Control Freaks

Phorm expects to launch its targeted ad service in the first half of next year after a successful trial with BT.

Phorm is behind technology that analyses web users' behaviour in a bid to serve up more relevant advertising. The company has been criticised because of fears that its technology will allow internet companies to spy on users.

However, it has taken great pains to explain that privacy is one of its major concerns and that because of the way its targeting works, no identifying information is retained on web users.

Phorm said that the BT trial, which began on 30 September, achieved its primary objective of testing all the elements necessary for a larger deployment, including the serving of small volumes of targeted advertising. BT has said it expects to move towards deployment of the Phorm platform.

Phorm chief executive Kent Ertugrul said: We have met with most of the main players in the advertising sector and they welcome the potential commercial value of the service. We have not set a date for a full launch, as this depends on several factors such as the ISPs, but we are looking at a launch in the near term. This is a first half of 2009 initiative.

A large cosmetic product company has filed a trademark infringement suit against an online sex toy company that sells from India.

Bare Escentuals Beauty Inc., which sells cosmetics at Sephora stores and the QVC television network, claims Bare-essentials.biz violates its trademark at U.S. District Court in Virginia, and is in violation of anti-cybersquatting laws.

Bare Escentuals also is asking that the court transfer its domain name to the cosmetic company. Bare-essentials.biz domain owners, who were not identified in the suit, registered the domain three months ago with a business address in Kolkatta, India.

Plaintiff is informed and believes, and therefore alleges, that registrant willfully and intentionally registered and used a domain name with a natural and obvious misspelling of the word ‘escentual' as ‘essential' to trick plaintiffs' customers into visiting registrant's website, which purports to sell lingerie and personal care products.

Consumer magazine Which? has complained to the solicitors' watchdog about a London law firm that sent bullying letters to hundreds of innocent consumers.

Davenport Lyons has been hunting for internet users who it believes have illegally shared copies of video games and gay pornography. The alleged file-sharers received letters from the law firm demanding payment of £500 compensation for copyright infringement.

However, letters sent out rely on IP addresses and with so many unsecured wireless networks and file sharing sites which spoof IP addresses, serious questions are being asked about the validity of evidence put forward by Davenport Lyons, evidence already discredited by at least two other European countries.

The case was featured on BBC's Watchdog programme this week, and both Watchdog and The Real Hustle have highlighted the relative ease with which many home networks can be breached. Many of those wrongly accused by Davenport Lyons say that their claims of innocence are ignored completely and simply followed with continued demands for money.

Michael Coyle, solicitor advocate with Lawdit who is currently representing hundreds of UK citizens who have received threatening letters, says that using IP addresses alone to pinpoint file sharers is a nonsense and that Davenport Lyons are using heavy-handed tactics.

Which? has written to the Solicitors Regulatory Authority complaining about what it describes as bullying and excessive , pointing out that during a recession, more and more companies will be looking to make money from individuals and that the SRA should take decisive action. Which? has invited anyone wrongly accused by Davenport Lyons to contact whichcomputingnews@which.co.uk.

A number 10 petition has also been created.

Steve Lawson, editor for Hellmail the postal industry news site said: Its a disgrace that an apparently respected firm of solicitors is relying on such poor evidence and sending out letters to frighten the wits out of people that in many cases have done nothing wrong at all, and then for those people to discover that they are not even being listened to.

The Danish Eastern High Court ruled last week that it is up to Internet service providers to ensure that their customers do not use the Swedish torrent-tracking site The Pirate Bay to download illegal content.

This ruling upholds a previous court order in the case between the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) and the Danish ISP Tele2.

Since February this year, Tele2's customers have not been able to access the Pirate Bay because an injunction forces Tele2 to block access at the DNS level.

Last week's ruling upholds this decision and will probably cause the IFPI to insist that all Danish ISPs block access to the site.

An amendment designed to protect Internet users from the anti-piracy lobby has been rejected by President Sarkozy of the European Council.

The rejection goes against the will of the European Parliament, where 88% of the members already voted in favor of the amendment, which was originally destined to protect file-sharers from Internet disconnection under the ‘3 strikes' framework. This was much needed, as in recent years, anti-piracy lobby groups have called for tougher monitoring of Internet users and are actively working to erode their rights further.

The amendment, drafted by Guy Bono and other members of the European Parliament, was supposed to put a halt to the march of the anti-piracy lobby. However, despite the fact that is was adopted by an overwhelming majority, with 573 parliament members voting in favor with just 74 rejections, the European Council went against this democratic vote.

In September, Bono stated in a response to the vote: You do not play with individual freedoms like that, going on to say that the French government should review its three-strikes law. Sarkozy had other plans though, and in his position of President of the European Council, he convinced his friends to reject the proposal.

Innocent people are getting letters from lawyers claiming they should pay for films they've never seen.

