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

I guess that creates an opportunity

[OlivierB]

For Relakks.com to start marketing their services to these ISP customers.

FYI, here's what Relakks does:
"- You'll exchange the IP-number you get from your ISP to an anonymous IP-number .
- You get a safe/encrypted connection between your computer and the Internet. "

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

Re:I guess that creates an opportunity

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Unfortunately some ISPs throttle all encrypted traffic and will continue to do so, unless customers start leaving in droves.

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.

Re:I guess that creates an opportunity

[monk.e.boy]

Hey, lets all burn 3 CDs of mp3s each, and post it to random Belgans.

FILTER THAT, FUCK-WITS

:-P

monk.e.boy

Re:I guess that creates an opportunity

[OlivierB]

ou are right but to that one could reply that:
- There is no evidence that Relakks customers are involved in illegal activities (unlike P2P whose unecnrypted packets you can monitor). I for instance happen to use Relakks more for Hotspot access than anything else.

- What happens if Relakks has some sort of DynDns VPN server address? The ISP could not reference this address in their DNS servers but then agin those subscribing to Relakks are savy enough to use OpenDNS as well.

What happens then?
FYI, countries like China and Saudi Arabia have been trying real hard to prevent all sorts of traffic: HTTP, P2P, VOIP etc.
None of these protections can hold up more than a few hours. VPNs are he easiest way to defeat these kind of protections.

Re:I guess that creates an opportunity

[Alchemar]

By only blocking VPN traffic that goes outside the country for anyone that has a residential account. Most people that would need to access a VPN outside the country would need to do so from the company that they were visiting, or access from a hotel. I am sure that companies large enough to have international visitors and hotels could set up an unfiltered line. I am not in favor of this action, just given some prior thought about how this wonderful loophole was going to be eventually closed.

Re:I guess that creates an opportunity

[Opportunist]

Then route it through TOR.

There is no such thing as a reliable blocker based on IPs.

Re:I guess that creates an opportunity

[Corwn of Amber]

Okay. I'd really like only one, though : Tactile Gemma, self-titled, 2001. Can't even find it on Amazon.

Re:I guess that creates an opportunity

[OlivierB]

you assume that my employers VPN servers are based in the same country as I am. In any multinational company, they will have a central VPN server, and it sure as hell won't be in Belgium. What if I am a small company in Belgium and I oustource all my hosting to a company in the UK? Your solution doesn't work.

Re:I guess that creates an opportunity

[dAzED1]

trust me, it wouldn't be difficult. If you can find it easily, then they can block it easily. Matters not if you use a different name service.

Re:I guess that creates an opportunity

[J0nne]

Great, contact me to get my address, send whatever you like...

Re:I guess that creates an opportunity

[dAzED1]

um, yes there is.

Query various name services for the crap you want to block. They'll give you an IP. Block those IPs.

Block the meta-IPs for TOR and any other such thing. At some point, you're relying upon something with a stable name/ip association. Block that thing.

Re:I guess that creates an opportunity

[bberens]

I'm not clear on how the ISP could distinguish between encrypted data and any generic binary data.

Re:I guess that creates an opportunity

[Opportunist]

If you enjoy rolling stones uphill, be my guest. You'll have to block "random" IP addresses all over the planet.

I dunno if you know how TOR works. If not, here you can find the specs. And the program. And the proxy, in case you want to participate and become a proxy, too.

Re:I guess that creates an opportunity

[jZnat]

If said generic binary data has a recognisable structure, it can probably be assumed to be unencrypted. However, the difference between random data and encrypted data is indistinguishable provided a good crypto algorithm and a random key.

Re:I guess that creates an opportunity

[beyondkaoru]

people generally don't send raw binary data these days; they send things encapsulated in ftp or http or whatever. those are easy to recognize, since routers can keep track of the whole tcp stream (aka eavesdrop) and look inside to see what's going on. so, even if you're downloading an image, you first had to do an http get. some encrypted protocols are obvious (ie, start with a handshake that is easy to recognize), and others are not, but hey, isp's control the routers, so can do whatever they want.

some of them might just slow down any protocol they don't recognize; as far as what sorts of specific evilnesses go on in the harsh reality of routing packets, well, i don't know :)

i'm mainly just saying it's possible. of course, i think isp's oughtn't waste their precious clock cycles reading what's in the payload of ip packets, though they certainly can and do. i am of the opinion that a router ought to simply figure out what paths are clear and send incoming packets to the correct place, and any prioritizing of packets should be done using only information at or below the ip layer, which should be more than enough information to stop abusers.

Re:I guess that creates an opportunity

[beyondkaoru]

the list of tor's server nodes is publicly available. there's only like a few hundred of them. blocking all of tor would be easy, though of course i wish it were otherwise :)

there are other systems that people have been thinking about besides onion routing to obfuscate without using specific servers to get to the internet. to make it unblockable at the ip level it would have to be more distributed than tor is.

though the servers they'd have to block are, indeed, all over the planet, they are not nearly as numerous (or random) as the phrase would suggest.

Re:I guess that creates an opportunity

[Kaetemi]

Or just do a whois on his domain name :P

Re:I guess that creates an opportunity

[J0nne]

You're right, Jan ;). Although the listed address is outdated. Maybe I should update it or I won't get the mp3's.

