Torrentalitarianism

Once again the upper echelons of big business appear to be pushing through their own agendas in the House of Commons. No, it's not cash for questions or cash for peerages this time.

No, following on from my last blog post, it's the British Phonographic Industry again with its cash for laws. This self appointed, self serving music industry lobby group has in the last week or so managed to - in conjunction with the Government - pressure Internet Service Providers into sending threatening letters to people accused of illegal file sharing.

Essentially the BPI will be the judge and jury. They will be trawling torrents, getting IP addresses, looking up which ISP that IP address is controlled by and then instructing the ISP to send a threatening letter, however they refuse to disclose their methods so who really knows whether any of the data they are basing their accusations on is accurate?

Obviously due to data protection laws, ISPs are not allowed to disclose any private details of their customers to the BPI but personally it would not shock me in the least if they were found to be being pressured by BPI lawyers into doing this.

The pressure is mounting: the Government are considering allowing the BPI to obtain personal details of ISP customers without having to go to Court to get a Court Order to do so. So much for privacy and justice when a group of racketeers can determine whether or not you are guilty of something they themselves are accusing you of.

The Government and BPI want ISP's to threaten to disconnect their customers but thus far no ISP has said they would be prepared to do this and Charles Dunstone of Carphone Warehouse has said;

"I cannot foresee any circumstances in which we would voluntarily disconnect a customer's account on the basis of a third party alleging a wrongdoing. We believe that a fundamental part of our role as an ISP is to protect the rights of our users to use the Internet as they choose. We will fight any challenge to the sanctity of this relationship with every legal option available to us."

Well done Mr Dunstone!

ISPs are obviously affected by any possible legislation because if downloading music is driven underground and becomes difficult for the masses then people wont bother with the expensive premium high speed connections and would opt for the 1 or 2 megabit packages.


Multimurderer

John Hutton MP, the head of the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform and Culture Secretary Andy Burnham MP have also discussed the possibility of applying a tax on internet connections. The figure mentioned was approximately £30 per year and this tax would be channeled into the music business to make up for alleged 'lost revenue' due to downloading.

The self-serving culture of MPs is remarkably similar to the music industry and it's lobby groups. Indeed, it wont come as much of a surprise that Andy Burnham is one of the MPs that voted against reforming MPs expenses.

Their intention for the download tax is clearly to subsidise the music industry and probably cream off a little for the Government itself, however I think the delicious irony of this idea is that it would be the stake through the heart of the music, film and game industry.

Who would buy a game, or an album or DVD when it could just be downloaded legally provided you paid £30 a year to the Government? All online music stores such as iTunes would be history yet CD sales would probably do a little better since they would be the source for people to rip their digital copy and share it.

It seems to have been overlooked in everything I have read that the BPI is just a private organisation that only exists because of music industry profits (5% of music income goes to the BPI). Why should I pay to subsidise an archaic business model? Why should I fund an ailing industry that cannot be bothered to reform itself, instead using its incredible financial might and completely farcical claims to press the Government into creating new laws to protect it?

The music industry has this in-built - but completely absurd - philosophy that people that download an album or a song would have bought the song if the download wasn't available and as a result they feel they 'lost revenue'. Is that what used to happen before the internet and peer-to-peer boom?

Of course not. People simply recorded tracks from the radio or taped CDs/vinyls that were borrowed from friends. With DAB digital radio and multiple digital recording media you could record a decent copy of a popular track from any radio station that broadcasts DAB.

This backwards step would ultimately mean that those smaller alternative bands or producers that have been virally advertised via the sharing of music would never be popular since radio stations don't play that type of thing in general. Back to the old days of endless generic pop music and nothing else with a few moguls such as Pete Waterman sat at the top making millions from it.

Unfotunately with those in charge at the Government having no grasp of real scenarios and situations they take the bait of the BPI hook, line and sinker.


Safe and Legal

It's often mentioned by BPI and British Music Rights spokespeople that the music industry wishes to 'work with ISPs' to create a 'safe and legal' system for downloading music. What? What on earth has any of that got to do with ISPs? It's like demanding that electricity suppliers should work with home owners to improve the function of their dishwasher.

