Slashdot Log In
MPAA Boss Makes Case for ISP Content Filtering
Posted by
Zonk
on Thu Dec 06, 2007 03:01 PM
from the same-old-routine dept.
from the same-old-routine dept.
creaton writes "At the annual UBS Global & Media Communications Conference yesterday, MPAA boss Dan Glickman banged on the copyright filtering drum during a 45-minute speech. Glickman called piracy the MPAA's #1 issue and told the audience that it cost the studios $6 billion annually. His solution: technology, especially in the form of ISP filtering. 'The ISP community is going to be at the forefront of this in the future because they have everything to lose and nothing to gain by not seeing that the content is being properly protected ... and I think that's a great opportunity.' AT&T has already said it plans to filter content, but others may be more reluctant to go along, notes Ars Technica: 'ISPs that are concerned with being, well, ISPs aren't likely to see many benefits from installing some sort of industrial-strength packet-sniffing and filtering solution at the core of their network. It costs money, customers won't like the idea, and the potential for backlash remains high.'"
Related Stories
[+]
AT&T Invests in Filtered Networking 152 comments
Filtered Coward writes "Last summer, AT&T announced its intention to begin filtering copyrighted content at some point. The telecom has now bought a chunk of Vobile, whose core product is VideoDNA. "Like other systems of its kind, VideoDNA develops a unique signature from every frame of video. The signature is meant to be robust enough to survive various transformations and edits, and it can then be used to run matches against incoming content.' Vobile claims that VideoDNA is good enough to be used on video when transmitted over a network. 'Based on the complexity of the problem, we suspect that anything initially deployed by AT&T will fall far short of a robust P2P video filter. But should AT&T truly have its eyes on just such a prize, the company would be in a powerful position to impose its own policies on the entire US, since it owns major parts of the Internet backbone.'"
Firehose:MPAA boss makes case for ISP content filtering by Anonymous Coward
[+]
Will ISP Web Content Filtering Continue To Grow? 239 comments
unixluv writes to tell us that another ISP is testing web content filtering and content substitution software. One example sees a system message that is pre-pended to an existing web page. While it seems innocent enough, is this the wave of the future? Will your ISP censor or alter your web experience at will? There have been many instances of content filtering lately and it seems to be a popular idea on the other side of the fence.
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Full
Abbreviated
Hidden
Loading... please wait.
Neat (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Neat (Score:5, Funny)
Captain Copyright told me last night.
Parent
Re:Neat (Score:5, Informative)
This is why the recent BitTorrent lawsuit against Comcast is so important...once they realize that they can't look inside encrypted packets, they're just going to block all p2p traffic. But even that is going to be hard, because at the encrypted UDP packet level, what really distinguishes a BT packet from, say, a Skype packet which is also encrypted by default? Screw encryption, what differentiates a DRM-free MP3 flying in from iTunes or Amazon from one coming through a modified BT protocol which uses port 80 and fake http headers?
In short, this is the dumbest idea and any implementation will be necessarily half-assed and is going to affect people.
Parent
Re:Neat (Score:5, Funny)
After all, people are just taking the music that no one wants to buy, right?
Parent
Re:Neat (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Wrong. (Score:5, Insightful)
No, the MPAA's #1 issue is their high prices and crappy movies.
Re:Wrong. (Score:5, Interesting)
The MPAA doesn't have a problem. It's making money hand over fist. I'm sure Dan Glickman wants more money, but don't we all. The MPAA's core business is selling seats in theaters, and they're doing fairly well, not as well as in the mid-90's but that's a measure of the overall health of the economy. The MPAA could sit back, not make any technological changes, and they'd still do well for probably about a decade (again, contrast with the music industry).
If I were pressed to name the MPAA's #1 issue, I'd probably say consumer ambivalence over HD-DVD and Blu-Ray. I wouldn't say piracy.
Parent
Re:Wrong. (Score:5, Insightful)
If I were to guess why theater attendance is a bit down from a decade ago, I'd point to gas prices, and less spending money, but also to the fact that with videogames and the internet there is more competing for our entertainment dollar (or hour) than there was 10 years ago.
