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Lycos Germany to No Longer Store IP Data
quaker5567 writes "The Register is carrying the story that Lycos Germany says it will no longer store dynamic IP addresses of its customers. According to the German Tele Services Data Protection and Telecommunications Act, ISPs are only allowed to store communications data for accounting purposes. Apparently, there is no requirement for German ISPs to keep a record of IP addresses. A decision by German ISPs not to keep logs on IP addresses would be extremely controversial as the entertainment industry is increasingly demanding that ISPs disclose the names of suspected file sharers."
This has always been an option for ISPs. I can see keeping IP info for a week or so in case there was an incursion but after that the only thing that it could be used for is informing (whether it was coerced or otherwise) on your customers ! As customers we must demand that our ISPs no keep long term IP records. There are plenty of options to connect to the internet and we as consumers must tell our ISPs that we will make this an important part of our bandwidth purchasing decision.
"It's so convenient to have a system where everyone is a criminal" - A. Hitler
In other news... crackers have obsessively moved to Germany, and signed up for accounts with dynamic IP addresses.
Obsessively? You'd think moving to Germany once would be enough.
...think this is a good move on the part of ISPs to quit doing the government's dirty work for tracking down criminals. It's not a company's job to keep tabs on their customers for the sole purpose of turning them over to law enforcement.
On the minus side, it is very likely some kind of political backlash will occur and a law will be passed requiring ISPs to keep much more detailed records than they do even now...
-py
It is quite a sad state of affairs when a company does something that is popular with the people, and yet there is controversy because another company doesn't want it to be done.
This is the most artificial sense of the word "controversy," because it is completely artificial.
Sad, sad state of affairs.
fifth sigma, inc.
"A decision by German ISPs not to keep logs on IP addresses would be extremely controversial as the entertainment industry is increasingly demanding that ISPs disclose the names of suspected file sharers."
Entertainment industry be damned. What we should worry about is network and systems security, DDoS, botnets, zombies, and of course SPAM and PORN. I hope we will not have to block *.de on our SMTP relays and TCP/IP firewalls like we had with *.cn and *.ne. Hopefully Germans will know how to be responsible with their privacy and lack of control. Only time will tell.
Karma: Positive (probably because of superiour intellect)
Any person with less-than honorable intentions won't do so from the comforts of their own home.
They're going to haul their laptop, equiped with Wi-Fi, to some random unsecured access point on the far side of town and do it there. In a situation like that, logs are almost entirely useless.
And here it is. Of course this explanation would appear, despite the fact that if this was the case then this story wouldn't be an issue at all. All of the file sharers could just grab their laptops and head to a wifi location.
Of course we know that is nonsense - criminals generally are dumb, and the police endlessly bust child-porn rings, as well as find people who communicate with children through IM services, via trusty IP logs and warrants. Even outside of this, though, forcing a criminal to go to a specific wifi point, itself easily identifiable, is vastly more of a lead to go on than "somebody in the state of New York". If you know that somebody sent a serious death threat from Joe's Coffee Shop at 2 in the afternoon, you can connect the dots and build some evidence.
I can't believe all this crap I'm hearing about "what if somebody does something bad and the ip address isn't logged" shit.
What fucking country did you grow up in where monitoring your every move IN CASE you MIGHT break a law was tolerated. When did we let our privacy and freedom get JACKED from us?
Real IDs, IP monitoring, etc... This kind of shit was UNTHINKABLE here in the US before the 1980's, and now, because we believe everything we're told about bad things happening if we don't do it, we've given away all of our freedoms and tolerate monitoring and intrusion that was considered science fiction material 20 years ago.
Other countries are NOT following our example- Spain didn't turn itself into a police state after the train bombings, politicians there went as far as to say "we are NOT at war", whereas, hear in the US, politicians say just the opposite, and we buy that shit!!!
Land of the Free, my ass....
</flame>
The other day I was able to walk down the street, go into a shop and buy some milk - get this - WITHOUT ONE PERSON ASKING ME TO IDENTIFY MYSELF!.
Can you imagine all the possible marketing information I squandered selfishly by not informing a central database about this action (this report not included). The cash I used was totally UNTRACEABLE!!! it could have come from anywhere. Not only that, but the person behind the counter was happy to undertake the transaction without me identifying myself (obviously some kind of terrorist).
I could have been going to use the milk for a BOMB!, would the authorities have had any way to check this? NO!!!!
When did everything become like this?
Oh wait - it has always been like this in Democracies.
Move along... there is no sig here.