October 30th, 2009

MI5, an ISP lawsuit and an e-petition: More opposition to piracy cut-off plans

Posted by Zack Whittaker @ 5:33 am

Categories: Discussion, Government, Legal and political, Piracy and file-sharing

Tags: Lawsuit, Internet Service Provider, Piracy, Digital Television, Internet Service Providers (ISPs), Government, Peer To Peer (P2P), TVs, Internet, Personal Technology

There has been more controversy this week with a major Internet service provider, a petition set up to harness the power of democracy, but also the British Security Service, MI5, all opposing the cut-off laws which are being pushed through by a key figure in the British government’s cabinet.

The Digital Economy Bill, which will be brought to Parliament in the next few months, began with a good intention to bring positive change to how the country’s primary source of communication was run and would continue to work, such as:

“…delivering a universally available broadband in the UK by 2012 through a public fund, including funds released from the digital television switchover help scheme.”

However, Peter Mandelson, the Business Secretary, is trying to use this legislation to follow through his apparent own agenda to fight illegal file-sharing in form of cutting offenders off the web for the maximum of a year.

Both intelligence services, MI5 and MI6 have “voiced their concerns” regarding the disconnection of citizens who are found to be file-sharing as it will make monitoring and surveillance far more difficult, while police and major law enforcement units in London are concerned due to the amount of evidence that will no longer be able to be collected as a result of these bans.

• Read more: Student suicide threat over RIAA bullying tactics
• Read more: Downloading content illegally vs. getting away with it
• Read more: Universities in hot water over students’ peer-to-peer sharing

It is important to say that Mandelson does not see “widespread account suspension” resulting, and that the “technical measures” (cutting off the Internet to offenders) will be a “last resort”.

Meanwhile, TalkTalk, a major ISP in the UK with ownership rights over Tiscali and AOL and serving over four million users, are threatening legal action against either the government for enacting the policy or even Mandelson directly.

Last month the ISP, who are massively against the three-strike plan, demonstrated how with many unsecured wireless networks still existing, how easy it would be to download illegal content or media through another connection.

With this, Andrew Heaney, TalkTalk’s executive director of strategy and regulation, has taken advantage of the Government’s e-petition service, asking the prime minster to:

“… abolish the proposed law that will see alleged illegal file-sharers disconnected from their broadband connections, without a fair trial.”

If you have or had British citizenship, you are more than welcome to sign the petition which can be found here.

As and when news develops on this rather interesting and somewhat personal topic, you’ll find it here.

October 25th, 2009

Universities in hot water over students' peer-to-peer sharing

Posted by Zack Whittaker @ 4:42 pm

Categories: Breaking news, Downloads, Government, Legal and political, Money, Piracy and file-sharing, University, University fun

Tags: Network, P2P, British Broadcasting Corp., Student, File-sharing, Peer To Peer (P2P), Government, Internet, Zack Whittaker

The battle against online piracy is heating up: a new artist led initiative is taking on the diplomatic and negotiation approach whereas governments and legislators are hitting down punitive policies on their citizens.

Jon Newton of p2pnet, alongside Billy Bragg, musician and director of the Featured Artists Coalition, have begun work on a2f2a.com, a campaign started to discuss how artists can cut out the middleman - such as the suicide inducing RIAA - and ensure artists are fairly remunerated.

Along with their mission statement, the efforts seem to be focused towards not only admitting there is no technological solution to the problems artists already face, but that users would be “willing to pay for music if they can be sure that the money is going to the artists whose work they enjoy.”

File sharing itself is not illegal; what is shared, exactly, could be. With BitTorrent being used to distribute emerging artists’ music on a wide and free scale, or services such as BBC iPlayer which rely on peer-to-peer technology to reduce the load on the central services - file sharing technology cannot be simply eradicated.

Read the rest of this entry »

August 31st, 2009

An open letter to the RIAA: Illegal file sharing problem solved?

