ISPs To Filter Traffic For Copyright Holders? 367
Dr. Zarkov writes "At a CES forum, representatives of AT&T and other ISPs discussed the need to filter traffic at the network level, to stop the transfer of copyrighted material. An AT&T spokesman said they 'would have to handle such network filtering delicately, and do more than just stop an upload dead in its tracks, or send a legalistic cease and desist form letter to a customer. "We've got to figure out a friendly way to do it, there's no doubt about it," he said.'"
Why does AT&T want this? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why are they so interested in this? Because there will be pressure on smaller ISPs to do the same, with the difference that for smaller ISPs, roughly the same absolute cost divided by a much smaller number of customers is a much greater per-customer cost?
Re:Why does AT&T want this? (Score:5, Insightful)
I still think it's because they oversold their network capacity and don't want to spend any new money on upgrading their infrastructure to match the capacity they advertise. The fix to this is to implement network filtering that prevents customer from using the bandwidth AT&T has sold them.
Re:Why does AT&T want this? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why does AT&T want this? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why does AT&T want this? (Score:5, Informative)
if they switched to an actual-transfers system, they'd lose all kinds of money on those people.
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This is very insightful. Nobody's going to start charging per-bit when all the big media companies are hoping people are going to start paying for downloaded movies and TV shows.
I often wish the Internet was considered a public trust, or something akin to the US Posta
Re:Why does AT&T want this? (Score:4, Insightful)
That's a fantastic idea. I think you should sign up right now, and tell us all how quickly you go broke paying for unsolicited traffic to your node from John Q. Cracker and his army of bot-machines.
Wait, did I say 'fantastic'? What I meant was 'fantastically retarded'.
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Afterthought: I can average 5-15GB total transfer daily. Beyond the linux installs (perhaps 15GB/month)it is mostly TV shows; I pay for Expanded Digital + 5 Premium Channels, I'd say I earned the right to download the new Boston Legal or Dexter considering a DVR could do the same (yay MythTV). I also buy the boxsets for shows I respect and then download the rips anyway for convenience. I.E. My usage might make me a little more prejudiced against the pay-per-bit idea than some Xanga/Myspace teen or AOL e-mail user.
This does bring up another problem with volume pricing; it would flat out _kill_ internet radio and internet TV, reverting audio and video media control back to the cable and radio networks. It would be yet another in a series of steps backwards in american communications and technology. We're already rated as a tech backwater in comparison to Europe, let's not allow our greedy corporatemongers to turn us into a tech fossil.
And then they wonder (Score:5, Insightful)
I was listening to a story on NPR this am about how AT&T was whining about their revenue dropping. Well, duh. Turn yourselves into the a**hats of the telecom world, then act surprised when people cut service or go elsewhere.
Doesn't it just move you to tears when mega-corporations making billions in profits every quarter start whining about the cost of an infrastructure upgrade? We have to upgrade the system...whaaaaaaa. We have make a few less billions in profit to support our market...boo-f'ing-hoo. If it's that tough then sell all your circuits and get into a new line of work.
I despise corporate whiners.
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It's a terrible system that leads to inflation of the company's actual worth, and the
Re:And then they wonder (Score:5, Insightful)
A board chairman really shouldn't give a rats *ss what the stock price is.
That represents money that the company has already raised.
Management chooses to be not to be in it for the long haul and are incapable of providing any leadership.
Mangement needs to be able to sell the idea of proper management too.
Re:And then they wonder (Score:4, Insightful)
It's a terrible system that leads to inflation of the company's actual worth, and the need for short-term profits over long-term goals.
If you're a corporate executive, heavily invested in your own company's stock (which isn't a bad thing, since it means you're putting your money where your mouth is), you stand to lose a lot of money if the share value tanks. So you do whatever's required to keep it up -- and what the market demands in many cases isn't long-term, stable profitability, but short-term growth and dividends. Nobody plans for further out than a few years, nobody can engage in really visionary or transformative projects; everything is about making this quarter's or this year's numbers so that all the Wall Street traders don't dump your stock.