Did iTunes have to 'work with ISPs' in order to set itself up as the premier online source for legal music? No it didn't. Unlike these self serving music lobbies, iTunes didn't sit there accusing its demographic of being common criminals and instead set up a decent service. The only problem with it aside from relatively low quality (bitrate) of MP3 is Digital Rights Management, or DRM.

This draconian system was demanded by the big music industry companies and iTunes had to comply else it could not operate. DRM is an encryption system applied to media files which requires the supplier of the file (in this case iTunes) to supply the 'key' to decrypt the file to each playback device registered with them. As a result, Apple knows you can only play that track on the devices registered with them.

There are of course limitations on how many PC's, iPods and so on that you can register with Apple and furthermore you are restricted to only iTunes compatible MP3 players (which according to Wikipedia totals just 5 different devices: iPod, iPhone and 3 Motorola mobile phones).

Unfortunately for the music industry, DRM only hurts 'legal' users so does not solve any of the issues that it was implemented for. Those that use torrents or newsgroups for downloading music wont be affected, will get higher quality tracks as well as no DRM. And this, it seems, is a concept the music industry cannot - or does not want to - grasp.

Instead of looking at providing a really good music archive with almost any track ever made in it at a reasonable price in a common easy to manage format that works with any MP3/4 player with no strings attached, they choose to lean on the Government to pass legislation that will allow a private organisation (the BPI) to basically police the internet in the UK.

Proposed Draconian measures to restrict file sharing include filtering content, i.e. blocking access to sites determined to be related to copyright theft are in the pipeline. This is similar indeed to the Great Firewall of China which only allows the Chinese to see what their Government wants them to see.

Throttling of users is another thing on the agenda, but Virgin Media are doing this already whether you download legally or not.


Knock Off TV advertising

The copyright lobbies have been advertising on the television over the last couple of years with some laughable scenarios. One common theme is that by purchasing copied DVDs or music you are funding drug dealing, child trafficking, paedophiles and terrorism. Another is the comparison between downloading music and DVDs and stealing a car or stealing from your grandparents.

With the latest Knock Off Nigel advertisements they are attempting to encourage social stereotyping, so if you are someone that downloads copyrighted material from the internet then you are also someone that would steal cars and money from your family as well as steal money from work colleagues try to avoid buying rounds in the pub.

The latest advertisement shows a guy in an open office supposedly downloading films on to his laptop only to be mocked by his colleagues and some moustachio'd pied piper character and labelled a Knock Off Nigel.

But this is what makes me laugh: in reality, everyone would be placing their order for films rather than attempting to outcast the guy downloading them. Further to this, he wouldn't actually be downloading them from work anyway and wouldn't charge people for what he has downloaded either.

It just goes to show how devoid of reality both the Government and the private industry lobbies are. The scenarios they use in their propaganda are farcically exaggerated and ironically you could use Gordon Brown as the one that steals your grandmas pension, Gordon Brown as the one that funds terrorism, etc.

I guess he's a Knock Off Nigel then.

The falsehood that is Virgin Media

I've been with Virgin Media, or Blueyonder as it was for about 7 or 8 years now. We got it installed when they first dug the road up past our house to put the cable lines down, and were mightily impressed with the blazing download speed of 52k/s (0.5 megabit). Who wouldn't be when the only alternative was dialup internet?

The price was £37 a month which was and still is a lot, but we were paying for the "best". The price is the same now, however the connection has been upgraded to 20 megabit which theoretically gives a maximum download speed of about 2000k/s. I was well impressed when last year I found that Blueyonder were upgrading my 10 megabit connection to 20 megabit for no additional cost.

The current fastest package offered by Virgin Media is still 20 megabit which is around the highest maximum downstream you can reasonably get in the UK. Their other packages are 2 megabit, 4 megabit and 10 megabit. They claim that they will soon offer 50 megabit connections. Cool.

Why am I completely pissed off with them then?