Posted by Zack Whittaker @ 6:11 am

Categories: Discussion, Government, Legal and political, Major breakthroughs, Money, Multimedia, Piracy and file-sharing

Tags: Revenue, RIAA, U.K., File-sharing, Peer To Peer (P2P), Taxes, Free Trade, Internet Service Providers (ISPs), Personal Finance, Internet

Dear the Recording Industry Association of America (the “RIAA”),

I know I’ve said some harsh things before, and to be honest, I still stick by them. The Family Guy musical sketch describing the characters’ opinions of the FCC could well be replicated here in view of your own organisation.

However, today I offer you a potential solution to the illegal file sharing problem that seems to have gripped the world stage.

In a nutshell, if you live in the United States and are caught downloading illegally, you can consider yourself already bankrupt, as the RIAA will sue you into the ground. However, under new legislation in the UK, instead of hefty fines, the Government could order your ISP to cut off your broadband connection.

This has annoyed the ISPs on this side of the pond because they claim while they provide the service, it is not their job to police how their customers use it.

The problem

I honestly believe that with the price of media at the moment, the vast majority of people would be content in buying media online - provided they could have it there and then in a download. The problem is that many popular items are simply not available online to buy. Granted, this has changed with the Amazon and iTunes wave of technologies and services, but it still isn’t up to scratch.

Also, the peer-to-peer technology and online file sharing is an open Pandora’s Box and now cannot be closed. You can attempt to take random people to court and financially send them back into the Stone Age, but you cannot convict everyone.

The recording and broadcasting industries must change to survive. You cannot sustain the business model you once had because the times have changed, along with the content delivery system and the generation of people.

Read the rest of this entry »

August 3rd, 2009

Downloading content illegally vs. getting away with it

Posted by Zack Whittaker @ 3:49 am

Categories: Downloads, Legal and political, Money, Multimedia, Next-generation technology, Piracy and file-sharing, Productivity, University fun

Tags: British Broadcasting Corp., RIAA, Licence, RapidShare, TVs, Tv & Home Theater, Personal Technology, Home Entertainment, Zack Whittaker

I have mentioned a few times before my somewhat controversial view on Internet piracy - the end-user downloading (and uploading, to some extent) of mostly videos, music files, software - and the issues which surround it. As this generation of students are the forerunners of the technological age, born into an era where technology has surrounded our upbringings and shapes our future, when the two collide, it makes for interesting news.

To read up on my previously mentioned controversial views of this topic, you can find more here:

• Students (unaware/don’t care) about music legalities
• Kicking Internet pirates off the web
• Pirate Bay court case bad news for students
  Gov. to pirates: we’ll slow you down, not cut you off
  
• Student suicide threat over RIAA bullying tactics
  (followed up by p2pnet in a post of thanks which was highly appreciated.)
  

Some time ago, my editor-in-chief, Larry Dignan, sent me a personal email after I asked how I was doing. As a student employee, it’s important to receive feedback from your superiors to receive praise but also ways of improvement. He said:

“…broadly speaking you represent the next generation of IT workers” and “what do the older generation need to know about your generation?”

Well this is for you, slightly-older generation. Piracy and downloading videos, music files and software without paying for it is illegal; there is no doubt about that. But it is a way of life, and it’s not going to stop us doing it. Yes, you can throw ridiculous and disproportionate fines at students especially, thinking you’re terrifying the bejesus out of the rest of us, but it doesn’t. And frankly, it just makes you [the RIAA in this, and many of the cases] look powerful yet oxymoronically impotent.

Is it the cost of media?

Chris Dawson, counterpart in education/student blogging and good friend, makes a good point:

“Our students largely understand Internet safety. If creepy guys try to convince you to meet them in person after chatting you up on MySpace, don’t do it. Fine. But what nobody seems to understand is that just because a torrent for your favorite band’s latest album is available doesn’t mean you should download it and seed it.”

But generally what he says, that “kids should knock it off“, I can’t believe in. I can agree with him on a legal front because to reiterate, it is illegal, but in a strange way it is now part of our culture. It’s not as if we are loaded or have plenty of money to splash out on a £29 ($48.50) Blu-ray disk for a one-time bout of entertainment. When I saw The Simpsons: Movie at this price in my local HMV, I didn’t stop ranting about it for ten minutes. The price doesn’t outweigh the high-definition goodness. I could download a reasonably small 250mb version of the movie and stick it on my iPod to watch on the morning commute, and still be happy with it.

