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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."
Me too. Especially if they can recover from the /.'ing they're going to receive now. (Will they ban /. too?)
That takes guts. They are going to actively search&seek out the RIAA drones! Unfortunately, they will be placing "fake" files on gnutella....the question being, are those fake files worth the gain of having a major isp on "our" side?
When in doubt, parenthesize. At the very least it will let some poor schmuck bounce on the % key in vi. (Larry Wall)
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.
I am sure this is the start of a huge slew of lawsuits. UserFriendly had a strip about this on Sunday. You can view it here. It raises an interesting point. The comic implies that anyone with a big enough footprint can ignore/swat the RIAA if they want.
That said, I think that the banning of the RIAA from networks is a start. Now they need to ban the spoofers and companies like MediaDefender who spend all of their bandwidth downloading files from YOUR computer to keep other people off.
The Dopester
"Yes, I'm a Karma Whore, but I'm doing it to pay my way through school."
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.
The idea of using a Gnutella honeypot and then using access logs to "spot the fed" is terrific - it'd be nice to see more ISP's stand up to the RIAA this way.
I used to think the balkanization of the Internet would be a Bad Thing, but I'm not so sure now given the kind of tactics we're seeing the record and movie giants use.
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
I'm curious what illegal things they have done? They maintain a private network and can give access to it to whomever they please, and most certainly do not have to allow another private entity access to it. Exceptions are in the case of a warrant for one of their customers where the FBI needs the equiv of a wiretap or something, but those are limited cases. I can't demand that AOL give me access to their mail server if I am not one of their customers, and this ISP can deny any incoming traffic they wish as long as doing so does not violate their contract with their customers.
What?
If ISP's had karma, Information Wave Technologies would have just hit the cap. I just sent an e-mail to them at thier riaa@informationwave.net address expressing my thoughts... you should too. Imagine what thier management would do if they got 25,000 e-mails stating how much people liked thier service?
(Yes, I know what would happen... thier mail server would go on strike, and be burned because it was too close to the exploding webserver)
Karma: SELECT `karma` FROM `users` WHERE `userid`=138474;
Everyone should be against any censorship!! May the RIAA burn in hell , but this ISP is no better....
Hell, this will proubly be modded down to hell, but think about what this could do to all our freedoms....
Secure multi-mediation is the future of all webbing...
The RIAA has announced its intention to crack any boxes that it wants to and has even bought a bill that would legalize it for them. That makes the RIAA a big security threat, even bigger when you consider that they have no oversight and a long record of not caring about little things like rights. Any contact with their network makes you vulnerable.
Any security type would want their network protected from snooping of any kind. Especially from a company that wants to shut down anyone it doesn't like and is protected against liability for any damage it does. An ISP blacklisting a company that does this, or even just announces that it plans to, is protecting its customers and being a good citizen.
I think the idea is going to catch on.
I spent a year in Iraq looking for WMD and all I found was this lousy sig.
I'm not so sure about that. Since their network is a private one, they certainly have the right to blacklist anybody they want. Should they share that list with other ISPs, there may be some problems. But setting up their own list is not illegal. Furthermore, should they see this thing out, they may eventually have more business than they can even handle.
RIAA may be able to take them to court, but it would probably be worth the $$$ to fend them off.
GreyPoopon
--
Why is it I can write insightful comments but can't come up with a clever signature?
And to satisfy those customers, they could just summarize the RIAA website:
GreyPoopon
--
Why is it I can write insightful comments but can't come up with a clever signature?
Press any key to continue, any other key to quit.
If you can do it to them, they can do it to you. Pretty difficult to argue otherwise.
An ISP that blocks or restricts RIAA use of the net is legitimizing the practice they purport to oppose. This is not the way to fight this particular battle.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
While this sounds nice and all. Blindly blocking network blocks can be a bad idea. I'm sure if the information on what IP blocks the RIAA uses to scan networks got out. Several people would just add those blocks to their firewalls and forget about it. Then later when the RIAA retaliates by changing their provider or getting new IP blocks and giving back their old ones, everyone would end up blocking someone having nothing to do with the RIAA. We have to fight them on the legal front, not the technological one.
It seems like it would be a good idea to implement this as distributed honeypots instead of one on ISP's network. Otherwise, what would stop the RIAA attack drones/bots from just blacklisting the blacklist and ignoring the honeypot.
riaa@informationwave.net
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
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.
Yeah, but by doing this, are they risking their status as a common carrier?
When the RIAA comes and demands they cut off access to warez.org, they'll be in less of a position to say they can't/don't do content-based filtering. In for a penny, in for a pound; this may be shooting themselves in the foot.
Since their network is a private one, they certainly have the right to blacklist anybody they want.
