Belgian ISP Forced To Block P2P Traffic

An anonymous reader lets us know of developments in a case in Belgium that has been under litigation since 2004. The Belgian copyright watchdog SABAM has forced an ISP to begin filtering P2P traffic (PDF). According to the PDF on the SABAM site: "The Belgian Society of Authors, Composers and Publishers (SABAM) has just won an important legal battle within the context of the dispute that opposes it to the Internet Service Provider (ISP) Tiscali, which has become Scarlet Extended Ltd. In its sentence of June 29, 2007, the Court of First Instance of Brussels is demanding from the access provider that it adopts one of the technical measures put forward by the expert in order to prevent Internet users from illegally downloading SABAM's musical repertoire via P2P software." The rumor is that Scarlet will be forced to deploy the same software as MySpace uses (Audible Magic) to filter illegal P2P traffic from the legal.

Comments

A simple way to defeat this

[bunburyist]

I think that our Belgian friends could simply bypass this using protocol encryption for bitorrent. Since bittorrent can work on any port, portblocking filters are useless. Packet sniffers would have a tough time detecting encrypted traffic. The major bittorrent clients all support protocol encryption. For a guide on how to get it working with your client check out:
TorrentFreak's guide to protocol encrpytion

Re:A simple way to defeat this

[Anonymous Coward]

Even encrypted bittorrent can be detected fairly easily with simple flow analysis. That said, it takes up significantly more router CPU etc so it's not normally done (yet.)

Re:A simple way to defeat this

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember, what the court asked is not to stop all torrent traffic but to stop illegitimate torrent traffic. So yes you can detect torrent traffic but if it is encrypted and the ISP blocks it and it turns out that it was legitimate, then the ISP will be in trouble.

So encrypted torrent traffic doesn't make it that much difficult to find out about the protocol used (yes traffic analysis helps). It makes it difficult to find out if it is legitimate or not.

Re:A simple way to defeat this

[profplump]

The traffic can be identified with some accuracy, but you still can't read the content. And if you can't read the content you can't do acoustic fingerprinting on the media files, which is what they've been ordered to do.

Re:A simple way to defeat this

[Opportunist]

It's one thing to outlaw something. It's another to enforce it. Or, in this case, it's easy to say "no P2P encryption allowed". But what is "P2P traffic"? A packet, having a valid HTTP header, trying to connect to a machine on port 0x50 is, usually, a request to a HTTP Server. It's easy, though, to use HTTP as a wrapper for any kind of traffic. Dunno if providers would be that happy about that, considering the incredible overhead.

What about encrypted traffic? How can you tell it's "P2P traffic"? How about traffic from multiplayer games that uses a completely alien packet configuration that doesn't fit any "standard" mold because the company making the game had to design their own packet format on top of TCP/UDP? How do you discriminate between "good" and "bad" packets?

You can't outlaw encryption. You'd get into a serious fight with banks that way (and, trust me, you DO NOT want a fight with a bank). You can't outlaw connecting on "nonstandard" ports, that would open another can of worms you do not want to touch.

So please enlighten me how you'd like to enforce the "no encrypted P2P" rule.

Re:A simple way to defeat this

[nevali]

What the hell do you think SSL is?

No ISP would be plain retarded enough to block all encrypted traffic, on the grounds that it takes away a big reason for people to use the Internet (and thus their service) in the first place: buying stuff online.

(Christ, I had to give up mod points to point this out)

Re:Legal VS Illegal

[Anonymous Coward]

The acoustic fingerprint of legal P2P traffic won't match anything from SABAM's musical repertoire.

Re:This could really hurt the ISP.

[arivanov]

They are pissed as is already. AFAIK Belgian congestion levels due to P2P are one of the worst in Europe at the moment. So funnily enough this is likely to receive support from a large portion of the paying customers.

Bad news

[Filip47]

This is bad news for us Belgians. We have but 3 major ISP's in the country and Scarlet is one of them. Soon, SABAM could attack the other two. Scarlet was the best choice to start, as it is the smallest of the three.

Not Necessary here in Canada

[Anonymous Coward]

No, this isn't the 'p2p' is legal in Canadialand response. It's the "Canadian ISPs do this without being lobbied".

Rogers Cable throttle _all_ encrypted traffic now, as people were encrypting to get around bittorrent throttling. Your 7Meg line will get about 10KB down on a fully seeded torrent (Linux ISOs or whatever).

No worries, you'd think, in a nice open market you can just go to the competition, except that there is none. If your local copper is incapabable of decent DSL speeds, chances are Rogers are your Only option for broadband.

Go the 'free' market.

Re:Legal VS Illegal

[guruevi]

Well, as you know, the RIAA is trying to force ISP's and universities to use the same exact appliance (Audible Magic) to block P2P traffic. If you work at a university and get to know this appliance, basically all it is is a very expensive firewall and as their website also declares, it blocks all unencrypted P2P traffic, doesn't differentiate between 'legal' or 'illegal' use.

It wouldn't surprise me if Audible Magic is owned or otherwise affiliated to people within the RIAA and it's offshoot organizations.

Re:Just encrypt?

[iwan-nl]

From the summary:

The rumor is that Scarlet will be forced to deploy the same software as MySpace uses (Audible Magic [CC]) to filter illegal P2P traffic from the legal.

I don't know how the mentioned software works, but if they are going to distinguish between legal and illegal P2P traffic, they will have to analyse the content. If that's the case, I think encrypted content can only be blocked by employing a whitelist containing fingerprints of legal content.

Re:But who gets the money?

[J0nne]

I'm not sure how they got the right to ask that, but they can force you to pay. If you throw a (public) party and you play music, you have to pay them too.

Don't panic yet.

[witte]

This is only the Court of First Instance. Scarlet will appeal, and this may very well drag on for several more years. The decision may be overturned; and I expect it will be.

What I don't know, IANAL : Is Scarlet already obliged to enforce this ass-hat decision while the case is appealed ?
If so, as a Scarlet customer I will have to figure out a way to subvert Le Filtre P2P until I find another ISP. Sorry Scarlet ;-(

Tangentially, it's worth noting that SABAM tries to set a precedent by taking on a small ISP (at the time this case started rolling they were quite small compared to Skynet and Telenet).
I don't see them trying to pull this shit on Skynet/Belgacom. Odds are they'd get crushed like a puppy trying to stop a bus. (Wishful thinking)