An interesting twist; the video below is available on BBC iPlayer, the BBC’s free on-demand service to UK citizens, but was also separated into four WinRAR files and uploaded to RapidShare. Because iPlayer content is protected, I opted for the RapidShare approach.

Even though the RIAA have taken a chunk out of RapidShare in a lawsuit two years ago and now proactively removes flagged content as copyrighted, if you search hard enough for something, you can still find it. Not to mention, it downloads over HTTP which runs at your maximum bandwidth, as opposed to torrents which can be flaky at best.

Confusing but equally valid case study

Consider this interesting thought. I pay my TV licence which allows me to watch any terrestrial or digital broadcast on my television in my home. This TV licence is a tax on television, basically. This funds the BBC and in return, the taxpayer owns it (like most of the banks nowadays). BBC iPlayer lets us download television programmes onto our computer after the broadcast it should we miss it or wish to watch it again.

My friend also has a TV licence but has a slow Internet connection. So, I download a programme from BBC iPlayer, stick it on a flash drive, go over to their house, have a cup of tea and transfer the programme from the flash drive to their computer. It would take them days to download it with their connection, so I thought I would help them out.

The twist here is that you don’t actually need a TV licence to download a programme from BBC iPlayer. But in essence, we still helped pay for the broadcast and the general running of the corporation. But I just shared a copyrighted television programme with a friend. Is that illegal? Honestly, I don’t know - but if it is, that can only be described as utterly mental.

But then again, not only does the BBC endorse file sharing with BBC iPlayer, it actively uses peer-to-peer technology to reduce the loads on its servers.

The viable alternatives and solutions

Currently there are two main players when it comes to music and video downloads. Software and games are in a league of their own, especially after digital rights management software has caused more problems with the gaming industry.

iTunes lets you download exactly what you want at a fraction of the cost of an album in the shops, which has a bunch of songs on you really can’t stand. Instead of spending £8.99 ($15.15) on an album, you could spend roughly £2 picking out two songs you actually like from the album. This literally is the best example I can give for value of money.

But then we have Spotify. Not only did Neowin provide an in-depth review of Spotify, it defines it as an “iTunes killer”, which so far, it seems to be slowly chipping away at the service. It looks and feels like iTunes, works on both Mac OS X and Windows, but provides the content for free.

But when researching how Spotify make their money without getting the virtual crap beaten out of them by the RIAA and other corporations, it didn’t seem to make much sense, nor could I find myself disagreeing with this reply.

To throw all of this into summation, downloading something which you haven’t paid for is illegal. The laws are still unclear and frankly, especially with the Gary McKinnon case, I personally thought if anything went hideously wrong, at least I would be able to face sweet, sweet British justice. But avoiding using torrents is one way to avoid legal battles for the time being, and while it’s not entirely free, RapidShare and other HTTP hosting services offer a relatively cheap deal for what you can get.

But if you can find services which offer a subscription service, similar to the HTTP hosting services - RapidShare, MediaFire, etc. - then go for it. Because iTunes is clearly too expensive and at least this way you fight a good chance of saving your pennies in the long run.

Will this make the slightest bit of difference to you? Are you going to continue downloading illegally just because you can? It’d be interesting to see what you think.

July 7th, 2009

Web 2.5: Is it time we elected an Internet government?

Posted by Zack Whittaker @ 8:26 am

Categories: Government, Legal and political, Piracy and file-sharing, Security, Web 2.0

Tags: China, Web, Nation, Agreement, Internet, Channel Management, Government, Marketing, Zack Whittaker

As I watched the BBC News last night after getting in from London, I saw riots in China with death tolls surpassing those of the 1989 Tiananmen Square tragedy. Mobile phones have “stopped working” and Internet access is “limited” in the area, according to the news reports.

The BBC are reporting that the Great Firewall of China - which limits certain websites, domains and networks - has limited access to Twitter, in an attempt to curb Chinese citizens from sharing their experiences to the wider world.

