Downloaders of the world unite: Japan and Sweden clamp down on ISPs

How will they distinguish between legal and illegal downloading?

There have been plenty of times I've downloaded albums I own on vinyl or on several occasions cds I've left at parties/in cars/round friend's houses. Heck, I've even downloaded a cd that was accross the room that I couldn't be bothered to rip because I had the cat on my lap.

And what about all the songs sent as promo to mp3 blogs by labels? I know they can be encoded to show their origin, but surely the ammount of work required to check every copy is insane.

I hope this doesn't develop into the music industry's version of speed cameras, where it's alleged to be for our good, but more realisticly is a giant cash cow for the people behind it.

arguable points when applied to filesharing, however? I'm guessing that (e) could come under that banner; the difference between that one and the others seems to reflect that 'line' that's generally drawn between people 'pirating' for profit and personal use. Kinda harks back to the days of FAST.

Has there ever been a case that (e) has been used to bring legal, rather than civil proceedings against an individual? Would it stand up for filesharing?

I ment that in regard to my previous paragraph.

The volumn of work involved in proving a download legal or illegal is what worries me. There are plenty of speed camera mistakes, but they'd rather assume everyone guilty then invest man hours checking every result to weed out all the mistakes.

British law works on proving the innocent guilty beyond reasonable doubt. I'm living in hope that if similar happens here, it isn't a speed camera situation where to minimise work and maximise income people are assumed guilty and automatically fined, then left to prove their innocence at their own cost.

let's separate these two developments

Firstly the actions of Japan, France, Britain etc making (or attempting to make) ISPs legally accountable for copyright infringements. It is akin to making car manufacturers legally accountable for speeding. It seems perverse as far as law goes but if the ISPs agree to it then we are all going to suffer.
The position here seems to be that the majors lean on the Government, the Government lean on the ISPs, the ISPs lean on the user and it's "you'd better not download or we'll cut your internet off"

The position in Sweden is slightly different and perhaps more worrying as they rejected a proposal that would enable ISPs to terminate their user's connection in favour of a ruling that forces the ISP to hand over individual IP addresses and account traffic details of people SUSPECTED of copyright infringement to any private individual who thinks his or her copyright has been breeched

Up until now in Sweden such details were only to be disclosed in CRIMINAL cases in which the MINIMUM statutory penalty is two years in prison, and only then at the request of the prosecution and the agreement of the judge. This change in law opens it up to all civil cases and gives the prosecuting lawyer the right to demand details from the ISP without the consent of a judge or even notifying the individual

Essentially it is a law which allows virtual spying and if it becomes standard it is the end of internet privacy and general self-government.

sad days

But I am bothered about Russian websites selling my bands cd for $1.50 and making out its legitimate when its clearly a criminal act of piracy.

I dont think this will help musicians but I'm not sure what will. Playing live does not even cover our expenses right now, and thanks to the internet your fans might not even be in the same country as you.

Also I'm not sure the point in having a hard drive of 400GB of music on it when you may only listen to the same 10 albums on a regular basis. Do we simply have too much choice now?