Radiohead backs bandwidth throttling as music piracy solution

Radiohead backs bandwidth throttling as music piracy solution
Radiohead guitarist Ed O'Brien had some words for the UK government's recent decision to move to "three strikes" piracy laws.

He is completely against the notion of kicking pirates off the Internet but does believe bandwidth throttling could be a better proposition.



It's an interesting and quick video, and I would recommend watching.



Written by: Andre Yoskowitz @ 5 Nov 2009 17:23
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  • 11 comments
  • beanos66

    O.K I'll say it...


    ...anybody who downloads radiohead deserves to have their bandwidth throttled :D

    5.11.2009 17:43 #1

  • sparky26

    excellent this guy knows exactly what hes talking about :-)

    5.11.2009 17:58 #2

  • nonoitall

    Quote:...that's their preferred means of dealing with a persistent file sharer.Most of the fat cats in the entertainment industry ignore the distinction between copyright infringement and piracy, which is bad enough. But IMO, this chap rendered his opinion completely moot when he failed to make a distinction between file sharing and copyright infringement.

    5.11.2009 18:03 #3

  • DXR88

    I think Baldy is picking up some static.

    5.11.2009 20:15 #4

  • emugamer

    Originally posted by sparky26: excellent this guy knows exactly what hes talking about :-)No he doesn't. He's a Govt. lacky now. Don't get me wrong, I'm a huge Radiohead fan. Seeing them live is amazing. I own all of their albums, all CD and some vinyl. Too bad he's a sell out. Addressing us as "those file sharer's" and supporting the concept of "stealing music" loses all credibility with me.

    Oooo....throttling...what a novel idea. Glad O'brien thought of that one. How about this one O'brien......LEAVE US ALONE. WE PAY YOUR BILLS. YOU AND ALL OF YOUR ARTIST FRIENDS GET PAID IF WE THINK YOUR WORK IS WORTH PAYING FOR.

    I'm going underground. I'm also going to play my radio loud in public and not pay royalties. I'm going to make a mix-CD for a few friends. I'm going to fart paranoid android and not pay a penny for it. I'm going to listen to what I want, when I want, how I want and buy what I like.

    5.11.2009 22:39 #5

  • SomeBozo

    It seems this guy identifies the problem, if ISPs start throttling bandwidth, people will go underground and start encrypting stuff. Not sure if a lot of people aren't already doing this and it is completely under the ISP's radar.

    If applications such as uTorrent are going to be filtered/metered by ISPs... What in the heck stop uTorrent from having some kind of handshaking mechanism to both encrypt the data and secondly fake out what the application sending data is to the ISPs... uTorrent already allows one to use a random port for communication while running the program. Seems nothing could stop uTorrent and other programs to have a simple handshake to negotiate what port to use for communicating.

    The only other comment i'd take exception to, he mentions only small percentage of people (2% or 5%) will copy and distribute as much music as they want, i think he is being overly optimistic, i would think the numbers are much much higher.

    6.11.2009 02:03 #6

  • xtago

    What he said is fairly good.

    As you'll always have a couple of people who'll just download everything they can and that's all they will do, I've heard of some people who buy a 1tb drive every couple of months as they are downloading around 50 to 100gigs a month, these people you can't really stop and won't pay for anythig as they are download so much stuff they just really couldn't afford to.

    Anyway, I think what this guy is mainly wanting people to be able to still share music, because if it was a pay only market there'd be no new music for people to buy as no one will be wanting to pay for music they can't hear/test to see if they like it.

    All the music on Myspace etc would have to be ripped off the sites etc and really what band etc is going to bother with a myspace site if you can't have any music.

    The real major problem though is the music studio companies as they are only after the money and not really fussed about anything else.

    6.11.2009 02:13 #7

  • KillerBug

    Are people still using torrents for piracy? I use torrents (Vuze) for legal file sharing, but would not consider using them for pirate material...that's just dumb. What he is supporting is not to stop piracy, only to stop legal file sharing.

    6.11.2009 03:57 #8

  • MReprogle

    Originally posted by KillerBug: Are people still using torrents for piracy? I use torrents (Vuze) for legal file sharing, but would not consider using them for pirate material...that's just dumb. What he is supporting is not to stop piracy, only to stop legal file sharing.And where in the world do you find all these legal torrents? If there really are some out there, there is probably only one person seeding, and it's you.

    6.11.2009 10:28 #9

  • ZippyDSM

    Heres the problem which they are seemingly happy with heavy bandwidth usage= file shearing(even if its premium media streaming) so throttle them all we will get more moeny that way!!!111.....

    6.11.2009 17:51 #10

  • Mez

    I think the industry has the means to monitor piracy. There are more robot spies than you can shake a stick at. For the last year everyone and their mother has been building robot spies. I have not done any P@P in 6 months or more. I have kept peer guardian up all the time just because I don't like robots probing my computer. They are more prevelent now then there were 6 months ago. I just went to the library catalog and was freeked out! About 20 sites were blocked but 5 times that got through. I am assuming the local government wanted to scan my computer and they were not on the block list.

    You all should keep peer guardian or the like up all the time. You might find out 'safe sites' are getting paid buy the cyber police to allow probing.

    You are ALL catalogged!

    12.11.2009 11:45 #11

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