Aussie ISP Scans Downloads For Copyright Violation

Steve Nakhla writes: "According to this article, Excite@Home has begun snooping users' downloads in order to find copyrighted or pirated material. Violators have their access cut off. As an Excite@home user, this alarms me. What exactly is their definition of copyrighted? Doesn't the New York Times copyright their online articles? Can I not view them any more for fear of violating Excite's policies?"

Comments

Good business strategy

[MicroBerto]

Isn't this company in financial trouble? That sounds like a great way to make more money! Spend it on extra employment while cutting your customer base at the same time!

How is this different from a wiretap?

[KosovoYankee]

If Ma Bell was listening to my phone calls to see if I was committing a crime, I would simply get 2 cans and an extremely long string. There is no way this can be defended ethically: Because they provide you with a service, as a corporation, they can legally observe and log every detail of enery task you use the service to complete? While a nation's highways may belong to the federal government, they still need probable cause to stop you and "observe" what you have under the seat of your car, or in the trunk. This complete circumvention of probably cause is ludicrous. As stated above: Imagine if the phone company did this!

Re:How is this different from a wiretap?

[JohnG]

Because they provide you with a service, as a corporation, they can legally observe and log every detail of enery task you use the service to complete?

Forgive my ignorance on this matter, but don't ISP's ALREADY log every task you complete? I could be wrong, but I would think they have records of what websites and newsgroups and such you've been to. This info is probably supposed to be kept private, but who knows nowadays.
Either way, it's just short hop from logging all your internet activity to MONITORING all your internet activity. It just surprises me, that of all the crimes they could go after, copyright infringement is the one they chose.
Looking at my past posts you'll see that I'm actually in defense of copyright more so that most slashdotters, but if they HAVE to violate our privacy, can't they do it to keep tabs on who downloads instructions for making nuclear bombs or who sends porn spam to potentially underage kids or something? Next to the wealth of dangerous and or illegal content on the web, copyright seems kinda harmless.

Re:How is this different from a wiretap?

[cyberformer]

"if they HAVE to violate our privacy, can't they do it to keep tabs on who downloads instructions for making nuclear bombs"

In the UK, they do exactly that: Under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers (RIP) Act, every ISP or even operator of a private network (like a corporate LAN or a cybercafe) has to help the police by scanning their traffic for potential terrorist content. If they don't, it's five years in the slammer.

South Carolina has a similar law regarding child pornography.

Of course, if you're opposed to these laws, you must be a terrorist or a child molestor...

Rights of the People

[NitsujTPU]

What ever happened to the rights of the people coming before the rights of companies? Has government become so weak that they cannot protect a company from being crushed by another because of those who use its services? Have companies become so much more powerful than the gorvernment that the word of the the people cannot be heard? Have the minds of the masses been so poisoned with anti-government claptrap that they cannot see that the government can set them free rather than imprison them?

Re:Rights of the People

[NitsujTPU]

What I mean is that in the minds of the people, "Techies think MS is bad." Is about as far as they comprehend corporate issues. Many accept lower level goods "upgrades" that just take away features, and the like because they are absorbing a media blitz as opposed to making informed decisions. The fault being with neither the companies for protecting their interests, or the government, but the people blame the government, who has to cave to the interests of the corporation since ONLY the corporation is making its voice known in a coherent sense, the people only blasting illiterate claptrap like "fuck the gorvernment, it's their fault," when really the only possible PROTECTION is through their use of the government, but since so few make their voice heard, it APPEARS that the corporate interests are the only ones with a voice.

Trust me, I'm capitalist through and through, I'd gladly take the helm of a company, and I trade stock regularly.

It's just a little CYA

[TrollMan 5000]

They're doing this to merely keep themselves clear of copyright infringement lawsuits.

That's all fine and good, but the way they go around doing it is wrong. From the article:

The users added that if an individual is breaking the law on the Internet, it should be treated in a similar way to somebody abusing the telephone system.

"The police should have to apply for a warrant and then present that to the telco to authorise monitoring for a specific person for a specific period," the reader said.

The people are getting upset with the ISP. Their ire should be directed at the real source of the problem: the copyright industry. It's gotten so bad that even ISP's are driven to the point of paranoia about copyrgiht infringement.

My question: Is it all worth it?

woah, WOAH!!

[Telek]

Isn't this a MAJOR invasion of privacy? I can't remember exactly, but I seem to remember that ISPs were told they were NOT allowed to do that to modem users, as it violates several privacy issues. You're required to get a warrant prior to initiating any snooping whatsoever. Just like the Telephone, they can't do that!

And besides, HOW do you tell what's pirated and what's not, from random streams of data? If I download 2 movies at a time, it's going to seem like garbage (a raw stream that is). And HOW do they know that it's pirated? How can they distinguish a pirated movie from a non pirated one? Similarly with data or music, how can you tell? What are they going to do, scan for patterns that might match? Get someone to watch all movie streams and listen to all audio streams? Think about how hard it would be to figure that out. Or are they just going to scan what SITES you visit, and then ASSUME you're pirating? This is crazy!

Re:ways around this crap?

[Evil Adrian]

You can only do that if you're transmitting data that's copyrighted by you via that channel. So perhaps if you upload your biography every time you download MP3's from an FTP site... they'll still be able to sue you, but you can sue them too, and be able to use their suit as evidence.

What are you talking about? Who would sue who? You can't sue somebody for something YOU uploaded to them.

The short version (IANAL)

[dkh2]

If it's been produced anytime since 1923 - somebody holds copyright on it.

The real issue that nobody is talking about is licensing. Yes, the New York Times and/or the original author holds copyright on all of that stuff. However, under the conditions for access to the NYT website they have granted you license to access that material online. They have not granted you license to download (read this as "save") and redistribute any of their IP.

It seems the real problem for Aussie ISPs is to identify the original source for anything served through them and to go after the account owners who allegedly violate copyright law.