Big Content, ISPs nearing agreement on piracy crackdown system

Hope it goes the distance.

If not this time, sooner or later they will put an end to it. Pirates are living on borrowed time at this point. Enjoy it while you can scum bags.

Looks like they are going to legalize 420 to make room for the content pirates.

no no guys you are totally missing the point - FAIR USE! </gideon>

Border's Books, Blockbuster, Hollywood Video, Movie Gallery, Tower Records, and a hundred more gone.

Do you see a pattern?

Time for a correction........

The pattern is a systematic destruction of the value of intellectual property.

Yes, a pattern of dumbing down and Farenheit 451 "no books"...

We allready have similar laws over here in the UK They can cut off your ISP for downloading games ect Havent heard of one case yet

Key word being "yet." They just may be collecting data at this stage. Or... they only passed that one, which was easy to pass, to pave the way for something much more aggressive.

You never know what the ultimate plan is when they write these things.

While I think piracy has hurt the various media industries I don't know that these four are a good example. Blockbuster and Hollywood video fell behind the times. Netflix and Redbox killed them. People got sick of paying $4 for a rental and then seemingly always getting stuck with late fees.

Tower, along with many record companies were hurt because of the ability to buy music online. No longer did a person need to go to Tower and buy a full length CD for $15-$20 when they can just pay 99cents for the songs they want.

Borders had the music problem, plus they don't have an e-reader.

Sure, piracy hurt them all, but I think in these cases letting technology pass them by was just as big a reason.

Exactly what I was going to post.

I don't know anyone personally who doesn't have a Netflix subscription. Most people I know own Kindles, and nearly everyone I know actively purchases on iTunes.

These businesses died because of a shift in the marketplace, and a complacent attitude about their business model, not a direct result of piracy.

Too bad most of the big file sharing companies and websites aren't in the US. Atleast some action is being taken somewhere though.

We have had them in force for over 2 years now and it doesent work because people just change ISPs or buy dongles or use other peoples wifi conecections. I know a 22 year old girl who doesnt even pay for her internet she just picks up open wifi connections in her flat and uses those. This was done not only in the UK but accross the EU and people still use torrents and file sharing sites all the time. The US seem to be way behind on these kinds of things for some reason

It's been in the works for awhile, and IT'S GOING TO HAPPEN. I've been saying it on this forum for years.

When it happens, it's going to come with a price tag.

What will happen:

The US government will enact a 'panel' that determines what sites are to be blocked by major ISPs in the United States to reduce piracy and/or other illegal activity.

Sites like rapidshare, hotfile, megaupload, warez forums, torrent sites and maybe even tube sites would be blocked to 98% of internet traffic in the United States. Other governments in other countries could soon follow suit.

However, be careful what you wish for. As with anything regulated by the government, the system will have flaws. Innocent websites could fall victim with little or no recourse, lobbyist could use the law to their advantage.....

Or even worse....

This action could eventually be a frightening step towards restrictions on content, sites and services for other reasons than piracy. Once you give a sanctioning body of government the ability to control access to certain sites, there is no taking it back.

The year after they block pirated sites, they could decide to block access to certain types of content, (piss, scat, girls that look young, rape, BDSM, etc, etc). They could block access to certain services to benefit lobbyist.

In the end, you can't have your cake and eat it too when it comes to handing control over to the government. I believe that goes for everything; whether it's healthcare, banks, private jobs that have become government-sponsored or the internet.

I think one of the other big reasons it doesent work is because it costs the ISP to actively police this kind of thing and they do not make any money from it, They loose money and they know to well that the banned customer will just go elsewhere loosing them even more money. Until they can find a way to make money from it like the letters that where sent out which went really wrong in the end, They dont give a flying fuck what games, songs ect people are downloading

Does that mean we can be high and making money too? Nirvana....

But seriously, I think the use of the INternet in the power overthrows going on in MiddleEast/North Africa scares the shit out of a lot of governments...I think we are seeing attempts for them to regain control...Which as you guys say, is good and bad. Just do clean, legal biz and most likely we will all be fine. If not, the game is over and we are done. There's always UEI.

No doubt there are huge hurdles with laws such as that, but now the ground work is now set to easily pass new laws with more teeth should (if) they get the tech side together.

