MPAA Boss Makes Case for ISP Content Filtering 282
creaton writes "At the annual UBS Global & Media Communications Conference yesterday, MPAA boss Dan Glickman banged on the copyright filtering drum during a 45-minute speech. Glickman called piracy the MPAA's #1 issue and told the audience that it cost the studios $6 billion annually. His solution: technology, especially in the form of ISP filtering. 'The ISP community is going to be at the forefront of this in the future because they have everything to lose and nothing to gain by not seeing that the content is being properly protected ... and I think that's a great opportunity.' AT&T has already said it plans to filter content, but others may be more reluctant to go along, notes Ars Technica: 'ISPs that are concerned with being, well, ISPs aren't likely to see many benefits from installing some sort of industrial-strength packet-sniffing and filtering solution at the core of their network. It costs money, customers won't like the idea, and the potential for backlash remains high.'"
Neat (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Neat (Score:5, Funny)
Captain Copyright told me last night.
Re:Neat (Score:5, Informative)
This is why the recent BitTorrent lawsuit against Comcast is so important...once they realize that they can't look inside encrypted packets, they're just going to block all p2p traffic. But even that is going to be hard, because at the encrypted UDP packet level, what really distinguishes a BT packet from, say, a Skype packet which is also encrypted by default? Screw encryption, what differentiates a DRM-free MP3 flying in from iTunes or Amazon from one coming through a modified BT protocol which uses port 80 and fake http headers?
In short, this is the dumbest idea and any implementation will be necessarily half-assed and is going to affect people.
Re:Neat (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Neat (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Neat (Score:5, Funny)
After all, people are just taking the music that no one wants to buy, right?
Re:Neat (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Neat (Score:5, Funny)
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Wrong. (Score:5, Insightful)
No, the MPAA's #1 issue is their high prices and crappy movies.
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I think he meant the #1 issue they could do something about.
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Re:Wrong. (Score:5, Insightful)
Nice point. People will still get sent to jail, but that won't stop piracy. Eventually, they'll have to admit that the only way to minimize (not stop) piracy is to step on the citizens' legal rights like privacy and free speech.
But even with that, they can't control the world and enforce the same laws without stepping on the other nations' rights.
And not even that will stop piracy.
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Re:Wrong. (Score:4, Insightful)
If they had half a clue they'd take a page from the credit card companies.
Visa and Mastercard don't try to stop all credit card fraud. They look to reduce it to manageable levels. If a solution is going to cost more to implment then it's going to save then they probably aren't going to run with it. If it's going to cost them more in customer goodwill then it gains them in fraud prevention they probably aren't going to run with it.
The same with piracy. They will never be able to stop all piracy. Steps should probably be taken to go after the worst offenders (I have little sympathy for people trying to engage in piracy for profit) but going after Grandma for downloading an episode of Law & Order is going to cost them more in goodwill then will gain them in prevention. And it still won't stop piracy.
Visa and Mastercard could stop a ton of credit card fraud by allowing (requiring?) merchants to ID customers, replacing signature verification with some sort of shared secret (PIN code?), etc, etc. Most of this isn't likely to happen, because it would cost them more in customer goodwill (do you want to show your license every time you swipe your card?) and sales then the amount of fraud it would prevent.
Re:Wrong. (Score:4, Insightful)
f they had half a clue they'd take a page from the credit card companies.
Visa and Mastercard don't try to stop all credit card fraud. They look to reduce it to manageable levels. If a solution is going to cost more to implment then it's going to save then they probably aren't going to run with it. If it's going to cost them more in customer goodwill then it gains them in fraud prevention they probably aren't going to run with it.
Exactly. Another example: stores could reduce shoplifting to zero by physically searching every person who leaves the store, but the store owner knows that (a)the payroll for all those security folks probably would exceed the value of the goods lost to theft, and (b)patting down customers and searching their personal handbags and pockets is not a very good way to insure return business to your store. So, you put a few cameras in electronics, designer goods, etc., electronically tag your high dollar items, train personnel to watch for suspicious activity, and that's about it. Some stuff will still go out the door free. You can minimize it, control it to some extent, but you can never eliminate it. In the case of online piracy, really the only way to completely eliminate digital piracy is to shut down the Internet. (I shouldn't post that -- might give some congresscritters ideas...)
