p2pnet - rss feed: Tiscali as BPI copyright cops
p2p news / p2pnet: News that European ISP Tiscali and Hollywood’s BPI (British Phonographic Industry) ‘trade’ group are at war continues to pull headlines.
“The two, which normally work together to encourage a bigger market for legal digital music purchases, have been conducting their joint business this week by press release, making public an underlying mutual discontent,” says the International Herald Tribune.
Coverage by puff piece is now SOP and in typical entertainment cartel fashion, the BPI says it wants Tiscali and Cable & Wireless to act as unpaid Hollywood copyright cops to, as the IHT sums it up, “track down and turn over” information about accounts, “that may be offering copyrighted songs free on peer-to-peer file-sharing networks over the Internet”.
Time Warner, Viacom, Fox, Sony, NBC Universal and Disney routinely use international police forces and government administrations, paid for by local citizens, to do their dirty work. So why not ISPs as well? - the reasoning goes.
C&W was yesterday reported to be taking, “whatever steps are necessary to put the matter right” saying policies for its Bulldog broadband Net service meant any accounts used for illegal file-sharing would normally be closed.
But Tiscali, with 17 clients among the 59 alleged transgressors, wasn’t cooperating.
In what Tiscali called a “media ambush,” the BPI fired off press statements demanding that the two ISPs immediately freeze the accounts of alleged transgressors. The releases were instantly picked up by the mainstream media.
The BPI, “sent their letter to the media before we even had a chance to read it and the information they went to press with was not strictly correct,” said a Tiscali spokeswoman.
Tiscali responded with an open letter in which it among other things, it said, “It is not for Tiscali, as an ISP, nor the BPI, as a trade association, to effectively act as a regulator or law enforcement agency and deny individuals the right to defend themselves against the allegations made against them.”
Quite some front on the BPI’s part, thought The Guardian Unlimited’s Charles Arthur, “get the ISPs to bear the responsibility for cutting people off , without accepting the legal burden of proof”.
Had something gone wrong with the BPI’s strategy of, “suing alleged file-sharers into oblivion?” - wondered the story, going on, “If it’s so confident that the ISPs are closing their eyes, why not sue the ISPs?
“Unsurprisingly, Tiscali wasn’t amused. (It’s been having an unamused year with the record industry, having had last month to withdraw its Juke Box, a legalised peer-to-peer music streaming service, because ‘it’s virtually impossible to work with [the European Recording Industry] in the promotion of legal music online’. “
However, Tiscali’s protective shield extends only to 16 of the 17 alleged client offenders.
In its open letter, the company says it’s contacted one customer, “in respect of whom you have provided partial evidence of communication to the public of copyrighted sound recordings and have given such customer seven days from the date of receipt of our letter to provide an explanation.
“Should we not receive an adequate explanation during such period, we shall suspend the user’s account pending resolution of your investigation, assuming by that time we have received evidence from you of a link between the user account and the IP address at the relevant time.”
Arthur suspects, “providing the evidence that Tiscali is asking for (such as screenshots of the users’ systems) might just infringe the Computer Misuse Act - you’d have to prove that you’d been invited into their computer to take the picture. (If you’re a Tiscali customer who likes the occasional bit of p2p, it might be worth seeing if you can find a pro bono lawyer on that one.)”
Stay tuned.
Digg this.
Also See:
International Herald Tribune - The End User: Digital discord, July 12, 2006
put the matter right - Tiscali tells Hollywood to poke it, July 12, 2006
The Guardian Unlimited - Record labels vs ISPs: it’s starting to get nasty, July 12, 2006
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