I'm not entirely sure how to fix it. I've wondered for a while if some regulative penalty on stock flipping wouldn't be beneficial; something like the penalties that exist on most mutual funds to discourage 'market timing' that hurt long-term investors. On one hand you don't want to do anything to the market that creates a dead-weight loss (like stick a per-transaction tax on stock trades, which would be the obvious route to prevent flipping), but the culture of short-term profits seems to be so destructive to our economy and industrial base as a whole that even as a quasi-free-marketer, I'm not inherently opposed to the idea.
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Re:Why does AT&T want this? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Why does AT&T want this? (Score:5, Insightful)
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This sword cuts both ways... (Score:2)
Result: Nobody wants overpriced Big-ISP connections any more.
Most likely (Score:3, Insightful)
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Makes perfect sense — it is their content. Don't like it — don't buy it.
Somehow the ages-old prohibition against using the tapes/CDs/DVDs in public ("private enjoyment only") never aroused much protest — everybody seemed content, that you can not set up a movie theater playing retail-priced tapes...
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The friendly way about it... (Score:5, Interesting)
You do not want to open that box...
Re:The friendly way about it... (Score:4, Insightful)
Besides, does anyone really think that that's going to work? It would be nearly impossible to filter out copyrighted material. As always, the Net will just route around the damage. That's the nature of the network and it was built that way on purpose.
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Re:The friendly way about it... (Score:5, Informative)
Check out Freenet [freenetproject.org] - total anonymity and total encryption is the goal. All that's needed for it to work is for more people to download and run nodes.
More like the friend code way about it (Score:3, Interesting)
Check out Freenet [freenetproject.org] - total anonymity and total encryption is the goal. All that's needed for it to work is for more people to download and run nodes.
One thing Freenet has in common with Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection is friend codes. In both Freenet and Nintendo WFC, you need to add the other user, and the other user needs to add you. So how does one find other trusted users' friend codes in order to connect to the network?
But I noticed that since the last time I checked freenetproject.org, the page Connecting to Freenet [freenetproject.org] has added a few sentences discussing an "insecure mode". Is this any better than just using a system built around eMule, Gnutella, or
Re:More like the friend code way about it (Score:4, Informative)
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ahem (Score:5, Insightful)
We've got to figure out a legal way to do it, there's no doubt about it.
There, fixed it for you.
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Actually fixed this time.
No More Network Congestion? (Score:5, Funny)
all the best,
drew
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All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners.
So AT&T would prevent me from seeing your comment unless each post contained a legal paragraph assigning it to the creative commons.
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Or if it didn't, would it open up liability? Could we all immediately sue AT&T for failing to filter out our copyrighted posts?
Re:No More Network Congestion? (Score:5, Insightful)
What he *really* means (Score:2, Interesting)
If I had to guess, I'd say this is about AT&T not getting sued by the big media companies. They seem to be bending over ba
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Only creative works are copyrightable. You could not, for instance, claim copyright on a number.
So as long as all your network traffic is passed using some sort of numerical representation, it should be okay. Binary, perhaps?
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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It's funny how the U.S., where the PC and the Internet first became big, seems less and less on the digital frontier. When in much of the EU...
Yes are current laws are draconian, but all this stupidity started when we signed on the Europe's Berne Convention. For the first two hundred years of our existence our copyright laws were much more sane.
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How many of the music/videos on your Romanian server are actually produced in Romania?
US of A invests huge amount of money into producing top quality music, videos, and other intellectual property. There is nothing wrong with wanting to be paid. Hence the difference between US and Romanian antipiracy attitudes.
"Top quality" media? That means that the rest of the world fucking loves whatever we produce and just can't get enough, as much as t
In practice (Score:5, Insightful)
People who download illegal files will continue to do so by obfusticating, unless you are to ban all binary transfers! It is the people who want to download legally who will now have to put up with restricted choice as well as DRM.
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They'd pretty much have to ban all transfers to/from any non-whilelisted IP to block trasferal of "undesireable" materials.
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fix: UUencoding - isn't that an ASCII encoding of a binary stream?