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Re:Wrong. (Score:5, Interesting)
The MPAA doesn't have a problem. It's making money hand over fist. I'm sure Dan Glickman wants more money, but don't we all. The MPAA's core business is selling seats in theaters, and they're doing fairly well, not as well as in the mid-90's but that's a measure of the overall health of the economy. The MPAA could sit back, not make any technological changes, and they'd still do well for probably about a decade (again, contrast with the music industry).
If I were pressed to name the MPAA's #1 issue, I'd probably say consumer ambivalence over HD-DVD and Blu-Ray. I wouldn't say piracy.
Re:Wrong. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Wrong. (Score:5, Insightful)
If I were to guess why theater attendance is a bit down from a decade ago, I'd point to gas prices, and less spending money, but also to the fact that with videogames and the internet there is more competing for our entertainment dollar (or hour) than there was 10 years ago.
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What about babysitting?!? (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh, right, I forgot; this is Slashdot. No-one has girlfriends, much less spouses and/or children :-)
Re:Wrong. (Score:5, Insightful)
I have to admit, after getting Netflix my urge to actually buy DVDs dried up pretty quick. I'll still get stuff here and there (especially if I plan to show it to friends/lend it out), but for the most part my collection has been stagnant for a couple of years now.
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I think subscriptions like Netflix are part of the reason why people are not going to the theaters as much as they used to,
I don't know or care about Netflix, but whatever.
My own reasons for preferring to watch movies any place[1] other than a theater:
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The MPAA's core business is selling seats in theaters, and they're doing fairly well, not as well as in the mid-90's but that's a measure of the overall health of the economy
I would make the argument that that was the MPAA's core business 20-25 years ago but if they have any business sense they know that this is no longer the case. The landscape has changed and the truth of the matter is for the MPAA to survive they need to understand that this is no longer their core business although they try to protect it as if it were its core business.
Music industry already got railroaded by something like this; they failed to see that their business had fundamentally changed and now the
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Re:Wrong. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Wrong. (Score:5, Funny)
...zing!
Re:Wrong. (Score:4, Funny)
Well, you have to understand... the studios didn't want the strike. The WGA are a greedy bunch of bastards that expect royalties off internet sales and other so-called "new media". Yeah, right! The studios have no way of knowing how much that new media is worth, so how are they going to pay royalties to the writers?
Don't the writers know that it's clearly impossible for the studios to calculate how much something is worth.... unless it's being pirated of course, then it's clearly worth billions of dollars and costs thousands of jobs ;)
In all seriousness though (and so my whole post isn't sarcasm), J. Michael Straczynski (creator of Babylon 5) has some interesting things to say [worldsofjms.com] about the writers strike. It's a good perspective into what motivates the rank and file of the WGA.
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Agreed. My first thought was that the Motion Picture Association of America's #1 issue should be creating quality motion pictures...
Can I borrow his dictionary? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm fairly sure it is either incorrect on "nothing" and "everything", or "lose" and "gain"...
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Re:Can I borrow his dictionary? (Score:5, Insightful)
That still wont address other issues like legal BitTorrent use, the large amount of false positives they'll get, customer complaints about Service X being slow for some reason.
Theres no way this will be s good thing for ISPs in the long term.
also...
if ISPs join together and reject this, theres a chance they can use a common carrier type of defence but once they try to actively filter BitTorrent, wont they be blamed every time they fail.
Interesting response if you get a letter from the MAFIAA... My ISP filters piracy so I shouldn't be able to download anything illegal and if I can its their fault.
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If they discover our 128bit key, we'll use a 256, 512, 1024... If set up right there is absolutely no way to tell the difference between encrypted BT and encrypted anything else. That's the point IT'S ENCRYPTED.
