Internet Life

Web Piracy Is ISP's Fault, the IFPI Says

Running out of targets?

By Vlad Constandes, SEO News Editor

25th of January 2008, 21:56 GMT

Adjust text size:

Internet piracy is the number one problem on the web right now, it is the sole purpose of huge sums of money being lost every year by media industries, so at one point they got tired and sick of it and they tried to crack it down. Needless to say that with the legislation still under development (at the time) they couldn't do all that much, but they could, in change, find, with the help of the authorities, track down some individuals responsible for the crime and have them punished.

That was in 2006. Two years later, in 2008, the International Federation of the

Phonographic Industry is holding Internet Service Providers accountable for piracy. Well not for the act itself, but for the fact that it did nothing to stop it from happening. Strangely enough, they have found government backing their claims, that in fact it is the ISPs who should be their own police.

John Kennedy, the president of the IFPI, told WebUser.com that "A turning tide of opinion is one thing - a concrete programme of action is another. There is only one acceptable moment for ISPs to start taking responsibility for protecting content - and that moment is now."

The one person who by himself turned the tide, in Kennedy's words, is French President Nicholas Sarkozy, who in late November last year announced that, in the country he runs, ISPs would be held responsible for whatever file sharing is going on within its network and that they had the job of disconnecting the respective users.

"Up until now ISPs have allowed copyright theft to run rampant on their networks, causing a massive devaluation of copyrighted music. More than anything else, the Sarkozy agreement in France has changed the mood, but there has been progress among Governments and in courts elsewhere too," said Kennedy.

Needless to say that this will most likely stir a wave of protest over what will be defined as file sharing or the amount of data that will be legal to be transferred from one user to the other. I'm foreseeing something really ugly looming up, but I'm not the optimistic type.

TAGS:

internet | piracy | ISP | IFPI

SEARCH THE NEWS ARCHIVE :

Today's News | Yesterday's News | News Archive

User opinions:

Comment #1 by: LoCatus on 26 Jan 2008, 01:12 GMT

reply to this comment

What a crock. It is not the ISP's problem to police the pirates. Saying it is is the same as saying a firearms manufacturer is responsible for each and every person who is shot by one of their products. It's like saying it's the auto maker who is responsible for people running stop signs and causing accidents.

HEY IFPI! Here's a couple ideas for you... Go after the people distributing the materials. (The ISP's WILL supply you with pertinent information if it is properly and legally requested)
How's about stop wasting millions on DRM and copy protection that DOESN'T WORK (You are not stopping the pirates) and drop the prices of the disks?

LoCatus

Share your opinion:

SUBMIT PROGRAM \| ADVERTISE \| GET HELP \| SEND US FEEDBACK \| RSS FEEDS \| ENTER NEWS SITE \| ENGLISH BOARD \| ROMANIAN FORUM
© 2001 - 2008 Softpedia. All rights reserved. Softpedia™ and the Softpedia™ logo are registered trademarks of SoftNews NET SRL.	Copyright Information \| Privacy Policy \| Terms of Use \| Update your software \| Archive

NEWS CATEGORIES: