Fluffeh writes:
"One of the first ISPs to voluntarily introduce a three-strikes regime for punishing file-sharers has today delivered an intriguing statement. After almost four years of working mainly with the music industry, TorrentFreak reports that Ireland's largest ISP Eircom hasn't disconnected a single subscriber for Internet piracy. In 2009, Eircom, the country's largest ISP, prepared its own three-strikes program following a deal with the major recording labels, a package which allowed Eircom to disconnect persistent infringers. So now, four years since its introduction in 2010, how many people has Eircom disconnected? A hundred? One thousand? Five?
According to the ISP, not even one. However, Eircom has 'declined to disclose how many warning letters it has sent out to customers suspected of unlawful filesharing.'"
(Score: 5, Insightful) by prospectacle on Thursday March 13 2014, @10:26PM
They make money from those customers. They save money if they can get the record companies to stop pestering them, by acting like they care about piracy.
Of course they'd want to do the bare minimum (that they can get away with) on this front. Why would they voluntarily tell a customer to "please stop sending us money"?
If a plan isn't flexible it isn't realistic
(Score: 4, Informative) by Lagg on Thursday March 13 2014, @10:37PM
http://lagg.me [lagg.me] 🗿
(Score: 2) by Fluffeh on Friday March 14 2014, @12:24AM
Will bend over for them to keep their profits up without them having to change or update their business model or keep their customers happy.
FTFY.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by edIII on Friday March 14 2014, @03:03AM
I don't think that motivation has much to do with anything really. They sent the notices as instructed.
However, no ISP would willingly agree to DPI just due to the costs alone. If there is one petty aspect of the entitlement present in the MAFIAA, is that they think the world owes them the protection for free.
To me it's become clear that the NSA, or Five Eyes, just gave up on trying to police the net with ISP level DPI similar to Carnivore. They just collect everything, infect everything, and at least they are bearing the costs apparently. At least I never hear about the ISPs complaining publicly about any costs.
So that leaves those cheap bastards out in the cold. Boo hoo, they need to do their own investigative work and ask for the notices. Which leaves them with a stupidity tax .
Users that don't know what they are doing pay heavy taxes anyways, and this is just another. Fortunately for the free world, people learn.
Hello private trackers, seedboxes, SFTP and FTP w/ TLS, & Darknets.
Those idiots in the MAFIAA just sent their prey to ground and taught them the value of silence, which can only work out in our favor ultimately.
I love that Three Strike bullshit. It's like forced bootcamp for the noobs. I know private trackers now in Europe where I can get 30k seeds on a private torrent. The tracker and the torrent sites are now protected by SSL, and I understand some trackers that have thousands of seeds now start putting people into groups automatically so that no one person connected to the tracker can download a full list of peers. They don't need a full list to achieve speeds of 10MB/s.
That's not even progressing to a full fledged darknet yet.
Of course those idiots try and spin it their way by claiming the silence means they won. Meanwhile, there are less noobs who believe it when they hear it, and more people with adequate skill levels that just laugh at their soured grapes PR theater.
They'll get what they want. Silence. Of course, meanwhile back at the ranch, revenue streams are drying up across the board for the old business models....
Do the ISPs give two shits about this? Hell No. They have their hands full with rampant media consumption that is far outpacing the bandwidth requirements for piracy in general. Netflix is an ISPs worst nightmare, and that's who they fear; The mega companies that have customers really sucking down the bandwidth. The last thing they care about right now is some peon representing the MAFIAA getting all up in their business and making expensive demands while Netflix is burning down their empire. I bet those people don't even get meetings anymore.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Friday March 14 2014, @04:05PM
Because the NSA is so transparent. Obviously there would be a gag order or whatever in place.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by edIII on Friday March 14 2014, @05:23PM
I don't think so. Not 10,000 gag orders to stop people from complaining about forced expenditures.
It's more likely the NSA uses their own equipment and bears the costs to keep it quiet.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Friday March 14 2014, @07:55PM
I kind of doubt the ISPs would lodge ten thousand complaints about the NSA if they know what's good for them.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 3, Informative) by edIII on Friday March 14 2014, @10:02PM
Oh you bet they would.
Unless the NSA is actually taking people and killing them and their families, those ISPs have been lobbying Congress for some time.
There is a reason why Clipper and Carnivore never got off the ground. The NSA only really started to have success when it A) Made it illegal for them talk about it (not preventing lobbying against it-which gets to the security committee) and B) Were willing to pay for their share of the expenses.
Just what makes you think they all of the sudden got massive buy-in for that budget? It would have to be some sort of massive event, some claiming false flag, that would rally public support in a vague way that allowed all sorts of new government departments to spring up and billions upon billions flooding in for support.
