Poke it! – Norway ISP tells Big 4’s IFPI
p2pnet news view Freedom | P2P:- Norwegian telecom group Telenor has had the sheer effrontery to tell Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony BMG’s IFPI to stuff it!
Or words to that effect.
IFPI Norwegian videogram association (Norsk Videogramforening) and the Norwegian Film Distributors Association (Norske Filmbyråers Forening), “had lawyers at Simonsen Advokatfirma send a letter to Telenor last Friday, asking the telco to block ThePirateBay.org, so none of its broadband subscribers would be able to use it. Telenor today replied that it will not do so,” says IT Examiner.
But, “ISPs are not complicit in the actions of its customers on the Internet,” Telenor told the IFPI hacks, going on, “Furthermore, Telenor sees no legal basis for the demands of copyright holders,” adding, “asking an ISP to control and assess what Internet users can and cannot download is just as wrong as asking the post office to open and read letters and decide what should and should not be delivered”.
What!! ?? A humble provider answering back to the Big 4’s IFPI (International Federation of Pornographic Industry)??
What is the world coming to?
But wait! Didn’t Norway’s Bård Vegar Solhjell, minister for education, have a similar reaction?
The IF probably figured Norway’s Bård Vegar Solhjell, minister for education, would roll right over when it [the IFPI] ordered the country’s largest internet provider Telenor to block Pirate Bay, said p2pnet, going on »»»
But all it achieved was to encourage him to, “defend the principle of file sharing,” says The Guardian.
“All previous technology advances have led to fears that the older format would die,” he blogged, adding:
“But TV did not kill radio, the web did not kill the book, and the download is not going to kill music.”
Adds IT Examiner, “Apart from telling IFPI and colleagues it paid lawyers for nothing, Telenor declared the business models for distributing and selling digital content over the net were antiquated. Content holders had yet to adapt to the modern world ‘and the reality of the Internet.’ The Norwegian operator opined copyright holders ought to come up with business models viable for the digital age of broadband internet, instead of moping around and blaming everyone else.”
The nerve!
IFPI mouthperson John Kennedy will something to say about this, you can be sure!
Stay tuned.
IT Examiner – Telenor blasts IFPI over Pirate Bay, March 2, 2009
p2pnet – Downloading OK, Norway minister tells IFPI, February 24, 2009
The Guardian – International Federation of Phonographic Industry, February 23, 2009
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March 2nd, 2009 at 5:47 pm
This “asking an ISP to control and assess what Internet users can and cannot download is just as wrong as asking the post office to open and read letters and decide what should and should not be delivered” is an awesome quote and should be used more.
And ah the old classics “All previous technology advances have led to fears that the older format would die,”.
March 2nd, 2009 at 6:02 pm
LOL, love the stab at JK.
PS: why hasn’t anyone done to this Kennedy the same that the president had happen?
March 2nd, 2009 at 6:05 pm
Yeh. One of the things I like about this site is the humor.
March 2nd, 2009 at 6:54 pm
and hte seocnd htey sue , hte contry in question shoudl file a UN briefing for economic terrirsm attacks by the USA by the big 4
also note one needs make new law outlawign them , lobby money form them and any one working for or assocated to them.
YA that would be funny.
March 2nd, 2009 at 7:36 pm
All it’ll take for a complete, ultimate win, is for ONE nation to explicitly declare file-sharing to be legal.
Then, the only alternatives will be for every OTHER nation to realize that anything they say about it is effectively unenforceable (beyond the current sort of harassment), or for that nation to attempt to neuter it’s internet connectivity. The only nation that’s really managed to “control” it’s Internet connectivity is North Korea — and that’s only because they’re a bunch of jack-booted thugs, and their citizenry is too pathetically cowed and “law-abiding” to do anything much against it.
Whichever nations finally explicitly “legalizes” file-sharing, is the nation that immediately gets to assume technological leadership, in that there’s going to be a huge number of folks creating stuff there that’ll make TPB look like a weekend hobby-project.
Plus, and let’s never forget this — it’s not like the current “laws” are being obeyed that much. You can bet that even if they DO manage to ratchet things up somewhere — since the opposition is global, their “local” efforts will fail to achieve anything substantive, just like now.
March 2nd, 2009 at 8:01 pm
^^ File sharing isn’t illegal, Henry. I know you know the difference, but the cartels have gone to a lot of trouble to make people believe it is wrong, so it’s worth repeating that sharing copyrighted files without permission is what it’s all about.
Cheers!
March 2nd, 2009 at 8:17 pm
This article just made my day.
March 2nd, 2009 at 9:13 pm
“^^ File sharing isn’t illegal…”
Everyone needs to repeat this fact to someone else at least once a day!
Propaganda is a dangerous thing to let roam free of challenge!
March 3rd, 2009 at 2:37 am
Thank god for Norway
March 3rd, 2009 at 9:02 am
The Netherlands has all but ‘approved’ file sharing. Comments to the effect that it is ‘good’. Hope it starts there.
March 4th, 2009 at 12:38 am
“File sharing isn’t illegal”.
Course not, Jon. All I meant by that, was: the first nation to explicitly state that fact, is the one where all the best technological stuff happens for twenty years or more, afterward. That’s why the RIAA/IFPI/MPAA are flailing around wildly, attempting to “gum up the works” the way they’re doing with TPB. (They can’t actually win, but they’re too short-sighted to understand that fact)
As to the “copyrighted files” aspect, we’re all pretty clear that copyright has mutated into something seriously different from what it was original supposed to be (It’s not particularly heping “science and the useful arts”, nor is a term of life-plus-75 “limited” in any meaningful sense of the term). Whether or not copyright terms are severely restricted on paper, you have to admit that if somewhere explicitly protected Bittorent trackers etc. from bullshit like TPB is experiencing, there’d be forty or fifty new trackers/search engines/social networks launched within a year. Napster and everything since has gotten people to fundamentally rethink what copyright is supposed to be (even though “the industry” manages to destroy/lobotomize apps, making people go on to the next, bigger thing.)
Now think what would happen if, for example, you combined trackers, a search portant, discussion forums, social networking features, hosted in a nation that was a “safe-haven” from such idiotic lawsuits? I’m pretty sure it would grow over time, and it’d have time to mature into something. A good example of how this is almost happening now is soulseek.
By the way: thanks for publishing my article submission: glad the edits made it easier to understand.
March 4th, 2009 at 12:48 pm
Just one little point Jon, Bård Vegar Solhjell may not be such a nice guy as we are all hoping he is…
while he does see that the old way of selling music is drying up faster than Paris Hilton’s functioning brain cells (yes, i know… she does not have any, but i was trying to be kind) and while Bård Vegar Solhjell thinks file sharing should be legal… he is thinking of other ways of “compensating the industry” like blanket ISP fees, which means Grandma and Grandpa who have no idea what the heck P2P or filesharing etc means will have to pay big content when all they do is use the net to chat with their grandchildren via IM, browse news sites and send email.
All our boycotting of their crap music and physical products like CDs will be for naught if the industry pulls off their biggest trick by getting money for nothing every month due to blanket fees. That should NEVER happen or all our won battles would be for nothing, they would have won the war.
/CJ
March 9th, 2009 at 10:07 pm
Some information:
Telenor is not only the largest ISP in Norway, but also the largest landline/mobile phone operator in Norway. They were a telecom monopoly until 1993; gov’t owned then, now a traded company with the gov’t still holding a majority share (53.97%, according to telenor.no).
For reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telenor for English,
and http://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telenor for Norwegian.