Mousetrap weblog: Internet reaction to illegal downloads deal

No sooner had Britain’s six biggest internet service providers (ISPs) agreed to monitor illegal file sharing than the web was abuzz with suggestions to get around the scheme.

The music industry yesterday announced that it was forming an alliance with ISPs to monitor downloading, issue warning letters and ultimately restrict internet access for the worst offenders.

The BPI, representing Britain’s music companies, announced a “three-step” sanction procedure, in which internet connections would be suspended on the second copyright infringement and cancelled at the third.

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• Mousetrap weblog: internet reaction to illegal downloads

A quick trawl through technology blogs and comments, however, revealed a number of techniques that could be used to obtain free music over the internet without risk of sanction. The Times downloaded free songs from the Killers and Deep Purple using the tips.

According to Terry Hands, writing on Times Online’s comment boards, one of the easiest methods is to use recording technology already installed on most Microsoft computers.

“The best way to download is to use Windows Sound Recorder and ‘tape’ the music you want on YouTube or the artist’s Myspace page,” he said. “Happy downloadin’!”

On the popular slashdot.com website, an alternative technique was proffered by someone called Anonymous Coward, who said: “Forget file sharing for music. Download Station Ripper (www.stationripper.com), register and hook it up to Last.fm, Pandora. com or any of the hundreds of streaming stations, leave it going for a week, throw away the crap you don’t want.”

A more sophisticated approach involves searching for “hidden” directories of music held by individuals on the web. Using the right Google search terms (obtained by searching for “How to get MP3s from Google”) thousands of files from hundreds of artists can be accessed – all freely available to download in seconds.

“Getting music by this means is pretty much undetectable,” said Petko Petkov, 25, a self-described “ethical hacker” from Bulgaria who lives in London. “The big file-sharing sites like BitTorrent and LimeWire will be monitored, but anyone can put up a few hundred songs without being noticed. It’s just about knowing where to look.”

Other suggestions were strictly for the hardcore computer geek. “Just sign up for an SSH tunnel account that has a SOCKS proxy,” a slashdot blogger suggested, unhelpfully. “I tunnel all my tracker communications through there. Simple.”

An easier solution would be to change your ISP to one that did not sign up to yesterday’s agreement.

Whatever the technique, everyone agreed that the latest effort by the music industry to protect itself would be defeated by an army of teenage computer geeks willing to try.

“That’s all that your efforts result in, dear music industry,” wrote Circle-timesquare. “Stronger, hardier weeds that you can never kill. You lose. You just don’t know it yet.”

The six ISPs that have signed up to the agreement are BT, Virgin Media, Orange, Tiscali, BSkyB and Carphone Warehouse.

Lucian Grainge, the chairman of Universal Music, the record company behind U2 and Amy Winehouse, said: “What I am hoping is that we can put off the issue of sanctions long enough so that we can make deals with enough of the internet providers, so the rest want to come on board.”

Record companies are keen to make their catalogue of songs available as an add-on to an internet package, at a cost of around £10 a month, as an alternative to illegal downloading.

This week, Universal reached an agreement with the internet provider BSkyB to make available all its songs for streaming live on to a computer, with the option of buying some songs to own separately. Sky is 39.1 per cent owned by News Corporation, parent company of The Times.

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