Tell that to the folks who ran the SPAM mail-relay blacklists. If I recall correctly, one of 'em got sued and forced to remove someone from the blacklist. That was a private list, maintained by private individuals, utilized on privatly-owned systems, and they still got sued (and lost). (Someone help me out on the details here, please.)
So, just because they have a *right* to block the RIAA, doesn't mean that a judge will agree. And, in the end, that's all that matters -- whether you can convince a judge (or jury, or cop). If you can't convince them, or can't afford to try, then you've lost, no matter what the law says.
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.
Actually, it isn't stealing.
.wavs and mp3's on my computer of my own composition. I own the rights to their use, and I choose to distribute them freely. My sharing of MP3's is NOT illegal under any construct of the law.
The supreme court has ruled time and time again that you cannot patent a sound. Nor can you copyright it. You can copyright it's composition (the sheet music), but you can't own a sound.
Never mind that argument. Think on this: I have several
However, the act of copying music from CD's without approval IS a violation of the law, provided I do it for profit. The profit doesn't have to be monetary. I can exact profit from the loss of sales the artist would normally enjoy. That said, seeing as I am not SELLING the mp3's, and study after study has proven that the sharing of mp3's BOOSTS sales, they have to PROVE that they suffered a loss from my activities.
It gets even more complicated than that - they only have Offensive Rights for protected works. They means THEY have to sue ME, and if they don't do it within 5 years of the infringement, they lose offensive rights to that work in TOTAL.
So go ahead and argue that people who share mp3'
s are stealing (and privately, I agree), but the RIAA and the artists themselves have the onus places on them to do something about it in court.
Some people are arguing that Napster, Morpheus, LimeWire et al are facilitating this, and are thereby guilty through association (in an "aiding and abetting sort of way). IF that's true, and I AM willing to scede that argument, then the RIAA and the artists need to take action against the manufacturers of CD-RW, DVD-RW, Casette tapes, mini-disc, VHS, Super-H, BetaMax etc etc etc, ad inifinitum. Anything less implies that they don't actually care about protecting their rights.
The Dopester
"Yes, I'm a Karma Whore, but I'm doing it to pay my way through school."
Which is that the RIAA simply does not understand the tech industry or technology.
It's like allowing an 18 year old with a basic knowledge of physics to decide regulations for bridge building.
For a less abstract analogy, I know that my television has been stolen from me. I don't know who, but I know it had to be someone in my neighborhood. Using the RIAA as a model, I should be able to go into each of my neighbor's houses to look for this television, without their permission. And if I have a strong suspicion that I have found the violator, I am allowed to destroy the house. That's basically what the RIAA wants.
Humorless sig goes here.
That's the problem with the media conglamerates.
Consumer: "I bought this CD/DVD, so I should be able to do with it as I want."
MC: "No, you only paid to be allowed to listen/watch it under certain circumstances."
Consumer: "Okay. Now my CD/DVD is scratched beyond use. I want a new one."
MC: "Can't do that. You only get that one copy. You have to be carefull with your own stuff. It's not our responsibility."
Personally I'd like to get a VERY thorough rewrite of the copyright laws that affect _me_ meaning Denmark and the EU, but I'd also like a global and FAIR set of copyright laws.
Not just fair to me as a consumer, but also fair to the copyright holders. As it is now (at least in Denmark) it is seriously borked, giving consumers rights that are in no way fair, and removing rights that ARE fair.
We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.
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.
Conversely why can't people just not steal the mp3's?
Because the RIAA refuses to sell them in a way that encourages people to pay for them: High quality files in a DRM-free format, at a price so cheap per song that people would rather pay it to get a file of guaranteed high quality than waste the time trying to find a perfectly-ripped, glitch-free copy somewhere for free. Do you know how many times I've had to keep re-downloading songs from Gnutella because they're cut off at the end or have glitches in the middle from the CD skipping when the song was ripped? It's not a fun thing to do with a speedy broadband connection, much less the dialup connection that the majority of people still use.
If the RIAA charged, say, 5 to 25 cents per song, or a more expensive x dollars-per-month all-you-can-download plan, with NO DRM CRAP, they would make a killing. Why don't they?
They're greedy.
They like the profit margins they maintain with their extortionate CD pricing.
They're cheap.
The startup costs for their own MP3 server farm would be pretty hefty, and that's money that (in their eyes) would be better put to use stuffing Hilary's couch cushions and mattress, and buying laws that prop up their existing business model.
They're lazy.
They don't want to have to strive to create more high-quality content. By only selling album-length CDs (the purchasable single as we know it is being killed off), they can effectively force you to pay $20 for that one song you like, because the other eleven on the CD make you bleed from the ears because they're so terrible. In all my years of CD buying (pre-Napster, of course), I can still have enough fingers to count the number of CDs I have where I love every single track on them. I could have a nasty accident with a bandsaw and that would still be true.
They're stupid.