The ISPs don't care, and very few ever did on principle. It was always about the money. NSA decided to pay. Case Closed.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 13 2014, @10:38PM
ISPs are not a police force. Not a judge, jury or executioner.
If the MAFIAA feels strongly about file sharing, they should sue... And perhaps find a way to give people what they want, at a reasonable price and make sure the have the better or at least as good a product as competition. No DRM is a big part of it.
It's really incredible to see how powerful the MAFIAA is, just look at the whole "let's DRM HTML" fiasco. And it's not even a very big industry.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by umafuckitt on Thursday March 13 2014, @11:35PM
I don't know if this is accurate [latimes.com], since the source of study is biased, but the article claims that the copyright industry is worth 6.5% of US GDP. That's a sizable chunk of the economy. Add to this fact that the industry is, by nature, a very public one: it's fronted by popular celebrities who export American culture and values abroad. Looking at the whole package I'm not at all surprised at the influence it can exert.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 14 2014, @07:36AM
Yet there are much bigger industries in US with much lower legal "protections". E.g. fashion which is also pretty full of celebs and life styles. Scare quotes because copyright is not about protecting authors but "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts". Not even sure which one of those applies to music and films.
Watch this video, it will probably surprise you. http://www.ted.com/talks/johanna_blakley_lessons_f rom_fashion_s_free_culture [ted.com]
(direct link to low quality video, you can find other resolutions in the source of the page, search for .mp4 http://download.ted.com/talks/JohannaBlakley_2010X -320k.mp4 [ted.com] )
TL;DR or mayhaps TL;DW since it's a video: watch from 12:22 to maybe 12:32 or so. (And once you realize this is good stuff, watch the entire thing, you can afford to spend 15 minutes to educate yourself!)
(Score: 1) by dilbert on Friday March 14 2014, @01:09PM
You watch lectures at 1x speed? It's rare that I watch any lecture/presentation/talk at speeds slower than 1.8x (sometimes up to 2.5x). More content in less time without sacrificing comprehension.
VideoDownloadHelper then VLC...much better than watching videos at 1x in the browser.
(Score: 2) by umafuckitt on Friday March 14 2014, @03:26PM
And there is still "copyright infringement" in fashion. Fake Gucci. Fake Rolex. Fake Zippo, etc. Selling fakes is illegal. The difference is that music and film piracy is easier and the quality of what you get can be equal to the original. Fake fashion products are usually inferior, harder to get hold of, and don't have the impact of buying the original. For this reason the film and music industry has the potential for being harder hit by copying than does the fashion industry. I can see why they campaign harder and why they're getting more attention.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 14 2014, @04:02PM
If you had watched the mentioned video, you'd know there is no copyright in fashion in the US. Only trademark. Usually copyright infringing music and films are superior to the original product as the famous image so graphically displays.
http://i.imgur.com/GxzeV.jpg [imgur.com]
So yeah, they will whine like pigs. That's hardly a great reason to listen to them and do their bidding.
(Score: 2) by umafuckitt on Friday March 14 2014, @05:57PM
Yes, I know. That's why I put copyright in quotes. I was using a common term to draw a parallel between the industries.
(Score: 3, Funny) by AnythingGoes on Thursday March 13 2014, @10:56PM
From the MAFIAAA:
"We have now found that users who have received these notices have now become law-abiding citizens of the internet and are no longer infringing on our rights"
In other news, usage of Darknets/private only torrents have now increased :)
(Score: 3, Insightful) by gallondr00nk on Thursday March 13 2014, @11:19PM
Now we just have to wait for the MAFIAA to do likewise..
(Score: 3, Funny) by AnythingGoes on Thursday March 13 2014, @11:27PM
The proper response would be something like
"when aerial porcine activity is observed"
and
"when all molecules in hades mysteriously reaches zero Brownian motion"
(Score: 4, Interesting) by GungnirSniper on Thursday March 13 2014, @11:43PM
Are you sure the spin isn't going to be "Three Strikes is ineffective, we need more laws to solve this"?
Tips for better submissions to help our site grow. [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by lx on Friday March 14 2014, @03:51PM
Clearly three strikes isn't effective. We need thougher rules. Let's make it four strikes.
(Score: 2) by Boxzy on Friday March 14 2014, @05:37PM
Even four isn't enough, we need five blad- er.. strikes I meant strikes!
http://purpleslinky.com/humor/satire/screw-everyth ing-were-doing-five-blades/ [purpleslinky.com]
Go green, Go Soylent.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 13 2014, @11:00PM
Screw the Gnats