Pretty much any network data transfer is binary, and I'm sure some
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ASCII is stored in binary also, however, it just handles some of the bytes in a particular mannter (newlines, may ignore the 8th bit, etc.), depending on the system. An ASCII stream is interpereted in transfer due to differing handlings of various things, whereas a binary stream is just shoved through.
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Most laws only affect the law abiding citizen (until the criminal gets caught).
For instance, to drive a car, I got licensed and had to pay a fee and buy insurance, yet there are many criminals driving the roads without a license - they didn't have to pay the fee and don't need insurance, but still have the benefits of driving.
I am not saying laws are not needed, just that the law abiding citi
uh huh... (Score:5, Informative)
Who gets to identify "copyright" and how do those with permission to use said materials bypass the system for legitimate reasons? Who is going to pay for the resources needed to store signature files for each copyrighted work on earth and the hardware needed to perform comparisons of any download with the signature database in realtime in such a manner that it doesn't adversely affect network performance?
Finally, wouldn't all these techniques be rendered useless by encrypted tunneling software short of making encryption over the internet illegal in itself? And who gets to enforce that?
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You, the customer, who else?
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wouldn't all these techniques be rendered useless by encrypted tunneling software short of making encryption over the internet illegal in itself?
While not making it illegal per say many ISPs reduce the bandwidth for encrypted traffic for just this reason. Torrents announce themselves as such as part of the protocol, they were getting throttled, so they got smart and started encrypting their traffic. Guess what? My ISP started throttling all encrypted traffic, alright for say doing banking, but when I'm using VPN to get into my work and do remote desktop, db access etc, it really sucks.
Comcast vs ATT (Score:2, Offtopic)
Right now, I have Comcast and am paying through the nose for it. I'm thinking of switching to ATT, which will cut my monthly bill in about half.
But price aside, I'm curious what the Slashdot crowd thinks of the choice between ATT and Comcast simply from a moral ground. Which company, in your view, is "better"? And I don't mean which company makes it easier to pirate materials, but which company behaves m
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It's all Kodos and Kang, buddy.
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You're kidding, right? That's like deciding between Stalin and [censored by Godwin], between Hilary Rosen and Jack Valenti, between Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan, etc....
Stop transfer of copyrighted material? (Score:5, Insightful)
So, lets see. Linux is copyrighted (it has to be to have a license on it). Does that mean they want to stop that as well? And the images on a web-page, they'll be copyrighted too so do they get stopped?
If not and they just mean "copyright infringing material" then 1) why don't they say that and 2) how do they ever plan to tell the difference between infringing and non-infringing use?
Same old same old, I guess: person of power wants to be seen to be "doing the right thing" by huge copyright holders but doesn't understand the detail or implication.
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That's easy: block everything that doesn't come from their "portal" site (for which they have agreements with the copyright holders). It'd be just like AOL! (And that's exactly what the "I"SPs want, because they could make a lot more money that way, if only they could force customers to put up with it.)
Please translate (Score:2)
The answer would show where the unbearable pressure is coming from that makes AT&T and it's ilk feel this 'need'.
Censorship whichever way.
What is the incentive? (Score:3, Insightful)
So what exactly is in it for at&t?
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a) costing them a fortune in bandwidth
b) illegal (or at least the majority is illegal) so that have a good reason to stomp it out without looking like they are just doing so to save themselves money.
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Why would they care if the customers are pissed off? They're the phone company! The customers don't have any choice but to put up with it. What are they gonna do, not have Internet service at all?
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I cant wait. (Score:5, Insightful)
See, this is what telecom amnesty gets you... (Score:5, Insightful)
That about establishes the principle that it's their network, not yours, and the moment you put your traffic on it, that's also theirs, to review and pass judgment on, and approve.
Or not.
Isn't it nice that they plan to do it "politely", though? That should count for something.
Encryption??? Hello?? (Score:4, Interesting)
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AT&T works with the Fed to spy on us. (Score:2)
What the big boys have been wanting all along (Score:2)
Yes, that's definitely the nose of a camel you see poised at the entrance to your tent.