Re:I guess that creates an opportunity

[Tony Hoyle]

If they have any sense they'll have VPN gateways in each country that they operate in. They're dirt cheap to setup, and wouldn't be travelling over home but business ones, so no restrictions.

Re:I guess that creates an opportunity

[Chandon Seldon]

If you can find it easily, then they can block it easily.

That's false. Unless the ISP wants to move to destination address whitelisting (i.e. you can only access approved servers), there's no way to reliably prevent people from using encrypted VPN tunnels for their P2P traffic. If set up properly, such tunnels can actually *improve* P2P download speeds in some cases.

Re:I guess that creates an opportunity

[dAzED1]

1) adding headers never improves speed. You're smoking crack.
2) we're not talking about preventing VPN tunnels in general, we're talking about preventing traffic (of any sort) in specific - specifically a certain site. If an ISP doesn't want you to get to that one site, it is beyond trivial for them to block your "easy" attempts to get it.

Re:I guess that creates an opportunity

[dAzED1]

what beyondkaoru said.

Re:I guess that creates an opportunity

[Chandon Seldon]

adding headers never improves speed. You're smoking crack.

Routing through a protocal-specific smart cache sometimes does though.

If an ISP doesn't want you to get to that one site, it is beyond trivial for them to block your "easy" attempts to get it.

Sure, the service needs to be offered at a finite number of IP addresses and the ISP can pretend to be a user to find out what they are, but even that method can be countered by silly techniques like user-partioning (different users see a different subset of servers based on a hash of their IP - so the ISP will only see 1/n of all of the servers). In the end, the best case for the ISP is that it turns into an arms race that eats endless man hours.

Re:I guess that creates an opportunity

[infidel13]

Options>>Preferences>>BitTorrent>>Protocol Encryption>>Enabled

Re:I guess that creates an opportunity

[Reaperducer]

Although the submission puts the story in the context of the recording industry versus the computer industry, it's a lot worse than that.

Because of the strange laws in Belgium and the country's lack of codified freedoms, SABAM has sued or threaten to sue people for all sorts of things. They've even hired lawyers in America to sue Americans for posting their own vacation photographs on the internet. That's how crazy the laws are in Belgium.

Just encrypt?

[dintech]

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

Re:Just encrypt?

[profplump]

It's not just you.

Re:Just encrypt?

[Anonymous Coward]

The deep packet inspection boxes that ISPs buy can thoroughly block encrypted Bittorrent traffic because it examines the "pattern" of connections (BIttorrent's are unique), not the actual content.

Re:Just encrypt?

[anilg]

Ah yes.

Re:Just encrypt?

[jZnat]

But which is more expensive: the deep-inspection boxen, or the amount of bandwidth being used by encrypted BitTorrent? I would probably guess the inspection box is, but that's just me.

Re:Just encrypt?

[counterfriction]

Yeah but you're missing the point. The goal is not to block ALL bt traffic, it is rather to block those exchanges that are illegal, and still allow the legal.
So, as dintech said, if you encrypt the packets, it would be tremendously more difficult to apply AudibleMagic or whatever.
My guess would be that they would just block all encrypted traffic in the bt protocol.

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:Just encrypt?

[Thundersnatch]

The inspection box is a mostly one one-time capital expenditure. An OC-192 or similar high-speed connection to a Tier-one backbone provider could cost hundreds of thousands of US dollars per month.

Buying bandwidth (or maintaining, leasing, and deploying fiber in the case of Tier-1s) is the #2 recurring cost an ISP faces, second only to employee salaries.

Even very expensive hardware is comparatively cheap.

Re:Just encrypt?

[billsf]

You are right. Its very obvious and I'm still puzzled why this wasn't done from the start. Torrent has an easy to recognize pattern as one author said, crypted or not. Far more problematic would be key management. Another issue is using crypto improperly can be worse than not using it at all. While its routine with Unix, its not with Windows. Small issues, but a political move like this might be just what's needed to get people to understand the basics and use it.

Zaphod Beeblebrox said it best...

[Anonymous Coward]

Aw, Belgium, man! Belgium!

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.

Re:This could really hurt the ISP.

[Broken scope]

All the Belgian wow players are going to be pissed.

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.

Re:This could really hurt the ISP.

[GalionTheElf]

Do you have a reference for that? Not trying to be a dick genuinely interested.

Re:This could really hurt the ISP.

[J0nne]

I doubt that. Every major ISP here limits the amount of traffic per month, which means that people tend to either leech (=not share on p2p networks) or use newsgroups or rapidshare. Bur hey, prove me wrong by providing a source if you like.

Re:This could really hurt the ISP.

[tarscher]

The problem is that Belgium (actually Flanders) has 3 mayor ISP providers of which Tiscalli, now Scarlet, is most interesting for high traffic user and thus also torrent users. Scarlet offers vast amounts of downloads (60 Gb/month) for very competitive price. I personally know people that switched to Scarlet because they download often and a lot and do this with torrent sites. btw, I'm also planning to make the switch but this torrent case might make me wait.

Your statement that Scarlet might very well feel this in their business is, I think, very likely.

Re:This could really hurt the ISP.

