UK Internet Users suspected of Piracy will have to pay £20 to appeal. - Polidicks

[QUOTE][B]Suspected internet pirates will have 20 working days to appeal against allegations of copyright infringement and must pay £20 to do so, according to revised plans to enforce the UK's Digital Economy Act. [/B]The details are contained in secondary legislation presented to Parliament and a draft code published by Ofcom. The telecoms regulator said it expected the scheme to begin in 2014. Campaigners oppose the fee saying users should be innocent until proven guilty. The Creative Industries Minister, Ed Vaizey, said: "We must ensure our creative industries can protect their investment. "They have the right to charge people to access their content if they wish, whether in the physical world or on the internet." [B]Three letters [/B]Under the plans users suspected of accessing or uploading illegally copied files will be sent letters from their internet service provider (ISP), delivered at least one month apart, informing them they are suspected of copyright infringement. The messages will also contain information about where to find licensed material online. Copyright owners can request details about all the accusations made against any account-holder who receives three or more letters within a 12-month period, but the user's name will not be revealed at this stage. Rights holders wishing to chase a suspected pirate must seek a court order requiring the ISP to hand over the details. Ofcom said this additional step was designed to encourage efforts to be focused "on the most persistent alleged infringers". [B] Appeal fees [/B]Accused users who wish to appeal against the claims outlined in any letter must pay £20 to do so, but the revised code says only grounds specified in the act will be considered. Campaign group Consumer Focus chief executive Mike O'Connor said: "Copyright infringement is not to be condoned, but people who are innocent should not have to pay a fee to challenge accusations. "Twenty pounds may sound like a small sum, but it could deter those living on low-incomes from challenging unfair allegations." He added the best way to reduce unnecessary appeals was for Ofcom to require a high standard of evidence from copyright holders to avoid notifications being sent out on the basis of "flimsy evidence". Ofcom noted its revised code stated rights holders would only be able to gather evidence using measures approved by the regulator. [B] Punishments [/B]ISPs - who must also contribute to the cost of running the scheme - will ultimately be required to take steps against repeat offenders such as limiting their broadband speed or suspending their accounts. However, Ofcom noted this would require further legislation that could only be considered after the letter scheme had been in force for a year. Even so, members of the Creative Coalition Campaign, welcomed the latest step towards implementing the copyright crackdown. "We urge ISPs to begin building their systems now and to work constructively with rights holders, Ofcom and government to get notice-sending up and running as soon as possible," said John Smith, general secretary of the Musicians' Union.[/QUOTE] [URL]http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-18594105[/URL] What was that about innocent until proven guilty?

[quote]"We urge ISPs to begin building their systems now and to work constructively with rights holders...[/quote] We are telling you to start spying on every user, if you fail to do this you will be fined infinite amounts of money. You are to violate the privacy rights of every user that subscribes to your service and report back to us everything they do.

Why the fuck are they going after downloaders? What makes them think that attacking them will raise their profits? Go after uploaders if you have a problem not the downloaders.

Guilty until proven innocent. Yup.

Wow uhm. Imagine if you got a parking ticket because they suspect you parked there three days before, and you have to pay them to even investigate it.. I mean, it's a pretty good scheme to make some cheap money but I wouldn't expect this forced on a huge group let alone a country, without some serious backfire.

No no leave me alone. Can they still trace me if I use the pirate bay's UK proxy?

[QUOTE=Cypher_09;36496725]No no leave me alone. Can they still trace me if I use the pirate bay's UK proxy?[/QUOTE] They can trace pretty much anything given the money and time. Proxies aren't the Go-to end all problems solution. Your best bet would be a private tracker.

Fuck off

Guilty until proven innocent yo, pillar of a free society

So the 20 pound thing is "Fuck the poor, they don't get to defend themselves."

[QUOTE=kattolil;36496710]Wow uhm. Imagine if you got a parking ticket because they suspect you parked there three days before, and you have to pay them to even investigate it.. I mean, it's a pretty good scheme to make some cheap money but I wouldn't expect this forced on a huge group let alone a country, [B]without some serious backfire[/B].[/QUOTE] As much as I'd like them to have to face consequences for this in the future, I really doubt they will. The ISPs aren't going to put their foot down and tell our government to shove it since they're dealing with people that could potentially royally fuck their business up if they do that so they definitely wont take chances. I have a feeling that apathy will take hold and regular people will fail to do anything too, and even if they did the government would just straight up ignore their petition / protest / whatever action they take like they've been doing with literally every other protest actions people have been taking recently. So yeah they're pretty much about to get away with enacting state sponsored extortion.

