This headline was truncated to "Music royalties group poo" by my news ticker, which I quite liked.

However my favourite truncated headline has to be from the BBC: "Mills-McCartney hires royal leg [al team]".

It may take a while to make Pirates understand that they are not above the law, but they will either learn or go to jail.

ISP's generate profits from providing a gateway to the Net and as such they have an obligation to filter illegal distribution of copyright protected materials. If the ISPs are unwilling to do this then they are in the wrong business and should fold their tent and call it a day. All industries are subjected to regulation and ISPs and the Net should be no different.

A poor attempt at a Troll :)

See here for instructions: http://www.urban75.com/Mag/troll.html

"ISP's generate profits from providing a gateway to the Net and as such they have an obligation to filter illegal distribution of copyright protected materials"

Therefore toll road or toll bridge operators, who provide a paid gateway, have the responsibility for enforcing speed limits and all other motoring laws.....?!? I think not.

Applying that logic on other companies, such as phone companies. All crimes committed or planned over phone should be filtered by the phone companies? Right...

Paris: cause she knows information, eh pictures and stuff, want to be free...

Punishing the middlemen is generally pointless. The people at either end just contact each other by a different system.

Try and lock people out by hitting the access channels and you'll be about as successful as any other DRM developer who claims their system will be secure for the next 10 years and then sees it broken within 48 hours.

"ISP's generate profits from providing a gateway to the Net and as such they have an obligation to filter illegal distribution of copyright protected materials."

Um, no they don't. And it's not a view you are likely to hold unless you have either a) a vested interest or b) mental retardation.

The Post Office don't filter their packages (although they do ask very nicely that you don't send bad things through them). Telephone companies don't stop you swearing over the phone lines (although, in the UK, it is illegal to do so - at least over landlines). And in the name of Max Mosley no newspaper would ever print something libellous...

The reason ISPs are being asked to filter or at least monitor their traffic is a very simple one - because they can. Most can't be bothered and, if any of the UK ISPs had the balls, they'd fight the record companies attempts to make them play ball. Trouble is, they're just going to follow the path of least resistance - whether that means letting people do what they like or avoiding being taken to court in a test case.

Anonymous Coward, although you'll probably try and sue El Reg to trace me anyway...

Odd you should say that when Sony

a) put a rootkit on your system

b) stole code from someone else

c) left a backdoor on your system even when you used their belated instruction for removing the rootkit

Acts which have had McKinnon facing several centuries of jail time.

Sony seems to think they are above the law.

The entire GROUP seem to think this. Or have you forgotten their 171M fine for price fixing CD's (an illegal cartel) that netted them billions in profits. Or using unlicensed investigators. Or barratry (filing John Doe criminal cases to drop them when you have a name and persue civil cases). How about lying to the courts? Making up losses. Abuse of process. etc, etc, etc

When will they get a clue. If there's a monopoly, the only method of making a free market work is to create a competitor that is illegal. Piracy.

Worse, if you have a pirate copy, you have a BETTER product than the official one.

Any wonder people aren't paying?

so what rock are you hiding under?

its not a matter if a isp is willing or not to filter copyright infringing materal, its if it is possible or not.

so, you can block all P2P protocols, but thats not fair, because they do have legitimate use..

actively scan every media file that passes through its network? too many privacy issues.

end of the day, you cant filter every bit of pirate music or video, and if you cant block it all, you may as well not block any.

while your in the process of banning stuff and holding people liable for others actions.... ban cameras, to stop the kiddie porn brokers, ban the building of roads, because you can break the speed limit on it. ban everything that has a legitimate use just because it can be exploited for other means.

I agree!!!

Also, schools should be banned, because they ignore their obligations by teaching people to read and therefore possibly use the internet via an ISP to download said copyrighted material.

that you can unerringly detect what given bits going over the interweb are specifically copyright protected and which are not? Is that 10 second snippet legal or is it even yours? Is that full song on your "protected" list or not? I'm not in favor of pirates, but i'm not in favor of "stupid", either.

Let's hope the court comes to it's senses and does a little smackdown on these protectards.

They do?...There was me thinjing they are a mearly profiding access for comms...perhaps you would like phone companies to filter all calls as they could be ilegal things happening or the post office opening all lettters to make sure nothing bad is being sent...

Or you could just fuck off you BPI shill...

"have an obligation to filter illegal distribution of copyright protected materials" ...

No, they dont. In the same way as those highways agency provides a gateway to the road system it is up to LAW ENFORCEMENT to enforce the law.

Also copyright is a civil crime, which means that it is those who feel their right have been compromised who have to follow it up...

If you are going to post AC, then you really should check the propaganda before you repeat it.

You may be right about 'Pirates' but ISPs are not pirates but common carriers. Many (me included) don't believe they have any right to perform deep packet inspection to discover what users are doing. Even if they did, how do you suppose they could discern if a particular data packet stream contained copyright material which was being transmitted without permission? The idea is absurd.

In the same way, I would not want all of my phone calls listened into by BT in case I was plotting some illegal activity. Since you are posting as a AC I guess you wouldn't either.

I think it is you, AC, who needs to get a clue.

Yawn Troll

But while we are on the subject this is a rather ridiculous ruling, should all knife manufacturers vet all their customers or car manufacturers be held liable if one of their vehicles was used in a robbery. Tut tut Belgium, what would Hercule Poirot (it's the only famous Belgian I can think of and he's fictional) have made of it all.

Actually - in Belgium they want to make copyright infringement a criminal offence, including trying to circumvent paying the AUVIBEL levy on recordable media. If they had their way they'd genuinely have Customs set up checkpoints at the border and search cars to see if you were trying to smuggle blank CDs into the country.

They already regularly get the cops to march in their dozens into computer fayres to bust importers who don't charge the levy (remember - the levy is paid to same cartel who've been caught lying in court, breaking EU competition law, support the lifestyle of drug addled homophobes etc).

in other news, decedents of the displaced people from the slave trade are to sue the Atlantic ocean for being the carrier of said slaves from Africa to America....

the Atlantic Ocean has denied responsibility and have shifted the blame onto the continental plates. if there was no shift, there would be no ocean to carry them over....

really, what I don't understand is why don't they simply ask ISPs to block certain websites from being accessible? I understand that bittorrent have many legitimate uses, but those "legitimate" uses are usually tracked on certain trackers while illegitimate files are served on illegitimate trackers.

Just go by the percentage of the files on the tracker, if 90% are movies and 10% are gnu/linux disk images (and other stuff), then the tracker should be blocked.

Now stop trying to use "losing money" as a reason to spy on what I do online

re: why not block trackers?

time and man power and it is just as easley subverted as anything else

re:Sooner or later the Pirates will buy a clue

"troll troll troll your post gently down the feed"

ok I will bite. pepol have answered the why shouldn't they do it but my point is it probably is not possible the original article pointed out that the software they where told they should use for filtering did not work

that should be

Sooner or later the Pirates will steal a clue

ok ok no need to push

...unite!

And if you can't be bothered to unite, does anyone have a good tracker for the latest Bond film?

There seems to be an echo in your post. Pull your head out of your arse and try again.

Retard.