[Chatterton]

Traffic per month is a pain in the a**. As you say, I tend to use direct download, newsgroups or rapidshare & co. And if a really need to use bittorent because there is no other source, I set the upload to a minimum to reduce my monthly traffic. A second problem with bittorent is that the difference between upload and download is big (6-20Mb down, 768Kb up) here that letting bittorent use as he wish the upload bandwidth is a recipe to a saturation of the link and rendering it unusable to other application and bittorent itself :( How many times I have seen bittorent getting his download speed to the floor because he capped the upload bandwidth :/

Re:This could really hurt the ISP.

[arivanov]

My data is probably a bit old. I saw some numbers on a couple of occasions 1-2 years ago when interviewing with a couple of network policy control startups. At that time they were one of the worst in Europe. Situation may have changed nowdays.

Re:This could really hurt the ISP.

[GalionTheElf]

Thanks for that.
I wonder if that's more due to poor infrastructure or really the lawless wasteland that is Belgium. Just seems to me (as a Belgian) that I don't notice a higher % of people, either in my RL or on-line dealings, that I run in to an unusually larger percentage of Belgians downloading stuff.

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

[Animaether]

The ISP wouldn't necessarily be in trouble. They'd just have to adjust their TOS to say "No encrypted P2P traffic allowed" and call upon their contract agreement with the client saying that the TOS can change at any time, and that the user is free to cancel their service if they disagree with the new TOS. After that, they can just block it - legitimate or not.

Yes, that may lose them some customers - probably less than the current order will cost them.. and even that will be puny in comparison to the total number of customers they have. Heck, they'll be free of the leechers. Maybe they'll secretly be happy about it.

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

[genner]

I'ts more likely they will allow encryption only business lines.
Time to upgrade....or run a torrents from work.

Re:A simple way to defeat this

[MaxInBxl]

Excuse my ignorance on the subject but wouldn't a router + port forwarding defeat this "blocking of known ports" defense?

I really don't know much about networking so I'm asking an honest question.
(oh and I live in Belgium)

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:A simple way to defeat this

[Meatloaf Surprise]

Yes, that could work. Many P2P programs allow you to change the ports in their settings anyway so it probably wouldn't be necessary to use a router. The problem is, though, that this isn't what the ISP is going to do. They will be monitoring all packets transmitted by users over the network and comparing them to their music database. The best options in this case would be to use encryption of some sort so your packets aren't detected as a copyrighted song, but I'm not sure if that will even work.

Re:A simple way to defeat this

[dave562]

How long until they pass a mandate that says something to the effect of, "Companies who want to pass legitimate torrent traffic over the network need to do so in an unencrypted fashion."?? I hate to rain on everyone's encryption utopia, and as cliche as the saying is, if you don't have anything to hide, you don't need to encrypt it.

Re:A simple way to defeat this

[adona1]

As well....seeing as Bittorrent downloads a file piece by piece in no particular order, how are they going to scan random 128k-2mb files to see whether they are copyrighted or not?

Re:A simple way to defeat this

[storem]

What you're saying is just plain wrong. It's not because you have nothing to hide, someone has the right to snoop through your unencrypted traffic. Privacy is a primary right of every individual (at least in Europe), encrypting ALL traffic will improve the security of people/businesses that need to hide something. Now an encrypted connection stands out; real secure data should be lost in the bulk of encrypted data. It is your RIGHT to not be monitored. You are INNOCENT of any crime (digital or otherwise) until proven otherwise.

Re:A simple way to defeat this

[Opportunist]

No idea. But if anyone knows, I know quite a few AV manufacturers who'd pay good money for that information! Not for copyright issues, rather for the question "malware or not?".

And I tend to assume that Kaspersky, having about half the staff of the former KGB on their payroll, WOULD have found something already if it existed.

Re:A simple way to defeat this

[genner]

O
wow ok...guess I posted that on the day the coffee machiene was broken.

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.

Re:Legal VS Illegal

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:Legal VS Illegal

[kv9]

But what about the LEGAL P2P traffic, [snip] RTFblurb

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.

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:Legal VS Illegal

[CastrTroy]

Does anybody else find it funny that they're supposed to use a product called "magic" to block P2P traffic? Does it detect things that are zipped/rarred? How about ISOs? How about Ogg? How about VFQ files? It's nice that they have a product that is supposed to do the blocking for them, so they don't have to worry about how well the filtering is being done, but I think it will be pretty useless, and that people will just find a very easy way to get around the filter.

Re:Legal VS Illegal

[j.sanchez1]

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.

Thanks! That is what I was looking for with my question. I didn't understand how, if at all, legal & illegal P2P traffic would be filtered.

Re:Legal VS Illegal

[gstoddart]

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

Of course they will.

See, lately, they've been acting abroad through subsidiaries, getting other countries to sign up for more restrictive laws than they have to deal with, and then getting congress to re-import those laws in the interests of 'harmonizing' everyone's laws.

I'm willing to bet if you followed the trail, it's large multinationals like Sony who initially lobbied for these laws in the first place. Next, they'll push real hard to get it imposed in the US ... and, then, by extension, their trading partners who have been bullied into adopting those same laws.

It completely sucks, but you can almost bet they'll manage to get it eventually.

Cheers

Re:Legal VS Illegal

[Jugalator]

it blocks all unencrypted P2P traffic, doesn't differentiate between 'legal' or 'illegal' use.

