Thin end of the wedge
In a press release today Virgin Media and the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) made a joint announcement that Virgin customers whose accounts “appear to have been used to distribute music in breach of copyright” will receive separate warning letters from Virgin Media and the BPI.
On April Fool’s Day, both parties denied any such deal.
“Accounts will be identified by Virgin Media on the basis of information supplied by the BPI,” said the release. “Both letters will be distributed by Virgin Media, without the need to disclose customer names and addresses to the BPI.”
“We believe that new partnerships with ISPs can help build an internet in which music is properly valued,” said BPI CEO Geoff Taylor. “That will benefit not just musicians, songwriters and labels, but all internet users who love music. This joint campaign with Virgin Media is the first step towards achieving that goal.”
“That goal” is the BPI’s demand for ISPs to implement a three strikes and you’re disconnected rule, robustly rejected by Carphone Warehouse CEO Charles Dunstone on 4 April.
Not working too well in USA
The Virgin/BPI announcement coincides with a report by University of Washington researchers on the functioning of the US music industry’s automated copyright infringement crawlers and takedown notices under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).
In the USA, the BPI-equivalent RIAA polices the Internet. When an alleged infringements are identified, the association issues formal complaints to network operators that may result in websites being taken down or home internet connections being disabled.
Recently, such notices have soared at US universities, although campus authorities report no increase in P2P activity. “How can the RIAA know if the files being offered are actually the protected works of their clients, when don’t download and open them?” asked one university official.
The Washington University researchers have demonstrated what may be happening. They generated hundreds of DMCA takedown notices for computers at their university that never downloaded or shared any content whatsoever – including several printers.
“Our results demonstrate several simple techniques that a malicious user could use to frame arbitrary network endpoints,” says the report. But they also found that innocent users may receive complaints even without being explicitly framed, even if they have never used P2P software.
They also warned that software packages designed to preserve the privacy of P2P users are not completely effective, and are also themselves taken as markers of infringement.
Given the deep hostility the RIAA’s heavy-handedness has generated in the States, is it too much to hope that its British equivalent might avoid trampling into the same pitfalls?