1. Virgin Media are involved with Phorm.

Phorm is a company that makes money from targetted advertising. Loads of companies do that. Every time you subscribe to printed or online media they ask you what other magazines you read so they can mailbomb you with advertising related to the subject of your favourites.

But Phorm gleans its information in unethical ways: by making deals with ISPs to spy on your web usage. It then matches your surfing habits with its database of advertisers and funnels targetted advertisements to your browser, no doubt creaming commissions off at various stages in the process.

Apparently Phorm has entered into these "institutionalised spyware" deals with leading UK ISPs (BT, Virgin Media and Talk Talk). I guess they hope that when people realise that Phorm is associated with these large companies that customers believe they are in safe hands when they are clearly not if they care about online privacy.

Why should I be so cynical about this? Phorm could, after all, be honorable. Unfortunately for them Phorm has an unpleasant history. According to the wikipedia entry in it's previous incarnation as 121media it creating an advertising system called ContextPlus and at least one product based on this was labelled as spyware by a leading antivirus company. This product formed part of a further system called Apropos which, when installed (usually without you knowing) did exactly what Phorm plans to do with Virgin Media, BT, and Talk Talk - spied on internet usage and sent browsing habit details back to them.

Apropos was one of the old traditional types of spyware which used tricks to stop you uninstalling it. Funnily enough, the Virgin Media homepage has plenty of information to help protect users against this form of spyware yet by getting involved with Phorm they appear to be planning to actively solicit and institutionalise spying on their customers. It just goes to show how suddenly morals and ethics are forgotten when there's a chequebook being waved.

Fortunately for us at the moment, the Information Commissioner's Office has stated that Phorm would only be legal as an opt-in service.


2. Virgin Media sold me a 20 megabit connection
....but its only really 5 megabit.

When I first read that Virgin Media were going to start applying a 75% bandwidth throttle to "the top 5% of downloaders" I thought this would mean those that leave their connection hammering downloads day and night, racking up hundreds of gigabytes per month of data.

Virgin Media have tended to advertise their products around downloading more and more media, faster. Indeed my 20 megabit package is advertised as "supersonic". Not for one minute did I think I would be affected by connection throttling since I don't leave my PC on overnight downloading, and rarely download tons of files. But I am.

Problem is, Virgin Media dictates that if you use your connection at full speed for more than 25 minutes between 4pm and 9pm (unless you use the internet at antisocial times) then you are a heavy user.

If I wish to download say a couple of game demos from XBox Live in the evening I'll get around 1400k/s for half of the download and then after that it's game over and the connection speed is reduced by 75%. For the next 5 hours. This makes me a top 5% downloader according to Virgin Media, despite other users downloading thousands of gigabytes more data per month (albeit overnight).

Virgin Media's throttling hours cover almost the entire day. Home from work, go on the internet, download something or other to watch, or some tunes. Maybe let the kids play some games online on their PC's or whatever. Boom throttled: come back in 5 hours.

Sure, even under throttling you can still surf sites but if you're on a home network with a few people using it it soon gets slow, particularly if you want to download anything or watch Youtube.

In addition to being throttled, they also make the connection crap. Your ping times skyrocket and in a lot of cases web sites don't even appear due to packet loss. I guess this isn't intended but it certainly happens.

I think Virgin Media has labelled normal internet usage in 2008 as heavy usage in order to basically cream more profit from their customers. Their XL package is nothing more than a gimmick. In fact all of Virgin Media's broadband packages are gimmicks because you simply don't get what you expect to pay for. They are aware that people on these packages like to have freedom to download a lot of multimedia content: indeed that's how they publicise it.

Sure, they have covered themselves with lots of small print but the overall idea you get from their advertising campaigns is that it's brilliant for people that like to download. How can it be when relatively insignificant users such as myself are being capped on every day in a blue moon that they actually try to download anything of significance (i.e. a Linux ISO or some TV shows)?