If ISP's start "filtering", just watch the way interpretation of copyright law expands. All the major corporations can afford to buy access to the courts, and you'll see one case after another work its way through the system, each stealing a little more from us.
You thought the RIAA was bad? Wait 'til these scumbags set their lawyers loose.
i download copyrighted material everyday (Score:5, Insightful)
Practically every page I download has a copyright, including the one I am reading now.
All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners. Comments are owned by the Poster. The Rest © 1997-2007 SourceForge, Inc.
How can they differentiate unauthorized copyright from authorized?
Carrier? (Score:4, Insightful)
AT&T is my ISP (Score:5, Funny)
Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic (Score:5, Informative)
This is quite interesting to follow since here in Sweden the debate climate has just made an interesting turn. For the first time, politicians in our parliament has come out in support of scrapping the current laws against file sharing on the grounds that enforcing them requires giving either ISP:s or rights owners too much insight into people's personal communications, thus violating our privacy.
This was sparked by a government report suggesting that the law should be changed to require ISP:s to scan the network traffic of their customers and possibly terminate the internet service if multiple violations were made. One thing we should not here is that in Sweden, the ISP:s are strongly opposed to monitoring their customers and wish to remain providers of a service, not the internet police of rights owners.
The main problem in this whole issue is that people tend to think that just because something can be done with new technology (such as monitoring what I send over the internet to my friends) it's ok to do so. Free societies value personal freedom and the freedom to keep our private lives to ourselves. No one would dream of suggesting that the postal service should start opening people's mail to see if there's something illegal inside. If it's not right in the analog world, it's not right in the digital world either.
Now I'm just waiting to see how long it takes the rest of the EU to catch on. There's a big chance that we'll see soon see the largest changes to copyright laws since they were originally thought up. Personally I'll be satisfied with a clarification that clearly states that it's illegal for anyone to monitor my personal communication regardless of what medium I use, unless specifically required to do so by a court of law (as in other wiretapping cases).
Friendly way to exit common carrier status? (Score:5, Insightful)
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At what point does their filtering of content lose them common carrier status and mean they have to filter *everything* or be liable for everything a customer can get at on their network?
Surely they're either a common carrier (they carry all traffic regardless) or they're not? In which case I'd expect people to start suing because they don't block child porn, or their network was used when little susie was abducted by that man off the net or terrorists emailed each ot
My solution... (Score:3, Interesting)
Also, don't ever underestimate the bandwidth potential of a pack of blank DVDs and a parcel post.
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Also, don't ever underestimate the bandwidth potential of a pack of blank DVDs and a parcel post.
Yeah, but the latency is just awful.
The Internet "used" to be owned by the people (Score:5, Insightful)
I want change, alright. I want the greedy IP companies thrown off OUR web and send them back to their brick and mortar. Give the web back to the people and educational institutions and companies that don't try political and USPTO lock downs.
While we are at it, let's pull health insurance companies grubby hands off of health care. Take profit out of health care. That some should profit on the suffering of the sick and injured, and others even INCREASE their suffering, is detestable, but politicos from BOTH parties are happy with it, as long as they get their campaign "contributions".
Then, let's shut down the check advance folks. 450+% interest! They feed on the poor and make the Mafia look like a charitable organization. They've replaced Louie the Leg Breaker with law enforcement to do their dirty work. The credit card companies are not much better. 35% interest? Diverting payments to the lower interest rate loans when the higher interest rate loans are older is simply theft. and hair trigger interest rate increases? Politicos from BOTH parties are happy with it, as long as they get their campaign "contributions".
My copyrighted files are legal to download (Score:2)
Take my files, please:
Early diagrams of filtering technology... (Score:2)
What's the big deal? (Score:2)
ISPs and piracy (Score:4, Interesting)
ISPs know too well that without piracy, there would be little demand for expensive broadband connections. Of course, on the other hand, it has to be kept under control, lest it starts costing ISPs too much money.
Once legal alternatives become more profitable to ISPs, pirate networks will dry up overnight. The recent assault on net neutrality is an attempt to get there... making legal download service pay for "protection".
