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ISP Bans RIAA to Protect Its Customers
fader writes "Information Wave Technologies, a northeastern (US) ISP has announced that "it will actively deny the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) from accessing the contents of its network". Apparently this is in response to the RIAA (and MPAA, but they don't seem to be blocking them yet) plan to actively attack P2P users. All I can say is, you go, guys! I hope more ISPs will follow their lead."
Information Wave will also deploy peer-to-peer clients on the Gnutella network from its security research and development network (honeynet) which will offer files with popular song titles derived from the Billboard Top 100 maintained by VNU eMedia. No copyright violations will take place, these files will merely have arbitrary sizes similar to the length of a 3 to 4 minute MP3 audio file encoded at 128kbps. Clients which connect to our peer-to-peer clients, and then afterwards attempt to illegally access the network will be immediately blacklisted from Information Wave's network. The data collected will be actively maintained and distributed from our network operations site.
How about this part of the article? Honeynetting your ISP with fake mp3s to confound RIAA meddling is way more proactively defiant, IMO, than simply blocking traffic from riaa.org.
An ISP is not obligated to provide full, unhindered access for, to, or by anyone elses network. The RIAA has no legal grounds to force Informationwave to open up access to their network, for the same reasons private retail outlets and restaurant establishments can choose not to serve anyone they feel might cause harm to their establishment or other customers. RIAA is big, but not big enough to reverse precident.
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Yes, there is.
Don't read much, eh?
I spent a year in Iraq looking for WMD and all I found was this lousy sig.
Two, it's unworkable. Certainly whoever the MPAA/RIAA will employ to do their dirty work will be smart enough to come from a different location once they realize their IP's are blocked. This solution would be a little better if they had a system in place to block IP's that were actively attacking a P2P network, or a client, or a browser, etc. I see no problem with temporarily blocking small netblocks or IP's to stop an attack.
Read the article again. They are employing a honeypot client on their side, with dummy files, to establish connection links. Then they find that they are getting smurfed from the same client who searched their drive a few minutes ago, and poof! A new IP address is added to the blacklist.
Add some reverse DNS lookup and logging, and you have grounds to file an internet attack under the DMCA umbrella and get some accounts closed, heck, maybe even get some cash out of the weasels if enough evidence is collected.
No. They are refusing to carry inbound traffic which is known to cause harm to their network. Content-based filtering is refusal to carry outbound traffic. Big difference.
First of all, 'entrapment' only applys to law enforcement agencies. That said, only in specifc circumstances. If you are coherced into doing something by an undercover police officer you would not normaly do, that is entrapment. If they step out from an ally and start offering you free samples of cocaine, then you take it and they bust you for posetion, that is entrapment. If you come up to the same cop and start asking for it, that's not entrapment. That's you soliciting illegal drugs. He was just standing there. Looking like a drug dealer isn't illegal, is it now? Nope. You just assumed. the RIAA is just assuming that they are volating copy right laws. The ISP isn't pushing it. Even if it was teh FBI sitting their hosting the files, it wouldn't be entrapment. It's not like they went into IRC and started telling people about their "cool" new archive. Dumb ass.
If you want to search someone's drive for illegally copyrighted material, go to the police or FBI and get a warrant. Anything else is illegal hacking. If you are trying to DOS a P2P user, you are DOSing the ISP and all its users.
Would you want to have internet service from an ISP who allows non-governmental (w/o a search warrant) entities to search your files? How about continual DOS attacks? The way I see it, by not allowing the RIAA to perform these actions, they are protecting their ability to provide its services to its paying customers.
As an admin for an ISP, I can say, that the ISP is not required to let their users have unrestricted access to the internet. Look at AOL, MSN.. MSN won't allow you to access an external SMTP server.. Also, from an ISP standpoint the RIAA just became the enemy. Part of our job is to protect our network from malicious attacks, this includes the crappy RIAA. I wish I could convince the owner to allow me to block the RIAA IP blocks...
