BPI To Sue UK Filesharers Staring Next Month

(I'm assuming that file transfers on slsk go directly from peer to peer rather than being routed by a server; I think this is the way it works, but can't really remember)

The other thing to note is that as with the RIAA, they are talking about targetting people who are sharing lots of tracks, rather than the downloaders. I'm guessing this is for a combination of legal, technical and strategic reasons.

Which is the point of suing people, of course. They don't care about winning their cases; they just want the publicity.

With Gnutella (that's the Limewire/Acquisition protocol, right?) it takes a while for a good network to build up, and for searches to result in many hits (which still come through in a trickle rather than all at once). I'm assuming the whole thing is truly distributed, making it impossible to shut down with a court order. Is that right?

UK music to 'sue online pirates'
Blank CDs
CD sales have been in decline
The British music industry is set to announce its first wave of legal action against internet users who download music illegally.

The British Phonographic Industry (BPI) is to announce it is targeting "major uploaders" - those who make music available to share free with others.

Music file-sharers have been blamed for a decline in world-wide CD sales.

The BPI's actions follow that of its US counterpart which is already suing those it calls the worst offenders.

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) began issuing lawsuits seeking compensation from alleged downloaders in 2003.

The BPI and the International Federation of Phonographic Industries (IFPI) is joining forces to announce new measures to tackle the problem in the UK.

Warning messages

The BPI warned in March it would take legal action against users of peer-to-peer music services, which allow people to swap tracks online.

It has since sent thousands of internet messages to desktops warning people the song-swapping sites they were using were being watched.

The BPI believes a hardcore 15% of file-sharers are responsible for 75% of all illegal music downloading.

The popularity of music downloading largely caught the music industry by surprise, meaning it has been playing catch-up in the fight to tackle it.

But now there are many legal download sites, where users pay for the music and the money goes back to the recording artists.

BBC correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones said critics would ask whether firms should be suing their customers.

The BPI says single sales have more than halved in the UK since 1999, when downloading took off - despite research suggesting it has a minimal effect on sales.

This reads like it was stolen from a CBeebies Newsround report.

1. No point buying EMI CDs [in Australia at least; don't know what it's like in the UK] because they're crammed with that Copy Control shite that renders them useless

2. After the record companies take their share, most artists don't bloody get any money anyway

I know almost nothing about IP addresses and the like, but I remember someone saying on a torrents thread that typing 'netstat' in a command prompt thingy brings up a list of all the IP addresses connecting to your computer. This seems to work for Soulseek too. I mean, I seem to be able to see the addresses of the people downloading from me.

So the basic position is this:

- Slsk does relton a central server to enable users to make connections with one another, although once connections have been made, transfers are directly peer to peer. But the RIAA etc. have no powers to close down this server, or at least don't have the will to do so.

- There's nothing special about slsk that would protect users from BPI/RIAA prosecution. They just haven't bothered with it so far, concentrating on Kazaa.

Is that right?

xpost:

Most 3rd party torrent clients (like Abc) will list the ips of the people who are running the torrent.

Yes exactly that, also the RIAA only has power in the US and only looks after the interests of it's member labels.

But what we (in the UK) should be concenred about is the BPI, who are threatening an RIAA-like offensive.

28 people in britaina re to be sued with more to follow.

So basically the lesson is: don't be in the 15% of hardcore file sharers and you'll be fine!

In response to Nick's comment - since filesharing appeared I *haven't* been buying nearly as many CDs (though I can equally argue that's because of a change in my relationship to music rather than the availability of free downloads - in the days of audiogalaxy I certainly bought CDs because I'd heard stuff through filesharing, even if most of it was emo).

Also, I do honestly think that people who are downloading/distributing in bulk ARE deserving of being caught and punished - it's hard to make a moral case about why they're worse than occasional users, but maybe the drugs laws are a relevant example when it comes to possession, personal use etc.

The BPI spokesman said they have already decided on a list of people they are going to sue.

has anyone ever read an article along these lines that actually mentions slsk?

i don't suppose the BPI will be targetting mp3 blogs? as while the files offered tend to be obscure stuff, it's still a very direct and blatant way of provoding music illegally. it seems to be random (some sites have been instructed to remove only certain files but appears to be random also - including my own site in the past)

*And less music magazines.

Pete Waterman was just on ITV news bleating on about how filesharing is like stealing chocolate bars or something.

The RIAA were given powers to obtain information by courts who were obviously bending over backwards to be helpful to big business (the principle strikes me as questionable to say the least, an analogy being, say, a retailer given blanket powers to enter the homes of people living in a part of town on the grounds that some of them were known to be shoplifters). Does the BPI have similar powers, or a realistic likelihood of obtaining them? I may be wrong in this, but I sense that the RIAA would have had a fiercer and more partisan backing from sections of the US public than the BPI would have here - Brits are, I think, less pro-business and the business is also proportionately a smaller part of the economy (although the British courts do have an appalling record of sacrificing principle to the desired political outcome, eg in rights of trade unionists etc).

other things the BPI should be addressing:

inconsistency of market prices - WHY does a CD cost £15.99 in HMV, £11.99 in Woolworths or Tescos but only £8.99 from Splash or CD Wow?

given how rubbish British music is right now generally*, why bother wasting all that money on a Brit Awards ceremony next year? (*at least wrt to who they would consider giving awards to)

working with labels to use the internet to their advantage more, encouraging people to actually donate money to artists/labels online if they've downloaded music and not bought the CD (which is just an annoying material object that just takes up space along with 500 others of it's kind at the end of the day)

The BPI doesn't have any formal powers to obtain ISP's traffic data. However, all ISPs have to keep the necessary data in case important government bodies who do have those powers - the Egg Marketing Board, and so on - need the data in order to Defeat Terrorism. The BPI just needs to find some friendly ISPs who will hand the data over to anyone with a solicitors' letter.

I think the ISPs issue is interesting on the one hand filesharing is one of the reasons broadband is popular and no limit broadband over services with monthly download limits in particular, so they make money from the subscriptions. On the other hand the economics means they rely on people not using the bandwidth limit all the time (no gauranteed QOS on DSL/Cable).

-- Markelby (boyincorduro...), October 7th, 2004.

Quite right. People shouldn't be buying crack in Atlantic Avenue when they can get properly packaged crack in Woolworths just around the corner.

It's not like stealing chocolate bars, it's like giving someone a bite of your Aero in exchange for a nibble of the Wispa (provinding the tracks in question are merely remixes of each other).

(xpost - oh, sorry... yeah, what Alba said)

But would this be admissable evidence in a court of law? Personally I don't know, but I do think it's an established principle that people with privileged access to private information for a specific purpose can't then legally use it for other purposes, and that evidence obtained illegally isn't normally admissable (except for torture by foreigners, obviously). I suppose it depends on whether the ownership of data is with the ISP or its customer, but I'd have thought the Data Protection Act would offer at least some protection here.

The editor of 'Rip and Burn' has just been on the news. He's surprisingly fresh-faced and extremely clean-looking.

The editor of 'Rip and Burn' has just been on the news. He's surprisingly fresh-faced and extremely clean-looking.

As was the improbably youthful and trendy looking BPI spokesman wheeled out on telly this morning. *Look, it's not just greedy middle-aged fat cats wanting to steal the kids pocket money!! It's smart, hip kids worried about the future of music!!*

not really, because you give away nothing - your file isn't diminished in any way after the other person has 'nibbled'. if there was a cost involved with you sharing files then the whole thing would soon stop.

(there is a p2p sharing network that stops the owner accessing the file whilst it's being lent out - gets around the unlicensed copying aspect of things)