Virgin Media blocks the Pirate Bay and how it doesn't even matter

As of yesterday Virgin Media customers were no longer able to reach the standard domain address for the Pirate Bay (thepiratebay.se/) after an earlier high court ruling demanded that the UK's biggest ISPs block access to the site on the grounds that it breaches copyright laws. This move has brought with it criticisms from several internet advocacy groups.

Speaking over at guardian.co.uk Jim Killock, executive director of the Open Rights Group, said:

Blocking The Pirate Bay is pointless and dangerous. It will fuel calls for further, wider and even more drastic calls for Internet censorship of many kinds, from pornography to extremism ... Internet censorship is growing in scope and becoming easier. Yet it never has the effect desired. It simply turns criminals into heroes.

Part of the problem is that in an attempt to block access to copyrighted material, Virgin Media have also cut off access to the Pirate Bay blog - leading to a rather chilling effect on free speech.

It seems like the block has had an inverse effect as TorrentFreak carried a report in which the Pirate Bay stated they witnessed a surge in traffic to the site - after the block came into effect. Traffic levels saw a spike totalling an extra 12 million visitors as web users came to see what the fuss was about (a classic case  of the Streisland Effect).

Access to the site can still be achieved if web users are committed enough to seek out alternate ways to reach The Pirate Bay. The UK arm of the Pirate Party have a proxy server setup to help people bypass the rather clumsy attempt at enforcing domain level censorship. How long this link stays available remains to be seen.

Over on the Pirate Bay's blog is an overview of the different ways in which users can still access the site:

As usual there are easy ways to circumvent the block. Use a VPN service to be anonymous and get an uncensored internet access, you should do this anyhow. Or use TOR, I2P or some other darknet with access to the internets. Change your DNS settings with OpenDNS. Or use googles DNS servers... we could go on...

 There are a range of different VPN services - some free, some expensive - that provide web users with alternate ways to route around censorship. The very real danger in the future lies with the potential misuse of domain level blocking. The Pirate Bay has been blocked as a consequence of successful lobbying by the entertainment industry (due to hosting links to files that may violate various copyright claims), but as the web becomes more and more a commodified experience, one wonders how long it will be before censorship of domains occurs at the expense of websites that carry material other powerful lobbyists disagree with

In the mean time, the blocking doesn't matter. The video below shows one way round the block. However, the future of the Internet doesn't look quite so open today.

Virgin Spotify users?

While the US tech/media/music press is getting excited about the imminent arrival of Spotify in the US (register your interest here), back in the UK there are plans afoot to integrate the music streaming service into Virgin Media customers subscription plans. Given that Virgin have obvious links with the music content industry, and already provides a number of on-demand music video services to customers on the more expensive television packages, then this deal (or something akin to it) is long overdue.  If this Spotfiy deal materialises it will be a welcome addition to the Virgin Media family, but there is a history of false starts and delayed promises with regards to Virgin being able to deliver.

Back in early June 2009 a number of premature announcements were made regarding a deal between Virgin and Universal Music.  Geoff Taylor of the BPI even so far as to claim the deal would help curb illegal file-sharing (although it doesn't take a genius to see how well-managed and reasonably-priced subscription deal might be beneficial to the industry more generally):

“It is very encouraging to see an ISP and a record label working together as creative partners.  At the same time, the fact that Virgin Media will apply a graduated response system to tackle persistent illegal downloaders demonstrates that graduated response is a proportionate and workable way forward."

However, after 2 years this deal had very little impact or clear outputs at the consumer level. So, it's at this juncture that some kind of deal might finally materialise.  Mark Sweeney has noted that the reason for this protracted business is because Virgin Media also had to separately agree terms with Universal Music, EMI, Sony Music and Warner Music as they have the power to veto any deal Spotify does.

It would seem that a final deal is still some way off and that it the music package won't be available to all customers.  The Register claim Virgin are planning on centring this service around their new TiVo PVR box (as opposed to their V+ HD and standard boxes). Virgin Media have announced that box will include a Spotfiy app. The TiVo service has gotten off to a shaky start if the number of price cuts are anything to go by.  The service was originally launched at a premium price of £199, but has been slashed down to £99 for the 1TB version and £49 for the 500GB box (with free installation).  Virgin Media have even took the unusual measure of refunding existing TiVo users the price difference.  

