Slashdot Log In
ISPs To Filter Traffic For Copyright Holders?
Posted by
kdawson
on Wed Jan 09, 2008 08:11 AM
from the superhighway-becomes-cop dept.
from the superhighway-becomes-cop dept.
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.'"
Related Stories
Submission: ISPs to filter traffic for copyrighted media? by Anonymous Coward
[+]
News: Install Copyright Filters on PCs, Says RIAA Boss 391 comments
Don't squeeze the Sherman writes "At a conference last week, RIAA president Cary Sherman said he didn't support mandatory filtering by ISPs, but in a video clip posted by Public Knowledge, Sherman offers a far more troubling 'solution': installing filters on users' PCs. From Ars Technica's coverage: 'The issue of encryption "would have to be faced," Sherman admitted after talking about the wonders of filtering. "One could have a filter on the end user's computer that would actually eliminate any benefit from encryption because if you want to hear [the music], you would need to decrypt it, and at that point the filter would work."'"
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Full
Abbreviated
Hidden
Loading... please wait.
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.
Parent
Re:Why does AT&T want this? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Why does AT&T want this? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
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.
Parent
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'.
Parent
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.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Parent
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.
Parent
Re:Why does AT&T want this? (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Why does AT&T want this? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Most likely (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Parent
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.
Parent
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)
Parent
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.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually fixed this time.
No More Network Congestion? (Score:5, Funny)
all the best,
drew
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:No More Network Congestion? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
The U.S. seems to be losing its tech edge (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You, the customer, who else?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
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.
What is the incentive? (Score:3, Insightful)
So what exactly is in it for at&t?
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)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
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)
My solution... (Score:3, Interesting)
Also, don't ever underestimate the bandwidth potential of a pack of blank DVDs and a parcel post.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
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".
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.
What about common carrier status? (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
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
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
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....