Illegal downloaders face UK ban...

[AmbeRz]

I am sooo getting away from the UK. -.-

[noodle]

Depends. France is pretty tight on it. And yeah, as I found out a while ago from a canadian person on this forum. Cananda is pretty cool with it... My dad might retire to Canada anyway, so all good for me ... jjks

[Tyrien]

Originally Posted by ivi0nk3y

Yep lol, or anywhere else in the world. Apparently Canada is pretty neutral about lots of things.

*moves*

Yup. We really don't have a law against it. It's one of those "frowned upon" thing though. It's in my ISP's EULA that you shouldn't do it, but that doesn't stop people. A friend of mine got an email from them forwarded from Universal for downloading Beowulf.

I honestly don't think that illegally downloading music hurts the music industry that much. Sure they lose a lot of revenue, but are they not still making a net profit? One of the things that annoys me about big companies like that.

[Suki]

It's not gonna happen. They've been saying they'd take measures aimed at reducing the crazy amount of downloading from the internet since forever, and never got round to it. Besides, it's not about stealing but sharing files with other users. If they want us to stop downloading stuff, first thing they gotta do is lower the price of music to consumers. I went to buy the latest Crossfade album two weeks ago but they didn't have it on sell, fuck, the guy at the store had never heard of the band and it didn't even appear on the computer -.-' what was I supposed to do? Give up on getting it? I would have gladly paid for it, but it ain't my fault this band hasn't made it overseas yet and their albums are not sold in stores, so I went and totally downloaded it.

Anyways, I wouldn't be too worried, they can't just cut your connection off.

[ivi0nk3y]

Originally Posted by Suki

It's not gonna happen. They've been saying they'd take measures aimed at reducing the crazy amount of downloading from the internet since forever, and never got round to it. Besides, it's not about stealing but sharing files with other users. If they want us to stop downloading stuff, first thing they gotta do is lower the price of music to consumers. I went to buy the latest Crossfade album two weeks ago but they didn't have it on sell, fuck, the guy at the store had never heard of the band and it didn't even appear on the computer -.-' what was I supposed to do? Give up on getting it? I would have gladly paid for it, but it ain't my fault this band hasn't made it overseas yet and their albums are not sold in stores, so I went and totally downloaded it.

Anyways, I wouldn't be too worried, they can't just cut your connection off.

The issue is about them making laws to deal with the issue, not whether it can be done or not.
Finding IPs and knowing what sites they've accessed is quite simple. Currently, everything you do on the internet passes through the ISP. Authorities can also just access the records a server of a site may contain. The FBI have done this to prosecute people already.
For the first scenario, ISPs can simply make a database which flags IP's when they access illegal sites. Once this shows up, it can be used to whatever end the law dictates. Companies can also draw this up in contracts with new consumers, that if they access such sites, they could be banned from using the internet. These details will then be passed on to other ISPs, much like details are passed to different Insurance companies.
So in essence, eventually they will just cut your connection off.

[Odin]

This law would be hard to enforce in the courts. There is a element of plausible deniability in downloading content from the internet. The issue is that is extremely hard to prove that a person knows the exact content of a file until he has already downloaded it and viewed its contents.

This is the analog of finding a wallet full of money on sidewalk. If you pickup the wallet and look in it you are not guilty of a crime. If you turn it over to the authorities or even lay it back down, then legally you have committed no offense. Only if you keep the money are you guilty of stealing.

It's what you do, once you have the file that matters. If the downloader can claim that he deleted the file after he realized that it contained copyrighted material, then the law can not prosecute.

This is why there have been no actual court cases involving people who have only downloaded files. They might recieve a few threatning letters, but no prosecution follows. All court cases to date have involved the act of uploading and sharing material.

[MMM]

You are seriously complaing because you can't steal music and movies anymore?

C'mon, people, grow up.

Do you really think musicians all live in mansions and fly private jets?

Yes, maybe the top %0.01 are that rich, but most musicians are struggling artists. God forbid you would shell out a dollar for their art.

You can excuse it in your head, but downloading music for free on the internet is stealing.

I think they should take cars from drunk drivers, child molesters shouldn't work in schools, and online thieves should probably lose their Internet.

[noodle]

MMM, I agree with most of what you said, but I think you'll find that it's mostly successful artists that have their stuff available for illegal downloads...

[Excessum]

Ahh... all i can say is Long live streaming packet encryption!!! ^_^

[chryuop]

Excuse my ignorance...but how do they know what I download? I download tons of Aikido videos that are actually legal to download. I watch movies online that are now in theaters without downloading them (they are all now in stream from internet). Are they gonna work with hopw big a file is? and how big should it be?