Comcast Working On 'Helpful' Copyright Violation Pop-ups 284
gregor-e writes "Comcast is said to be preparing to snoop on your internet browsing to detect when you attempt to download a copyright-protected item. On detection, Comcast will pop up a helpful window that contains information about where you can obtain a legal version of whatever you're downloading. 'While sources familiar with the new initiative emphasized that it is being seen as a complement to CAS [a.k.a. six strikes] and not a replacement, the very emergence of an alternative raises questions as to the viability of CAS, which has been criticized for myriad reasons ranging from the questionable strategic rationale of punishing subscribers to an implementation that has been characterized as scattershot. How the two systems would coexist is unclear.'"
Comcast will be inviting other ISPs to join its new system as well.
let me get this straight (Score:5, Insightful)
They are going to be modifying web pages with this popup crap? They will be actively scanning every page I go to to see if there is a link to something on some master lists somewhere, modify every HTML page I download to include some sort of script to create a pop-up?
Really?
I guess they could maybe just intercept all HTTP requests that go to specific hosts and URIs and supplant the destination with a replacement HTML page... much better
So, let me get this straight (Score:5, Insightful)
Buying more bandwidth is out of the question is too expensive, but dropping a fortune on the hardware to do deep packet inspection is no problem.
Fuck comcast... (Score:4, Insightful)
My fancy new 'digital' tv wont work without comcasts boxes around. You can't even buy one. Rental only. Good thing they gave them out for free...
Oh Wait...'free' dta boxes are now costing every month. What the actual fuck... 'free' to comcast actually means until we start charging for it.
Forced to pay for 40 channels of pure shit to get 10 channels you might want to watch sometime. It's such a complete scam.
Every month its yet another problem with either the net or the tv or billing. And the bills keep going up. The service and quality keeps going down.
And habib over in india or wherever has no fucking clue how to fix anything without calling them at least 5 times.
$160 a month for this shit... It's about time to get rid of them for tv at least...
God i wish i had another choice for internet...
Save us google you're our only hope. Your worst half-assed attempts at anything are 5000% better than comcasts best effort.
Re:let me get this straight (Score:5, Insightful)
Hey, break DNS, why not break HTTP too?
So, the NSA gets sloppy seconds? (Score:5, Insightful)
We're worried about the NSA seeing everything that goes over our connections.
But how much worse is it to have your own ISP doing so? Previously, we at least had the illusion that they didn't know. (Yeah, right. Do you browse with HTTPS-everywhere? And if you do, do your search terms go to some search provider that reports to the government?)
But now we know that they'll be looking directly at what you download. It's no step at all to go from "looking for copyrighted material" to "looking for anything we are interested in". Al Qaida training materials? Anarchist cookbook? PETA protest schedules? Republican party caucus meeting schedule?
Remember that adhesion contract you agreed to when you signed up with your ISP? Where they can change the terms when they want? Care to guess whether those terms will change to assure that you "agree" to deep packet inspection and content filtering of your internet traffic?
Stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
This Six Strikes thing is both retarded and a horrible business practice. Why? Because they'll probably single out torrent traffic and assume that you must be pirating something. Hello Comcast: torrents != piracy. Ultimately that's what all these initiatives for piracy look at and they've declared war on P2P sharing because regardless of what it is, it must be "illegal." It also feeds right into the argument for traffic prioritization and filtering which is another horrible idea for the Internet. I can see some Comcast exec saying "We're going to be filtering torrent traffic because our friendly warnings have shown that 90% of the users involved in P2P are doing illegal activity." All the while they're pushing their own content services for substantial fees onto their users. I for one would be worried if I were a Comcast user and would seek out HTTPs connections everywhere I go on the net or look for another ISP.
Re:Is this so bad? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the EFF is outgunned here when you have former Senator Chris Dodd heading up the MPAA. There's a reason why the MPAA and RIAA have friends in DC and why we have laws like the DMCA and an abhorrent fear that the profits of the members of these organizations is at risk. John Doe suits have been their bread and butter attack method and now with more and more Federal Judges growing backbones it would appear that their tactic involves harassing the ISPs all the while greasing the palms of Congress. Let's not forget where the push for SOPA comes from, it's guys like old Chris there, pushing his contacts in DC. [forbes.com]
It's (Score:5, Insightful)
Internet
Service
Provider.
Just forward the damn packets and take my money.