Wow. Even computer game companies like Blizzard Entertainment should make more noise about that.

SSL for Azereus

[simm1701]

I get the impression an SSL standard for packet encryption is going to get put together for torrent fairly soon...

Either that or a couple of the bigger ones are going to get updates/patches/plugings so when sharing with the same client they will be encrypted...

Re:SSL for Azereus

[brunes69]

Azerus already does packet encryption.... has done so for years.

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

[the_womble]

I believe that piracy itself should be viewed as crime (because it's not right now) and the notion of piracy being a very bad thing should be inculcated right from school

The enforcement of a law is difficult because the majority of disagree with it and people disobey it. Do you:

1. Change the law to be in line with the majority view.
2. Brainwash kids so that the next generation will agree with it.

I assume your point was the though the law says breach of copyright is a crime, most people do not feel that it is a crime, so we are agreed about what the majority view is.

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 find it so interesting

[Frizzle Fry]

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

Re:I find it so interesting

[cdrguru]

There is no effective "law" against murder today. 9 out of 10 people are not convicted, so the law is hardly a deterrent.

Copyright law was respected when mass redistribution was not possible. In 1960 copyright violation was virtually unheard of by individuals. It was extremely difficult to copy a 45 record to give to 12,000 of your friends. Or a paperback book.

Today, there will never be "respect" for copyright law as long as mass redistribution is as easy and convenient as it is today. It will always be cheaper and easier to get a copy a some digital file from someone else than it will be from the creator. So copyright is effectively dead.

Is education the answer? Why do you believe your right to live is any better than someone's right to kill you? Could it be that you were taught from early childhood that killing people was wrong? Could we do the same thing with copyright to instill in people that the creative act deserves some kind of respect? Today, I doubt it.

Re:I find it so interesting

[Opportunist]

Could be education. Or just that I, personally, value my right to live higher than my right to kill someone else. Maybe it's lazyness? Dunno.

As you put it, laws against murder are no deterrent. Well, they sure are here (we find 9 out of 10 murderers), and spending your life in prison (the ONLY possible verdict if you're found guilty for 1st degree murder) is hardly something to look forward to. But even if not, why don't just everyone go out on a killing spree? I'm pretty sure in the sue-happy community that the US is, there are usually quite a few people getting on someone's nerves. Still, compared to the people that piss me off (and I'm on another continent, has to be worse if you're actually living there and get into touch with them on a daily base), the bodycount is rather low.

Why's that? Could it be that people understood that this law is FOR them, not AGAINST them?

What I see more as the problem is that the copyright does not offer any value to one side of the fence. And even more that it's seens as a "victimless" problem when someone copies. Think back to the times of prohibition. It was illegal to drink, and people still got drunk. Why? Because they didn't understand the law. Because the law was working AGAINST them, not for them. And behold, it was that certain law that made people like Al Capone possible. Think he'd have had a chance to become so rich 'n famous if he couldn't have made a killing (pardon the pun) with illegal booze?

Laws have to make sense and they have to be understood to be heeded. Maybe education is the answer, but you must not simply lie to people and pretend, and hope that they understand. They will, but not in the way you'd want them to. A prime example was the former soviet countries, where the people were filled with lies, so blatant lies that they simply couldn't believe them anymore. When you get preached water while you see the preacher drink wine, you start to disbelieve them. So preaching that on one side the poor studios and artists are starving while at the same time you hear that some hypestar cashes in a few million bucks, people will call you a liar, and rightfully so. When you get told that studios need the right to hunt you down for illegal downloading while at the same time they get off the hook easily for infecting your computer with spyware, you feel kinda compelled to ignore the law as well.

Re:The Begging of The End.

[monk.e.boy]

The internet will route around this breakage.

Just give it time to adapt.

monk.e.boy

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:Encryption

[profplump]

Instead of re-writing every protocol to look like IPSEC, couldn't we add a layer to the network stack between the transport layer and the IP layer to encrypt the IP payload? Then we wouldn't have to re-write all our old apps, wouldn't need to implement encryption in every app, and wouldn't need to try to hide the port numbers. If only there were such an IP-layer SECurity service...

Re:Encryption

[macemoneta]

Instead of re-writing every protocol to look like IPSEC, couldn't we add a layer to the network stack between the transport layer and the IP layer to encrypt the IP payload? Then we wouldn't have to re-write all our old apps, wouldn't need to implement encryption in every app, and wouldn't need to try to hide the port numbers. If only there were such an IP-layer SECurity service...

Maybe we should call it Stunnel?

Re:Encryption

[Josef Meixner]

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.

If you can decrypt the packets why do you assume the ISP can't? Especially if the key is included in the software it is pointless, if it is in the data stream the ISP can also get it. Also how do you intend to connect to a well unknown port? Portscanning and trying to guess which encrypted packet might be HTTP?

Also your mail won't be safe at all. Yes, the ISP can't read it, but at least in Germany all the mail providers have to have a real time tap for law enforcement and I believe that is fairly standard all over the world now because of all those evil terrorists mailing their plans all the time (at least it seems politicians think so). So you need to encrypt your mail protecting the contents, but the receiver is still plainly visible as it would otherwise be impossible to foreward it to the receiver. And as far as I can see, encryption of mail basically failed or how often do you send encrypted mail?