Parent
Re:Wrong. (Score:5, Insightful)
I have to admit, after getting Netflix my urge to actually buy DVDs dried up pretty quick. I'll still get stuff here and there (especially if I plan to show it to friends/lend it out), but for the most part my collection has been stagnant for a couple of years now.
Parent
Re:Wrong. (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Wrong. (Score:5, Insightful)
Nice point. People will still get sent to jail, but that won't stop piracy. Eventually, they'll have to admit that the only way to minimize (not stop) piracy is to step on the citizens' legal rights like privacy and free speech.
But even with that, they can't control the world and enforce the same laws without stepping on the other nations' rights.
And not even that will stop piracy.
Parent
Can I borrow his dictionary? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm fairly sure it is either incorrect on "nothing" and "everything", or "lose" and "gain"...
Re:Can I borrow his dictionary? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, I had the same reaction. If ISP customers buy internet service for (among other reasons) clandestinely downloading movies, then that customer is one more customer you might not have had before. The only thing ISPs have to lose by limiting downloads is more customers.
...Unless you take his quote as a veiled threat, i.e. "You'll have everything to lose and nothing to gain by not seeing things our way, since we will bend legislators over our knee to provide us with the tools to bitchslap you into line if you don't come around." I'd say that's a logical reading of the quote that seems to conform well with the **IA modus operandi and way of thinking.
Parent
Re:Can I borrow his dictionary? (Score:5, Insightful)
That still wont address other issues like legal BitTorrent use, the large amount of false positives they'll get, customer complaints about Service X being slow for some reason.
Theres no way this will be s good thing for ISPs in the long term.
also...
if ISPs join together and reject this, theres a chance they can use a common carrier type of defence but once they try to actively filter BitTorrent, wont they be blamed every time they fail.
Interesting response if you get a letter from the MAFIAA... My ISP filters piracy so I shouldn't be able to download anything illegal and if I can its their fault.
Parent
Make the MPAA pay for it (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Make the MPAA pay for it (Score:5, Insightful)
See the problem here is that the MPAA is calculating this $6 billion/year number by saying multiplying the number of pirated copies (a number they can only estimate and they probably highball it) times the retail cost of a legitimate copy.
The problem with this is that it completely bypasses all microeconomic theory.
In simple terms, there are a huge number of people that will consume your good if it doesn't cost them anything (or next to nothing), but as soon as you raise the price a little bit, the number of people willing to buy the good drops substantially. This is called the price elasticity of demand.
While there is some limited evidence that the market for piracy has shrank the overall market, it's difficult to tell how much of an effect piracy really has. There are so many other factors (dilution of purchase points, ease of access to new/unsigned bands, etc) that there's some evidence that the total market for media has actually increased substantially, but the record labels are being left out of the equation.
Piracy isn't good, but it is a result of a free society and the deadweight loss (basically: if you tax someone or restrict prices via regulation, the decrease in income from the economy is greater than the income from the tax, so there's 'lost' production that never occurs) incurred by preventing it is astronomical.
IANAE, BIAAEM (I am not an economist, but I am an economist major and I hope to get a PhD in economics down the road)
Parent
Re:Make the MPAA pay for it (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
If the MPAA focused more on assisting ISPs (Score:5, Insightful)
It will happen, and here's why... (Score:5, Insightful)
2) The **AA's will therefore lobby for an exception to the DMCA for their stuff.
3) Congress will grant it.
Any questions?
One Solution (Score:5, Funny)
Freedom? (Score:5, Interesting)
And if ISPs should filter our content, then why shouldn't other service and content providers outside of the internet be responsible for censoring what we consume, say, do as well? Parents can filter what their children consume. I can filter what I can consume. It should stop there.
I don't have a problem with ISP filtering... (Score:5, Insightful)
If they are willing to accept all of this liability, then I have no problems at all with them filtering network content. I'll still pick one of their competitors that doesn't, however.
Piracy (Score:5, Funny)
Can't the Navy or Coast Guard help them with this?
Re:No your number one issue SHOULD BE (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
mod parent up ;-) (Score:5, Funny)
so m=e/c^2
therefore, i owe you e/c^2 for the mass of yours i am using
do you take picodollars?
Parent