And yes, the USA is way behind. Which is amazing because you'd think Hollywood would be able to lobby to get some real laws passed. I think it's also an indication of just how out of touch the US government is.

Something will come together sooner or later. No one expected this problem and there is no easy solution, but I have faith that through trial and error, someone will figure something out.

Exactamundo.

It's all pointless. Piracy always has been and always will be. It's a never ending progression from one platform to another.. one technology to another. Online piracys' gone from BBS > FTP > Newsgroup > HTTP > Torrent > File lockers/Tubes or something like that. The torrent crowd will move onto the file lockers. The money just moves from the torrent site owners to the file locker site owners. The advertisers keep on banking.

The cheapening of bandwith and increasing speeds will make it all the more worse. The general public will grow more and more pirate-savy. I don't see file lockers ever going (international laws being what they are) but if they did, something else would just come and replace them. What? I don't know. Crypto-P2P? Massive RDP service roll-out?

The only hope for most of digital content producers is to make shit so good Joe Bloggs wants it more than the effort of downloading it, he just puts his CC # into somewhere legit.

OR... you learn some actual marketing skills (rather soley than relying on spamming tits + ass across the internet) and create a sales funnel that monetizes free content first and benefits from upsells later.

If you can montize your content whilst it's all out there, then you're gonna bank so fucking hard with this downloading/social generation of traffic.

OR..... they will learn to develop new content lock down technologies like a better version of DRM and us it. I can assure you any perceived money lost to DRM bitching is nothing on the scale of money lost by piracy bar none. At some point, those companies who are left, will make this realization.

Frankly, I think the days of the downloads (at least the higher quality, new stuff) is coming to an end for the big budget studios. Soon, because of the insanely low bandwidth costs, you are going to have streaming only solutions in the near future.

But piracy negates every point you make: DRM and non-downloads.

Billion dollars corps can't keep their DRM solid (Sony) and every way of displaying digital content has some app/addon that bypasses/downloads it. There is nothing that the commited hacker crowd won't circumnavigate. Always have done.

Don't look to technology to protect your income. Change the business model to make more than you ever have done.

There are multiple options that this industry could choose was my point.

1. Switch back to DRM, or a better version of that.
2. Switch to a streaming only business model.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

They also release a brand new radar detector every time that there is an upgrade in the police's guns to "beat the system". Yet any time I drive down the highway there are people pulled over for speeding.

I'm pretty sure the evidence is overwhemling that the pirate community do "beat the system" and profit massively from it, whilst the content producers profits are lowering. Building a better mousetrap just isn't gonna stop piracy.

I never said it was going to 100% stop piracy troll de'jour.

There are some people who will never pay for shit. Those people are not my, or business owners, target audience. Just as democrats will never convert the most die hard republican. It is a waste of time and resources.

However, NetFlix, and iTunes have "overwhelming" shown people will pay for content. Just as Clips4Sale has shown that people will even pay on a per clip basis for $12.99 for a 12 minute clip when they could get 1000 for $24.95.

We can play your silly reindeer game of piracy justification all day. But for anything you point to, there is an opposite business model that is working..... with some more successful than others. But my original point was that the business model has changed, as have customers wants and needs. The adult industry needs to "build a better mousetrap" to help keep them profitable.

This can only be a stop-gap measure.

Business models will have to change.

DRM is a pipe dream.

Truth is, an ISP is a form of Gov Regulation, which regulates your ability to access the Internet, business providing it as a service is the mask they use.

The technology and 'net tech has already been created that will solve this issue. The idea behind an IntrAnet and a torrent, will end up saving our asses. Add in the ability to cloud internet access through wifi, local cache the data in bits across the local cloud, the more people, the bigger/better/faster that cloud would be.. making several sub-internet or copies of the Internet, all over the globe and no need for an ISP.

Self regulation at its finest... the more they push, the more this becomes a reality.

huh? i clicked your thread title and read the above post and was hopeful that there was some new law with big fang being planned. So I clicked the link to the article ...... where do you see anything about 'steel bars hotel'? all i see is another toothless law that won't do a thing in the battle against piracy.

in a nutshell here is what may happen to a pirate:

1)Throttling subscriber bandwidth speeds

2)Limiting subscriber access to websites (eg, restricting access to the top 200 sites until the contested behavior stops)

3)Requiring the subscriber to participate in an educational program on copyright

Terminating Internet access is not being considered, the report says. The cost of this agreement will be shared by the ISPs and content providers.

i'm sure content thieves are going to be shaking in their boots when they're faced with giving up a Saturday to attend an educational course on copyright

It's old video technology that gets pirated today. People record a tape/dvd, download a wmv and even flash streams and, even the pc.... all old technology.

