Aussie ISP Scans Downloads For Copyright Violation 423
Steve Nakhla writes: "According to this article, Excite@Home has begun snooping users' downloads in order to find copyrighted or pirated material. Violators have their access cut off. As an Excite@home user, this alarms me. What exactly is their definition of copyrighted? Doesn't the New York Times copyright their online articles? Can I not view them any more for fear of violating Excite's policies?"
Good business strategy (Score:2, Insightful)
How is this different from a wiretap? (Score:5, Insightful)
Rights of the People (Score:2, Insightful)
It's just a little CYA (Score:2, Insightful)
That's all fine and good, but the way they go around doing it is wrong. From the article:
The users added that if an individual is breaking the law on the Internet, it should be treated in a similar way to somebody abusing the telephone system.
"The police should have to apply for a warrant and then present that to the telco to authorise monitoring for a specific person for a specific period," the reader said.
The people are getting upset with the ISP. Their ire should be directed at the real source of the problem: the copyright industry. It's gotten so bad that even ISP's are driven to the point of paranoia about copyrgiht infringement.
My question: Is it all worth it?
woah, WOAH!! (Score:4, Insightful)
And besides, HOW do you tell what's pirated and what's not, from random streams of data? If I download 2 movies at a time, it's going to seem like garbage (a raw stream that is). And HOW do they know that it's pirated? How can they distinguish a pirated movie from a non pirated one? Similarly with data or music, how can you tell? What are they going to do, scan for patterns that might match? Get someone to watch all movie streams and listen to all audio streams? Think about how hard it would be to figure that out. Or are they just going to scan what SITES you visit, and then ASSUME you're pirating? This is crazy!
Re:ways around this crap? (Score:1, Insightful)
What are you talking about? Who would sue who? You can't sue somebody for something YOU uploaded to them.
The short version (IANAL) (Score:4, Insightful)
The real issue that nobody is talking about is licensing. Yes, the New York Times and/or the original author holds copyright on all of that stuff. However, under the conditions for access to the NYT website they have granted you license to access that material online. They have not granted you license to download (read this as "save") and redistribute any of their IP.
It seems the real problem for Aussie ISPs is to identify the original source for anything served through them and to go after the account owners who allegedly violate copyright law.
Re:How is this different from a wiretap? (Score:3, Insightful)
Forgive my ignorance on this matter, but don't ISP's ALREADY log every task you complete? I could be wrong, but I would think they have records of what websites and newsgroups and such you've been to. This info is probably supposed to be kept private, but who knows nowadays.
Either way, it's just short hop from logging all your internet activity to MONITORING all your internet activity. It just surprises me, that of all the crimes they could go after, copyright infringement is the one they chose.
Looking at my past posts you'll see that I'm actually in defense of copyright more so that most slashdotters, but if they HAVE to violate our privacy, can't they do it to keep tabs on who downloads instructions for making nuclear bombs or who sends porn spam to potentially underage kids or something? Next to the wealth of dangerous and or illegal content on the web, copyright seems kinda harmless.
Re:Rights of the People (Score:2, Insightful)
Trust me, I'm capitalist through and through, I'd gladly take the helm of a company, and I trade stock regularly.
Re:How is this different from a wiretap? (Score:2, Insightful)
In the UK, they do exactly that [networkmagazine.com]: Under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers (RIP) Act, every ISP or even operator of a private network (like a corporate LAN or a cybercafe) has to help the police by scanning their traffic for potential terrorist content. If they don't, it's five years in the slammer.
South Carolina has a similar [informationweek.com] law regarding child pornography.
Of course, if you're opposed to these laws, you must be a terrorist or a child molestor...