Oh, dear. Virgin cracking down on illegal downloads

[owl]

So alledgedly Virgin Media (my ISP) is making moves to implement the 'three strikes and NO INTARWEBZ' policy on illegal downloading..

Woez! How shall I get my Numb3rs fix? There is about an 18-month lag time from it being shown in America and it being shown here (and then it's on ITV3 late at night, sigh). theoriginalspy, I hope that you keep up with the recaps :-/ *clings to theoriginalspy like Charlie to his laptop*

Also BSG, although the lag time is not horrendous. I can wait. Yeah, really.

Incidentally, I first got fannish about both these programs while I was watching downloaded episodes. I'd seen them on television, but they were just something that I watched when they were on (like Diagnosis Murder in university, but much less embarrassing). Guess what I went out and did once I'd got hooked on the downloads? Yeah, I bought the DVDs. So everybody won! The companies got £££ and I got new sandpits! Gah!

(I never download music or films. I have my own source of free music; it's called 'baby brother who gets paid to go to school and hence has money to burn'. Don't know what we'll do when he goes to uni next year, though.)

Comments

[theoriginalspy.livejournal.com]

How are they going to know if you get it, say from somewhere like Megaupload?

[owl]

Isn't megaupload all about ripped film and TV? I rather got that impression. Although people are saying that it's not downloading by uploading that's actually illegal, so as long as you aren't on a peer to peer you're clear, even if you're downloading from somewhere else. Dunno if that's true or not. Ah, well, at least you have two warnings....

[theoriginalspy.livejournal.com]

Usually, that's the purpose of MU amongst fans, but really it's just to send big files. Unless they're breaking into your account, how do they know if what you're getting is illegal?
Plus, with sites lite anonym et al, how would they know where you're d/l from?

[owl]

Well, I think the ISP would have to be looking at your data to actually catch anybody. Which is scary, you know? And probably illegal itself under EU law.

"We don't care. We don't have to. We're the phone company!"

[krpalmer.livejournal.com]

There's no law like that in Canada (yet), but our high-speed online providers go to lengths to slow down all non-vanilla Internet protocols. I switched away from the cable company's internet after I took them up on their "get a new cable modem!" offer and discovered that it slowed down Bittorrent, through which I've sought out Mystery Science Theater 3000 episodes not on official DVD (buying the official releases too) and some anime series not officially translated into English. (Things are a darker grey there, but at least I'm not one of those who find specious excuses not to buy officially licensed DVDs...) I signed up with a third party who buy a slice of bandwidth from the phone company and redistribute it with the firm promise that they won't slow anything down... and then the phone company figured out how to slow down (http://www.thestar.com/sciencetech/article/407730) all the third-party resellers without their asking. Still, as you said, having your connection cut altogether is worse...

Re: "We don't care. We don't have to. We're the phone company!"

[owl]

Yeah, I could live with that situation all right, I don't download much, and like I said it's only stuff that we wouldn't get over here till later anyway.

Re: "We don't care. We don't have to. We're the phone company!"

[krpalmer.livejournal.com]

I suppose that I can live with it too, actually... it's more "the principle of the thing!"

[--kali--.livejournal.com]

I really hope that someone with some decent legal knowledge takes up the fight for us and nips it in the bud.

[owl]

Yeah, me too *sigh*