Looking for technical solutions to social problems won't work. And I don't see it working for political problems either.

Re:Encryption

[Bishop Ebonhand]

"A technical solution is always better than a political one." That depends on who's version of "solution" you end up with. One persons solution is another's restriction...

Re:Encryption

[pilot1]

Hmm, I don't know. I like the name IPSEC better.

Re:Encryption

[ijdod]

Only when the technical choice becomes political

Re:Encryption

[profplump]

IP-layer encryption doesn't do ports, period -- that's a transport-layer concept. And since IP-layer essentially implies host-level encryption, there's no need to multiplex, so it would be unecessary anyway.

It's also not an issue for end-host firewalls, since a transport-layer-aware firewall would get the decrpyted traffic with plain old TCP in it away; seeing the port is only a problem for in-line firewalls. And you could solve that problem by decrypting at the border and forwarding un-encrypted (or re-encrypted if you like) packets to the end-host. You'd have to ensure that your key negotiation allowed for this, but from a technical perspective it's not terribly complicated; it's a lot like the standard tunneling-concentrator VPN setup that many people use.

You can know what's encrypted and what's not because whatever host does the decryption either does or doesn't decrypt things, and it knows whether or not that decryption step took place. A simple setup like this:
Internet->Firewall (blocks non-encrypted IP packets)->Server->Decrypt->Local Firewall (blocks bad ports)->Upper layers
would be entirely possible with today's IPSEC technology and firewalls, and would require no modification of any upper-layer protocols.

sad days to come

[blhack]

Usenet and IRC are next, guys. All it takes is one person to show some jackass ignorant lawmaker a pie chart of bandwidth used for piracy compared to bandwidth used for information exchange.

What is happening to our intertubes?! :'(!

Re:sad days to come

[Jedi Alec]

Are you referring to IRC the chat protocol, or DCC, the protocol used, among other things, to transfer large files between 2 individuals? Strictly speaking the 2 are pretty separate. The only thing that happens on irc itself is the initial connection between the 2.

In any case, a decent IRCD supports both SSLD and the ability to accept connections outside the 6667-6670 range(8080 works nicely), so no worries quite yet ;-)

Re:sad days to come

[blhack]

By your logic, the strong arm of the law never would have come down on sites like suprnova. Irc doesn't actually host any files, or transfer them, it just facilitates it.

Re:sad days to come

[vuffi_raa]

traditionally IRC would either give you servers with temporary passes or torrent links- DCC transfers are extremely slow

RC4

[Nicolas MONNET]

Azureus has supported RC4 stream cipher for a long time.

It's not as strong as SSL could be, but for the purpose at hand it's perfect.

port80

[wwmedia]

how will the block http traffic on port80? sites where you can upload very large files and get a download ticket in return

Here's what Relakks.coms costs

[Animaether]

$5/month or $50/12-month period

Wasn't the whole point of the P2P stuff this court ruling targets that people don't want to pay for the content?

( Yes, I know.. "people are willing to pay for the content, but not as much as the copyright holders are asking" ..not sure how that became an excuse for "so I'll just get it cheaper illicitly" instead of "so I'll just wait 2 months and pick it up out of the bargain bin", but alright. )

Re:Here's what Relakks.coms costs

[MightyYar]

They still get my money if I wait until it's in the bargain bin. I want to make sure that doesn't happen.

Re:Here's what Relakks.coms costs

[Kijori]

Then buy it second hand. Unless what you meant by not wanting them to have your money is that you want to have it...

Re:Here's what Relakks.coms costs

[MightyYar]

My first choice is to find independent labels. If there is someone I REALLY love on a major label, then I will buy it 2nd hand, though 2nd hand shops are not that easy to find and online purchases of 2nd hand stuff are a bit shady since you can't inspect it first.

But I have no moral problem downloading the major label stuff - mostly I don't like the quality, though. If I'm going to put on my pirate hat, it is typically to go over to the library with my laptop and rip compilation CDs. The New York Public Library has an amazingly diverse CD collection, and you can even reserve stuff online - it's like a free Netflix for music.

Frankly, I would prefer it if the whole music industry went down in flames, and I like to think that I'm doing my small part by not handing them a red cent. If I save some money in the meantime, well that's just peachy.

Re:Here's what Relakks.coms costs

[TheSeer2]

You know no one actually believes you. This is probably flaming but I'd wager most rational /.ers people just think you're cheap.

Re:Here's what Relakks.coms costs

[MightyYar]

But I AM cheap - I said that it was peachy that I was saving money. I'm very happy that my boycott doesn't actually require me to give up anything. However, I simply don't feel bad about "stealing" from the corrupt, especially when I deprive them of nothing except their illegitimate business plan. Why are the goals of minimizing my expenditures on music and helping to bring down the RIAA mutually exclusive? I'm a pirate as my father was a pirate before me... arrrr. We used to rent videos and then dub the tapes... I still do that with DVDs.

Re:Here's what Relakks.coms costs

[TheSeer2]

You were saying the cost reduction is a side-effect to the boycott. I'm saying you're just plain karma-whoring and really the boycott is a side-effect of the cost reduction.

