Virgin/Universal Partner On Anti-Piracy Issue

[Serra]

Didn't see this posted yet, thought it looked pretty good to me. The way it should be, IMO.

Link

Virgin and Universal have signed a deal that will give the ISP's customers access to "unlimited" music.

For a monthly fee, Virgin's broadband customers will be able to download or stream as many MP3 files as they want.

As part of the deal, Virgin has pledged to aggressively police use to stop the MP3 tracks turning up on file-sharing networks.

...
Artists such as Amy Winehouse, Girls Aloud, La Roux and Black Eyed Peas are signed to Universal.

Virgin said it had vowed to try a range of anti-piracy measures as part of the deal. The last resort would be a temporary suspension of a customer's internet connection if that person consistently ignored warnings about their activity.

Thoughts?

[Shintai]

TDC here in denmark got the same. Its quite superb. Works for cellphones, broadband etc. And you basicly pay close to nothing for all the music in the world. (Its included in the subscription types).

Now we just need movies and games too and we are set

EDIT: TDC dont police or such at all tho...its simply a bonus as a subscriber.

[XS_Rich]

Sounds promising, though I'd want this extending to include TV programs and movies (on a suitable release schedule of course ; I wouldn't expect cinema releases to be simultaneously available online).

[SoulsCollective]

I'd be interested to know that "aggressively police" means, and how intrusive their procedures to do so will be.

While I'm not interested in crappy lossy formats, I can imagine this would be very tempting to a lot of people, and is definitely a step towards the right way to handle content rights in the modern era.

[LuckyNV]

I'd be interested to know that "aggressively police" means, and how intrusive their procedures to do so will be.

While I'm not interested in crappy lossy formats, I can imagine this would be very tempting to a lot of people, and is definitely a step towards the right way to handle content rights in the modern era.

VM (Virgin Media) are known to actively monitor the traffic on your connection, I guess they find out what you're doing with that method and inspect more aggressively if they think you're file sharing

[Easybeat]

Virgin hmmmm......fast speeds, fairly cheap broadband however they openly advertise that they traffic shape the top 5% of users and that they'll cut you off after a warning for illegal activity.

Can't make my mind up about them TBH.

[Eson]

Protip: Get Spotify.

[Smartidiot89]

Protip: Get Spotify.

[FlawleZ]

Bah, rather pointless as most halfway savvy internet users will just use 3rd party capturing software for embedded MP3's, SWF's, etc. It's still far too easy to steal music regardless of the stream with the right tools.

[Xello]

VM (Virgin Media) are known to actively monitor the traffic on your connection, I guess they find out what you're doing with that method and inspect more aggressively if they think you're file sharing

They call it Traffic Management and they actually cap your bandwidth if you use too much of it. The new 50mb package removes the caps though, i had it installed last saturday and it's a godsend. Well i say installed, they really just send an 'engineer' out to plug in the new modem and hand you the 802.11n router, nothing a 5 year old couldn't do. They do have him run a speed test though, i guess it's the best they could think of when trying to justify charging you £30 for his visit

I can tell you that they don't act aggressively at all though against people who choose to file share, at least i've never heard of it.

[faster3200]

Well at least a company has realized that their business model is no longer good. I think this might be a better way to handle the situation.

[moiraesfate]

Depends how much the fee is. $15? Sure, no problem. $100? Not a chance.

[naokaji]

I can tell you that they don't act aggressively at all though against people who choose to file share, at least i've never heard of it.

They are only agressive if you use p2p, your pings will easily go up to 5 - 10k.

However, in the days of one click hosters that is really a non issue.

It does not take much for the regular throttling to kick in though and upload speeds are pathetic (but every uk isp has that issue).

[Dragy2k]

i h8 virgin with a passion and hope they roast on the coals of hell .....i was paying for a 4mb line some years back and getting 1mb if i was lucky ....the explanation i was told was someone in my area grid was heavy user so they throttled the AREA!! ...this was before they came clean and advertised it .........may they go down in flames.

[Serra]

Protip: Get Spotify.

The difference is that this is fully legal.

For those of us who like to be proponents of being lawful whenever possible, this is nice. Besides, flitting between piracy programs and methods as they change is not really a viable long-term solution.