On a similar note, in Iran the diplomatic efforts to sustain order after the controversial presidential elections last month are slowly having effect. With the lifting of certain measures such as the restrictions on text messaging and Internet access, it appears (at least from the perspective of Western media) that things are returning to normal in the region.

Shappi Khorsandi, an Iranian comedian who became a British refuge “before it became popular” often runs with this running joke:

“The Iranian regime strongly advocates freedom of speech - there’s just no freedom after you’ve spoken.”

This isn’t a soapbox to criticise Iran. As a nation, the people are beautiful, peaceful people who have been turned sour by a regime which oppresses the people — as we have seen in recent times thanks to Iranians using citizen journalism and posting videos to YouTube. A similar perspective in China has been broadcast through user-submitted videos showing almost an embarrassment of their own nations and governments in their reactions and responses. These are citizens working against the law, facing imprisonment and inhumane punishments to stand up for their own in-built human rights - a genetic survival instinct kicking in.

The Internet is being used as a means to support each individual’s right to freedom of speech. The boundary of what is politically active speech and bordering hate speech is not clear. Nevertheless, it is generally considered the West’s opinion that the Internet is used to express ourselves and our opinions. Other nations and cultures disagree. That is, however, their prerogative and we shouldn’t necessarily criticise that.

This did get me thinking though…

Read the rest of this entry »

June 5th, 2009

Gov. to pirates: we'll slow you down, not cut you off

Posted by Zack Whittaker @ 1:09 am

Categories: Discussion, Government, Legal and political, Piracy and file-sharing, Research, Security, University fun

Tags: Broadband, Speed, Piracy, Government, Broadband Internet, Telecom & Utilities, Network Technology, Telecommunications, Business Operations, Corporate Law

The UK government are currently looking into solutions to bringing Internet pirates to a standstill. With multiple cards on the table still but “all but ruled out” using a three strike system which the French government have already undertaken.

“Technical solutions” are one of the primary solutions aimed at tackling the problems with online pirated software, by targeting the pirates directly. Whilst thoughts are still vague, with bureaucrats and politicians still talking in metaphors, a full report will be delivered on the 16th June.

As the BBC report, an interim report brought out on 29th January, the “Digital Britain” report, sets out the pathway for every home in the UK to have at least 2MB broadband by 2012. This full report is expected to set out the way forward to expand economic growth and promoting education using technology as a key weapon for the next generation.

Whilst some countries have opted to take the three strike approach, which gives suspected pirate users three chances to change their ways after being detected, which then resorts to their web access being restricted, others believe broadband and Internet access is as necessary as gas, electricity or water supplies.

One of the only viable alternatives is having a List 99 for pirate users, in some way. Replacing names of those who are barred from working with children with those who have committed pirating offences, this would trickle down the system and put forward restrictions on the physical phone lines. With this,

Blocking certain ports and limiting available speeds on the phone line from the ISP itself is a far more effective way of damage limitation. Users in this respect may well pay anything from $20-$100 a month for an expected broadband speed, but speeds may be throttled at near dial-up speeds to prevent further abuse.

Who’s Watching You, a BBC series covering the surveillance state we live in, mentioned how some organisations hire electronic mercenaries to entrap those who share files over the BitTorrent network. However, as far as I am aware, you can get in a hell of a lot more trouble from sharing files than downloading files using the peer-to-peer network. Just by turning off any uploads, in theory, would prevent you being flagged up by these companies.

But would this work? Would the threat of mandatory dial-up speeds deter you from downloading or sharing? Leave a comment.

April 19th, 2009

The rise and fall of the web pirateer

Posted by Zack Whittaker @ 1:37 pm

Categories: Discussion, Government, Guest posts, Legal and political, Money, Multimedia, Piracy and file-sharing

Tags: Web, Trade Secret, Media, Apple Inc., Site, Zack Whittaker, Piracy, Internet, Advertising & Promotion, Business Operations

Zack Whittaker is away working hard (or hardly working, take your pick) on another projects. Elliot Harrison once again fills these size 12 shoes (the length of a small baby) to bring you another culinary delight of technology news, served hot with sautéed potatoes.