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If set up right there is absolutely no way to tell the difference between encrypted BT and encrypted anything else. That's the point IT'S ENCRYPTED.
Well, the problem is that often times the initial handshakes aren't encrypted, or they ARE encrypted but the handshake itself is still easy to identify as BT. If you can identify one connection as belonging to BT then there is nothing stopping you from slowing it down or even blocking it entirely.
Also, the current BT clients aren't exactly subtle. Even when using encryption the massive burst of traffic to random IPs all over the world isn't exactly low-key. Fire up Wireshark and/or tcpdump at your ne
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Re:Can I borrow his dictionary? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, I had the same reaction. If ISP customers buy internet service for (among other reasons) clandestinely downloading movies, then that customer is one more customer you might not have had before. The only thing ISPs have to lose by limiting downloads is more customers.
...Unless you take his quote as a veiled threat, i.e. "You'll have everything to lose and nothing to gain by not seeing things our way, since we will bend legislators over our knee to provide us with the tools to bitchslap you into line if you don't come around." I'd say that's a logical reading of the quote that seems to conform well with the **IA modus operandi and way of thinking.
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Make the MPAA pay for it (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Make the MPAA pay for it (Score:5, Insightful)
See the problem here is that the MPAA is calculating this $6 billion/year number by saying multiplying the number of pirated copies (a number they can only estimate and they probably highball it) times the retail cost of a legitimate copy.
The problem with this is that it completely bypasses all microeconomic theory.
In simple terms, there are a huge number of people that will consume your good if it doesn't cost them anything (or next to nothing), but as soon as you raise the price a little bit, the number of people willing to buy the good drops substantially. This is called the price elasticity of demand.
While there is some limited evidence that the market for piracy has shrank the overall market, it's difficult to tell how much of an effect piracy really has. There are so many other factors (dilution of purchase points, ease of access to new/unsigned bands, etc) that there's some evidence that the total market for media has actually increased substantially, but the record labels are being left out of the equation.
Piracy isn't good, but it is a result of a free society and the deadweight loss (basically: if you tax someone or restrict prices via regulation, the decrease in income from the economy is greater than the income from the tax, so there's 'lost' production that never occurs) incurred by preventing it is astronomical.
IANAE, BIAAEM (I am not an economist, but I am an economist major and I hope to get a PhD in economics down the road)
Re:Make the MPAA pay for it (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Make the MPAA pay for it (Score:4, Insightful)
1) Willing to see more than once in theater -and/or- willing to run out within 48 hours of its release and purchase
2) Buy DVD first week it is out
3) Buy DVD at full price within 2 months of release
4) Buy DVD, maybe, eventually, at no more than 75% normal cost, or a 2-for-1 deal
5) I'll buy it if I see it in the $5 bin at Best Buy
6) Would watch it on TV/Airplane if nothing else on and I can't sleep.
If most of the $6B is from people pirating movies like Gigli, or the animated Spirit Stallion of the Simeron [sp?] just to see how bad it was, you can hardly count them as Tier 1-3. But the $6B probably DOES count them in the higher tiers. Very rarely does a movie found in tier 5 or 6 turn out to be good, although I did see Wild Hogs on an airplane and found The Magnificent 7 in the $5 pile, both of which were much better than anticipated.
Those who will go for tier 1-3 will buy the movie no matter what. Tier 4 people might buy the movie, but they might forget it existed with the latest over-hyped Harry Potter flick or w/ever. Tier 4 movies might end up just getting rented or Netflicked. Tier 5-6 movies are very likely to never be purchased, if simply because they are not worth seeing more than once.
That is Hollywood's problem. Too few of the films are worth seeing more than once, unless you are really drunk or nostalgic for a bad movie from your childhood. So it doesn't make sense for someone to spend $20-$25 for something that will take up space and never be watched again.
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I, for one, don't want anyone offering my ISP a few hundred million $ to start filtering content. They just might accept the offer.