A Hertfordshire couple in their 60s were horrified to receive a letter last week from lawyers at Davenport Lyons accusing them of downloading a hardcore gay porn movie. It demanded they pay £503 for copyright infringement or face a high court action. The 20-page pre-settlement letter from Davenport Lyons, acting on behalf of German pornogaphers, insisted they pay £503 to their clients for the 115 minute film Army Fuckers which features Gestapo officers and Czech farmers.

The bewildered couple contacted Guardian Money. We were offended by the title of the film. We don't do porn - straight or gay - and we can't do downloads. We have to ask our son even to do an iTunes purchase.

But this Hertfordshire couple are not alone. A large number of people have received this letter, provoking a massive outcry on web forums such as slyck.com and torrentfreak which estimate 25,000 of these letters have been sent out. If all the recipients paid up, it would net £12.5m - more than almost any porn film has made.

Media expert Michael Coyle at Southampton-based solicitors Lawdit, is fighting on behalf of individuals who have received the letter from Davenport Lyons. Owners of films, music and computer games obviously have to protect their rights and prevent illegal copying, otherwise everyone would get all sorts of content for free.

"But many of these letters have been sent to people who have no idea what a download is. We've had straight pensioners complain, and a mother who had the shock of having to question her 14-year-old son about gay porn because he was the only apparent user of the internet connection that was registered to her.

Coyle says Davenport Lyons represent DigiProtect, a German company with rights to both pornographic films. He questions the amount demanded and methods used to identify computers alleged to have downloaded material. He believes the sum demanded is out of all proportion to the alleged injury. In one case, Davenport Lyons wanted £500 for a £20 game. The alleged file-sharing would have cost only about £50 - the rest is legal costs.

Coyle offers a £50 service for those who refuse to cave in to the demands as he believes some of the firm's successes are due to consumers paying up because they cannot afford the legal costs of defending themselves. They have won court cases including a high-profile £16,000 on a games download. But these have not been defended. My advice is to deny file sharing to any such request.

Google has claimed that a billion dollar lawsuit filed against YouTube, the video-sharing website it owns, threatens internet freedom.

The claim follows legal action by Viacom, an US entertainment company, which is suing YouTube for breach of copyright.

Viacom claim that more than 150,000 unauthorised clips of its copyrighted material have been found on YouTube, and that YouTube and Google, its parent company, had done “little or nothing” to stop infringement.

Google'
s legal team said that Viacom'
s action threatens the way hundreds of millions of people legitimately exchange information across the internet, and that it had gone far beyond its legal obligations in assisting content owners to protect their works.

Viacom filed the initial lawsuit last year, and tabled an amended version last month. It said that YouTube had consistently allowed unauthorised clips of television shows such as South Park and SpongeBob SquarePants to be posted on the site and watched thousands of times.

It also stated that the Al Gore documentary, An Inconvenient Truth , had been illegally uploaded to YouTube, and received an “astounding” 1.5 billion views by site users.

Google is willing to see the matter resolved in the US Supreme Court, said David Eun, vice president of content partnerships. The search giant claims that making service providers liable for the actions of users would threaten the way hundreds of millions of people legitimately exchange information, news, entertainment and political and artistic expression.

Google also claims that it has abided by the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, which protects service providers from liability for copyright infringement as long as they act swiftly to remove that material once it has been reported. Viacom, however, argues that the entire business model for the YouTube site relies on copyrighted content, and that it is unable to keep sufficient track of the unauthorised clips uploaded to its pages.

Last year, Google introduced a content-checking system to try and prevent copyrighted clips being uploaded in the first place, by matching videos against a library of original content to identify copyright infringement.

Wikileaks has revealed a document proposing a treaty that will significantly limit the privacy and rights of Internet users, to the benefit of multimillion dollar companies.

The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, (ACTA), is basically an attempt to criminalize the Internet, thus allowing a virtual police state to occur by the selective prosecuting of crimes. In short, it'
s an international treaty, or hopes to be, that will greatly increase already draconian copyright measures, in a poor attempt to appease the copyright and patent industries.

The proposal is based on the assumption that ‘intellectual property rights'
 trump personal privacy, data protection, probable cause, and lots of other important principles in western democracies.

The measure which has received wider publicity is the so-called ‘Pirate Bay killer'
. At the end of page two, there is a list of things that should be included in a signing country's legal framework, and in the section about criminal sanctions it states significant willful infringements without motivation for financial gain to such an extent as to prejudicially affect the copyright holder (e.g., Internet piracy) . Think non-profit, personal use file-sharing.

Worst of all though, are the following two points speaking of establishment and imposition of deterrent-level penalties and ex-officio authority to take action against infringers . It is argued that the current level of penalties aren'
t harsh enough, so there should be room for harsher punishments. Combine this with the ability to prosecute without a rights holder complaint, which means that people could be liable for millions, or imprisoned for sharing.

Of course, the other area most affected by this would be whistle-blower sites like Wikileaks itself. The owner of any leaked document can claim copyright infringement on its publication, and have it pulled. In this, ACTA is a very effective censorship tool. For some reason, though, this aspect has not been widely reported, or even mentioned.