The entire Internet is getting a hell of a lot more advanced. As it does, the cost of staying on top of the game is increasing. Just a fair warning to those that do not put money into research and development... if you look at the companies that do, they're the ones leading the industry, while the rest fall behind.

The adapt or die idea has a few core messages in it. If you're still a mom and pop shop, you best step the hell up and run a business like it should be ran. And, if you're still doing the same exact thing as you were 6-9 months ago, you're not adapting very well, if at all... that's how fast it's changing today.

Those that stay on top of the game, limit piracy simply because pirates focus on old technology.

It's not about stopping piracy. It's about making it more difficult to commit.

Obviously it's going to evolve tomorrow regardless of what's done today to stop it. Shutting down access via big ISPs to every torrent site, file sharing site and streaming site will still put a HUGE dent in piracy for a couple years which would = billions in every industry.

I wasn't trolling, nor justifying piracy and your Netflix/iTunes/Clips4Sale example is the precise example of what I said would win. Shit worth paying for and something I could half trust putting my CC # in.

I'll leave you to your illusions, but I, for one, am looking forward to banking off this traffic with a new business model. Adapt or die.

True. ISPs could be the last straw. But they're scared to do so, cos they know another ISP won't be so leniant = customers go to them or just use VPSs/RDPs. You have to be seen to stopping pirates... but what is a vast majority of your customers are pirates? You all have pirated, haven't you? I don't believe anyone here hasn't had an illegal copy of movie/audio/pdf/mp3 or seen an illegal stream etc... and the general public is the same. It's a brutal cat-and-mouse game. I feel for the small content producers. It must be crippling.

I love these expert nics that pop up out of nowhere.


Yes, piracy has always been here. They were bootlegging VHS tapes back in the day, then bootlegged DVDs, now internet videos.

The difference between now and then is... THE PIRATES USED TO SELL THE BOOTLEGS.

(Read the part in red a few times until it sinks in)


Huuuuuuge difference between someone jacking your videos and selling them vs jacking your videos and giving them away for free on every street corner. I know some of you are too dense to know there is a difference, or maybe you were not even around back then to see it, but at least ALL porn consumers were still paying for porn back then if they were in a store. If all of the stores used to let people just walk in and take anything they wanted for free, hoping they will buy some gum or a dildo on the way out, it would have destroyed most companies at that time too, including the bulk of the porn stores.

Now the pirates give it away an an attempt to make money elsewhere. Totally fucking stupid because they didn't have to do that. They could have sold it just the same (or even at a discount) and not conditioned an entire generation of what would be porn consumers into not paying for porn. Somewhere along the way someone got the bright idea of using porn someone would normally pay for as a loss leader, and it went downhill from there. It hurt everyone and continues to hurt everyone, even the pirate sites, and it will continue to hurt them. Only the most clever of the pirates will survive.

But that's what you get when you have a bunch of criminals and ex-cons running a "business."


Congrats, you just figured out how to beat piracy. Give yourself a raise.

Read my post above, it won't be the ISPs that make the decision. Congress introduced a bill sometime ago that would give a government panel the ability to tell ISPs what sites are to be blocked.

Anyone from Australia knows how it works.

Proponents want to enact the same system here except for piracy, it won't happen overnight but IMO, it's coming.

Whether they are making money via payment from the consumer or a file locker (per mille/downloads) or from CPM/CPA advertisers on their site, they're making money.

Your diatribe has expounded upon nothing. You've just come across as confused and bitter. Post counts do not equate exeprience so I don't see your need to be so derisive towards some anonymous dude on the Internet you'll never meet.

Does gudieon have a new nic?

I just hope they increase the penalties for seeders/uploaders, advertisers and site owners of piracy sites.

I think he'll be singing a different tune soon.

That will never happen. No government has the resources to go after people on a case by case basis. That's a civil matter and can only be enforced in the country where the offender resides in.

The only people that will be penalized will be ISPs for giving access to any site on a 'black-list'.