[QUOTE=carcarcargo;36496643]Why the fuck are they going after downloaders? What makes them think that attacking them will raise their profits? Go after uploaders if you have a problem not the downloaders.[/QUOTE] Even then, there would need to be a fair trial and the usual dishing out of facts. But that has never been what the entertainment industries have wanted - the legal system is just too inconvenient for them

[quote]The Creative Industries Minister, Ed Vaizey, said: "We must ensure our creative industries can protect their investment. "They have the right to charge people to access their content if they wish, whether in the physical world or on the internet." "We urge ISPs to begin building their systems now and to work constructively with rights holders, Ofcom and government to get notice-sending up and running as soon as possible," said John Smith, general secretary of the Musicians' Union[/quote] Typical we have people who don't know what they are talking about telling ISPs to do shit which is expensive and intrusive to their customers, the amount of hardware they'll need to get to log all this shit is ridiculous as well a huge waste of time and resources. I'm aware that in the UK ISPs already log your access but that is only for 5 days and it's actively being purged, from the sounds of this they'll be wanting logs of a much longer period of time meaning more servers and more storage needed. And paying to appeal, what the fuck is this horseshit, £20 is a fair lump of money regardless of your background, this needs some serious rethinking, or more or less scrapping as its a huge waste of time and money. If this does go through and gets established in 2014, I can see it going two ways: 1. ISPs will setup a basic logging system which will get swamped easily and send out the odd letter just to keep them quiet. 2. It'll be abused to fuck marking anyone and his dog forcing them to appeal making it into a lovely cashcow because every license holder decides a single line of text is enough to call a lawsuit against Bob Jones who downloaded another copy of Future Cop because his disk broke.

Whelp, time to steal the neighbors wifi...

[QUOTE=Cypher_09;36496725]No no leave me alone. Can they still trace me if I use the pirate bay's UK proxy?[/QUOTE] Use TOR

[QUOTE=Fedalkyn;36497055]Whelp, time to steal the neighbors wifi...[/QUOTE] im awaiting the first major case where someone technologically ignorant gets their wifi jacked, then gets a total of £200 of "investigation charges"

They can't comb pirates for money, it doesn't work like that.

[QUOTE=rhx123;36496533] What was that about innocent until proven guilty?[/QUOTE] you are guilty, even if you're not. even if you're found free of charge, you are still guilty, you just got lucky.

Money making logic, blame people for shit, collect cash when they appeal.

What the fuck is with the sudden craze around piracy, especially going after downloaders?

[QUOTE=Fatfatfatty;36497259]Use TOR[/QUOTE] TOR is slow as hell and not worth it, use a paid service like nVPN, sure it costs money but it's fast and more reliable than TOR.

I'm assuming the ISP's logic is along the lines of "IF THERE'S NO ONE TO PIRATE, THERE'S NO NEED FOR PIRATE WEBSITES TO EXIST, SO THEY'LL DISAPPEAR. YAY US!"

[QUOTE=Beaverlake;36497769]TOR is slow as hell and not worth it, use a paid service like nVPN, sure it costs money but it's fast and more reliable than TOR.[/QUOTE] You're telling pirates that can't even afford a 50p music track to subscribe to a VPN?

I'm sure 20pounds is going to stop the average joe from pirating

"They should go after the uploaders, not the downloaders" *Forgetting about Megaupload fiasco*

[QUOTE=AngryChairR;36498045]You're telling pirates that can't even afford a 50p music track to subscribe to a VPN?[/QUOTE] You know people pay for Usenet right?

Do the government even carry out tests to see if the majority of internet illegally download things? Or are they just listening to a couple of letters from some huge corporate companies? Because as far as I know, in the past couple of years or so the government have decided to brand the internet as a pool of law breaking thieves who steal things to purposely allow companies to lose out on profits. Here's a couple of things I'd just like to say (and because no one on the internet is man enough to do anything about it for some fucking reason) : -Companies will not lose money if people are downloading it, it wouldn't matter whether they're not buying it or downloading it, the company isn't funding the download to be shared, then paid for to download, they lose no money from people putting it on the internet because the companies put ABSOLUTELY NO MONEY INTO FUNDING ACTUAL PROPERTY MARKETING ON THE INTERNET. -It's technically not breaking any laws unless you're re-selling the product, but even then the companies aren't losing out, because they aren't paying for anything they don't get back, it's just people re-selling products the company have allowed to be distributed. I really don't see the problem here, only that the government are absolutely blind to the fact that not everyone that torrents re-sells the product/etc.

[QUOTE=Dead Madman;36498148]Do the government even carry out tests to see if the majority of internet illegally download things? Or are they just listening to a couple of letters from some huge corporate companies? Because as far as I know, in the past couple of years or so the government have decided to brand the internet as a pool of law breaking thieves who steal things to purposely allow companies to lose out on profits. Here's a couple of things I'd just like to say (and because no one on the internet is man enough to do anything about it for some fucking reason) : -Companies will not lose money if people are downloading it, it wouldn't matter whether they're not buying it or downloading it, the company isn't funding the download to be shared, then paid for to download, they lose no money from people putting it on the internet because the companies put ABSOLUTELY NO MONEY INTO FUNDING ACTUAL PROPERTY MARKETING ON THE INTERNET. -It's technically not breaking any laws unless you're re-selling the product, but even then the companies aren't losing out, because they aren't paying for anything they don't get back, it's just people re-selling products the company have allowed to be distributed. I really don't see the problem here, only that the government are absolutely blind to the fact that not everyone that torrents re-sells the product/etc.[/QUOTE] But the key to the capitalist society is that you pay for stuff. We have the problem now that people feel that they are entitled to whatever comes out and take it free, then laugh at the companies who made it, now is that fair?

[QUOTE=Ericson666;36498109]"They should go after the uploaders, not the downloaders" *Forgetting about Megaupload fiasco*[/QUOTE] Megaupload was a filehosting service that did a lot of legit buisness, unlike torrent reactor and TPB, and even they aren't breaking any laws.

[QUOTE=AngryChairR;36498045]You're telling pirates that can't even afford a 50p music track to subscribe to a VPN?[/QUOTE] It is cheaper