Update: Hate the G8

2nd June 2008

Draconian new copyright protection laws would give border guards the right to seize iPods and mobile phones on suspicion they contained illegal downloads. That'
s the very real threat of new legislation currently being worked out by the G8 nations, of which the UK is a part, according to Canadian reports.

These reports claim the Canadian government is secretly negotiating to join the US and the EU in an Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). Alongside the introduction of an international copyright law enforcement body, the deal would also see ordinary police given the right to search your digital devices for stolen files, and would also allow them to confiscate such devices. Front line security staff will be empowered to decide what content infringes on copyright laws.

Consumer privacy is also threatened by the act, which would force ISPs to hand over customer information on suspected file-sharers without a warrant.

A Dr Who fan blogging as Mazzmatazz has for some time been posting knitting patterns on the internet to show others how to recreate cuddly versions of the villainous Ood and Adipose aliens from the current BBC series.

The BBC, however, has taken exception to this since someone tried to sell one of her patterns on eBay. This, the broadcaster evidently felt, represented a clear and present danger to the £800m a year its commercial arm makes through its intellectual property and merchandising rights every year and it has unleashed its lawyers on her.

The readiness of giant corporations to confuse an excess of enthusiastic fandom with an insidious commercial threat is not heartening.

Update: Designed to Appease

See full article from the Times , 25th May 2008

A report in The Times and a very British public outcry persuaded the BBC to adopt the knitting patterns used to create the Doctor Who monsters – instead of threatening to force them out of existence.

The report generated a string of comments from Times readers, who questioned why the BBC was threatening one of its licence fee payers. Lawyers had previously said that there was little doubt that Mazzmatazz had broken the BBC'
s Doctor Who trademark by mentioning it on her website.

Only three days later, the BBC is exploring whether it can help to generate some money out of the designs, with a spokesman for the Corporation saying that it was never interested in stifling fan creativity in any way.

The woman behind the patterns for the fat, white Adipose and the squid-faced Ood characters has been invited to meet BBC executives with a view to creating a limited edition of exclusive promotional products for the public to buy.

On her website, Mazzmatazz, who has chosen not to reveal her real name, said that she just wanted to thank everyone who has sent me a message of support over the past few days and confirmed that she was currently discussing matters with the BBC.

The Judge in the landmark High Court legal battle between the Premier League and foreign satellite suppliers QC Leisure and AV Station has retired to consider his verdict.

The Premier League is seeking a ban on importing, selling, hiring, advertising, installing and maintaining decoders.

The defendants deny breaking copyright law and claim that the attempt to stop them selling the decoder cards is in breach of the EC Treaty, which guarantees the right of free trade between member states.

It is not known when Mr Justice Kitchin will deliver his verdict.

MP3tunes' CEO Michael Robertson sent out an email to all users of the online music backup and place-shifting service MP3tunes.com , asking them to help publicize EMI's ridiculous and ignorant lawsuit against the company.

EMI believes that consumers aren't allowed to store their music files online, and that MP3tunes is violating copyright law by providing a backup service. (And we're not using a euphemism here—it really is a backup/place-shifting service and not a file sharing site in disguise.)

In March, a court told EMI it couldn't demand that MP3tunes turn over all the music stored by customers on its servers. Robertson writes on his corporate blog that the request is absurd:

Files are not MP3tunes' possessions any more than the contents of a safety deposit box are owned by the bank that houses them. The storage provided by MP3tunes is the user's own space. A Locker is empty when someone opens an account and that customer decides what files are placed into their Locker. All files are stored at the request of the user. People who choose to utilize remote storage should be guaranteed the same level of privacy they have for the files stored on their local hard disk.

As you may be aware, the major record label EMI has sued MP3tunes, claiming our service is illegal. You can read about the case here. Much is at stake — if you don't have the right to store your own music online then you won't have the right to store ebooks, videos and other digital products as well. The notion of ownership in the 21st century will evaporate. The idea of ownership is important to me and I want to make sure I have that right and my kids do too.

Eircom has rejected claims by four major record companies that it, as the largest broadband internet service provider in the State, must bear some liability for the illegal free downloading of music by computer users.

The companies have claimed Eircom's networks are being used 'on a grand scale' for illegal downloading.

Mr Justice Peter Kelly said today he expected to fix a July date for the hearing of the unique action brought by the record companies against Eircom. The action is the first here aimed at internet service providers, rather than individual illegal downloaders.

The case was initiated last March and Eircom has filed a defence rejecting the claims and contending that the record companies have established no cause of action against it.

The action has been brought by EMI Records (Ireland) Ltd, Sony BMG Music Entertainment (Ireland) Ltd, Universal Music (Ireland) Ltd and Warner Music (Ireland) Ltd against Eircom Ltd.