The deal does present a number of questions:

• Will customers with existing Spotify accounts be able to connect this to their TiVo box?
• Will the TiVo Spotify app be restricted to just one box per household/customer or will it include multiple accounts (nobody wants to lose all those carefully crafted playlists do they)?
• What kind of pricing difference (if any) will there be between the TiVo app and the standalone versions?

So, the Spotify + Virgin deal is one with the usual caveats but there's no doubting that this is a great deal for Virgin Media customers. It also helps to challenge the market domination of players like Apple and Amazon.  This could be the start of a new phase of Spotify growth in the UK, and it'll be interesting to see how Apple responds to this (if at all) - if this partnership is successful in the UK, there's no doubt that other deals like it will be brokered in other territories.

How To: Virgin Media Super Hub + Apple Time Capsule

I've recently upgraded my broadband with my cable provider Virgin Media, from 20 to 30 meg.  As part of this process I was advised that my existing modem would be incompatible with the upgrade so I was going to be sent their wonderful Super Hub (a custom Netgear box).  The problem was that this Super Hub is a wireless router and that it wasn't quite compatible with my existing home network: an Apple Time Capsule and an Airport Express.  If I was to connect the Time Capsule to the Super Hub I'd run into the dreaded double NAT problem whereby each of the routers would try to allocate all the devices on my network IP addresses, causing all manner of conflicts.

Ideally, all the Super Hub needs is a kill switch to make it act like a modem and nothing else. But it doesn't.  This is a much maligned piece of kit that many customers have been grumbling about.  However, it can be tweaked.

I couldn't find any instructions for doing this, but I managed to piece together the relevant processes from posts on the Apple Discussion forums as well as the Virgin Media site (kudos to Seph).  What I'm going to do in this post is show you how I managed to disable the wireless capabilities of the Super Hub so that my Time Capsule can act as it should.  The same should apply to anyone using an Airport Extreme (the Time Capsule include this hardware) router too.

Before I started I jotted down the MAC address (aka Airport ID) of the wireless devices I was using (my MacBook Pro and the Time Capsule).  On a Mac you get to these by navigating to the following:

System Preferences >> Network >> Advanced >> Airport

The Airport ID should be at the bottom of the dialogue box.

How To:

1 - Plug the Time Capsule router’s WAN port into any of the LAN ports on the Super Hub.

2 - Plug the computer/laptop into any Super Hub LAN port and access the management page by typing http://192.168.0.1 into the address bar.  Login with the details from the back of the Super Hub and click the Advanced link

Click to expand

3 - In the left-hand navigation column, under Advanced, select the LAN IP option.  Examine the DHCP Client Lease Info field; you should see your computer and the Time Capsule (plus any other connected devices if you have them). If you haven't already, make a note of the MAC address from the Time Capsule and add it to the DHCP reservation section.  After that, give the Time Capsule an IP address like 192.168.0.10

Click to expand

4 - Next step, navigate to the DMZ host page on the Super Hub from the left hand column and enter the same IP address (e.g. 192.168.0.10) in the appropriate field. This means that the Super Hub will pass all traffic to the second router without any checks or filters. The Time Capsule will be in the same subnet as the router side of the Hub.

Click to expand

5 - Turn off or disconnect the Time Capsule and connect your computer to it with a network cable. Reboot it.  At this point launch Airport Utility - the Time Capsule will be reporting an error.  It needs to be put into Bridge Mode (either via the method below or by using the diagnostic tool):

Manual Setup >> Internet >> Internet Connection >> Connection Sharing >> Off (Bridge Mode)

Click to expand

6 - At this point you are almost ready to go.  All we need to do is disable the wireless functions on the Super Hub. Login to the router again http://192.168.0.1 but don't go into the Advanced mode yet.  Simply select Wireless Network Settings and change the Wireless mode to Off then hit Save.