I feel bad for the programmers and sysadmins (Score:4, Insightful)
The front line people responsible for setting this up are probably rolling their eyes in disgust, and looking for better jobs. If I were in their position, I would be. Have fun trying to enforce something that is unworkable and unrealistic. When you're not having fun anymore, hopefully you'll find a job that uses your skillset to do something that makes sense.
What about stuff with NO legal alternatives? (Score:5, Insightful)
What kind of "helpful pointers" will they be giving when there is NO legal alternative? The few times I've ever used peer-to-peer is when the item in question is "out of print" and "currently unavailable" (Disney is notorious for doing this). Just try and get an original cut of Disney's live action/animated hybrid "Song of the South". It's not available in this country at any price. Oh you can get heavily censored versions, but not the original (supposedly it is "too racist" for Americans).
I realize this represents a very tiny fraction of online acquisition (I hesitate to call it piracy if it can't be purchased) but I mention it because a lot of companies (like Disney) deliberately take things off the market in order to trundle it out every ten years or so with a grossly inflated profit margin.
Now I can get game of thrones (Score:4, Insightful)
Great, now they will tell me where I can legally pay to download the latest season of "game of thrones"
Re:Is this so bad? (Score:5, Insightful)
No, the same big corporations such as the RIAA and MPAA did that. Its because of their aggressive marketing, they've made sure there is no markett for anyone else. Justin Bieber is what you can listen to without being being labeled as "crazy", or something else where you inherently lack rights, such as being free from assault. This was going on even in the 1990s.
". All you guys did was drive the individual artists out of business so these corporate bullies could step in and rake *all* the profits."
First you complain about big chain stores, next your talking about artists going out of business. Now has never been a better time for live music. This is a bold face lie. None of those artists made a dime off record sales.
" Taylor Swift, Katy Perry and Justin Bieber style music is all that anyone can make money doing nowadays."
Black Sabbath Just go back together and released a new album with all original content. Oh, it sounds sick too.
I think there is more live music going on now, and with the same computers, and even the same technology that is used to "pirate", such as CD Burners, MP3s, and audio tools, can easily be used by artists to produce music without the need for record labels.
The only people really bitching are record label owners. They've always been sleeze bags who've abused musicians. So take your corporation shill ass out of here. Don't wanna here it. The movie industry doesn't have to pay the same 10-20 shitty actors $30 million a movie for a blockbuster with a total budget of $100 million, then bitch about money.
Next you'll talk about how living wage drove blue collar jobs to china.
Re:Is this so bad? (Score:4, Insightful)
How does "downloading content ... 80 percent of which you'll never get around to listen to or watch" produce the effect of "drive the individual artists out of business?"
The individual artists didn't pay for the bandwidth we used to download the crap we purportedly ignored. Or are you saying that the 20% we listened to drove them out of business because, obviously, we would have bought all of that content otherwise, and spending that money would have kept the artists in business?
Fact #1: reducing price increases consumption. At a price of zero, it is guaranteed that people are consuming quite a lot of content that they never would have paid a dime for. So that downloading (at no cost to the artist) would not have translated to pure profit if downloading were not an option, and in fact only a tiny portion of it would have translated to sales, and therefore it could not possibly have hit their sales as hard as you seem to think it did.
Fact #2: The labels habitually left their signed talent owing them money after their albums made the labels a fortune. THAT harmed the artist far more than the free exposure provided by downloading. Buying more albums would not have changed this *at all*.
Fact #3: The issue is not as polarized as you seem to think. Plenty of people on slashdot approve of copyright law, but disapprove of these means of enforcement. Your slippery-slope fallacy is falling on deaf ears.
So there you have it.
Re:Is this so bad? (Score:5, Insightful)
I mean, if this prevent having to deal with the RIAA or the MFAA and all the legal expenses, wouldn't it be better to be warned and go "My bad." and move along?
If we set aside the whole "monitoring your connection" issues (privacy issues, who watches the watchers, etc) and pretend thats not a problem... and if this were them "sending you a friendly warning letter", maybe thered be some room for discussion.
But the only way to accomplish what Comcast is suggesting here is by MITMing all of your connections and injecting content into the middle. Thats great in company environment, and "less than great" on a home ISP connection where you have a high expectation of privacy. Off the top of my head, some major concerns here:
I am not one to rail at the RIAA / MPAA without acknowledging that there is an issue with piracy (or whatever you want to call it). But 95% of the time the issue is that the response-- whether by MPAA, RIAA, or the ISPs -- is that the response is completely over the top. This is a golden example-- Comcast here suggests completely undermining the expectation of privacy and integrity of the connection they provide.