[STEvil]

Gee, when I supported something like this a while ago (I think I suggested $5/month) eveyone jumped on my back.

[Fraggle]

The thing which annoys me with Virgin is that unless you actively ring them up and renegotiate your contract every 3 months or so you end up paying way more than they advertise. This is because they continually drop their prices and have introductory offers which they don`t pass on to existing customers.

[initialised]

I can tell you that they don't act aggressively at all though against people who choose to file share, at least i've never heard of it.

Getting traffic shaped is annoying, especially when your downloading legally from steam but so long as you don't hit the limit it's probably the only broadband in the UK that can give you the full bandwidth that you pay for.

I still haven't had any warnings about using utorrent so I think they are just telling the government and content providers what they want to hear. After all, 10mbps+ broadband is for downloading so why would they want to hurt their customers?

[Manabu]

So they will monitor all our private comunications to see if the bits that we are transfering are universal music or not. If it is another label music, or some other thing, they will cut their users internet conection.

For this you will have to pay an very expensive fee ("the cost of a couple of albums a month") which only an tiny percentage will go to the artists, and most of it should go to the obsolete music labels.

I don't see how this can be reasonable. C'mon, suport Pirate Party already. Or some universal tax (that may amount to 0,1% of mundial PIB, for example) with reasonable profit distribution that legalizes all sharing.

[Zaskar]

Outta curiosity, do the MP3's you get have DRM?

For this you will have to pay an very expensive fee ("the cost of a couple of albums a month") which only an tiny percentage will go to the artists, and most of it should go to the obsolete music labels.

Whats funny is if the music labels were just removed from the equation, music COULD be free for private use, charging only for business/advertisement/movie/TV use, that + concerts and most artists would be getting more money then they do now without the labels huge cut, and the few who don't... well that just means they shouldn't of been making that much anyways and the market is correcting its mistake. Then you wouldn't need any of this crazy restrictions on technology and tracking, music sharing for private use would be like free publicity.

Music labels are stunting the growth of good music AND technology, they need to go. No one cares if everyone that works for them losses their jobs, that's never a reason to keep an obsolete system around.
They promote artists? All that translates to is artificially pushing up someone who's music wouldn't of gotten there on their own merits, which means they didn't deserve it anyways and I couldn't care less what happens to them.

[naokaji]

So they will monitor all our private comunications to see if the bits that we are transfering are universal music or not. If it is another label music, or some other thing, they will cut their users internet conection.

It is a UK specific thing though, the UK does not really have privacy rights so they can do with your traffic whatever they want anyway.
It would lead to countless legal issues in other countries though, so it will be a long time before it will happen outside the uk.

[Shintai]

So they will monitor all our private comunications to see if the bits that we are transfering are universal music or not. If it is another label music, or some other thing, they will cut their users internet conection.

For this you will have to pay an very expensive fee ("the cost of a couple of albums a month") which only an tiny percentage will go to the artists, and most of it should go to the obsolete music labels.

I don't see how this can be reasonable. C'mon, suport Pirate Party already. Or some universal tax (that may amount to 0,1% of mundial PIB, for example) with reasonable profit distribution that legalizes all sharing.

They already monitor and log due to terrorlogging etc.

[Manabu]

It is a UK specific thing though, the UK does not really have privacy rights so they can do with your traffic whatever they want anyway.
It would lead to countless legal issues in other countries though, so it will be a long time before it will happen outside the uk.

Well, but regardless if I live in UK or not, my privacy will be violated everytime that I conect directly or indirectly to an UK computer... Shintai is right to point that this is already true now, but I don't think that it is right.

Some of it was discussed in this Rick Falkvinge's talk at Stanford University: Copyright Regime vs. Civil Liberties

@Zaskar: yeah, this is basicaly the economic part of Sweden Pirate Party argument on music AFAIK.

[Xello]

upload speeds are pathetic (but every uk isp has that issue).

This new 50mb one actually boosted me from 756k upload to 1.6mb, still not great but the upload wasn't supposed to be getting touched so it was a pleasant surprise. The 100mb trials they're running in parts of England have 15mb up, hopefully won't be long before it's available elsewhere.

[RADCOM]

Now that they have 100MB they are traffic shaping the 50MB broadband. A fair price always helps in clawing back some of the millions lost in revenue due to piracy :P