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And your argument about MPAA paying 1/2 the "damages" is obviously a straw-man, but it does raise an interesting p
If the MPAA focused more on assisting ISPs (Score:5, Insightful)
So... (Score:4, Insightful)
By definition, all text, pictures, and video have copyright applied to them at the moment of creation.
It will happen, and here's why... (Score:5, Insightful)
2) The **AA's will therefore lobby for an exception to the DMCA for their stuff.
3) Congress will grant it.
Any questions?
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Hey guys! Great Idea here...! (Score:4, Insightful)
I hope AT&T doesn't mind getting dragged into pretty much every lawsuit involving one of their customers that comes down the pike now... "what do you mean you're not responsible for the child porn coming out of one of your client's computers!? You filter content now, don't you...?"
(I know, loopholes and such, but at least (IMHO only) the precedent and mechanisms to claim AT&T responsible for all their users' content is now in place. If they filter inbound, they can filter outbound. If they filter movies, they can filter pr0n. If they filter by discrete packet, they should (at least according to a plaintiff in such a lawsuit) be now collaterally responsible for the flow of data through their network.
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They're not, and they don't want to be.
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They're not, and they don't want to be.
I don't know of a single ISP who ever wants to be held legally (and financially) liable for what their users do.
More or less, they do act in that role (the DMCA guarantees most of it), and will happily hide behind the title the nanosecond they get hit with a lawsuit for something one of their users had done.
While you are correct in that they cannot carry the full weight and title (there are differing classes of it, IIRC) - they do have a little that they can hide behind as immunity in any legal proce
One Solution (Score:5, Funny)
I've watched that movie... (Score:4, Funny)
Freedom? (Score:5, Interesting)
And if ISPs should filter our content, then why shouldn't other service and content providers outside of the internet be responsible for censoring what we consume, say, do as well? Parents can filter what their children consume. I can filter what I can consume. It should stop there.
Has anyone validated these loss claims by... (Score:3, Interesting)
A lot of assumptions (Score:2)
This claim makes a lot of baseless assumptions. Besides the fact that P2P can be used for legal purposes, how does he know that P2P is ultimately a bad thing for ISPs. Sure, more people will have access to files, but more people will also be sharin
I don't have a problem with ISP filtering... (Score:5, Insightful)
If they are willing to accept all of this liability, then I have no problems at all with them filtering network content. I'll still pick one of their competitors that doesn't, however.
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Re:No your number one issue SHOULD BE (Score:5, Funny)
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But Fucking Movies are the ones doing well...
http://www.dailynews.com/news/ci_6059391 [dailynews.com]
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/11/21/60minutes/main585049.shtml [cbsnews.com]
And you can use your own partner, or someone else's.
hello mpaa (Score:2, Insightful)
you can own atoms: a ham sandwich, your car in the driveway, but bits and bytes, sorry, not yours, never will be
you'll figure it out in 200 years at the rate you are going
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there IS a way to keep information locked up (Score:2)
but when you release it in public, it is in fact free
so you are misdirecting the argument to one about privacy. no, wrong subject
the subject is about commerce: those who attempt to install tollbooths on the flow of information in public: the riaa, mpaa, etc.
unfortunately, they can make all the ip laws that they want. they just happen to be unenforceable laws
in my world, i would like to make valid laws, laws that someone can actually enforce
but if you want to pass laws that the sky
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I also don't see why physical property is so "real", and intellectual property is compara
it's unenforceable (Score:2)
but if you put that bike on your front lawn, someone may take it. doesn't make it right, but everyone understands the common sense about defending your property
so yes, the concept of owning property in real life is just as coontrived as owning bits and bytes, EXCEPT that you can actually defend your property in real life, so it has some value as a concept
if you own say a "movie", when you give it to someone, you've g
mod parent up ;-) (Score:5, Funny)
so m=e/c^2
therefore, i owe you e/c^2 for the mass of yours i am using
do you take picodollars?
