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Could This Be The End Of The Internet?
ll0yD asks: "There is an article at Security Focus blowing the horn on network security companies working to stop file sharing over the Internet and private networks. The main reason they are working on this is to combat Napster and other related "evil" network programs. I understand the need to protect copyrighted material, but this looks like it is going a little too far. If someone can stop MP3's from moving around the net what stops someone from stopping your electronically filed taxes or the bills you pay online? Besides isn't file sharing what the Internet is about? What are your views?" This disturbs me. The Internet is all about sharing, but not just files, but ideas, be it via Napster, or a browser. Now I'm worried that some fool will start making noises about banning FTP.
Yes, this is a problem. The University of Minnesota nearly adopted a no-SYNs policy for the residence halls, where all SYN packets would be blocked. Fortunately, there was a group of individuals who noticed that there were many `legal' services that would break. Identd would be broken, preventing many people from using IRC. Any sort of net phone software would probably stop working (unless they used UDP or something). Even ICQ would have probably stopped working. The staff at UMN is pretty smart, and it's pretty surprising that they even suggested doing that...
Anyway, I am getting concerned about cable and DSL companies that want to take similar policies. I know that many companies scan their subscribers' computers looking for anything remotely troublesome. You could probably get your connection shut off for even having identd listening on an FTP port, even if in.ftpd or whatever is not installed on your system.
I know that bandwidth is an issue, but it will always be an issue.. I think you could justifiably block a service for a certain amount of time, until your bandwidth supply is enhanced, but they should always be temporary things.
Of course, one thing that my family's cable provider (@home) does is limit upstream bandwidth to some pretty low numbers. I think it's sitting at 112kbps right now. Certainly, that's still a pretty good speed, but it does have an impact...
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Ski-U-Mah!
Stop the MPAA
Imminent Death Of The Net Predicted!
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The packetshaper and packethound devices aren't nearly the threat this /. article makes them out to be. It smacks of unnecessary alarmism designed to generate message traffic... Trolling, almost. First of all, these devices are hardware, and that means it ain't free, and so it won't "take over" the net. Second, all a qualified hacker/coder needs is intent to defeat this kind of system; I could propose three strategies right away and I've only allocated a fraction of my attention to it. Lastly, the deployment of these boxxen on networks could be challenged under the First Amendment by a particularly talented ACLU/EFF type law team.
I can see the fnords!
After reading the article, I'm not really concerned. It talks about bandwidth limiting that is im place on many campuses (which I have no problem with, napster should NOT be allowed to eat 98% bandwidth that all students pay for). It also talks about some new products that block packets based on content instead of port. This is interesting, but just like net nanny and co, I predict that this will not work perfect and people will be pissed when it starts killing legit packets.
As long as this kind of software is contained to the service provider, and the big backbones don't start trying to kill random packets, we don't have much to worry about. If your ISP starts killing your packets, change ISP's. I wouldn't think an ISP like that is going to stay in business very long anyway.
The last part of the article was about the sad joke of a program, Media Enforcer (remember that, Metallica fans?). The anonymous writer pretty much admits that it isn't effective since napster names aren't returned to it and gnutella ip's can be faked. Trust me on this one, file shareing software will evolve much faster than blocking software will, which side do you think has the best/brightest/most people on it's side?
Finkployd
Learn to read. You fucking dunderheads. The article is about companies and schools blocking access to Napster or trying to save their bandwidth for something that is important. I go to a JC that has two T1's hooked up to the main campus. If you've ever used a T1 all by yourself you might think it is a rather fast little connection. Spread said connection out over an entire campus and you've got the slowest piece of shit ever. My schools is one of those that can't afford to have a bunch of neanderthals running Napster on lab computers. A semester or two ago one of our projects required we get some code from the teacher's webserver at another school. We only had three computers active yet had lots of trouble connecting to the server, then when we finally did get through we were getting a 1.5k download and the .tar was 3 megs. It turns out a bunch of people over in the lab were downloading MP3s and a couple were playing Quake2. Was it the end of the Internet? No but it sure did prove a point. People in the labs wasting money by chatting and downloading MP3s are something that definitely needs to stop. Not all schools can afford an OC-192, neither can busineses. Many businesses have ISDN's that while fairly speedy are charged by the byte for transfers. If you're playing a game or using Napster, not only are you wasting time but you're costing the company money. I'm all for bringing a Zip disk with your favorite MP3s and listening to them while you work. Don't get your fucking panties in a bunch when someone tells you how to use something they own or are paying for.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
This is a legitimate tool in private networks. I work in an industry that is signatory to intellectual property agreements with the music industry among others and we have a legal obligation to abide by their usage requirements. This means no napster for anyone. And yet we've got many people who want to use it in spite of their employers obligations *and* their own interest in not seeing their employer sued or lose the ability to license said I.P., which would cripple half our business.
Our strategy for suppressing napster is tough firewalling, user education, as well as what I call "domainjacking" -- making my nameservers primary for off-limits domains (opening www.napster.com gets you the copyright section of our computer policy). Domainjacking coupled with restrictions on what nameservers you can query is very effective as lots of these types of apps have hostnames coded into them that will now never resolve properly.
There are many examples like this where businesses have an obligation to their shareholders, their employees, customers or others to constrain the flow of information they have. It used to be easy to block stuff, but with the advent of gnutella, freenet, etc it's gotten much, much more difficult.
Having tools and techniques to block these applications is important to those of us that have to defend the legal security of our private networks.
I got into this discussion with a friend some time ago, about How gnutella could be touted as a legit peice of bussiness software because it does not *exclusivley* restrict itself to mp3's and that by Napster pandering to the music crowd has brought itself under fire... Of course we both have knowledge of neumerous FTP servers from where we can get just about anything we want. The issue is this, Napster (and even guntella) are high visibility, there have been prominent news stories and articles about these programs, and once the public becomes aware (at large) of something like this, sure as hell, someone is not going to like it. FTP has been around longer then I've been working with cmputers, but it doesn't have the publicity that Napster does (maybe it's needs a better publicity agent..), it also is used legitimatley by as many people who use it for nefarious purposes..(if not more). Those who NEED an "idiot box" client such as napster or gnutella to get what they are looking for will lose out, but to the literate computer users, well, we won't be very inconvenienced at all.
As gfor shutting down the internet... well microsoft claims it would hurt the economy if we just broke them up...
peanuts compared to the damage that would be done by shutting down the internet...now where'd I put that copy of Wildcat BBS...
______________________ There is no
a) It's their hardware and their data connection. They are entitled to do whatever they please with it. If they choose to block traffic I want, too bad. I can choose to vote with my dollars. Anyway, before you cry heresy and mark this flamebait, I would like to point out that this is _exactly_ the argument a sysadmin makes when blocking spam. The H/W is theirs and they don't have to relay for you.
b) They ain't made no router big enough to pass multi-gigabit backbone traffic and filter packets at the same time. Therefore, They ain't no fucking way they can cut off napster and your other favorite apps at the backbone (but please, if you are one of those "pseudointellectius" types, do continue to say draconian, I understand it is a necessary part of your diet :).
I believe point b) entirely mitigates further discussion on this topic. Go home...there's nothing to see here.
cat
Did you even read the article? It's not talking about banning any file sharing, it's talking about allocating bandwidth. If all it does is lower the priority for Napster or other bandwidth hogs, who can complain?