Yet, there is a more sensible way: the universal hosting marketplace. Imagine a P2P network where anyone can host files, and is guaranteed to be paid for each upload. ISPs could provide a large chunk of the capacity (à la Usenet), and make a bundle from that.
Give financial value to uploads, and the most active file sharers will view illegal file sharing as a financial loss. Similarly, piracy will become an observable, tangible loss to ISPs.
Until now, piracy was producers' problem. Give value to bandwidth, and it becomes everyone's problem.
Disclaimer: I am currently working on an open-source solution to achieve just that (see sig). Feel free to join us.
What? This is stupid! (Score:5, Insightful)
Not wanting to RTFM, exactly WHY should ISPs filter traffic? The DMCA holds the ISP blameless for what goes through their "pipes".
Like not stopping legitimate copyrighted traffic.
After all, in this century (for the first time ever) as soon as something is "affixed in tangible form" copyright is granted. Everything on the internet save anything created before 1920 is copyrighted.
All ISPs have to do to keep copyrighted material off their networks is shut down the fucking network!
My friends' music is copyrighted. They want it shared. Star Wreck is copyrighted. They want it shared. Linux and other FOSS is copyrighted and they want it shared.
Good luck filtering out "Star Treck - The Search for Spock" from "Star Wreck - In The Pirkinning".
ISPs need to mind their own damned business and leave my internet traffic alone. Keep the files I can legally transmit from transmitting and you'll hear from my lawyer. This is entirely unaceptable. My ISP has no obligation nor right to filter traffic.
This is infeasible (Score:2)
The main attack on encryption is to offer nodes for the P2P download or fake being the server. The data is then available in clear again. Defense is again very simple: Blacklisting does the trick.
This is doomed from the beginning, unless encryption gets outlawed. Quite frankly the whole global copyright industry is insignificant compared to the e
What about common carrier status? (Score:3, Insightful)
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It's kind of sad.
LOL (Score:5, Funny)
You are hereby notified that the content of this slashdot post is Copyright (c) 2008 by myself. I reserve all rights to this post. Please filter it appropriately to prevent duplication of this post.
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The Friendly Way (Score:2)
bullshit (Score:2)
Why are you asking me? (Score:2)
ISPs To Filter Traffic For Copyright Holders?
How am I supposed to know that? Don't ask me, jeez I come here to read news not to report it.
However if you're offering me a job I'll go dig around and see what I can find out.
Great idea! (Score:2)
They won't solve piracy with this. There are better ways. Such as addressing WHY people pirate, instead of just trying to crack down on it. You know what might discourage piracy? If ISPs start charging for bandwidth. So instead o
A few things... (Score:2)
2. Threaten to go to another ISP. It isn't like all ISPs will automatically jump on the bandwagon.
3. If we allow them to do this, what prevents things going one step further and Microsoft implementing anti-piracy measures in future versions of Windows (or perhaps current versions with patches)? Can you imagine if Windows had something to check whether the file
And what about my own media? (Score:2)
they say copyrighted - they MEAN music and vids (Score:3, Insightful)
All they will do is ban material that the big players (read: RIAA MPAA) want stopped.
I doubt it will work, as the studios will still have to have a means of digital distribution, so I'm guessing that "legitimate" content will have some sort of pass- phrase or encrypted header applied. The filters will let that stuff through (to the destination in the header?) but would prevent it going elsewhere,
What happens next is people learn how to hack or decrypt the headers (or apply their own over the top of the old header) and we're back here again.
Plus ca change
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The simple answer is going to be that if copyright material is being transferred that the ISP is an agent acting on behalf of the infringer. They are enabling the infringement and by not doing everything in their power to stop it they are in fact encouraging it and allowing it to happen.
We've been through this before back in the days when BBS were being sued by copyright holders. When the big guys took over they lobbied congress for common carrier status and got it. By statute they are not responsible for the content they carry. A magazine is because they are "editors". Two different legal statuses.
If ISPs start editing and controlling content then they become responsible for the content carried on their systems. This wipes out the common carrier status they fought so hard for and wo