Comments on: Beating the online pirates

By: woodins

woodins — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 22:02:33 +0000

So . . . . . we kill off bittorent, and everybody jumps onto mIRC and uses bots. Good luck in trying to differentiate between people sending legal and pirated data in that scenario. Piracy has killed the PC Bruce, i agree, we know, we get it . . . . . Its the only real reason the 360 and PS3 exists because they are harder to run illegal material

By: Dudley

Dudley — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 22:38:54 +0000

“The BPI are lobbying hard to get laws like this in place, where ISPs would be forced to compromise their customers’ privacy to line the recording industry’s pockets. Such laws are as unworkable for an ISP as they would be for the Post Office”

Ooh I like this.

Expecting ISPs to monitor all traffic everywhere is like expecting the Post Office to open and read all letters. Completely unacceptable on both a technical or moral background.

By: Robin

Robin — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 02:53:00 +0000

This post gives an interesting (unintended) insight into the reasoning (panic) that leads to the adoption of inappropriate DRM systems when only faulty or incomplete information is available.

The BPI are lobbying hard to get laws like this in place, where ISPs would be forced to compromise their customers’ privacy to line the recording industry’s pockets. Such laws are as unworkable for an ISP as they would be for the Post Office.

Where will the “thieves” kicked from one ISP go? Internet access is a utility now, and it is in no ISP’s interest to throw away customers for the sake of concerns about their infrastructure’s ability to cope. This is the very reason traffic shaping and throttling were implemented.

I for one would not like to see the games industry adopt the same lazy and unscrupulous litigation-based tactics that have destroyed the reputation of the BPI and RIAA.

Trying to better understand why people will choose to pay for games instead of pirate them (after all, piracy has always been an available option) would be more productive than fruitlessly looking for a ‘silver bullet’ to stop committed pirates.

By: Scott

Scott — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 22:14:13 +0000

“Quite frankly the ISPs would rather not have the thieves on their networks.”

True now- but only recently.

While the attitude 5-10 years ago was very much a neutral, “we don’t police the internet”, I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the attitudes now that it’s video that’s (both legally and illegally) consuming large amounts of bandwidth while the ISPs are also selling TV services.

Watch the latest episode of Doctor Who through Virgin and your speed gets throttled to 75%. In other words, you can’t use your unlimited 8Mb broadband to provide your television from iPlayer, 4OD, Sky Anytime, YouTube etc. etc.

But you can pay to access iPlayer through Virgin or BT’s private VOD service…

By: anonymous

anonymous — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 15:50:12 +0000

It would be nice if people would actually look up the definition of “stealing” and “theft” before they use it in an article. If I steal your wallet, then I have it and you don’t. If you steal my car, then you have it and I don’t. If I download a song from your computer, then we both have it, so how is this stealing? By no means am I saying illegal downloading is a good thing, I just don’t consider it to be stealing.
As for stopping digital pirates, it can’t be done. Period. Pirates, IMO, are the pioneers of a new type of economy. Because they don’t pay for the digital media, companies are going to have to come up with new and better ways of making money of their products, such as offering free downloadable media with built in ads, similar to how TV offers free programs but with ads in between.
And I would just like to point out: why would a person buy an .mp3 when they can watch the music video for free on youtube?

By: Read

Read — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 15:47:31 +0000

http://torrentfreak.com/good-pirates-help-businesses-sell-more-product-080324/

By: rich

rich — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 15:35:00 +0000

I’d love to know how this system is going to tell the difference between a truly illegal torrent, or me updating my copy of WoW or downloading a Linux distro? In short – it cannot *ever* determine if the traffic is illegal or not. It’s simply impossible. So instead they will try and tar all torrent traffic with the same brush. Truly ridiculous. Haven’t the EU got something better to be doing? Like, oh I don’t know, averting a global economic crisis?

By: jer

jer — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 15:18:53 +0000

not to mention ant ftp systems, 3 strikes ok so idl a ptach for a game like wow through bittorrent or a free to play client like sword , how can they fdifferentiate between legal p2p and illigal p2p most files these fdays are compressed mislabled and passworded, makes it vbery hard to moniter.

i do agree that piracy needs to stop

but not at the cost of the net,
even if you manage to stop bittorrents another system will take its place
i dont see any viable way to stop it entirly
every type of protection is hacked within days of coming out

By: rckt42

rckt42 — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 13:09:57 +0000

Also, you should change your comment validation. One never knows when the comment arrived ok and is awaiting moderation, and when it just got lost!

By: rckt42

rckt42 — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 13:08:21 +0000

As usual, Bruce, your hate of piracy blinds you. There are a lot of legal uses for P2P. There are countries where P2P for music and movies is legal, like Spain (not for software, though).

And the “Telecom Packet” is just the *AAs trying to implement 1984. A mandatory software in every computer that spies everything you do on the net to decide if you have the right to do it?. You’ve got to be kidding me!

Sorry, it is a price WAY too high to try to combat (not even beat) piracy, and anyone that thinks the means justify the end like that is just consenting to a digital Iraq.

The three strikes won’t work. Nor will the spying. In the end, the *AAs, the distributors, everyone is just making everyone less and less likely to buy products. Keep treating me like a thief, and in the end you’ll force me to be one.