They are seeking orders - under the Copyright and Related Rights Acts 2000 - restraining Eircom from infringing copyright in the sound recordings owned by, or exclusively licensed to them, by making available (through Eircom's internet service facilities) copies of those recordings to the public without the companies' consent.

Willie Kavanagh, managing director of EMI Ireland and chairman of the Irish Recorded Music Association (IRMA), has said that, because of illegal downloading and other factors, the Irish music industry is experiencing 'a dramatic and accelerating decline' in income.

The record companies believed greater availability of broadband will lead to a further escalation in the volume of unlawful distribution of recordings, he added. While the record companies had taken various measures to discourage record piracy, including public
awareness campaigns and legal actions against individuals engaged in piracy, these had proven very costly and time consuming and were not enough to stop people using illegal services on a broad scale.

Virgin Media is in negotiations with content producers about introducing a system that would slow down customers' access to material from producers that did not pay Virgin a fee, its chief executive has said.

Neil Berkett said that Virgin Media is talking to producers about creating a fast-track access system which would enable their content to be prioritised on its network.

Such a system would relegate companies which did not pay its fees to slower connections, meaning that users' experience of those sites and services would be degraded.

Berkett's comments, in an interview with the Royal Television Society's magazine Television, will ignite a debate in the UK over net neutrality, a subject that has been the source of controversy in the US in recent years. Net neutrality is the name given to the current state of internet access which treats all packets of information equally.

In the US, telecoms companies have objected to the fact that online video and audio companies are making money from internet users over networks the telcos provide. They want to be able to offer faster access to their consumers to content firms, for a fee.

Berkett told Television that he believed the UK Government was open to the idea of fast and slow lane internet access: This net-neutrality thing is a load of bollocks.

Television magazine said that Berkett told it that the company is already negotiating with content producers and video games publishers about 'more effective' access to Virgin Media subscribers. He conceded that the plan would slow down the connections subscribers would have to material produced by firms which did not pay it.

The Premier League has launched a High Court action yesterday to ban cheap live televised matches. The League is seeking damages and an order to stop companies supplying equipment which enables British viewers to receive the games via a foreign broadcaster rather than the more expensive domestic broadcaster BSkyB.

James Mellor QC, representing the Premier League, told Mr Justice Kitchin at the London court: It is a good old-fashioned rip off. He said QC Leisure and AV Station are supplying domestic decoding cards from Greece and North Africa which allow British viewers access to broadcasting services to which they are not entitled. In this country you can watch Premiership football courtesy of Sky. You pay your Sky subscription.

He said that if publicans want to show the matches to customers, they have to pay a more expensive commercial subscription. If a publican takes a domestic Sky card and uses it to display Premiership football in his pub, he is obtaining unauthorised access. It is a breach of contract and a criminal offence. There have been upwards of 180 prosecutions of publicans who have used domestic Sky cards for commercial purposes.

The companies claim that European law allows the free movement of goods throughout the community and if the cards are available on the market, then they can be sold anywhere within the EC.

Mellor said the case is not about free movement of goods but about illegal infringement of copyright. It is about dealers making a fat profit. All they do is get hold of a foreign card and apply a substantial mark up of up to 100 per cent. They are just acting as a postal service. How do they get hold of these cards? They get them through deception.

He said the defendants provide false names and addresses in Greece and North Africa to apply for the cards. The cards cannot be sold outside the particular country where they are issued and when the authorised suppliers find out about the deception, the contracts are terminated and the service is switched off, he said.

The case is expected to last up to two weeks.

Component video outputs have been dropped from the newest version of Sky's high definition boxes in an apparent anti-piracy move.

Older Sky HD boxes have both HDMI and component outputs; however, of the two, only the HDMI connection supports HDCP - high bandwidth digital content protection - which is designed to make copying content in high definition move difficult.

HDMI is now a standard connection on high definition televisions but older equipment may only support component video. It is thought Sky left such connections on earlier models for this reason; in 2005, Sky told Digital Spy that all programming would be available over the component outputs.

Sky has amended the Sky HD user guide with an explanation stating that a minor adjustment has been made by removing the HD analogue component video connection.

It added: This change was made to help prevent the illegal copying of HD programmes and movies, and enable Sky to continue to bring you quality entertainment.

European politicians have voted down calls to throw suspected file-sharers off the net.

The idea to cut off persistent pirates formed part of a wide-ranging report on creative industries written for the European parliament.

But in a narrow vote MEPs backed an amendment to the report which said net bans conflicted with civil liberties and human rights.

It puts MEPS at odds with governments planning such action against file sharers.

The vote shows that MEPs want to strike a balance between the interests of rights holders and those of consumers, and that big measures like cutting off internet access shouldn't be used, said a spokeswoman for the European Parliament after the vote.

The amendment was added to the so-called Bono Report on the Cultural Industries. This was written by French MEP Guy Bono to inform forthcoming European parliament policy that would encourage growth in the region's creative industries. The amendment called on the EC and its member nations to avoid adopting measures conflicting with civil liberties and human rights and with the principles of proportionality, effectiveness and dissuasiveness, such as the interruption of internet access.

