Virgin Denies Reports That It Will Kick File Sharers Offline

from the no-sirree dept

Thu, Apr 3rd 2008 9:30pm — Mike Masnick

Earlier in the week there were reports that even without a government mandate, Virgin Media had come to an agreement with the entertainment industry to start kicking off users accused of file sharing, using a "three strike" rule. However, Virgin has now claimed that no such plan is in place while also noting that it found the concept "draconian." Reading between the lines, it certainly sounds like BPI (the British equivalent of the RIAA) presented Virgin with a plan to do this, and Virgin basically told BPI that it would consider the plan, at which point BPI leaked a report to the press that it was a done deal.

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Filed Under: ban, file sharing, isps, uk
Companies: virgin

9 Comments

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Anonymous Coward, 3 Apr 2008 @ 10:43pm

Go go business-speak
Or poliic-speak for that matter.

Virgin says "we'll think about it" which as everyone really knows means "um, no".

BPI then being the twisted greedy bastards they are take those words and use them to exagerate the response.

Exageration and ambiguity in action.

Just wish greed-oriented (as in power/money wanting) entities would realise the danger to ambiguity and stop that part of it at least . . .
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Paul Layton, 3 Apr 2008 @ 10:51pm

Out of curiousity...
...Virgin start an airline in the USA that I will never fly on?
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mike allen, 4 Apr 2008 @ 12:39am

should have known
BPI are same as IRAA namely LIERS (sorry mike)of course it could be that Virgin did agree then a number of their customers asked for their MAC key and virgin backtracked just MHO.
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Jake, 4 Apr 2008 @ 2:42am

Funnily enough, just under three-quarters of an hour ago a BBC radio news bulletin informed me that the CEO of TalkTalk has publicly told the BPI where to shove it.
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Martin, 4 Apr 2008 @ 3:31am

Yes, but...
Let's not forget that these were the same people which said that companies that advertise "unlimited" internet when in fact there is a Fair Use policy which users aren't aware of is false advertising and that there services were unlimited (in the sense of download limits). It was then pointed out that Virgin actively limit people's internet connections if they download too much data and hide the fact in a policy that can only be found by searching their website.
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mike allen, 4 Apr 2008 @ 3:43am

talk talk
yes they have said shove it. however the government have said if nothing agreed by april (this month) then they will act.
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fuse5k, 4 Apr 2008 @ 5:26am

comment 5
Martin,

Virgin don't have limits on their broadband at all. If you download 30+ gig a day on peak time, they will throttle your connection so that you don't spoil connection speeds for others, but they will never cut you off, and once the peak hours are over you get back to your advertised speed.

I know this through experience.. I certainly dont think its unfair for them to do this, as they obviously have limited bandwidth to share among all of their paying customers
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Wyatt Ditzler, 4 Apr 2008 @ 12:52pm

How...
So how would they know if the data you were transmitting was 'illegal' are they sniffing everyone's packets? Would they notify you, like with a search warrant? I know it is the UK, but there are surely some data privacy laws that they would have to jump over to implement such a plan. Otherwise any company could just accuse everyone of sharing files illegally right?
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Anonymous Coward, 5 Apr 2008 @ 5:11pm

No, the UK business and Govenment just ignores data privacy laws anyway.
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