Doubtless many readers of iGeneration will have already heard the latest about how the ‘pirates’ of The Pirate Bay seem to have found themselves somewhat marooned after sailing a rough sea of lawsuits against the dubious content which their site provides links to. As a result, they may have to give much of their hard earned booty back to various media companies and music artists in compensation and face a prison sentence. SEK 30 million to be precise which roughly equates to $3.6 million dollars.

Alright, I overdid the pirate imagery there a bit, though it was worth it.

The Swedish group of Internet pirates, better known by some of their Internet aliases, such as Anakata and TiAMO, run a website which indexes and tracks BitTorrent files posted across the expanse of the Internet. These links provide people with access to files which can be downloaded as is the inherent nature of a BitTorrent engine. In some cases these links on the tracker site are to independently produced works and shareware programs provided for the good of the users of the Internet, which is no doubt nice.

The core of the issue raised within the recent court case deals with certain copyright infringements which can occur as a result of this, and the mass of illegally placed software, music, films and other media which is on the Internet which can be accessed easily using this site as a medium.

Read the rest of this entry »

April 17th, 2009

Pirate Bay court case bad news for students

Posted by Zack Whittaker @ 5:17 am

Categories: Breaking news, Discussion, Government, Legal and political, Piracy and file-sharing, University, University fun

Tags: RIAA, Music, Zack Whittaker

The news broke a few hours ago that the creators of The Pirate Bay, one of the largest search repositories for torrents for music, videos, games and, let’s face it, high quality porn, are heading to prison after being found guilty of breaking copyright laws.

I am no stranger to the dark side of the Internet, the downloading of illegal files and whatnot. Students love their music, their videos, and often can’t afford to buy bread and milk let alone a $20 DVD from Wal-Mart.

With organisations such as the RIAA bullying students into paying ridiculous fines for “crimes” sometimes barely committed (there is such a thing), the state of online media is slowing down to a point where I can see no other outcome than a massive Bush-like “war of suing people”.

The media have covered this story extensively, reaching to the highest websites the Internet has to offer. However, I suspect this is a media show and nothing else. The Pirate Bay have only ever done this, metaphorically pointed people in the right direction where to download files from.

Consider this. A group of twenty people have multiple copies of a music CD. A person comes along wanting to listen to some new music but doesn’t know which one to choose. They ask The Pirate Bay to point in the general direction of someone of which their music will suit their taste. The person then approaches that person, takes a copy which is perfectly acceptable to the person sharing the music, and listens to it.

Relatively simple, I’d say? I’m sure you agree.

So all this media havoc and mess, trial by jury and fines reaching in excess of $17 million-(ish), it’s comparable to a public hanging.

As the BBC describes it quite well, the Pirate Bay is “beached, but not sunk“.

The power of revolution is strong, and the more people who revolt over such a matter, the people will prevail. It’s the basis of democracy; give the people what they want. No matter how big the RIAA can be, no matter how powerful a democratic government may appear, the people will always have the upper hand.

• Read more: Students (unaware/don’t care) about music legalities
• Read more: University music tax: sharing and caring?
• Read more: Student suicide threat over RIAA bullying tactics

Have the courts stepped out of line by using the owners of the Pirate Bay as media bait? Do they deserve the treatment they get, or is it fully justified? Are the RIAA spinning out of control or are they just doing what’s right for the American people?

Leave your thoughts in the comments section.

February 16th, 2009

Student suicide threat over RIAA bullying tactics

Posted by Zack Whittaker @ 9:15 am

Categories: Downloads, Government, Gratuitous rant, Legal and political, Money, Multimedia, Piracy and file-sharing, University

Tags: RIAA, Music, Thomas Perrelli, Piracy, Business Operations, Corporate Law, Zack Whittaker

After checking Twitter a few moments ago, I was shocked, horrified and appalled at the news that a student from Chicago threatened suicide over the forceful, bullying tactics of major media corporations.

I didn’t think my 200th post on ZDNet would result in me saying this.

I have a fairly controversial opinion when it comes to software piracy, and sharing music and other multimedia online. But considering hundreds of millions of people share and download music every day, the chances of being struck by one of these lawsuits is en par with winning the lottery or being killed in a nasty milk float accident.