Why do you think the Sandvine / bittorrent issue a few years ago was such a big deal? Its because "somebody" randomly inserting bogus traffic into your connection represents a MASSIVE threat.
Re:Is this so bad? (Score:4, Insightful)
The brick and mortars going out of business was something that was going to happen regardless. When you can make distribution more or less instantaneous from the comfort of your own home, folks will take the convenient option most of the time. I for one do not miss having to haul around a mess of CD's in my car, which has a six-changer that's never been used, nor do I miss lugging around a huge library of technical books when my tablet can essentially hold a full reference library for a fraction of the weight.
The next thing to go will be movie theaters. Sooner or later, some enterprising company is going to try offering movies on demand at release instead of waiting out the normal theater release period. It'll cost something like $50, but that will still be cheaper than hauling the family into the theater, paying marked up ticket prices, marked up concession prices, and having to deal with some idiots crying kid.
Whether or not it's right or contributes to the degradation of our society's ability to actually socialize is a whole other discussion, but there is no stopping the march of technology and it's use to feed the public's ever growing demand for instant gratification.
Re:So, let me get this straight (Score:5, Insightful)
Buying more bandwidth is out of the question is too expensive, but dropping a fortune on the hardware to do deep packet inspection is no problem.
That's because the hardware to do that you can stuff in a closet somewhere. The hardware to create more bandwidth on a coaxial network that is continuously being pushed and prodded into doing something it wasn't designed to do -- two-way communication, is considerably more complex to deploy and maintain. To add a server, you just need a port on a wall and some space in a rack. To add another 100 mhz of bandwidth to a coaxial network, you need to rip out every repeater, run down every possible source of signal leakage, and then yank out all the equipment at the head-end... and nevermind that many customers are using their own equipment that may or may not be compatible with the new protocols, equipment, etc.
Now, all that said... Comcast should have been incrementally upgrading this whole time, like any other utility provider. Unfortunately, like every other utility provider, they don't upgrade their infrastructure until there's no other choice. Our power grids are maxed out, our sewers are rotting, our bridges are falling into rivers, our cell phone service is the laughing stock of the first world... and we are paying more and more every year for them. All because short term profit isn't just a mentality... for a publicly-traded company, it's a legal requirement. The problem here is that our method of economic incentives and government regulations about infrastructure/utility services is, achem... broken. Badly.
So it's not technically Comcast's fault... they're just doing what everyone else is doing: Doing anything possible to avoid biting the bullet and investing in infrastructure. So long as the government isn't willing to simply revoke their licenses and tell them to get the fuck out, and start inking non-exclusive contracts for services, and making regulatory demands for regular and timely upgrades... businesses will continue to profit at your expense. But of course, that is how they want it, though we did, by remaining politically inert, allow it to be this way.
There's plenty of blame to pass around.
Re:So, let me get this straight (Score:4, Insightful)
Interesting points and I agree with all but one, but I need to add an item.
Comcast doing this brings a sense of normality to the current Government intrusions to privacy. Data should be protected from this, as Comcast is a service provider (utility), by the first and fourth amendment. If they are using DPI on the network, they will not just be inspecting HTTP requests but ALL packets.
The point I disagree with is where you claim it's not Comcast's fault. It absolutely is their fault. Just like it's the power companies fault when things fail, the oil companies fault when they don't upgrade refineries, etc... They have a choice (or at least I believe they have a choice) on how they dump their marketing and lobby dollars. They could lobby for improvements and alert customers to the draconian big brother rules the Government creates just as easily as they could lobby for higher profits and helping big brother. Few if any companies choose to do the former, especially when it they hit larger scale.
Of course we pay the price for the latter, and there is no penalties for these companies screwing up. Since they helped the Government, the Government helps them monopolize and uses tax dollars to keep them floating when needed. The big unfortunate issue is what happens when all the phony money runs out and everyone is broke? It can't be that far down the road.
Re:let me get this straight (Score:5, Insightful)
TL;DR - their lawyer must be having a seizure over the potential liability exposure they seem to be asking for
It's peanuts compared to the marketing potential. Scareware is a booming industry -- look at how much malware we have to scrub off our computers now. The average computer is more likely than not to be infected with some kind of rogue application at this point, and the problem is accelerating.
Now we have ISPs injecting HTML into web pages to scare them into purchasing digital media "legally" and threatening to report them to the police if they do not... we've legitimized this whole ecosystem. The internet has become a place where you are either predator or prey.