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Sure, here you go. I assume your computer is not accumulating a net positive charge? Good, then you have your electrons back.
What do you mean they're not the same electrons? I suggest you just try to prove that. Distinguish between the electrons you got back and the ones you sent out, if you think you can...
if passing unenforceable laws (Score:2)
just don't expect that laws that can't be enforced have any meaning in the real world
A Triumph Salvo from the Idiot Gun (Score:2)
Richard Dawkins chuckles, then turns back to his computer and downloads a screener of Bender's Big Score.
Wrong. (Score:2)
It's not in the best interest of ISP to filter content. They they lost what common carrier status they have. This will open them up for lawsuits and make them responsible for content carried over their "wires."
The MPAA and RIAA want this so they will have bigger fish to sue.
Preaching to the choir... (Score:2)
The problem is there aren't that many movies worth the purchase price and, perhaps it's just me, not that many worth renting or watching again after seeing it in the theater. The last few times I've browsed the video store I thought, no, no, maybe, no, ...
One VERY simple problem with this sort of thing (Score:4, Insightful)
These filtering systems, and by this I mean systems from Macrovision on VCRs on up to DVDs and internet video, serve not just to protect 'the content' but also serves to lock out any growing or potential competition. Just as the RIAA presumes that all MP3s are illegal, the MPAA presumes that all content online must also be illegal. How can any filter system like that ensure that legal content is permitted unhindered? And when 'legalized' video content is allowed through, what's there to prevent DRM or Watermarking from being stripped from the original data?
What these systems serve best, just as in the case of DVD CCS, not to protect the copyright...or really even the ability to copy, but the right of playback and content formatting and presentation control. How many times have you bought a DVD only to find that there are stupid commercials or previews that you are prevented from skipping? That's the REAL intent as far as I'm concerned.
Piracy (Score:5, Funny)
Can't the Navy or Coast Guard help them with this?
pfft (Score:3, Interesting)
-start a company that delivers content via bittorrent
-have a few friends "buy" products and then be unable to complete the download
-have them then proceed to mock this company
-file lawsuit against ISP, claim loss of business damages for $100k and $20M in punitive damages
-repeat
Then again, if bittorrent and all other dedicated P2P protocols are somehow filtered, there's still many protocols that can be "hijacked" to carry payloads but cannot really be filtered (IRC, NEWS.. heck, if you encrypt the content, even email).
Try as they might, illegal filesharing will never end.. it may only diminish if they start offering a reasonably priced and featured legal alternative.
In other news (Score:2)
KGB boss makes case for samizdat filtering
Southern farmers say that emancipation costs them $6 billion annually
Dear MPAA prick, we do not owe you or your corporate buddies a living. Our freedoms are not contingent on your business model. Stop being evil, and get a proper job instead of living off corporate welfare.
Glickman called piracy the MPAA's #1 issue (Score:2)
These MPAA clowns are the same bozos who said the VCR was the movie industry's biggest threat a couple of decades ago.
$6B? Sure! (Score:2)
Dan "Don" Glickman (Score:2)
'The ISP community is going to be at the forefront of this in the future because they have everything to lose and nothing to gain by not seeing that the content is being properly protected ...'
That sounds like a pretty serious threat if you ask me. I wonder if ISP's will wake up with severed horse heads in their beds...
good luck with that Mr MPAA (Score:2)
Calling "protection of content from theft" the MPAA's number one issue, Glickman reiterated claims that piracy costs the studios $6 billion worldwide every year.
Half the MPAA budget goes toward reducing this number, and the trade group believes that the single best way to do so is through technology. How big is the MPAA budget? Anything close to 12Billion?
6 billion dollars - MPAA budge == ??? profit?
"Technology will be the key to determine how successful we will become," Glickman said.
Successful at what? I would have thought shareholder value would be that key? Has anyone else ever wondered how independent films, and their more recent popularity has hurt the MPAA and its members?
It's a wonder he did not mention free indy films distributed by BT.
