Don't Forget: "Six Strikes" Starts This Weekend 298
Dr. Eggman writes "If you don't recall, then Broadband/DSL Reports is here to remind us that ISPs around the U.S. will begin adhering to the RIAA/MPAA-fueled 'Six Strikes' agreement on July 1st. Or is it July 12th? Comcast, AT&T, Verizon and Cablevision are all counted among the participants. They will each introduce 'mitigation measures' against suspected pirates, including: throttling down connection speeds and suspending Web access."
Don't Forget: "Six Strikes" Starts This Weekend (Score:3, Interesting)
It's the beginning of the end for the INTERNET.
Re:a minority opinion (Score:4, Interesting)
I definitely agree. Now rather than just having no chance to perfect your strategy for getting away with torrenting, you get 5 before you're fucked.
Bittorrent (Score:2, Interesting)
I didn't see this answered anywhere. I use bittorrent to download and seed Linux distros and the Wikipedia for schools disc. How much will this pointless crack down impact my legal and legitimate use of this service?
Re:Hacktivism at its finest (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, it depends. If the target was a person who'd been instrumental behind, say, mandatory sentencing for drug possession, I'd be all for it. It's basically a way of showing the people who make these decisions the practical ramifications of them - because they either cannot understand basic logic, or don't care because they don't think it will apply to them.
Likewise, if this was targeting, say, a participating ISP's CEO, or the family of an RIAA exec, I'd be all for it. They're introducing a process that punishes people while circumventing due process. Let's see it bite them in the ass a few times, like it will everyone else.
That's what they want (Score:5, Interesting)
The RIAA and MPAA love playing whack-a-mole; they have decades of experience doing it, they have laws on their side, they have public sympathy on their side. Suing an service provider off the face of the Earth doesn't really get the public angry, and it can result in that service provider making a deal that rakes in cash. Suing some college kid, some working class parent, some old computer-illiterate grandmother -- those things get the public angry (which is only tolerable up to the point where they start voting for less industry friendly politicians), they have no chance of producing a profitable deal, and they involve a party that has little money to give.
Re:Hacktivism at its finest (Score:2, Interesting)
Just get a few Microsoft employees to pirate stuff on their work computers. After all, corporations are people too.
The money is in "services" (Score:5, Interesting)
Compare this to the Internet, where peer to peer networking thrives (and which is a peer to peer network itself). Sure, there are service providers online, but the truth is that unlike the cable TV system, the Internet does not require service providers to distribute entertainment -- anyone with an Internet connection can be a participant in entertainment distribution. Suddenly, the consumers are not just passive receivers whose wallets can be raided; they are participants in the distribution of entertainment, and they are not all party to an explicit deal with the copyright industry. They might receive their entertainment without having to pay for it, they might distribute the entertainment before or after the industry would have preferred, they might make entertainment available that embarrasses the industry.
The industry does not know how to rake in billions of dollars in profits in such a scenario. Thus they have simply resorted to attacking peer to peer itself. As long as people are only able to receive their entertainment from a distribution service, the industry is happy. They'll play that game, they'll sue and bargain with file sharing websites, because they understand the model and the websites have more to lose than some college kid. The endgame is for the Internet to become a fancy cable TV system, where there are channels, distribution regions, disputes between networks and copyright holders that leave consumers without entertainment, and most importantly, consumer systems will just be passive receivers.
Six strikes? Just a way to scare people away from peer to peer models, until there are enough TPMs and DRM systems to ensure that peer to peer networking is no longer possible.
Re:That's what they want (Score:2, Interesting)
Yes. You have a far better chance of catching them if you don't drive them underground.
Re:Much Ado About Nothing (Score:5, Interesting)
Nothing to hide, nothing to fear. Just like you have nothing to fear from the TSA or the Patriot Act! Those in power can never make mistakes or do anything wrong.
Re:That's what they want (Score:5, Interesting)
That is terrible -- the Internet is supposed to be for us, that is, for the computer users of the world. We are supposed to have a network where we can communicate freely
It will be when someone develops a system kind of like FreeNet or ToR that actually works well for content distribution and consumption without revealing responsible IP addresses, doesn't require any advanced technical knowledge to publish and update content, is very fast, scales very well, and replaces BitTorrent and other protocols, which only provide file transfer, not content discovery and easy publication of media.
What about Legal Torrents? Can the ISP etc sort? (Score:5, Interesting)
Will the ISP systems be smart enough to figure out what's being torrented or just dumb and track if your line shows any torrent participation at all 'you must be a pirate'?
I suspect they only look for the torrent header codes and cannot see inside so cue up all kinds of additional backlash for the ISPs/etc.
. What is in the torrent transfer codes to show reliably what's in the included file?
Re:That's what they want (Score:4, Interesting)
That is no longer true. We have government under control of wealthy elite, cartels. It is very much a disconnectd entity stealing from us, taking away our rights, turning our country into a fascist police state.
Re:The money is in "services" (Score:4, Interesting)
Thus they have simply resorted to attacking peer to peer itself.
It's worse than that. These could be the first salvos in a war on general-purpose computing [youtube.com].
Queer (Score:4, Interesting)
Take over the pejorative and use it as a badge of honor. It's a proven technique. Hence, self described queers marching down the street, and The Pirate Party.
Re:What about Legal Torrents? Can the ISP etc sort (Score:4, Interesting)
I have a bunch of Linux distros that I torrent continuously (debian, lubuntu, and ubuntu-studio at the moment). I don't code so I help out the Linux community as I can. Will the ISP systems be smart enough to figure out what's being torrented or just dumb and track if your line shows any torrent participation at all 'you must be a pirate'? I suspect they only look for the torrent header codes and cannot see inside so cue up all kinds of additional backlash for the ISPs/etc. What is in the torrent transfer codes to show reliably what's in the included file?
The only worthwhile comment/question in the entire discussion... and no response. Everybody else is complaining that their freeloading and lawbreaking is going to get harder. Boo hoo. They sound like Goldman Sachs when congress was proposing to regulate financial markets.
But here is the real relevant question, will legitimate uses of this legitimate technology be punished now that the due process has been removed?
Six Strikes lasted for six days (Score:4, Interesting)
When an ISP starts denying you access to service or curtailing service you are paying for based on having conducted their own investigations or making determinations of guilt the lawsuits will be filed, the plaintiffs will win and the ISPs will stop.
Remember kids SOPA failing has consequences. The most salient amoung them with regards to this plan was the immunity grant to ISPs for playing judge jury and executioner against its paying customers.