It's all pointless. Theft always has been and always will be. They should just let people steal from stores. Seriously.. when are these companies going to get a clue? People are always going to shoplift and burglarize so fuck it. The only hope for retail is to make shit good so Joe Bloggs wants it more than the effort of putting it in his pocket when the camera isn't geared in on him. Theft has gone from Horse theft > Auto theft > Catch my drift? ... BOY.

It's telling that those that vehemently disagree with me focus on my description of their shitty situation and not the proposed solution to getting out of it:

Don't be a victim and cry about it on an internet forum. Be a better marketer.

That's what I thought, you don't get it.

They are not selling it to consumers.



Yes, confused, bitter, a total noob, and too afraid to let people know who I am, even though I'll never meet them, so I post under a fake nic. You got me.

Fucking corporations. The sooner they give everything away the better. They are totally out of touch with the youth of today. No one should be paid for producing a product. That's just pure greed.

Wow, your nonsensical ramblings are headache inducing. YOU'RE the person brought the topic of consumers paying for pirate copies (VHS) into a discussion of internet piracy. You have no idea what you are even rabbiting on about at this point, do you? You're totally lost. Is English your first language?

The username DWB, an anon twitter account and no personal website =/= a full disclosure of who you are. WTF is a "fake nic"? How is my username "fake"? Fuck.

Shit, I bow out. I came to this forum to make some traffic connections. Found some, but reading these dickheads who think cos someone is suggesting to beat piracy by adapting (rather than bashing your head against the problem) is advocating piracy... well, your dead in the water and the better porn marketers will eat you up and leave you still poor.

And some of you guys are thinking of defering to mainstream? lol You got no chance, sunshine! It's more blackhat than porn.

You still don't get it.





Nice to meet you.


Right, you just came here today for the first time.

This is what I do:

http://www.dwbramps.com/

I'm a ramp builder.

You guys are funny. I say funny, because as much as you sit there hoping and praying for regulation, you're pretty clueless it seems on what happens when regulation of all of this were to go into effect, here in the good 'ol USA.

I have a feeling you guys are so keen on government intervention and regulation because you are shit out of ideas and luck in trying to combat such a massive problem for content owners. Its understandable if that's the case, and certainly not a bad thing completely, but its not the ONLY solution out there ya know?

Most major piracy operations out on the interwebz are far more advanced than the US gov and all of the MPAA/RIAA folks combined. They are also not based here in the US, so trying to shut them down has proven a hell of a lot tougher than anyone really admits to. Sure, some big file sharing sites get shut down, but they are just replaced by mirrors and copycats by the tens of thousands. For every one operation taken down, it effectively creates many more popping up in its place. This shit, will never stop. If you think it will, you're an idiot.

They are also in the game for very different reasons than what these groups believe. Most of it actually has to do with bragging rights/street cred amongst their peers, control of content (ie. tweeking video filters, encoding, production value etc) and of course access to a movie or song for example before anyone else has it (0-day). There are lots of other reasons too, most of which are not addressed or even realized, but that's fine.

When you refer to these "evil doers" as "pirates" I'll bet you think they are just a bunch of ninja dressed dudes sitting around in some back alley basement hideout plotting on ways to steal your content and distribute it for monies across their vast connected infrastructure of other hideouts across the globe. -- Nope, most "pirates" are just your average joe blow who is likely to be sick of paying crazy high fees for a movie at an overpriced theater or doesn't want to buy a DVD/Bluray movie at some insane price. See, what you guys don't get is that its better to adapt than to fight things, at least in regards to the "piracy of downloadable content" is concerned. And by adapt, I don't mean adapt and sue them or toss them into prison, I mean just make it a lot more affordable. Stop raping them in price. Look, if a movie costs $250M to produce, maybe Hollywood should take a look at cutting costs on the production side versus the distribution side. They have a very firm control over that stuff, and they know it. They are not losing money on this.. perhaps they are losing a chunk of profit, but they are certainly not losing money in terms of costs.

Anyway, none of this stuff will actually go in the direction you are hoping for. Plainly because of one minor detail.

Money. That's all there is to it.

It costs the ISP's more money to monitor and slow things down than it does to acquire new costumers. Why do you think Comcast made that announcement that they would not share customer data? Because they are nice and sticking up for their customers? lol fuck no!! Its because it costs them more money and they don't like to lose money, they like to make it, so they don't want to even be bothered and used it instead as a PR campaign to look good for a change. +rep to them for the spin, they did a great job.

