Friday, April 04, 2008

Carphone Warehouse: We won't be music cops

Carphone Warehouse, despite having one of those Kid Jensen style names that looks more and more ill-chosen as time goes by, has told the BPI that it's not going to be bending over and watching its customer's filesharing.

Charles Dunstone says TalkTalk won't SnoopSnoop:

Mr Dunstone, whose TalkTalk broadband is Britain's third biggest internet provider, said the demands are unreasonable and unworkable.

He also said his firm will refuse to cooperate with the BPI, despite threats of legal action.

The BPI, of course, is belligerent and threatening in response:
But the BPI said internet firms need to educate their customers not to steal music.

It also claims that if they do not help with the fight against music piracy, then the government will bring in legislation to make them cooperate.

Obviously, this isn't a direct quote from the BPI but even so - "make them co-operate". How co-operative is one being if compelled with threat of legal action?

It's possible that TalkTalk is more worried about the cost implications than the privacy concerns, but at least someone is telling the BPI a firm "no".


3 comments:

Anonymous said...

"But the BPI said internet firms need to educate their customers not to steal music."

Eh? Isn't that like asking Land Rover to pay for an advert telling its customers not to go ram-raiding?

(Whatever happened to ram-raiding, by the way? Has it gone the way of glue-sniffing and 'video nasties', to the great Daily Mail in the sky?)

Simon Hayes Budgen said...

It'd be a great Mail editorial, wouldn't it?

"The youth of England's past would find their fun with innocent pleasures - conkers, scrumping, driving a car through Dixons window to pinch a cassette player - but not so now..."

Olive said...

Aside from the practical problems of sniffing every packet that goes across their networks, searching for stolen music, not to mention the privacy issues, I don't think that legally the ISP's *have* to ensure that their users are behaving themselves. Are the post office going to be opening every parcel they carry to check for stolen goods?

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