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.'"
The excuse I needed... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The excuse I needed... (Score:5, Insightful)
The excuse I need to drop Verizon and... wait, my only other option is Comcast? Damnit...
Vote with your wallets. (Score:3, Insightful)
Stop buying music and movies. Very simple!
Re:The land of the free... (Score:5, Insightful)
Land of the Foreclosed, home of the Banking Gangsters.
The transformation is almost complete (Score:5, Insightful)
The internet was once thought of as a digital library and commons. Now it is little more than an interactive television.
Re:SSL? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:In case you didn't get it... (Score:2, Insightful)
They probably have a clause buried in said existing contract that gives them the right to change it whenever they damn well feel like it, so I doubt you'll have much luck trying that.
Re:The excuse I needed... (Score:5, Insightful)
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. One thing's for sure:
I'm not going to go out and buy Hollywood's crap, unless it's something I've already seen and liked -- such as Battlestar Galactica. This past year I downloaded about 200 movies and liked almost none of them. TV shows were a little better percentage but not by much.
Instead I'll just read science fiction in books and magazines. Or watch free TV (the 45 channels I get over the antenna). Or free hulu. Or cheap games ($20 for 40+ hours is a good bargain). It makes no sense to buy movie/show DVDs when they have no return policy for the crap, and there are so many other options.
Re:counter lawsuits - entrapment (Score:5, Insightful)
Be an adult, and take responsibility for yourself.
Awesome. (Score:4, Insightful)
With US ISPs playing copyright cop, darknets and other anonymizing techniques will be active by default in all P2P clients by the time my country rolls out similar laws.
Being a step behind the US means workarounds will be mature and widespread by the time I have to deal with this...
Re:In case you didn't get it... (Score:5, Insightful)
Nothing in this article indicates any sort of traffic monitoring on the part of the ISPs. It only sounds like a standardized way to keep track of the C&D letters they've been sending out for years.
Don't get me wrong, this is bad too as there's no accountability for sending faulty C&D letters, and I doubt there's going to be much of an appeals process. But it's bad in a different way than deep packet inspection is.
Re:The excuse I needed... (Score:5, Insightful)
Cable is limited because the providers hoodwinked municipalities into giving them limited monopolies under the assumption that running multiple sets of lines would cause problems for the consumers including increased costs passed on as high prices. This is a lie, of course, but that's what we have at the point.
Bound to happen (Score:5, Insightful)
The free, unmonitored, unfiltered, open internet we know today will be unrecognizable ten years from now, mark my words.. Bottom line: the internet as we know it is incompatible with controlling, big money corporations. Period. They fear it like the plague, and will never stop at trying to break it, or control it. And they have the resources to do it.
In places like china and the middle east your internet access is filtered and monitored due to fear of upsetting the government's rule.
In this - supposedly free country- your internet access is filtered and monitored due to fear of upsetting corporate profits.
I just can't see the difference.
Re:counter lawsuits - entrapment (Score:4, Insightful)
Can you also sue a bar for entrapment, when you get nailed for driving drunk, when the bar could have simply stopped serving you after one drink?
Under normal circumstances, of course not. But if the bar has worked out a deal with law enforcement to call them if you have more than one drink, then they might be acting as an agent for said law enforcement agency. If the bartender encourages you to drink more, knowing that you're gonna be driving home, then calls the cops, while acting as an agent for those cops, then that could be entrapment. I'm not saying it's an exact analogy...but just pointing that out.
Now..a better analogy might be a BYOB bar, where they take a sip of everything you drink to determine alcohol content, then report you to the cops if the alcohol content is too high. It's the sampling of my drink, whether or not it was alcoholic, that I would have a problem with. The difference is that if a bar did that, I simply wouldn't go to that bar, and I doubt many other people would either. With Internet access, most of us don't have the luxury of options.
One thing I want to know is: What methods are they going use to determine if somebody is pirating?
Re:The land of the free... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Really folks. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Really folks. (Score:5, Insightful)
The same reasons you don't.
Re:The excuse I needed... (Score:5, Insightful)
Wait... somewhere after movie #150 that you didn't like you kept thinking "maybe the next one will be awesome!"?
I guess at least you watched every single one of them yourself to form your own opinion, but surely it can't hurt to start with some reviews?
Figure out what reviewers you usually agree with and weigh their reviews more heavily, before you download 200 movies the majority of which you could probably have guessed you wouldn't like.
It would have saved you from bad entertainment, and freed your time for the books and magazines (presuming you don't just download the ebook versions of those, too, of course).
Crap like this is why (Score:3, Insightful)
my internet provider isn't a big media player.
Fuck them and the lobbiest sluts the senators fucked to get us to this point.
Re:SSL? (Score:5, Insightful)
Magnet links do not protect you at all. Torrents as they currently are, contain all available data to get you in trouble.
Torrents are not encrypted. You can route torrents through an encrypted VPN service, but many VPNs do not like you doing that, and the speed is never as good.
The solution to avoiding the ISP and legal troubles will come in the form of encrypted sharing networks, where data is randomized, anonymously, either through small groups of people making friends networks (Retroshare look it up) or larger pools of people. The trick is, when do we start setting these encrypted sharing networks up, and how do we all meet, and how do we keep the cops from joining. And if they do, is it really an issue?
Retroshare and similar programs will allow you to give the big "fuck you" to the RIAA. The trick is, we have to stop using torrents and start forming encrypted communities.
Re:this means nothing (Score:5, Insightful)
Given the Obama Administration's involvement [wired.com], I suspect they're doing it under some kind of threat. It's part of a growing trend: regulation without legislation and enforcement completely divorced from the process of law,
Re:Really folks. (Score:4, Insightful)
If you're going to violate TWO copyrights, though... the murder rap is definitely the better deal.
Re:The excuse I needed... (Score:5, Insightful)
This past year I downloaded about 200 movies and liked almost none of them
If you're obviously this difficult to please, why on earth would you keep downloading movies? Once you're on to movie #47 and it's still not to your tastes I think it's time to do something else. Like go for a walk.
Re:The excuse I needed... (Score:5, Insightful)
Go for foreign films. The MAFIAA doesn't give a damn about piracy of non-MAFIAA products. So get used to reading subtitles and get the added benefit of a brand new perspective on cinema. South Korea, Hong Kong and Japan all have some great filmmakers - and Europe is full of them too. Plus you will get to see the really good stuff years before Hollywood can figure out how to remake it.