US ISPs Become 'Copyright Cops' July 12th 409
An anonymous reader writes "Comcast, Time Warner and Verizon are among the ISPs preparing to implement a graduated response to piracy by July, says the music industry's chief lobbyist. ISPs, including Comcast, Cablevision, Verizon, and Time Warner Cable, have officially agreed to step up efforts to protect the rights of copyright owners. From the article: 'Supporters say this could become the most effective antipiracy program ever. Since ISPs are the Internet's gatekeepers, the theory is that network providers are in the best position to fight illegal file sharing. CNET broke the news last June that the RIAA and counterparts at the trade group for the big film studios had managed to get the deal through — with the help of the White House.'"
Re:SSL? (Score:5, Informative)
The whole point of an SSL Diffe-Hellman or RSA key exchange is that any eavesdropper (including the ISP) can't figure out the session key, even if they hear the entire negotiation.
Not entrapment, tortious interference (Score:2, Informative)
A third party interfering with a business deal made by two others is tortious interference [wikipedia.org]. You would have to have pretty deep pockets to prove it, and it would have to be a pretty clear-cut case where there was no harm being done, say, a Bittorrent stream of a Linux distribution.
Re:The excuse I needed... (Score:5, Informative)
Same here. Verizon DSL has sent me 3 emails (about 2 years ago) where they caught me downloading movies or tv shows. I'm curious what they will do to me next time I'm caught.
How about using a P2P friendly VPN such as BTGuard [btguard.com] or Mullvad [mullvad.net]? (Mullvad accepts payment in Bitcoins, btw)
Re:The excuse I needed... (Score:5, Informative)
Another alternative is dialup. Folks like napisypl distribute nice small 70 or 150 megabyte rips. You can download 6 episodes per day (like I'm doing right now in my hotel) (Tudors season 1). AOL/Netscape's never sent me any warnings.
Re:The excuse I needed... (Score:5, Informative)
Here, I can have my phone with one company, but have DSL on the line with another company - is that not the case in the US?
Nope. Phone companies are not required to lease lines to other providers.
They were required to from 1996 til 2006 until the supreme court declares cable providers provided "information services" rather than "telecommunication services" and were exempt from such requirements and the FCC reclassified phone company's DSL services to match in the interest of "fairness"
Re:The excuse I needed... (Score:5, Informative)
Sonic.net is probably the only ISP where first responses to technical questions commonly come from the CEO.
If you live in Northern California, look them up. They are already providing 1 Gbps / $70 in Sonoma; let's encourage them to roll out to the Bay and see what actual competition does to the market place.
Re:The excuse I needed... (Score:5, Informative)
You hit the nail on the head. In Australia:
- The ACCC forced Telstra to allow competitor ISPs access to its copper lines and telephone exchanges/COs. This means that any ISP can come into an exchange, install its own DSLAM, connect Telstra-owned lines to it and provide internet access to customers, regardless of who that customer's phone service happens to be provided by.
- Additionally, Telstra (and Optus) also wholesales their own DSLAM ports to competitor ISPs who don't/can't have their own DSLAMs in an exchange. They charge port fees for doing this (and thus these Telstra wholesale plans are usually more expensive than equivalent plans using a providers own DSLAMs), but it basically means that even relatively small ISPs can offer services nation-wide, even in remote areas where Telstra is the only company with equipment.
In most areas of the US though, companies that owns the lines aren't forced (as far as I know) to grant access to competitors. So your choices are usually:
- The local DSL monopoly (i.e. the telco that owns the lines in your area); and
- The local cable monopoly (i.e. the company that owns the cable in your area)
In some areas you might also be lucky enough to have FiOS or another third or fourth option here, but vast areas of the country really only have one or two choices. Even worse, most DSL providers are still ADSL1 only (whereas in Australia, ADSL2+ up to 24 Mbps is pretty much ubiquitous).
I'm Australian but have lived in Wisconsin for an extended period, in a reasonably-sized city, and only had the choice of (very overpriced) cable, or AT&T ADSL1 (capped at 6 Mbps/768kbps). I chose the DSL as frankly, I don't want cable TV (and the provider didn't allow you to get JUST internet without TV). I much prefer the situation in Australia where I have 20+ ISPs to choose from and they all offer much faster speeds that AT&T DSL had.
Re:The excuse I needed... (Score:5, Informative)
Figure out what reviewers you usually agree with and weigh their reviews more heavily
I swear I'm not affiliated, but Criticker [criticker.com] is awesome for that. The interface isn't all shiny, but the algorithm is solid.
Re: You downloaded about 200 movies (Score:4, Informative)
You are, in their eyes, The Problem.
"Who said we get to download first and decide at our whim only that we like it?"
Re:The excuse I needed... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:The excuse I needed... (Score:3, Informative)