Virgin Media The UK’s only cable broadband operator is to implement a “three strikes and your out” counter measure system against customers who obtain illegal media content over their network, Virgin Media are introducing this counter measure in partnership with the BPI (British Phonographic Industry). The same type of system was used by Tiscali and the BPI last summer but quickly collapsed after the two could not decide how to share the cost’s of the project.

Virgin Media which is the UK’s only provider of cable residential broadband is to introduce a “three strikes and your out” system aimed at customers who download illegal digital media like, music, movies, tv-shows etc.

In a statement today, Virgin Media said: “We have been in discussions with rights holders organisations about how a voluntary scheme could work. We are taking this problem seriously and would favour a sensible voluntary solution.” Virgin Media have not yet indicated when the trial will begin of this system, they did say however that customers would be notified before the trial commences.

The system will be monitored by BPI enforcement agents who will detect and gather IP Addresses of Virgin Media customers who are participating in P2P and File-Sharing networks. When the BPI has a list of infringing IP Addresses they will then submit that information to Virgin Media who will voluntarily notify customers with warnings to stop or face disconnection from their service.

This “three strike rule” on connections follows hot on the heels of Virgin media’s bandwidth throttling policy which has already caused an uproar and rendered most Virgin customers broadband services unusable between the hours of 4pm till 9pm. The most popular virgin package “M” which has a 4mb download speed has had the worst reviews with having only a 700mb limit up and down between the hours of filtering.

This limit is the equivalent of watching or downloading a single (legal) episode of the diggnation.com video podcast in HD format. Virgin state that statistics proved heaviest use between the hours of 4pm and 9pm, well of course they do? because that’s when most users return from school or work.

The UK Government is really pushing for these typ of scheme’s for ISP’s, or face enforced legislation.

So what can you do to protect you identity when virgin introduce this service and completely destroy your privacy rights, the two methods we would recommend at the moment are BTGuard and PeerGuardian 2.

BTGuard - http://btguard.com/
BTGuard is a proxy service that reroutes your BitTorrent downloads thru our servers. BTGuard’s servers are located in Canada which has some of the strictest privacy laws in the world, ensuring the protection of your identity and IP address! We even protect you from your own ISP. No special software is required. BTGuard works with all major BitTorrent clients including uTorrent & Azureus. We don’t log any of your activity and download volume is unlimited. Purchase instantly below with Paypal for £3.80!

PeerGuardian2 - http://phoenixlabs.org/pg2/
PeerGuardian 2 is Phoenix Labs’ premier IP blocker for Windows. PeerGuardian 2 integrates support for multiple lists, list editing, automatic updates, and blocking all of IPv4 (TCP, UDP, ICMP, etc), making it the safest and easiest way to protect your privacy on P2P.

P2PViNE would really recommend the use of BTGuard in this instance if you use Bit Torrent as it hides you IP Address completely from the BPI and anyone else that might be interested in exactly what you are downloading. As a Virgin Media users it’s already a service i have signed up for, just in case they do a quiet trial without the stated announcement.

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Tags | bpi, IP monitoring, legal, three strike, virgin media