating software.

 

Its got to the stage where I have all but given up buying DVD or blue rays mostly due to Copy protection problems.

Edited May 9, 2014 by Pottsey

[Michael]

In the context of torrent sites, it's fair to say a good percentage of those are illegal, but you're right - the download itself could be downloading from as many as 50-100 machines or maybe more. The sky's the limit.

 

Obviously blocking well known torrent sites (or torrent search engines) has its advantages, but authorities should be taking down these sites or instructing hosting providers to do so. Prevention is always going to be better than cure and although most hosting providers will or should have a Code of Conduct or equivalent policy, they very rarely enforce it unless told to by a legal body representing the likes of a music studio.

 

I don't consider drug addiction is an illness personally - it's just exactly that an addiction, yet we all regularly consume legal drugs such as coffee or chocolate, it's all done in moderation, hence no harm is caused. You'll always get users hell bent on getting something for free, that's a fact of life. Better regulation from the start is going to reduce these kind of problems. The fact a mirror site can be brought online within hours or even minutes - there's your problem. It's too easy and readily available to buy into a hosting provider with little or no checks.

 

Changing the context a bit - but in theory, this could mean a young individual (say under the age of 16) could in theory launch/create an adult website. There are little or no checks which are conducted at this level.

[Gibson335]

There is a positive side to downloading. I have purchased many CDs and DVDs on the basis of downloading music from bands I had never heard of and whose music I would therefore not have purchased. I have done the same when downloading US TV shows - going on to purchase DVDs. That's obviously a minor spin on things, and of course artists and companies lose more than they gain when it comes to downloading, but it can cut both ways at times.

[Michael]

I believe youtube has sort of introduced a solution to this problem - listen to the first 1-2 minutes of a new song, then offered download links to purchase the full track. It's not perfect, but it is a workable solution.

 

But again (as I wrote above) if a new hosting provider regulation/policies were introduced covering most western countries, the problem is going to be tackled more efficiently. There are only so many hosting providers out there vs. end users downloading the content hence the dealer vs. user example I wrote above.

[Jamman960]

I used to spend hours each week downloading TV series as they aired in the states, I'm glad they've sorted this out now and most series are aired within days rather than months. I just don't have the time to muck about with it all these days

 

I rarely bothered with torrents, Usenet has until recently been untouched, now you just have to be quick and find a host that's fairly slow with DMCA take down requests

[abillybob]

I'd like to share this with you all see what you think

 

ISPs to start sending warnings to illegal downloaders - HITC Tech