How can it be allowed to advertise something as unlimited - which has a crystal clear definition - yet apply a usage restriction to it? That seems like a pretty fundamental contradiction to me. No company should be permitted to redefine the dictionary in order to create an advertising gimmick.

When you get 75% of your bandwidth removed after 25 minutes of full speed downloading within a 5 hour time bracket, are you even getting your money's worth when you could have two of Sky's "unlimited" 16 megabit ADSL package for less than what Virgin Media charge for 20 megabit?

According to Virgin Media, the 20 megabit connection has a higher cap threshold than their other 2, 4 and 10 megabit connections. I disagree. With the 20 megabit connection, you get throttled even faster than you do on their 2 megabit connection.

On 2 megabit, you get throttled after 41.6 minutes of full speed usage. On 20 megabit you get throttled after just 25 minutes! For the next 5 hours of course.

It may well be fairer if outside the peak hours of 4pm-9pm I could actually get the speed I am paying for without being throttled for 5 hours after every 25 mins of full speed downloading.

Not so fast! Amazingly, Virgin Media also applies a throttle between 10am and 3pm as well, so you can only be throttle-free in the middle of the night when obviously you're likely to be up and on the PC.

The Advertising Standards Authority has slapped their wrists a little but let them off the main issues, like alleged mis-selling. Virgin Media should absolutely not be permitted to advertise a 20 megabit product in its current state. They should clearly say that it's only 20 megabit for 25 minutes at peak rate and then you get 5 megabit. They should not be allowed to use the word unlimited. It's simple.

When it was Blueyonder the service was better, the reliability was.. well I never had to call them for 6 years.. so I guess that's pretty good. I wasn't capped either. Branson conglomerate comes in and it becomes shite! It compares almost exactly to his train network: old leased tilting trains that are marketed as cutting edge (despite most of Europe having them since 1990) and priced significantly higher than other forms of transport.

On the Virgin Media newsgroups some people think that having your connection speed cut by three quarters for most of the day is better than having a monthly bandwidth cap. I disagree. It might be better for people that leave their PC on downloading all day and all night, but with a monthly cap at least you know that you will get the advertised speed when you need it.

For people like me that don't leave their PC on downloading stuff all the time, knowing I CAN download that demo from XBox Live and that it won't take forever is better than sitting down at 7pm and waiting an hour and a half for it to download (by which time I'm bored of it already!).


3. Virgin Media are in bed with the BPI

Not much to say about this that isn't on the link but the BPI, or British Phonographic Industry, are pressuring ISPs to threaten users involved with copyrighted material.

Virgin Media is one of said ISPs that is actively doing this despite being the ISP that for years has based its marketing strategy on having the fastest connection and being able to download more and more multimedia.

Recently they mailed letters to some of their customers threatening them with disconnection if they were to continue. They claimed it was a mistake and that they wouldn't be cutting people off.

No smoke without fire I am afraid. Virgin Media are constantly linked with stories involving various copyright organisations and threatening to disclose information or disconnect people.

Ironically, Virgin Media carries a news feed packed with all the games, movies or music you could ever want and is free to download as a Virgin Media subscriber.


4. Virgin Media thinks net neutrality is bollocks
...and believes they are bigger and better than they actually are

Unsurprising really given the other tampering they do/plan to do with our connections, the CEO of Virgin Media has declared that he is happy to throttle content providers if they don't pay his company large sums of money.

Surely this simply means Virgin Media will lose customers unless the user classes the slowness of say BBC iPlayer as normal and just stops using it. I wonder if they will throttle Youtube. I know Virgin Media is a large company but they are minnows compared with Google.

I read also that they were starting to throttle Usenet usage. I guess it's not because of a bombardment of compliments about their service: more that they have noticed people switching off torrents due to "web sherrifs" and going to Usenet which in many cases is faster than BitTorrent and can't be policed by outside agencies. They may be able to monitor it, but they can't remove anything from it.


5. Virgin Media helplines are all premium rate
...and you always have to hold for more than 10 minutes

Speaks for itself really, unless it's a Virgin Media helpline in which case it only speaks to you after 10 minutes of hold music.