7 - Log back in to the Advanced mode on the Super Hub http://192.168.0. Navigate to the Services tab under the Content Filtering option in the left hand column.  Once there deselect the Firewall Features and  IP Flood Detection and hit Apply.

Click to expand

You should be good to go now.  Your original wifi network will be functioning as normal and the Time Capsule will be taking care of business.  I did a quick ISP speed test and it looks like I'm getting the full 30 meg speed.  Nice.

NB: Virgin Media are planning on upgrading the Super Hub's firmware and testing it around April time

Virgin says "no" to disconnection

This story is taken from TorrentFreak who are reporting that there is very little chance that they will follow through with the threats to disconnect their customers suspected by the BPI of participating in illegal filesharing. The original source of the admission appears over on the BBC Newsbeat site who claim there is "absolutely no possibility" that Virgin Media will take legal action against their customers.

This comes on the back of stinging criticism against the ISP who have issued 800 letters to customers over the last month warning them not to use "unauthorised peer-to-peer networks" like BitTorrent or Limewire to swap copyright protected files. The BBC have footage of a customer, Will McGree of Cardiff, who has been issued with one of these letters but denies its accuracy (a point I mentioned here yesterday). It seems difficult to reconcile both positions when Virgin Media are clearly bowing to pressure from the BPI, despite a lack of sufficient evidence.

Virgin have claimed they will not hand details of their customers details over to the BPI but it remains to be seen if they can be trusted to keep their word on this matter, especially since their associated business include music interests. Combine this with the fact that many ISPs (Virgin included) have been overselling their subscription capacities (and maximum download speeds) and are desperate to curb excessive bandwidth users and the picture looks less clear.

Disputing claims as to who downloaded what and when will soon become harder to contest if new Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) become the norm in places other than just Sweden. Until recently, the processing power required to inspect data packets has made this prohibitive, especially if they were encrypted (torrent files), as it required computers with massive computational power. Again, TorrentFreak carry the story:

"The other, arguably more sinister usage of DPI, is the growing interest by advertising companies to use deep packet inspection to observe what Internet users are doing. Watching your browsing activity, you can gain all kinds of insights into the user behind the keyboard. Similar to spyware, but on your line not your system, it’s not a good thing, and impossible to remove. Worse, it may be able to tell who is behind the keyboard at the time, by identifying trends in connection behavior."

Irrespective of filesharers, this kind of privacy invasion should have us all worried, especially if it is prone to abuse. It seems like hiding traffic in SSH VPN tunnels is now no longer a feasible alternative. Even our YouTube activity is under threat. The EFF have more info about the move which gives Viacom a lot of data to play around with. If ever the digital rights of the planet were under threat then it's now.

BT joins Virgin Media in music sharing clampdown

It seems like the stakes have been raised in the cat and mouse game that is the music industry versus the pirates (aka the customers). BT have announced that they are about to go down a similar route to Virgin Media and start to issue warning letters to web users suspected of downloading music files without the permission of the copyright holder.

In the interests of full disclosure, much of this post is comprised of material from 2 articles over at The Register which you can find here and here

An article over at The Register suggests there is an increasing consensus forming between ISPs and the music industry. Geoff Taylor, chief of UK record industry trade body the BPI claims,

"Everyone agrees on where we need to be, and we are working closely with our colleagues across the music community, the more progressive ISPs, and government to get us there."

So how is this processes panning out? In brief, an agent working on behalf of the BPI will search file-sharing networks for files labelled as music and harvest the ISP address of the computer hosting it. They will then time and date stamp the file and contact the ISP responsible for hosting the customer. The ISP will then issue a warning letter or two (one from the BPI and one from the ISP) warning the customer about the illicit nature of the behaviour. One of the letters may hint at a possible disconnection. It would seem that the ISP odes not relay customer details back to the BPI (for now).

TorrentFreak have a host of articles describing the rather dubious nature of the accusatory methodology employed to 'prove' that file-sharing activity is what it seems to be, with some IP addresses that were supposedly participating in piracy were actually attributed to network printers. Hardly fool-proof evidence.

