UK : Internet provider fires shot across bows of music industry on piracy

TalkTalk, the internet service-provider owned by Carphone Warehouse, has flatly rejected demands from the music and film industries that it should "police" the internet and cut off some broadband customers in an attempt to stem the flood of illegal file-sharing. The British Phonographic Industry (BPI), has suggested persistent illegal file-sharers should be warned by their service providers and then be cut off under a "three strikes and you're out" rule. (The Guardian)

Virgin Media in talks to trial three strikes regime against P2P

Virgin Media could soon become the second major ISP to attempt to implement a "three strikes" system against illegal filesharers in partnership with the record industry. The cable company is in talks with the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) to trial a system of warnings, followed by disconnection, for the most persistent copyright infringers. It's the same scheme that Tiscali briefly put in place last summer. That led to 4 customers being disconnected after allegedly ignoring the warnings, but relations between Tiscali and the BPI collapsed in a row over how the costs should be shared. (The Register)

File Sharers Get Help Spotting ISP Moves

Vuze Inc., a California-based company that provides a popular file-sharing program, is giving its users a tool to help figure out if their Internet service provider is interfering with their traffic. The Associated Press last year confirmed user reports that Comcast Corp., the country's largest cable company, was secretly disrupting some file-sharing by its subscribers. The "plug-in" Vuze made available as a free download last weekend looks for "reset packets," the tool Comcast uses to break off some connections with computers trying to download files from Comcast subscribers, Vuze said Wednesday. (AP)

Inside The Deals: AOL May Be Worth More Than You Think

Long-suffering AOL may be worth more than some investors think. Last fall, UBS analyst Mark Morris pegged the value of Time Warner’s AOL unit at $13 billion, a mere 2.5 times revenue. That pessimistic view reflects AOL’s declining revenue, which fell 33 percent last year to $5.2 billion. A lot has changed during the last few months. Oh, AOL’s revenue still is on the decline. But Microsoft’s offer to buy Yahoo for $42 billion has pressured its rivals. That bid, currently worth about six times Yahoo revenue, shows that even mature Internet companies have plenty of appeal to the right strategic buyer. (PaidContent)

Italian File-Sharers Let Off The Hook

Italian companies may not spy on individuals who engage in illegal file-sharing, according to a controversial new ruling. The ruling of Francesco Pizzetti, president of the official Italian body for Guaranteeing the Protection of Private Data, follows the attempts of a German record label, Peppermint, which last year began using the Swiss computer firm Logistep to gather the IP addresses of at least 300 Italians who were illegally sharing files. (Billboard)

Sweden to Get Tough on File-Sharers

Swedish courts will soon be able to force the country's Internet providers to hand out information on suspected file-sharers in a move to crackdown on online piracy, the culture and justice ministers said Friday. "We need to... stand up for musicians, authors, filmmakers and all other copyright owners so that they have the right to their own material," Justice Minister Beatrice Ask and Culture Minister Lena Adelsohn Liljeroth wrote in a joint opinion piece published in the Svenska Dagbladet daily. The ministers said they will move ahead with the proposal this spring. (AP)

Japan : Winny copiers to be cut off from Internet

The nation's four Internet provider organizations have agreed to forcibly cut the Internet connection of users found to repeatedly use Winny and other file-sharing programs to illegally copy gaming software and music, it was learned Friday. The organizations plan to launch a consultative panel, possibly in April, together with copyright organizations including the Japanese Society for Rights of Authors, Composers and Publishers and the Association of Copyright for Computer Software. They will then begin making guidelines for disconnecting users from the Internet who leak illegally copied material onto the Net. (Daily Yomiuru Online, Variety, News.com, Billboard)

Verizon embraces P4P, a more efficient peer-to-peer tech

The Distributed Computing Industry Association's P4P workgroup is devising a new protocol for what researchers describe as carrier-grade peer-to-peer file transfer systems. Verizon reports that a recent test it conducted revealed that the new protocol provides a significant boost in download performance while simultaneously reducing network congestion. Verizon senior technologist and P4P workgroup co-chair Doug Pasko said that Verizon observed download performance improvements of approximately 200 percent during tests conducted with Pando. (Ars Technica, AP)

