Is blocking sites the right way to tackle illegal downloads?

Not everyone knows how to encrypt (me too), so surely education should be a tool but are new tools universal esp as the rogue is nearly — just ahead! So hey for now at least use a combo of tools and effective education. Not everyone is as the late r. Fenyman and able to think with complete understanding “on their feet”!

[Hello Wild Thing, please try not to write in all caps – it sounds like you’re shouting. Check out our Commenting Guidelines if you’re unsure. Thanks, mods.]

Do you understand the technical implications of what you are suggesting? – in addition the loss of all internet connection because of accessing a site is well on the way to censorship in general.

What happens if a child accesses a site – does everyone in the house get punished?

What if another legitimate website is hosted on the same IP as the problem site?

What if you access the site by accident or have your wireless connection used by your neighbour/AN other?

This kind of over the top reaction is what leads to poorly thought out and impractical legislation. Understand the problem before offering an opinion on how to solve it.

Sorry I understand the technical implications of what I suggest – I get tired of the lack of responsibility shown by so many “it’s never my fault” – it IS your fault.

If it is your child that downloads – it is your fault for lack of supervision – If your connection is at fault – it is your responsibility. That’s what all the safeguards are for – You cannot download a film “by accident”.

Frankly I understand the problem – but I doubt if you understand or accept YOUR responsibility/

Wow – You make the assumption that I am guilty when in fact I am just interested and well informed on the subject – Well done for clarifying that you are both uninformed and an over-reactionary though, it is appreciated.

If you did understand the implications then you would have understood the point about the same IP hosting multiple sites or for example the ease with which a connection to a site can be masked via a VPN. (there are many more examples)

Blocking sites will not work – full stop.

However, educating people to the implications of what they are doing, backed up, as the more sensible people in this convo have suggested, with well thought out legal downloads will get much more of a result for the media owners. The sooner they realise this and stop listening to their lawyers or people like you the better.

Good answer on many levels and yes educating that downloading is bad people will not prevent many from doing it – I want to get the companies to educate people differently…..

However, the point about the messages in DVDs illustrates the point very well – putting anti-piracy flyers in a purchased DVD is preaching to the converted and the same penalising of legitimate customers is rife in media protection activities – Ubisofts DRM program for example.

Also, I re-iterate I am not condoning these activities! – I am merely stating that blocking websites will not work – not through self interest but from a technical and logistical point of view. Any work done by an ISP to stop a website will be circumvented, within hours. The way bittorrent works is based on a an un-centralised data model – it is designed to perpetuate beyond a single server or website. Newsbin is just a list pointing to where the data is hosted – it is very easy to set up another list or have the list migrated to areas that are unenforceable – for example social networks could very quickly be adapted to a similar role and how do you block that?!?

Any attempt to do this will fail miserably like most government initiatives directed at digital media- they just don’t understand it and by the time they do things have moved on.

The media rights owners are only marginally better and that is where the problem will be beaten. Innovators in this field understand – for example online games distribution is starting to understand people will pay for something if it is cheap, easily accessible and has added value – Steam or other similar services are having a huge success in this arena and are teaching the traditional distributors a lesson. There is growing evidence that if you don’t use DRM but release something for free with an option to pay afterwards you get more revenue than if you had protected it in the first place.

Basically the traditional distribution models don’t work very well for digital and the quicker we stop trying to enforce the will of the big corporates through governmental legislation the better

There will always be people who steal – giving people better options to buy will reap far more dividends than DRM which only penalises those who have already been a loyal customer

The drug discussion is a perfect analogy for this debate really – all the huge amount of money, time and lives wasted on enforcement could have been far better channelled into education in a legalised system – and I guess the big drink and tobacco manufacturers are the equivalent of the MPA in trying to prevent a sensible solution to the issue.

You can probably rely on the deviousness of evaders overcoming that of enforcers for the forseeable in both these cases 😉

Agreed. Nor would they expect telephone service providers (BT) to be responsible for blocking unsolicited calls, obscene calls, ‘dead’ calls, terrorist calls, etc.

The only possible reason is corruption.

Agreed. And if they put in half the effort to ‘get’ spammers, the Internet would be twice as fast and so much safer!

Over 75% of spam originates in North America, which sort of illustrates that it is industry money that is having an unhealthy influence with lawmakers.

Huzzah! – Seems there are some sensible people in government 🙂

Have they been reading in here?