The threat of disconnection is the preferred deterrent of record industry in its battle against the filesharing of music. It has pressed hard for "three strikes" process, and has the support of the UK government, who do not want to interfere directly, to come to a voluntary agreement with ISPs that satisfies both sides. There are similar plans afoot in other European countries (eg France, Netherlands, etc) to implement a "three-strikes" approach despite the MEP Guy Bono report on the Cultural Industries condemning this approach.

In order to make this activity attractive to ISPs, the BPI have been proposing that the music industry comes up with more innovative ways to make money from the sector, by offering better services, which may benefit the ISPs via increasing customer retention. The decision to threaten customers with disconnection seems counter to that ethos but there may be some new ventures ahead.

A recent press release from the BPI suggests that new business models are proving successful:

"record company revenues outside direct sales of music increased by 13.8% to £121.6 million in 2007, from £106.9m in 2006. These additional revenues now account for 11.4% of record companies’ domestic income."

Retail sales are the traditional avenue for income generation but this is clearly changing. Digital sales and licensing are helping the industry, but newer services are also proving attractive. These include generating income from:

• Synchronisation licence income - associated use of music in games, adverts and films
• Broadcast and Public Performance Licensing (PPL) - getting income from venues which play music publicly
  
• Multiple-rights deals ("360 degree deals") - deals which generate income from merchandising, touring, image rights, sponsorship and digital products like wallpapers for mobile phones

Such practises are believed to have resulted in a 16.2% increase in revenue generation in 2007. These service may soon be complemented by legal file-sharing services in the near future, once complications have been ironed out. It would seem these services could be very different to the types of subscription services ran by Napster in which artists would awarded on the basis of popularity. Music sales have long since been on the decline whilst the popularity of music has remained (see the slide courtesy of The Register).

When the industry introduced the CD format it allowed for the renegotiating of royalties, but with the death of the CD in the face of unlicensed filesharing, the industry is having to look to alternate methods of revenue generation, which may lie in the restructuring of licence deals in as similar vein to the model employed by Last.FM. However, the decision by Warner Bros to pull their content from the service in a dispute over royalties may highlight just how far this matter has yet to go before being resolved.

The BBC is losing some friends...

...but could it be gaining others?

Another day, another report of how the BBC is upsetting the apple cart in ISP land. The Register is carrying this report of how the ISP Tiscali is up in arms about the high bandwidth consumption being driven by the iPlayer (as I mentioned recently).

It seems that Ashley Highfield's comments regarding ISPs have incurred more wrath as Simon Gunter, strategy chief at Tiscali, claiming it's

"bit rich that a publicly-funded organisation is telling a commercial body how to run its business".

The issue here seems to be that the BBC have delivered a simple service that people are wanting and are willing to use, yet this is having an adverse effect on ISPs working on slim margins.

The suggestion that the BBC be charged with a bandwidth tax for driving web content is a bit rich given that other sites like YouTube seem to be excluded from this rhetoric. Who knows where this will end up?

Meanwhile, just to add further flames to the fire, Anthony Rose announced that the BBC were bringing its popular iPlayer to the world's favourite console, the Nintendo Wii. IGN are reporting that the Wii is outselling the PS3 in Japan by a ratio of about 3.5-1 through March. The homepage of nexgenwars keeps a rough estimate of consoles sold to date (note that the Xbox 360 is 2 million sales behind the Wii despite being on the market a year longer).

The BBC announcement is a little misleading - it's not as if Wii owners are going to get a dedicated iPlayer channel on their Wii-desktop just yet. They will need to use the Opera-based Internet Channel that came free with the console at launch (but later at a cost of 500 Wii points, or approximately £3.50) and bookmark the iPlayer URL.

The major problem the BBC is facing here is the Wii's native use of an inferior quality video codec for playback as Rose spells out:

"Nintendo Wii supports only Flash 7, which uses the Sorenson Spark codec rather than the ON2 VP6 codec introduced with Flash 8. Unfortunately the Sorenson compression isn’t nearly as good as ON2 VP6 compression, which is why most video sites gave up encoding their content in Flash 7 compatible format."