But "technology" in isolation won't do much to help the movie business. The MPAA needs the support of those companies best in a position to implement filtering technology: ISPs. Acknowledging that the studios have often been "in tension with" the ISP community, Glickman claimed that the two groups have a much better relationship these days.
Does this mean they are admitting defeat? If only sniffing packets as they enter and leave your NIC can squelch the flow of illegal downloads, haven't they lost? Why not send an MPAA rep to your house to live in your spare bedroom so they can truly monitor what you are doing online? I'm absolutely certain that no one else would ever get that monitoring data or use it for nefarious purposes, now would they? Is the **AA funded by the NSA? WTF
Seriously, if it were not for the preconditioning that Bush and co. did with the NSA and DHS, I think wallstreet boys would be dumping **AA stock like it was anthrax about now. This article is tantamount to saying "we have a dead business plan, and we NEED help to stay in business. We probably won't be able to stay in business over the next 10 years unless the government forces ISP's to bail our sorry asses out of this sling called The Internet because we can't produce anything that people like, and all our competitors are killing us with good content"
Repeat after me, "innovate or die... innovate or die... innovate or die"
Can we all pitch in and buy a buggy whip to send to this guy?
Please repost (Score:4, Funny)
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I'll worry... (Score:2)
ISP's (Score:3, Insightful)
Let's approach this from the other angle (Score:2)
So let me get this straight.. (Score:4, Insightful)
The RIAA and MPAA claim billions of dollars in damages due to piracy each year, yet when asked how much an individual download costs, they have no clue.
Get a clue: Clamping down on casual trading is not going to bring increased revenues. People aren't paying because they either see no value, or they feel the process is flawed. Making it harder to find these works won't make anyone suddenly feel as though there is value. People will just start to look elsewhere, or - as usual - get smarter, and find means around this. Virtually all deep packet inspection can be thwarted by encryption, so what exactly is there to be gained except more headaches for those running ISPs and higher prices for their customers?
A win-win Threat from the MPAA (Score:2)
This sadly is a threat from the MPAA (that I guarantee you will be followed by the RIAA) that is a double-edged sword for any ISP....
Glickman called piracy the MPAA's #1 issue and told the audience that it cost the studios $6 billion annually. His solution: technology, especially in the form of ISP filtering. 'The ISP community is going to be at the forefront of this in the future because they have everything to lose and nothing to gain by not seeing that the content is being properly protected ... and I think that's a great opportunity.'
This to me is a threat. The only "everything to lose" that an ISP (who is currently protected by the Safe Harbor provisions of the DMCA) is the **AA getting laws changed to hold an ISP liable (or winning a precedent setting case that ignores those laws - which they keep trying).
...but others may be more reluctant to go along, notes Ars Technica: 'ISPs that are concerned with being, well, ISPs aren't likely to see many benefits from installing some sort of industrial-strength packet-sniffing and filtering solution at the core of their network. It costs money, customers won't like the idea, and the potential for backlash remains high.'"
Which brings us to the above part, which I think Ars is on target with. If an ISP/OSP (beco
Is the same MPAA... (Score:2)
...who couldn't be bothered to acknowledge that they were violating the GPL with their "University Toolkit" till their ISP got a DMCA takedown notice [slashdot.org]?
Seriously, remind me why we should take their "intellectual property rights" seriously if they're not willing to reciprocate.
hey AT&T (Score:3, Interesting)
you will lose my internet business, my phone business and wireless business
to the local cable company.
Studios' problem (Score:3, Informative)
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So why not have unrestricted downloads of content from the ISP's servers when purchased.
Because the typical bottleneck with a DOCSIS network is not the ISP edge, but the DOCSIS nodes themselves. Allowing someone to have full access to all of the bandwidth (even if the source of that download was within the ISPs network) would harm the other users in the neighborhood.
If your ping times went from 60ms to 300ms would you really care if the source of your neighbors download that was killing your node was local to the ISP or not?