The vote has no legal force and leaves national governments free to implement their own anti-piracy plans. But, said the Open Rights Group, it does "signify resistance" among European law makers to the strict measures that nations such as France are implementing.

Japanese companies plan to cut off the Internet connection of anyone who illegally downloads files in one of the world's toughest measures against online piracy.

Faced with complaints from the music, movie and video-game industries, four associations representing Japan's Internet service providers have agreed to take drastic action, the Yomiuri Shimbun said.

The newspaper, quoting unnamed sources, said service providers would send e-mails to people who repeatedly made illegal copies and terminate their connections if they did not stop.

The Internet companies will set up a panel next month involving groups representing copyright holders to draft the new guidelines, the report said.

The four major record companies have launched a lawsuit against Eircom, the largest ISP in Ireland, alleging that it is “making available” copyrighted music tracks through its network. The lawsuit aims to force Eircom to introduce network level blocking of peer-to-peer filesharing.

According to reports on The Irish Times, Eircoms lawyers have said that the company has no knowledge of specific instances of illegal activity infringing on the rights of the record company, and reasserted Eircom’s protection from being forced to monitor its network under the terms of the Electronic Commerce Directive.

Eircom has refused to institute network level content controls, citing the same Directive. As a “mere conduit”, Eircom cannot be held liable for content that it merely carries over its network. If continued to judgment, this case may set an important precedent: whereas the recent Belgian case of Sabam v Scarlet was widely criticised as being wrongly decided at first instance because it was brought against a smaller ISP with inadequate legal defense resources, Eircom is a fully-funded former monopoly national telecoms operator.

We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to Support ISP's in not bowing to pressure from a desperate insustry into becoming defacto net police.

Recently there have been increasingly desperate attempts by the music industry to control how individuals consume media. Since these measures have in large parts failed (as a public relations disaster and an expensive, ultimately ineffective process), the industry is attempting to force ISP's to bear the blame for users actions and police information consumption.

There is no practical way to detect the difference between legal and illegal material – particularly if the content is encrypted therefore this will effectively ban the use of some methods of transferring data. ISP's should not be encouraged to invade a users privacy by analysing their data if they are not suspected of any crime, this sets an extremely dangerous precedent which very quickly leads to censorship of the internet.

The government should not legislate on behalf of the music industry but should support open internet policed if necessary by public authorities using the usual mantra of innocent until proven guilty, requiring evidence and a court order before a users privacy may be invaded in this way.

UK ISPs must take concrete steps to curb illegal downloads or face legal sanctions, the government has said.

The proposal is aimed at tackling the estimated 6m UK broadband users who download files illegally every year.

The culture secretary said consultation would begin in spring and legislation could be implemented "by April 2009".

Representatives of the recording industry, who blame piracy for a slump in sales, welcomed the proposals.

ISPs are in a unique position to make a difference and in doing so to reverse a culture of creation-without-reward that has proved so damaging to the whole music community over the last few years, said John Kennedy, head of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI).

A spokesperson for the Internet Service Provider's Association (ISPA) said that creating appropriate legislation would be very difficult: Any scheme has got to be legal, workable and economically sustainable. He also said that ISPs were already pursuing self-regulation, which was the government's preferred route.

The government has no burning desire to legislate, Andy Burnham, culture secretary, told the Financial Times. However, he said that the proposals signalled a change of tone from the government.

Its intentions are outlined in a creative industries strategy paper called Creative Britain: New Talents for the New Economy.

Earlier this year it was reported that the government was considering a "three strikes" approach to tackling persistent offenders in the report. But Burnham denied this was the case and told the FT that the strategy had "never been in the paper".

The release of software from a firm run by a noted Norwegian hacker is likely to cause waves in the music and film download world.

Jon Lech Johansen became the "enfant terrible" of the DRM industry when he released software which cracked the encryption codes on DVDs. His firm, DoubleTwist, has now released software allowing users to share digital media files across devices.

It would allow songs bought on Apple's iTunes to be shared on other devices. At the moment, the only portable music player which can store content downloaded from the iTunes store is Apple's iPod.

Users can copy downloaded songs to a CD and then copy the disc back on to the computer so that the songs can then be moved to other portable devices - but the quality of the music is affected.

The new software from his San Francisco-based company DoubleTwist will allow users to share both user-generated and professionally created music, photos and video clips between computers, mobiles and game consoles.

Initially the system will allow file-sharing with Sony's PSP games console, Nokia's N-series mobile, Sony Ericsson's Walkman and Cybershot handsets and Microsoft's Windows Mobile smartphones.

The software converts media stored in one file format to those used by the other devices in a system that mimics the process of ripping a CD onto a computer. One hundred songs can be converted in about half an hour, with a slight degradation in sound quality, according to the firm.