They just can't see that if they sell something cheaply enough and without onerous restrictions, people won't be motivated to steal it. Every time they come close to this idea, the services they launch are too expensive and/or use some proprietary file format locked down six ways from Sunday, or have other consumer-hostile aspects.
~Philly
Instead of just blocking the RIAA itself, how about blocking RIAA members? Imagine if Sony, RCA, AOL/TW, etc.. had all of their internet traffic blocked by ISPs? It really wouldn't be that hard to get the consumers on the side of the ISPs, as the ISPs could argue that the RIAA and its members are promoting and financially supporting electronic terrorism!
An ISP that blocks or restricts RIAA use of the net is legitimizing the practice they purport to oppose. This is not the way to fight this particular battle.
... if they do not, they are likely to see the underlying reason for why people are willing to pay for internet access go away, and with it their entire market dry up to virtually nothing.
Nonsense. They are restricting system crackers from attacking their networks, and their customers. This is a longstanding policy for most ISPs, who blacklist SPAMmers and other neferious crackers who are looking to steal information (e.g. credit cards) or damage people's systems out of pure maliciousness.
The RIAA has chosen to become one of the above, and announced their intention to do so publicly. The ISP is responding in a responsible manner, both in terms of immediate security and in terms of long-term economic viability.
Think about it. If the RIAA and the MPAA are allowed to crack, and possibly destroy machines on the internet, or succeed in their more modest objective of turning the internet from an interactive publishing medium everyone can be hard on into a more-or-less one way, glorified interactive shopping network channel, how many people are going to be willing to spend $40/month or more for access?
Virtually no one, which means all of the ISPs in question essentially go out of business, or become a niche market. Either way, they lose.
AOL, Sprint, AT&T, and other large broadband players had better stand up to this as well
That would serve the purposes of the MPAA, the RIAA, and other copyright cartels, but it would be devistating to the tech industry, the internet, and very directly to the ISPs in question.
It looks like one ISP has actually thought the consiquences through, and chosen the best alternative for dealing with it. I suspect any ISPs capable of reading the writing on the wall, and interested in projected earnings beyond the next couple of quarters, will likely reach similar conclusions.
Perhaps not AOL, which has come to be dominated by their media-cartel half, Time-Warner, but certainly AT&T and others should seriously be considering similiar measures to protect their networks, their customers, and ultimately their business.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
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"
Common Carrier doesn't apply to ISPs. That precedent has already been set.
Furthermore, the suits have all been against maintainers (and publishers) of blacklists, not the ISPs that used them. The owner of a private network has just as much right to block traffic they deem undesirable (unsafe, whatever) as I have to eject a burglar, or other trespasser, from my home.
utter rubbish
oh wait - just thought of Britney Spears - how did I forget her.
I don't know, but if you figure it out please tell the rest of us so we can forget her too!
Hey kids, there's only 5 days left 'til Yak Shaving Day!
The RIAA is not going to use their corporate network for this; They are going to use disposeable connectivity such as DSL, cable, and dialup to launch these attacks.
...and on a another note, how long do you think it will be before the RIAA has trained dogs to search out illegal copyright infringing media sniffing every bag and person at the bus temrinal, trainstation, or airports? How long before they request the DoJ to randomly pull over and search automobiles for CD-R, Dubbed Audio Cassettes, or *gasp* portable mp3 players and arrest the driver/owners for interstate transport of stolen property and seize the cars for sherrifs auction? IMO this whole IP thing has gone so sideways that all bets are off, infact I'm suprised we havent seen a shotgun weilding hillary rosen on the covers of Time and Newsweek.
The two questions I have for you armchair systems admins and network engineers are;
1. What good will blocking 208.225.90.0/24 and 12.150.191.0/24 do for your network?
2. What good will transit providers derive from blocking 208.225.90.0/24 and 12.150.191.0/24 from traversing their network?
This is a purile waste of time and energy, do the right thing; Call your congress critter, hack them back, or protest in some other more effective way -- a router or iptables entry is a weak protest.
This communication is secured using Rot-26 Encryption Algorithm, Unauthorized decryption will be subject to laughter.
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...
If there is any chance that anyone could identify RIAA crackers from REAL crackers, the RIAA must be registering or keeping records of it's actions. Would any unrecorded or unapproved action then be classified as a REAL attack - along with REAL liability ? Would every report of cracking need to be cross-referenced or would they all be ignored ?
If ISPs report every instance of cracking by the RIAA, wouldn't the limited resources of the FBI be required to investigate so many 'approved' federal crimes that the real criminals would be getting away with more ?
These guys have the right idea, document, blacklist, AND report - treat the RIAA attempts like any other illicit action on their network !
"Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech."--Benjamin Franklin
I really hate signatures, but go to my website.
MAPS had (and likely still has) documentation on their website. Harris was blacklisted for a reason.
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!