This means that the BBC are having to transcode their programmes to fit the console. However, they figure that instead of people watching iPlayer content on laptop or desktop monitors, there are plenty of Wii's connected to flat panel televisions in the front rooms of the UK (approximatively 2.5 million) - ideal for those people who don't have Virgin Media's 'catch up on demand', Sky+ or another PVR option like Tivo.

The iPlayer normally streams at 500 Kbps and delivers excellent quality video (way better than YouTube which is most likely why they are not being dragged into the furore), but in order to make this work on the Wii, Rose points out that the BBC:

"had to increase the bitrate to 820Kbps because the Sorenson codec used by Wii simply needs more bits to achieve the same picture quality. So, for a smooth playback experience on Wii you’ll need an internet connection that can give you 1Mbps or better."

So what does this mean for the ISPs? You guessed it - more data being streamed adding to their woes. It shouldn't be too long before this kind of service gets integrated into Xbox Media Centre or the Playstation Network, further compounding the bandwidth situation. That is if Sony and Microsoft agree to open up their services. Is the BBC purposefully sticking its head above the parapet and deliberately antagonising ISPs? Is it hoping that if it gets enough people using its service it can justify itself and its license fee?

The BBC vs ISPs

It looks like the current bête noir of the web, at least in the UK, is not the pirates but the BBC. Charles Arthur over at The Guardian is running a piece on the extra traffic that the BBC's iPlayer is generating.

Recently, we have had rumour and denial regarding Virgin Media's decision to implement the three-strikes-and-your-out policy on customers using peer-to-peer software on their networks. Earlier this week, Charles Dunstone, head of the Carphone Warehouse and Talk Talk openly rejected demands from the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) that the ISP should police it's networks on their behalf. It seems that the ISPs have bigger concerns than a minority of users sharing music and film -

Now, it might seem strange to hear that the BBC has a two part iPlayer: one which streams data much like the kind of streams we see on video sites like YouTube; the other which works like the current BitTorrent protocol via the BBC iPlayer Download Manager - data from files is distributed across users computers and shared in a decentralized way, thus making distribution more even and efficient. The video quality of the second option is far superior than the first option.

One can guess that the streaming bug is a no-brainer for web users accustomed to clicking the play button and expecting their good quality BBC footage streamed on demand. The peer-to-peer option is a little more complicated (but the BBC have done a good job of making it fairly simple). Indeed, a BBC press release from January points out that users stream video at a ratio of 8-1 over the more efficient peer-to-peer route.

YouTube itself is already testing higher quality streamed video as reported by Lifehacker. This looks set to add further misery upon the already strained ISPs as the data load increases.

But let's get back to the iPlayer traffic. Arthur is reporting that all the extra streaming people are doing is adding to the costs of ISPs who tend to pay BT per gigabyte of data used due to the relaince on the latter's IPStream technology. The cost of streaming has almost trebled for some ISPs in the first month alone. These IPStream pipes ted to come in at 155-megabits. Arthur estimates that this means when 300 people are streaming BBC content at 500 kilobits per second, the pipe is choked.

ISPs have suggested the BBC contributes to the situation, perhaps by installing hardware within the UK Broadband network (The Telegraph leaked this last year, dubbed Project Cheetah), although the BBC's head of future media and technology, Ashley Highfield, used a BBC blog to claim that ISPs need to get their house in order and actually deliver on what they advertises to customers. Unlimited broadband should mean just that.

The BBC may be setting itself up for a fall if it is not careful. With the future of television looking increasingly to the internet they do not want to upset those companies best placed to provide the content - it's not as if the BBC own the pipes that connect the houses of the UK. Yet.

ISPs may want to exert some pressure back on the BBC and close down the iPlayer streaming service if it costs them too much. After all, it is carried on port 1935 and we have seen ports blocked before. China does it very well. It would not be too surprising if the BBC was forced to curtail the streaming service in favour of the peer-to-peer model...

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