Think about the industries that would be effected? The security industry, online and offline would love it I'm sure, but only in the short term for most of them. File sharing hosts would probably charge more which is bullshit for "becoming legitimized". Production and distribution costs will certainly continue to rise, a lot faster I'm sure. And the best part of all of this, is the body of regulation, in our government would look to the private industry for "advisers and experts", because that's how regulation always works in this country. After a decade or two, you'll start getting a broken down and aged system that will not really do what it was first supposed to be in place for, as they'd be too busy sifting through an overwhelming amount of shit they were never even supposed to regulate or govern over. Coupled with all sorts of pointless gov jobs in the form of directors of this and that and blah blah blah...

See... its stupid and pointless. Just make shit cheaper and stop crying about this and get on with your day. If you can't figure out how to bank from this, then fuck off and go look somewhere else, because no one solution is gonna stop this. Ever. Well, that is, unless we all die on Dec 21 2012.. lol

If the answer were as simple as lowering prices piracy would be all but gone now. In the mainstream world the days of paying $15-$20 for a CD just to get the one song you want are over. Now for less than a buck you buy the song you want. It never wears out and you will have it for the rest of your life. You can even preview the whole album and decide if you want to buy it and if you do it is likely cheaper than CDs used to be.

On the movie side, it is easy to say "lower production costs." But that is not so simple in practice. Big movie stars that draw in big crowds want to be paid for that service. Sure, the studios could partner with them and offer them all profit sharing so they don't have to pay them bigger salaries up front, but most actors don't want that because all they have control over is their performance. If the studio paid them very little with the promise of a big profit share then never released the movie or they released it with little promotion and it tanked the actors wouldn't make much. Most movies lose money at the box office and then hope to break even or make a profit in DVD sales, rental, PPV etc. These big blockbuster movies that bring in hundreds of millions are what allow the studios to make the other smaller, riskier movies.

So sure, they could lower the price of a ticket to go to the theater, but that price is also controlled by the theater owners so they would be forced to take less too. The question is how low would they have to lower the ticket price to?

With Netflix and Redbox now prices to rent movies are at all time lows. I pay $9 a month for Netflix and get 2-3 movies on DVD per month as well as watching 2-3 more movies and/or TV shows on the streaming service. Redbox lets you rent movies for $1 per day. That is a pretty fair price.

The problem is that pirates want it for free and feel entitled to it. If the price of movies and music were cut by 50% there would be the same amount of piracy as there is now. It doesn't matter how cheap it is, they want it free. If you go on a site like torrent freak and read any article about a ruling/judgement that goes against the pirates then read the comments you might be shocked at what you see. The people are proud to pronounce themselves pirates and vow to never pay for anything again. They simply want it for free so no matter how fair the price is, unless it is free, they aren't co-operating. They don't see it as stealing they see it as liberating what they feel is theirs from the hands of greedy companies.

I'm not sure having all these government rules is a great answer, but I know lowering the price is likely not it either.

I wouldn't be surprised if one day the media companies team up with the PC makers and come up with a hardware based solution.

Think about video game consoles, the content is protected by the hardware. Sure you can modify the hardware to pirate games, but it's a huge pain in the ass so it's kept to a minimum. If the media companies all formed up and paid into a large fund, then paid Intel a royalty to add a feature to all new chips that only allowed licensed content to be played, that would work way better than most laws.

It may seem silly, but if all the TV studios, movie studios, and record labels all paid in, it would end up being billions in royalty fees for Intel, Apple, or whoever they chose to pay to add the hardware based feature.

Any hardware/software solution on the user-end would be cracked with a snap of a finger no matter how sophisticated it is.

Not if you have to modify the hardware to do it.

Look at the Xbox. You can take one apart and modify it to run pirated games, but it's enough of a hassle that it keeps piracy to minimum.

The whole point is to manage piracy, not totally stop it. If the protection is in the CPU or GPU, not many people are going to fuck with their $2K computers just to avoid paying 99 cents for a song. That's the point.

The very motivated will always try to pirate content, the key is to make it so it's just not worth the hassle for the average Joe, which is why I used the Xbox example. Games are $60 and it's still not worth it for most people to crack open their game consoles.