Re:Here's what Relakks.coms costs

[MightyYar]

Who's to say if I am rationalizing or not? Even if I think that I'm not, that is a foolish position because rational people will by definition have a rationalization for everything that they do. I worry about as much about my Karma as I worry about being attacked by ninjas in my sleep - that is to say, not at all.

The reason that I post in these copyright threads is that I think that all non-commercial copyright should be abolished, and I don't think that calling people names will get us anywhere. Current copyright law is a joke - I don't know of anyone without some "illegal" content... either a mix tape given to them by someone or a dubbed VHS tape even if we ignore the digital realm. When the law has most of it's citizens as criminals, it is time to change the law... not the citizens.

Good, make someone else bear the brunt

[gelfling]

It's insane that my provider can happily support my P2P traffic, get paid for it then turn around and rat me out all the while being immune from those very same lawsuits. If people want to see changes in the P2P laws then you will have to make the carriers bleed.

Re:Good, make someone else bear the brunt

[MightyYar]

That already happened in the US - thus the carriers getting a pass in the DMCA, and the infamous DMCA takedown notice.

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.

Re:Bad news

[houghi]

Yes, if you looked at only the largest three. There are other alternatives. I use Evonet. One of the reasons is that they are not scared if you use the word Linux talking to them.

Re:Bad news

[goarilla]

what about chello, skynet/belgacom, tiscali, dommel, telenet, upc, belnet (not for regular consumers tho) ...

Re:Bad news

[Hognoxious]

Unless things have changed recently, Belgium has only one ISP - Belgacom Skynet. All the others are just resellers.

Re:Bad news

[Filip47]

Mind the word "major" belgacom/skynet, telenet and scarlet

Re:Bad news

[Katchina'404]

My problem with Evonet is that they do not have a proper English website (i.e. so-called English pages are in Dutch).

Re:Bad news

[Katchina'404]

Have you been living under a rock ?

Nowadays some ISPs will sell you an internet service through a Belgacom line (as far as I know, Mobistar does this for example), but even then we're talking about two different layers of services (the line and the internet connection at the end of said line).

Other ISPs will work completely independently using their own hardware on the raw twisted-pair (Scarlet does that). Of course, twisted pair belongs to the incumbent operator (which in this case is Belgacom) but that's the way it is in most places over the world as far as I know.

Other providers use other infrastructures for providing their service, such as tv cable (Telenet and Cello come to mind) or even WiMax (Clearwire, I believe).

Re:Bad news

[Katchina'404]

As a Belgian, I can only agree with this...

Hmm.

[Mockylock]

Wouldn't they be able to change ports until they find one that conflicts with another?

Re:Hmm.

[mjjw]

Yes but packet inspection can reveal a lot. My ISP blocks all unencrypted Usenet traffic during the daytime no matter what port it is on. They also block encrypted usenet on the standard port. The result? I use encrypted usenet on the HTTPS port :)

Re:Hmm.

[Mockylock]

Bastards.

Yay for giganews.

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:Not Necessary here in Canada

[ratboy666]

As I have noticed...

Of course there is an "easy" solution... Encrypt everything, rencode the encrypted version to ASCII, PNG content, and WAV formats and then transport that via normal http requests. But, break it into a "page with rich content", hitting n servers.

The data will expand (roughly by 2x, it will actually be a bit less). Since the throttle is 10KB compared to 5MB, its 500 times slower. So, this will speed up your transfer by 250 times. The value of "n" would then be 8 to 10, which corresponds well to "light" rich content web pages.

The attack Rogers has is to block sites -- but this would work for a few months. If a rolling bank of IPs could be used, it would be better. Indeed, Rogers offers "personal web sites" that could be utilized (why have the traffic count to your cap, and most people don't use the personal web site anyway). Basically, download *from* personal web sites, and upload to them as well.

I am annoyed by the slowdown. I am not sure if SSH traffic is being tampered with (it is certainly not as bad as bittorrent traffic).

Maybe I should start experimenting... But it would take a while for the network effect to kick in to support such a thing.

Re:Not Necessary here in Canada

[vuffi_raa]

this is kind of like the old usenet days- when you used to be able to get photoshop as a jpg (or series of them) and then rip it with jaws or one of the other binary programs into the application-

Creates "Jobs"

[superbrose]

Another somebody gets paid for implementing a technology that definitely does not offer any real solution to the piracy problem and probably makes life for the law-abiding end-user a little more difficult.

Just like those fantastic copy-protected CDs that were so safe that pirates managed to copy them instantly, while many CD players failed to read them (not to mention the reduction in sound quality)!

Instead of paying all these experts to come up with the solution, maybe prices for digital products should be lowered so much that it would no longer be worthwhile to download a pirated version.

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.

ob

[Hognoxious]

I for one welcome our new Belgian overlords.

Blocking Child Pornography Too?

[mdm-adph]

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but on Audible Magic's "CopySense Appliance" website (what I'm thinking this is all about), it lists how it can also block child pornography -- kind of setting their sites a little high there, aren't they? Would it just be searching for some kind of file name, or what?

Re:Blocking Child Pornography Too?

[Opportunist]

Simple: Who cares if it works? The company promoting it certainly doesn't. Do you have child porn on your computer? No? See, it works!

As long as companies aren't held responsible for their claims, they can claim whatever they want. And people for some odd reason believe those claims.