Fits in rather nicely with our imperialist views that we can engage in cyberwarfare whenever we want, and then loading aircraft carriers full of automated drones. The corporate-military supraorganization is marrying the idea of greed and profit to abstract murder on the basis of algorithmic determinism. Soon it won't be people killing people, it'll be algorithms killing people. In a world like that, what's a little advertising? What's a little dystopia when there's profit to be had?
History may well remember that the information age was just the prelude to a whole new dark age. And it'll be recorded that we doomed ourselves trying to protect ourselves from pedophiles, murderers, terrorists, and every other boogieman. But... it's not exactly the first time in human history that a sudden leap forward in technology or industry created a power vaccum that led to social collapse. Actually... this would be the first time it hasn't happened, in case it doesn't. :/
Re:Is this so bad? (Score:5, Insightful)
So who won? You didn't win. Look around at pop music and what's being created today. Taylor Swift, Katy Perry and Justin Bieber style music is all that anyone can make money doing nowadays. Tower Records and all of its bricks and mortar competitors went out of business long ago. So did Borders.
Oh really? Actually there is as much or more music being made today than before the big bad Internet 'destroyed' the music industry. You may not know this if you only listen to terrestrial radio but there is a lot of music being made, of every genre imaginable.
Few artists today can sell a million records. Those than can you find on the radio. The rest you have to search out. For those artists the Internet is their friend.
I have discovered a lot of new music listening to Pandora and Slacker that I would never have heard listening to the radio. Hell I've discovered entire genres that I hadn't heard of. I've watched their videos on Youtube and learned about the artists on Facebook. If you aren't a top-tier pop, hip-hop or country act the record companies are willing to put marketing muscle behind the Internet provides a way for artists to take promotion into their own hands.
In some cases the Internet even provides artists with the means to bypass the labels altogether, allowing them to be in control over their own destiny. Sure, they won't have any platinum records on the wall but for true artists it is more important than selling out your artistic vision to get a big-label record contract.
Music isn't dying. Slowly but surely the big record labels are, at least in their current form.
Re:Is this so bad? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:murrika (Score:3, Insightful)
slashdot: land of liberal niggerlovers who think it's SO VERY HORRIBLY TERRIBLE for me to say nigger. because they never lived near a bunch of niggers, had anything not nailed down go missing, seen them congregate in packs of 20-30 all of them thugged out and most of them armed, blasting loudass rap music into the wee hours of the morning, aggressively yelling at anyone on the public road, vandalizing everything with gangsta graffiti, destroying property values, causing cop cars to show up weekly, letting their undisciplined bastard kids run around causing trouble, parking junk cars in the yard and leaving them on blocks, and generally acting like the goddamned vermin they are.
Sounds exactly like the rednecks I grew up with. Swap the rap for country and its a dead ringer. Now, would you kindly go fuck off and die?
Re:Is this so bad? (Score:3, Insightful)
One thing that the MAFIAA has right about "stealing profits"
Money is a finite resource, and you can only spend so much of it before you're broke.
So in a sense, when you pirate something instead of buying it, you are getting your cake for free, and money you could have spent on the media you "stole" instead goes to someone else. Whereas if you didn't pirate, you'd have to make a choice as to where you spend your finite money. Everyone having goods or services to sell you is competing for your money, and if you pirate something instead of paying for it, you cheat the producer out of his chance to win your dollars by satisfying you as a customer. In that sense, it's just like shoplifting. The common factor isn't deprivation of physical goods, but in cheating the producer out of compensation they are due for providing the good or service.
Don't get me wrong, the MAFIAA is a pack of greedy fucks. And everyone knows that marginal costs should reduce to zero becuase media is so cheap to reproduce, so I would very much like capitalism to flush out the rent seeking and economic profits.
They are however right that pirating deprives them of money that went to someone else when you still get your cake and eat it too, because the money you could have spent on their goods instead goes to someone else.
If you think media is overpriced for its quality, don't buy it. Boycott it. Making sacrifices because of a finite budget is just part of being a consumer, and providers of goods and services have to fight over your spending dollars just like everything else.
In one sense, piracy is not theft, because you're not taking anything physical. However, as far as cheating the producer out of compensation, it's no different from shoplifting. If it's valuable enough to pirate, it's valuable enough to pay for. If we don't like the price, we simply do without and hope that the producer plays ball and lowers the price.
How low they can go before they quit selling? Depends on how much it costs them to produce it. The free market can sort it out.
Re:Is this so bad? (Score:4, Insightful)