The Recording Industry Association of America (”RIAA” hereon in) with the assistance of other major corporations, including EMI, Warner, Sony BMG, has reported to be bullying students and “innocent people” in a series of attacks in regards to music piracy. Whilst some may say sharing a music file with another person is like walking into a shop and stealing the CD, I would whole-heartedly disagree.

I don’t know a huge amount about the legalities, nor do I understand US law or even the politics too much, so I’ll give this the best go I can. Many of my links direct back here, so please do check out the sourced article.

Thomas Perrelli is the “main guy” who shut down Internet radio by helping to mastermind massive fees imposed on companies such as Pandora.com. Also we have Donald Verrilli, who was one of the main people involved in the attempts of Viacom suing YouTube.

These two men, Perrelli and Verrilli, don’t have a very positive opinion in the online world.

Long story short, according to p2pnet:

“I eventually had a long telephone conversation with girl I mentioned earlier, the one who was threatening to kill herself, and she said she, too, would write something about her experiences. But she changed her mind after her parents agreed to bail her out.

She wouldn’t tell me the price, but she said she now hoped she’d be able to get back to her studies and on with her life.”

There is then the story of Brittany Kruger, who could never be considered a pirate of any kind, shared some music with a few of her friends. This led to the RIAA instigating a lawsuit against her, and described as “being hung out to dry by the labels, with the RIAA fronting for them.”

Her full story can be found a quarter way down the page in blue.

In both my honest, professional opinion, as both a journalist and a student, these vicious, thoughtless, bullying tactics need to stop. Yes I’m sure to some extent this post may not make sense, and you’re probably looking for a point. There is my point, America, because students should not be victims of media giants who take advantage of the law.

December 9th, 2008

University music tax: sharing and caring?

Posted by Zack Whittaker @ 5:13 pm

Categories: Downloads, Legal and political, Money, Multimedia, Piracy and file-sharing, University, University fun

Tags: Tax, Student, Music, Zack Whittaker

In the last few days, a plan devised by men in shiny suits, employees of the devil himself and the occasional dictator-regime supporter to create what can and should only be described as a “music tax for students”. But wait, because this is a good thing.

I’d let that sink in for a minute.

There have been calls from far and wide to regulate illegal music downloads by university students; using an academic network to illegal obtain files (which is probably part of the original constitution anyway; we all know Washington loved his iPod) has resulted in arrests (well, lawsuits anyway) of many university students in the United States.

Not to mention, I wrote about the legal vs. illegal downloading of music some months ago, and whilst I don’t condone illegal behaviour, I came to the sound conclusion that if you could get away with downloading music illegally, then go for it, but solely at your own risk. That certainly got some controversy, and I’m off the lawyer’s Christmas card list this year.

The Warner Music Group have proposed an “tax” which includes a small fee in part of the tuition fees paid to the university, which goes towards a blanket licence which is applicable to every student in the university. This would enable students to download music how they want to, regardless of whether it’s through Torrents, Rapidshare, browsing iTunes or browsing other people’s iTunes; regardless of which method of download is used, the artists will still get a cut. It may not be the cut they’d get had they sold their music directly, but it’s better than nothing.

The institutions collect the payments, which would be an extra few dollars on top of tuition fees anyway, and that pot of money is handed to an intermediary to then fairly distribute it to the artists, like handing out Christmas presents at an orphanage.

So, not only does this make every element of illegal music downloading totally legal, with no DRM and little restriction. Universities and students won’t be hauled out of their beds at 3am and interrogated because they have a drunken craving for Barry Manilow. And finally, it gives back to the artists who are whinging on piracy when it’s their lot who are jacking up the price so high, the rest of us just lose interest. Let’s face it; James Blunt just isn’t that good.

Although this hasn’t been set in stone yet, there are still many details which need to be ironed out for this to work. I’m confident this will be a positive step forward in the process of “semi-legal-but-actually-perfectly-morally-acceptable” downloading. We’re taking the mess with the amount we illegally download, and yes, it’s convenient and quick, but this new solution would make it so much cheaper overall.

To be honest, I’d be surprised if any of this made sense considering I have a fever spiking at 102°. If so, please leave a comment; this could be an interesting one.

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