Re:Good

[mdm-adph]

You know... your post just made me realize why they don't play full videos on MTV anymore -- god forbid someone tape the audio off their TV. The RIAA was probably all over that one.

SABAM meets university resistance

[192939495969798999]

Let's see how SABAM holds up against the Foreign University and College Kids Exchanging Music group (FUCKEM).

Acoustic Fingerprinting

[holt]

Many people have been commenting that acoustic fingerprinting is how ISPs can differentiate between legal and illegal traffic. What I'm confused by, though, is why files that match are automatically determined to be illegal traffic. Are MP3 files I ripped myself from CDs I purchased and still own considered to be illegal? If not, how can an ISP know whether a particular transfer is between me and some random P2P person, or between me and another machine under my control? If the transfer is between two machines I control, is that actually an illegal transfer?

The problem is that there is no way to know, simply by inspecting packets or analysing traffic flow, whether the users involved have the appropriate licenses to perform the action they're performing.

Re:Acoustic Fingerprinting

[Orestesx]

The same argument could be made for every single P2P service that's ever been shut down. From what I remember the reason Napster was shut down was that such a large majority of its use was for copyright infringement. The VCR was legal because it had substantial non-infringing uses. Napster did not. Bittorrent has substantial non infringing uses so it would seem to be much more difficult to shut down from a legal point of view, not to mention a technical one.

Re:Acoustic Fingerprinting

[holt]

Yes and no... The biggest thing Napster had going for it was the easy ability to search through everyone's libaries to find what that for which you were looking. The file transfer portion was not the important bit. What was shut down was the centralized index of everyone's library, which caused everyone to switch to distributed P2P like Kazaa, etc.

If the courts were trying to shut down the "searching other random people's libraries" portion of P2P traffic, then fine, my argument doesn't apply. But this acoustic fingerprinting method doesn't try to stop the searching part, it tries to stop the file transfer part. Once the file is in transit I don't see how one can infer intent. Searching others' libraries and then downloading could show some kind of implied intent, but just the file transfer could mean any number of things, many of which could be legitimate.

Re:Acoustic Fingerprinting

[vuffi_raa]

this is my issue too, I am an electronic musician, and I do remixes all of the time for other artists all over the world- so they have to send me copyrighted material- this is why I now need to change ISP's since AT&T is instituting file filtering- no more unencrypted transfer for me- and that will be a pain in the ass when someone that I am getting material from is sending me unencrypted material.

oh really??

[pablo_max]

"...forced to deploy the same software as MySpace uses (Audible Magic) to filter illegal P2P traffic from the legal." I don't remember P2P ever being illegal in any country. Perhaps trading copyrighted files are, but if I want to share my homemade sex videos or garage rock band tracks via P2P I can do it all day long..

Re:oh really??

[janrinok]

Not in Europe. Sharing your homemade sex videos is distributing pornography and you cannot, legally, do it. Yes, I know that the internet is full of it but that doesn't stop it being an offence, and if the police want to bring legal proceedings against someone who is passing their sex videos around they can do so, and will probably be successful. The garage rock bands should be OK but probably not as popular with the masses.

It bears repeating..

[breckinshire]

Was it Ludacris, or perhaps Snoop Dogg... "Belgium ain't nothin' but a bitch"

Scapegoats

[phorm]

Yes, but now the music+movie industry can blame the failure on the ISP, and drag them into further litigation.

Heh...

[vegiVamp]

I didn't actually RTFA, but if the ruling literally states 'downloading SABAM's musical repertoire', then I guess Scarlet should ask them for a complete and up-to-date copy of their catalog, and of course publish that so their clients know what they can and cannot do. I don't know how the MAFIAA et al do things, but SABAM isn't very willing to disclose the exact contents of their catalog, as we've experienced several times. They want to you cough up for all songs you play at parties, not just the ones that they actually are the representatives for.

I will never understand...

[jvd]

OK, I understand that you filter copyright'd material, that's fine, I guess. But how can you block all P2P traffic? Not all the traffic in P2P networks are of copyright'd software/music/videos/ etc. People also use P2P to share sutff that isn't illegal, you know.

As stated before: censorshipintherouter

[rjamestaylor]

This is the reality of censorship in the router.

Thanks for giving them the idea, Finkelstein!

But who gets the money?

[KevinColyer]

I am disappointed by SABAM but not surprised. I live in Brussels and we run a small bar that plays live music. It is typical European - i.e. a small venue. We pay SABAM licensing fees for playing general recorded music and for concerts we host. (And a separate fee for our shop next door's right to play music). Now we could only fit a maximum of 50 people in and yet we still pay the same fees clubs fitting in hundreds would.

When bands come and play their own original music, we have to pay a fee to SABAM for this right...
What upsets me the most is that as far as we know NONE of the bands who fall into that category have received one Euro cent of royalties from SABAM.

I (and many others here) are not impressed with this company. Their business seems more akin to racketeering than ensuring royalties are correctly rewarded to the artists who created the works.

Re:But who gets the money?

[MadUndergrad]

When bands come and play their own original music, we have to pay a fee to SABAM for this right...

What gives them the right to demand those fees? Did you sign some kind of shitty contract or is it stipulated by law?

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.

Re:But who gets the money?