ISPs urged to help combat pirates

The call will be made in a speech, seen by the Financial Times, to be delivered by Feargal Sharkey, chief executive of British Music Rights, at the awards ceremony of the Internet Services Providers' Association. "My key message to you tonight is that the music industry is embracing change," wrote Mr Sharkey, former singer with 1970s punk band The Undertones. "This is the debate we need to get back on track: how to unlock that insatiable demand for music, and in a way that grows both of our businesses. Surely the bright and brilliant minds in this room can help figure this out?" (Financial Times)

Chief of AOL’s Parent Is Open to Deal

Jeffrey L. Bewkes, the chief executive of Time Warner, AOL’s parent company, acknowledged weakness in the business and said he was open to combining AOL with another company — “whatever configuration makes it the strongest and the most valuable.” But he may have been soft-pedaling what seems to be an increasingly troublesome situation at AOL, which has bet its future on a new strategy of selling advertising across the Internet and has spent more than $1 billion on related acquisitions. (NY Times)

Music firms take Irish ISP to court over illegal downloads

Four major record companies have brought legal action to force Irish ISP Eircom to stop its networks being used for the illegal downloading of music, according to The Irish Times. This is the first case in Ireland where internet service providers have been targeted rather than individual illegal downloaders. (Computer Weekly, Billboard, Ireland.com)

U.K. pirates would heed ISP warning

Piracy would be massively reduced if offenders in the U.K. received a warning from their Internet service provider. A report undertaken by Entertainment Media Research, suggests 70% of people would cease piracy if they received a warning. Percentage of those who would stop downloading unauthorized content if contacted by their ISP rises to a whopping 78% among male teens. (Variety, Ars Technica)

NY AG subpoenas Comcast on broadband

Comcast, the nation's largest cable company, is the subject of several complaints to the Federal Communications Commission and has been sued by customers over its throttling of file-sharing traffic on its cable-modem service. "We have requested information from the company via subpoena," Jeffrey Lerner, a spokesman for Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, said Tuesday. (AP, Portfolio.com)

IFPI Fails to Force ISPs to Become Anti-Piracy Enforcers

The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) has been lobbying politicians of the European Parliament to force ISP’s to identify, filter, block and remove copyright infringing content from the Internet. Now, according to an early report, it appears that all three anti-piracy measures have been defeated. (Torrent Freak)

DRM Is Dead, But Watermarks Rise From Its Ashes

With all of the Big Four record labels now jettisoning digital rights management, music fans have every reason to rejoice. But consumer advocates are singing a note of caution, as the music industry experiments with digital-watermarking technology as a DRM substitute. Analyses of watermarked traffic can be done with "forensic precision," and that the results could give the music industry hard evidence of copyright music transiting specific internet providers' networks. "It gives them the ability to put pressure on policy makers and ISPs to do filtering," said Fred Von Lohmann, an Electronic Frontier Foundation attorney. (Wired)

BT bets its future on broadband 20 times faster than now

BT is boosting Britain's attempt to remain at the top of the global broadband market with plans to install a network at Ebbsfleet in Kent that offers speeds 20 times faster than the average UK household connection. The company hopes its deployment of the UK's fastest ever residential network, at the development of 10,000 new homes, will be a crucial testbed as the government, regulator Ofcom and industry come to decide how to upgrade the country's broadband network. (The Guardian)

ATT and Other I.S.P.’s May Be Getting Ready to Filter

At a small panel discussion about digital piracy at NBC’s booth on the Consumer Electronics Show floor, representatives from NBC, Microsoft, several digital filtering companies and the telecom giant ATT said the time was right to start filtering for copyrighted content at the network level. “What we are already doing to address piracy hasn’t been working. There’s no secret there,” said James Cicconi, senior vice president, external & legal affairs for ATT. (NY Times)

FCC to Investigate Comcast's Alleged P2P Throttling

The Federal Communications Commission will investigate complaints that Comcast actively interferes with Internet traffic as its subscribers try to share files online, the commission’s chairman, Kevin J. Martin, said Tuesday. Comcast denies that it blocks file sharing, but acknowledged that it was “delaying” some traffic between computers that share files. (AP)