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

Just encrypt?

[dintech]

Is it just me or is this trivial to circumvent by encrypting traffic?

This could really hurt the ISP.

[Jaaay]

It'll be interesting if they'll be able to sue for damages once P2P customers take their buisness elsewhere since this is being selective applied to them and not their competitors for now. Note that this is for a specific ISP so it's really making them uncompetitive. If it were applied to all ISPs then it wouldn't make a difference for the company but if their the odd one out you'd imagine they'll lose a lot of customers since in the reality of this situation a lot of people like to spend all day downloading stuff. Legally if this was applied it should be in a law that affects all isps to keep the market fair. Whether any law banning P2P which has legitimate users also is good in the first place is another question.

Legal VS Illegal

[j.sanchez1]

According to SABAM, if all Belgian Internet access providers would adopt the technical measures proposed by the expert so that P2P software could no longer be used for exchanging copyright works, this would put an end to the illegal traffic as Belgium is concerned.

But what about the LEGAL P2P traffic, like Linux Distros and patches for various apps and games that are out there, as well as artists who promote and encourage the sharing of their works?

I hope that this isn't dragged over here to the States by the RIAA or MPAA.

I find it so interesting

[Bullfish]

That the "experts" think methods like these (filtering) work when it comes to stopping and slowing piracy when history shows that they do not. In fact, pretty much any shutdown/slowdown ever achieved created or accelerated development of newer, stealthier, more robust methods of piracy and distribution. At best it seems a scam to sell filtering software.

Re:I find it so interesting

[Opportunist]

When you now add suggesting to have kids turn in their parents for filesharing, I'm going to invoke good ol' Godwin...

What you want is to turn our education around by pretty much 180 degrees. Remember elementary school? When you were told that you should "share" what you got with others, that it's more fun to play together instead of alone? That giving is more fun than receiving?

Now you want to turn it around? Don't we have enough greedy, selfish bastards already?

People need to understand laws to heed them. You can see that every day. "Don't kill" is easy. And understandable, hey, I don't want to be killed! So prolly the next guy doesn't enjoy it either. On the other hand, the program I wrote to solve my problem, do I care if someone else uses it? Nah. I still got it, it ain't like I can't use it anymore just 'cause he does too. Hey, I remember my elementary time, and I like sharing that program with him!

Make copyright laws understandable, and give people a reason to heed them. Current copyright is completely out of whack, it's (translated quote from a lawyer) "too complicated for use, but formidable for abuse". It's true. We actually have conflicting parts in our copyright laws, which is partly due to it getting patched more often than the average MS OS.

And give people a reason to heed it. If a law is pointing against me without offering me any benefits, my will to heed it is close to zero. Unless you can enforce it by the very root of the word enforce, i.e. with brute force, people will not care about the law. A law against killing limits me (I can't kill freely at will), but also protects me (neither can someone just pull his gun on the road and kill me without impunity). Same for stealing. Which incidentally is also heeded less by people who don't have jack. Could be coincidence, and probably is...

You will notice, though, that people were more willing to heed copyright when it was still based on "equal protection", i.e. when copyright not only limited the customer but also gave him some rights. Since those rights are eroding away, so is the willingness to heed the law.

Make fair laws, and people will heed them. Make unfair laws, and people will only ponder how to evade them.

Re:I guess that creates an opportunity

[dAzED1]

How could the ISP filter or block VPN traffic without annoying the rest of the professionals who rely on corporate VPN access?

They don't need to. They just need to block traffic to Relakks, then all other legit traffic can continue.

Encryption

[javilon]

I will repeat what I say on this cases, and also about censorship and network neutrality issues:

The only way to assure net neutrality is to encrypt every packet and randomize the ports on all new network protocols. This is true right now for some P2P and skype.
Given the current European policy on data retention, we should do it even for mail and instant messaging. Of course you should use sftp instead of ftp and ssh instead of telnet, and your SMTP sessions should go encrypted, but that is not enough. We should rewrite every protocol and make it look like IPSEC.

This way we would avoid the following problems without the need for regulation:

- Government censorship (the China firewall becomes less efficient)
- Traffic Shaping (ISPs shouldn't have the right to decide what protocols can you use).
- Multi tier pricing (the ISP could discriminate by IP, but not by service)
- Traffic analysis (for example the European Data Retention policy. If all packets look the same it becomes much more difficult)

A technical solution is always better than a political one.

In this case, the "expert" wouldn't have suggested the filtering solution if all of the p2p protocols where encrypted, like some bittorrent variants.

Re:Creates "Jobs"

[CastrTroy]

This is the problem with the Music/Movie companies. They want to maximize their profits. So they ran their numbers through some computer, and discovered that movies should cost $X and that CDs should cost $Y. These prices have nothing to do with the cost of producing the CD/DVD, because the cost of those is effectively $0. Instead they try to figure out how many people they can get to buy the product at a certain price in order to make the highest profit. However, these calculations were done a long time ago, long before P2P was widespread. People were willing to pay more for stuff when there was no other way to get it. However, now that people have another way to get it, legal or otherwise, they should lower their prices in order to compete with piracy. Piracy shouldn't be an issue. If you like a song, it should be so cheap to buy it that you won't even think twice and will just get it right away. Currently, people have to look at the price, think it over, leave the store, and then maybe go back to the store (virtual or brink and mortar) and make a conscious descision to purchase music. However, if they made CDs $5, and DVDs similar, and downloaded songs around 10-25 cents, people wouldn't even think about whether or not they should buy it, or if it was worth pirating, they would just pay for it.