The company is confident there will not be any legal challenges from Apple. The software is available as a free download from the company's website.

UK net firms are resisting government suggestions that they should do more to monitor what customers do online.

The industry association for net providers said legal and technical barriers prohibit them from being anything other than a "mere conduit".

The declaration comes as the government floats the idea of persistent pirates being denied net access.

Net firms have been stung into defining their position by the emergence this week of a draft government consultation document that suggests ISPs should be drafted in to the fight against piracy.

It suggested that people who persistently download and share copyrighted material could have their net access removed.

A spokesman for the Internet Service Providers Association (ISPA) said the 2002 E-Commerce Regulations defined net firms as "mere conduits" and not responsible for the contents of the traffic flowing across their networks. He added that other laws on surveillance explicitly prohibited ISPs from inspecting the contents of data packets unless forced to do so by a warrant.

The spokesman said technical issues also made it hard for net firms to take action against specific types of traffic. For instance, he said, while some people use peer-to-peer networks to download copyrighted material many commercial services, such as Napster and the BBC's iPlayer, use file-sharing technology to distribute music and TV legally.

People who illegally download films and music will be cut off from the internet under new legislative proposals to be unveiled next week.

Internet service providers (ISPs) will be legally required to take action against users who access pirated material, The Times has learnt.

Users suspected of wrongly downloading films or music will receive a warning e-mail for the first offence, a suspension for the second infringement and the termination of their internet contract if caught a third time, under the most likely option to emerge from discussions about the new law.

Broadband companies who fail to enforce the three-strikes” regime would be prosecuted and suspected customers' details could be made available to the courts. The Government has yet to decide if information on offenders should be shared between ISPs.

Six million broadband users are estimated to download files illegally every year in this country in a practice that music and film companies claim is costing them billions of pounds in lost revenue annually.

Britain's four biggest internet providers – BT, Tiscali, Orange and Virgin Media – have been in talks with Hollywood's biggest studio and distribution companies for six months over a voluntary scheme.

Parallel negotiations between Britain's music industry and individual internet providers have been dragging on for two years.

Major sticking points include who will arbitrate disputed allegations, for example when customers claim to have been the victim of “wi-fi piggybacking”, in which users link up to a paid-for wireless network that is not their own. Another outstanding disagreement is how many enforcements the internet companies will be expected to initiate and how quickly warning e-mails would be sent.

International action in the US and France, which is implementing its own “three-strikes” regime, has increased the pressure on British internet companies and stiffened the Government's resolve.

The commitment forms part of a Green Paper on the creative industries entitled The World's Creative Hub to be launched by Andy Burnham, the Culture Secretary, and Gordon Brown next week.

When Hollywood asked the two big phone companies to help with its fight against piracy, they responded in opposite ways. AT&T is talking about developing a system that would identify and block illicitly copied material being sent over its broadband network.

Verizon, however, opposes the concept. I spoke to Tom Tauke, Verizon's executive vice president for public affairs, on the subject. He said the company's view combines a concern for the privacy of its customers with self interest. It may be costly for it to get into the business of policing the traffic on its network. Indeed, phone companies have largely spent a century trying not to be liable for what people say over their lines: We generally are reluctant to get into the business of examining content that flows across our networks and taking some action as a result of that content, he said.

Tauke offered at least three objections to the concept:

1. The slippery slope.
   
   Once you start going down the path of looking at the information going down the network, there are many that want you to play the role of policeman. Stop illegal gambling offshore. Stop pornography. Stop a whole array of other kinds of activities that some may think inappropriate.
    
2. It opens up potential liability for failing to block copyrighted work.
   
   When you look back at the history of copyright legislation, there has been an effort by Hollywood to pin the liability for copyright violations on the network that transmits the material. It is no secret they think we have deeper pockets than others and we are easy-to-find targets.
    
3. Privacy.
   
   Anything we do has to balance the need of copyright protection with the desire of customers for privacy.

....And even if some legislation was introduced to formalise these server blocks, can we trust parliament to examine it properly?

If we take the example of the provisions in the current criminal justice and immigration bill regarding "extreme pornography" - closely targeted at internet users - then it's doubtful we can rely on the Commons at all. The third reading debate was guillotined to just eight hours. "Extreme pornography" barely got a mention and the proposals to criminalise men who pay for sex, subject of so much debate here on Cif, did a little better. Just one MP was permitted to speak for 15 seconds. If you want a shocking snapshot of the appalling way we're governed today, take a look at the Hansard transcripts, if you don't have time for that then this opening comment from Tory Edward Garnier to his clearly embarrassed Labour opposite number, David Hanson, might give you an inkling of the mood: "May I begin by congratulating the minister on his ability to keep a straight face?"