Use the legal liability argument as this ISP is. If the RIAA attacks your clients computers and destroys something of value, your company is liable for it. That should be argument enough.
This isn't the sig you are looking for... Carry on...
If they do, the big boys will soon cease to offer broadband. No one will want it, as soon as I can get off it I will. Hopefully consumers (especially US consumers) will pull their heads out and realize that it is they who have the final say in what happens to a company. If you stop buying CD's as I have the RIAA will eventually listen. If you stop using ATTBI and switch all of the phone accounts you can off of their service they will listen. The beauty of capatilism is that we as consumers have the power to change things, the only reason companies are so big and powerful (which is a REALLY REALLY bad thing IMHO) is that we have allowed them to become that way. Homo Depot is the size it is because people stopped supporting the little independant hardware store. I for one prefer small independant hardware stores, a) because you get help, can ususally talk to a nice helpfull person, b) no hour long lines, and c) you are directly supporting your community instead of supporting a huge multi-national. The same goes for ISP's the little ISPs are worried about their customers, not about a corporate image and shareholders, so they will go out of their way to protect you as their customer.
ATTBI blocked my account for having a set up my BSD box with a static IP (it took them over a year to notice, and COX never cared), I got the service reinstated, told them that I was switching off of their service, we are in the process of changing my wifes cell phone service from ATT and I had the choice here at work about a long distance carrier recently and I specifically chose not to go with ATT. If we all did this companies like ATT and conglomerates like the RIAA and the MPAA will have to listen, after all they are only companies and the only power that they have is the power that we as consumers give them. Capatalism works, but we have to be the police, not the government.
(B) + (D) + (B) + (D) = (K) + (&)
No...it says people that download files from there and then turn around and start attacking will be blocked.
It all comes down to how smart the RIAA's find and kill stuff is. If it just goes by filenames, then this will work. If someone finds out that some song being billed as Linkin Park's latest is indeed someones static, then it won't work.
For definitions and actual law related to common carrier status see Here
By my reading of section 202 they can make reasonable descrimination against people, and if cutting off people who are bent on harming your customers isn't reasonable I don't know what is.
It shall be unlawful for any common carrier to make any unjust or unreasonable discrimination in charges, practices, classifications, regulations, facilities, or services for or in connection with like communication service, directly or indirectly, by any means or device, or to make or give any undue or unreasonable preference or advantage to any particular person, class of persons, or locality, or to subject any particular person, class of persons, or locality to any undue or unreasonable prejudice or disadvantage.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
That said, assuming the ISP isn't acting in concert with law enforcement, they're allowed to do whatever they want to keep out RIAA. RIAA would only have rights to pursue recourse if they had a contract with the ISP in some vendor-customer relationship. The ISP's actions don't constitute an attack against RIAA, although I'm sure RIAA would love to spin it that way.
-- "Sucks to your ass-mar"
This of course begs the question: Should ISP be considered common carriers?
SM MBL-VIR looking 4 SIG 4 LTR. must be DDF, no 420, SD ok.
Common Carrier doesn't apply to ISPs. That precedent has already been set.
when we as BBS operators would ban Law Enforcement officials from entering our service, not that we had anything to hide (most of us anyway) but to keep them from harrassing our users.
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
I quote, "No copyright violations will take place, these files will merely have arbitrary sizes similar to the length of a 3 to 4 minute MP3 audio file encoded at 128kbps. Clients which connect to our peer-to-peer clients, and then afterwards attempt to illegally access the network will be immediately blacklisted from Information Wave's network. The data collected will be actively maintained and distributed from our network operations site."
They're not listing OR blacklisting everyone who accesses their honeypot, just those that try to ATTACK it. Nowhere at all do they ever mention spying on their own users. You can't 'illegally access' an open network like a Gnutella honeypot unless you're doing something to disrupt it. (The difference between entering a library and entering a library whilst screaming and throwing molotov cocktails everywhere.)
They're blacklisting and posting people who ATTACK their honeypot. Not users who download the fake files.