By preventing debate the government was able to kick the bill to the House of Lords, where finally some sanity may prevail. Already half a dozen lords have spoken up to oppose the extreme pornography proposals, from one perspective or another - not that you would know it from the media. We even had, thanks to the Earl of Onslow, a suggestion that what people get up to in their own homes, or own dungeons, might not be the proper concern of government. Can it really be that the UK's last remaining defenders of individual freedom are the lords? Optimists even reckon that in Lords committee stages the bill might be stripped of its worse excesses.

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AT&T have announced that it is seriously considering plans to examine all the traffic it carries for potential violations of U.S. intellectual property laws. The prospect of AT&T, already accused of spying on our telephone calls, now scanning every e-mail and download for outlawed content is way too totalitarian for my tastes. But the bizarre twist is that the proposal is such a bad idea that it would be not just a disservice to the public but probably a disaster for AT&T itself. If I were a shareholder, I'd want to know one thing: Has AT&T, after 122 years in business, simply lost its mind?

No one knows exactly what AT&T is proposing to build. But if the company means what it says, we're looking at the beginnings of a private police state. That may sound like hyperbole, but what else do you call a system designed to monitor millions of people's Internet consumption? That's not just Orwellian; that's Orwell.

The puzzle is how AT&T thinks that its proposal is anything other than corporate seppuku. First, should these proposals be adopted, my heart goes out to AT&T's customer relations staff. Exactly what counts as copyright infringement can be a tough question for a Supreme Court justice, let alone whatever program AT&T writes to detect copyright infringement. Inevitably, AT&T will block legitimate materials (say, home videos it mistakes for Hollywood) and let some piracy through. Its filters will also inescapably degrade network performance. The filter AT&T will really need will be the one that blocks the giant flood of complaints and termination-of-service notices coming its way.

But the most serious problems for AT&T may be legal. Since the beginnings of the phone system, carriers have always wanted to avoid liability for what happens on their lines, be it a bank robbery or someone's divorce. Hence the grand bargain of common carriage: The Bell company carried all conversations equally, and in exchange bore no liability for what people used the phone for. Fair deal.

AT&T's new strategy reverses that position and exposes it to so much potential liability that adopting it would arguably violate AT&T's fiduciary duty to its shareholders. Today, in its daily Internet operations, AT&T is shielded by a federal law that provides a powerful immunity to copyright infringement. The Bells know the law well: They wrote and pushed it through Congress in 1998, collectively spending six years and millions of dollars in lobbying fees to make sure there would be no liability for "Transitory Digital Network Communications"—content AT&T carries over the Internet. And that's why the recording industry sued Napster and Grokster, not AT&T or Verizon, when the great music wars began in the early 2000s.

Here's the kicker: To maintain that immunity, AT&T must transmit data "without selection of the material by the service provider" and "without modification of its content." Once AT&T gets in the business of picking and choosing what content travels over its network, while the law is not entirely clear, it runs a serious risk of losing its all-important immunity. An Internet provider voluntarily giving up copyright immunity is like an astronaut on the moon taking off his space suit. As the world's largest gatekeeper, AT&T would immediately become the world's largest target for copyright infringement lawsuits.

The government have turned up the heat on internet providers, warning that laws to force disconnection of illegal filesharers are already being drafted for a parliamentary debut in November.

Lord Triesman, the minister for intellectual property, said that if ISPs can't agree a voluntary scheme with the music and film industries by the end of summer, he will press Gordon Brown to introduce legislation in the next Queen's speech.

It's the first time Triesman has put a public timescale on the threat he made last autumn to bypass self-regulation.

Triesman emphasised that the government speaks with one voice on illegal filesharing. We're not prepared to see the kinds of damage that will be done to the creative economy, he said.

If a joint settlement to monitor and cut off persistent copyright infringers isn't signed voluntarily, legislation imposing rules would likely be rubber-stamped by MPs.

Triesman  also revealed that the UK government is working with the French on their anti-infringement legislation - measures which Nikolas Sarkozy promised in his presidential manifesto.

The proposed laws create an enforcement body that French ISPs will turn over filesharing data to. The "three strikes" system will see infringers disconnnected if they don't sign and stick to a promise not to share copyright material.

Triesman said: The French are plainly very serious about this, it's really interesting. We will actually do quite a lot of work alongside them - not neccessarily to reach exactly the same objective, but I think we've got a desire to share evidence and analyses. There's no point repeating each other's research.

Copying music from a CD to a home computer could be made legal under new proposals from the UK government.

Millions of people already "rip" discs to their computers and move the files to MP3 players, although the process is technically against copyright law.

Intellectual property minister Lord Triesman said the law should be changed so it "keeps up with the times".

Music industry bodies gave a cautious welcome to the proposals, which are up for public consultation until 8 April.

The changes would apply only to people copying music for personal use - meaning multiple copying and internet file-sharing would still be banned.

Owners would not be allowed to sell or give away their original discs once they had made a copy. To allow consumers to copy works and then pass on the original could result in a loss of sales, the proposals warn.

UK music industry body the BPI said it supported the move to clarify the law for consumers, but warned that any changes should not damage the rights of record companies.

The Association of Independent Music (Aim) said the proposals did not go far enough - pointing out that CDs could become obsolete in the next decade. It said that, once CDs are replaced, the law could be misused to "open the floodgates to unstoppable copying", adding that it would like to see copyright holders compensated when music was copied.

Lord Triesman said the proposed changes would explore where the boundaries lie between strong protection for right holders and appropriate levels of access for users.

Hollywood isn’t thrilled about my new High Def monitor and they’ve decided to punish me by revoking my Watch Now privileges from Netflix. [Streaming film rentals]

When I tried to launch a streaming movie, I was greeted with an error message asking me to “reset” my DRM. Luckily, Netflix’s help page on the topic included a link to a DRM reset utility, but when I went to install the program, I stopped dead in my tracks when I saw this warning.

“this will potentially remove playback licenses from your computer, including those from companies other than Netflix or Microsoft”

I decided to call Netflix’s technical support and they confirmed my worst fears. In order to access the Watch Now service, I had to give Microsoft’s DRM sniffing program access to all of the files on my hard drive. If the software found any non-Netflix video files, it would revoke my rights to the content and invalidate the DRM. This means that I would lose all the movies that I’ve purchased eg from Amazon’s Unbox.

Netflix’s software allows them to look at the video card, cables and the monitor that you are using and when they checked mine out, it was apparently a little too high def to pass their DRM filters.

Because my computer allows me to send an unrestricted HDTV feed to my monitor, Hollywood has decided to revoke my ability to stream 480 resolution video files from Netflix. In order to fix my problem, Netflix recommended that I downgrade to a lower res VGA setup.

As part of their agreement with Hollywood, Netflix uses a program called COPP (Certified Output Protection Protocal). COPP is made by Microsoft and the protocol restricts how you are able to transfer digital files off of your PC.

The irony in all of this, is that the DRM that Hollywood is so much in love with, is really only harming their paying customers. When you do a DRM reset, it’s not your pirated files that get revoked, it’s the ones that you already paid for that are at risk. I’m not allowed to watch low res Netflix files, even though I have the capability to download high def torrents? How does this even make sense? It’s as if the studios want their digital strategies to fail.

There was plenty of hysteria this week about the fact that Google Reader (RSS/News reader) shares private data and has ruined Christmases...

The basic problem is that Google unilaterally changed the system so that links you thought you were sharing with your spouse or a few close friends were actually shared with anyone you'd ever chatted with via Gtalk, or possibly all your Gmail contacts.

Google has tried to defuse the resulting hostility. This culminated in a Boxing Day blog post that admits: We'd hoped that making it easier to share with the people you chat with often would be useful and interesting, but we underestimated the number of users who were using the Share button to send stories to a limited number of people.

It's an amazingly arrogant response. Google should have just reverted to the old system and provided an opt-in for people who preferred the new way to do things. That would have silenced the angry mob while giving it time to produce an acceptable system.

This highlights a problem that is almost always ignored by the people flogging online services: that you are making yourself completely dependent on them. They can change the service however they like, without asking you first. In reality, you probably don't even have copies of your own data, and can lose access to it at any time.

The larger problem for Google is that Google Reader has now highlighted its attitude to privacy. Privacy International rates Google the worst of the major Web properties, giving it a black rating for Comprehensive consumer surveillance & entrenched hostility to privacy.

Internet users who download copied films or television series could soon see their service suspended as huge political pressure grows on broadband service providers to stop illegal downloads.

The Government has given notice of its concern at the “huge cumulative effect” of illegal downloads and called on internet service providers (ISPs) to examine ways to reverse the trend.

MPs are also calling for the use of camcorders in cinemas to be made a criminal rather than a civil offence, as nine out of ten pirate films first appear in the market as a camcorded copy.

ISPs are to be brought to negotiations in the new year over plans by film companies to suspend the service of those who break the law.

Until now, broadband companies have been deeply reluctant to step in, arguing that it is impractical to monitor the activities of users and would infringe privacy.

ISPs are no more able to inspect and filter every single packet passing across their network than the Post Office is able to open every envelope, insists ISPA, the industry association. However, this argument has been undermined by developments in France, where an industry initiative backed by President Sarkozy could result in internet subscribers who download music, films and other content without paying for them being banned from having access to the web.

Denis Olivennes, the chairman of Fnac, the DVD retailer, who conducted a review for the French Government, called for a “three-strikes-and-you’re-out” policy for individuals found guilty of internet piracy. He argued that ISPs are culpable because they encourage subscribers to take advantage of the amount of free material on the web.

Some broadband companies have indicated that they are willing to enter negotiations. A spokesman for Virgin Media said: As a responsible ISP, Virgin Media would always openly negotiate with any interested party or governing body such as Ofcom.

A spokesman for BT said: Copyright infringement is a civil not a criminal offence and the infringed party should seek compensation. This is a matter for the rights holders and not for the ISPs.