[fishbowl]

Sounds just like ASCAP for the US. However, you have to pay for original music? This kind of contract would not be enforceable in the US because any government interference could be defended on First Amendment grounds. ASCAP provides a prior defense for artists to play cover songs, so that live bands can play popular music without needing to get individual permission from copyright holders. Many venues in the US -- that is, any live music venue that intends to stay in business -- pay ASCAP fees, even if every artist that takes their stage plays 100% original music.

In the US, your right to play original music cannot be abridged directly by any government, and no attempt by a private party to abridge this right would be supported by any judicial ruling (in theory, corruption and incompetence aside).

It bothers me greatly whenever I hear something like this from a place that I have always believed to be, essentially, a utopian ideal of a place with liberal, functional government that serves the ideals of free people. And then I read a post like yours and Belgium becomes a place that in one very important sense, is a form of tyranny, worse for its people on a fundamental premise (free expression) than even the USA.

Re:But who gets the money?

[KevinColyer]

I'm not sure they have a moral right here but it seems to be Belgian law.

Re:But who gets the money?

[kuiken]

They only have the right to ask if you play music from their catalogue.
We have organised concerts with only bands that where not a member of SABAM and did not play any covers that belong to them.
When once the inspector came we put on a song called "Fuck SABAM" and told the inspector if he wanted to come in he would need to buy a ticket.
Some angry letters where send back and forth and they finally dropped it.

For anyone that does not know who sabam is, Its the RIAA using BSA techniques.

Re:But who gets the money?

[J0nne]

Does that song happen to be online somewhere (and under a permissive license)?

Re:But who gets the money?

[toolslive]

SABAM has no ties whatsoever with the Belgian goverment. It is an organization that claims to act on behalf of the artists. They fe go around and verify if pubs don't use copied CDs. If they find any, they will try to confiscate and collect a fine. (an illegal practice btw)

Re:But who gets the money?

[kuiken]

It by some local punk group, dont think they have it online,

You could always look up "The Usual Suspects" their song "Ram sabam"

Re:But who gets the money?

[LaundroMat]

SABAM is a private company, that works with local independent contractors, who get paid on a commission basis. And that is a large part of the problem.

Re:Good

[megaditto]

Guess what? The companies don't care about people bitching as long as they keep watching.

Audible Magic ...

[un1xl0ser]

Can anyone let me know if 'Audible Magic' has a tag and rename feature? Can it download album art? I need to know more about this product!!!!!1one

Re:Good

[Opportunist]

MTV? Wasn't that the music TV station in the 80s? Wonder what become of them. Are they still broadcasting?

VPN by country

[Anonymous Coward]

The comapny I work for sets up separate VPN servers for US, Europe, & China. That makes it impossible to use the company VPN to bypass the Great Firewall of China. I doubt there are enough mobile users in the PRC to justify doing that for bandwidth reasons. And the company web proxy redirects google.com to google.cn. The hotel internet is filtered too.

Boy does it suck. Try booking an airfare on a Taiwanese airline from inside the Great Firewall sometime. Lucky for me I can keep my DSL-connected Linux box running at home, and SSH tunnel to it, or I might still be stuck there for lack of an airline ticket.

Posting AC in case they are watching...

Re:VPN by country

[Lehk228]

yea watch it with that SSH, you might get a ride from the palty van

It baffles me...

[lantastik]

...that the powers that be still do not understand illicit software/warez distribution. 95% of the content originates from the newsgroups, P2P is just a convenient way to disseminate the property. All they are doing by blocking P2P is stopping the "n00bs" who don't know where else to get it, and they are hardly the ones to worry about.

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)

Re:Don't panic yet.

[storem]

There is an even bigger issue here:

Are we willing to live in a state (I'm a Belgian) that enforces monitoring our Internet usage? We have clearly chosen the path to take in the last elections (10 June 2007). We didn't vote for communism, hell we didn't even chose for those poor socialist anymore. We choose freedom, liberty, the right to choose...

Let the movie industry go after the copyright infringers, but not at the expense of all people. We do still have rights, it's time we started to remember that!

Re:Don't panic yet.

[De Lemming]

What I don't know, IANAL : Is Scarlet already obliged to enforce this ass-hat decision while the case is appealed ? According to zdnet.be:
Scarlet has 6 months to confirm. If they don't confirm, they risk a 2500 euro/day fine.

Re:Don't panic yet.

[witte]

Time to start encrypting/anonymizing everything, i guess.

Not blocking, filtering

[houghi]

Not that that is much better, but it is not as bad as it looks. At least it is realy directed at copyrighted material, not at the protocol in itself.

Some information on the tool they most likely will be using and the thoughts about that tool
http://www.eff.org/share/audible_magic.php
http://www.eff.org/share/audible_magic.php?f=audib le_magic_letter.html
http://www.eff.org/share/audible_magic.php?f=audib le_magic2.html

They claim is that they can filter 70%. That means that can't filter 30%. Let's see how fast that 30% becomes 100% and still have the same amount of download.

An interview about it

[houghi]

This movie is for those who do not understand what paricy is.

It is a pity that those new fangled technowlegees killed the movie industry.

Re:what needs to happen

[BoberFett]

My family likes the internet just as it is. If your doesn't, I suggest you find a new tool for communication.

Fighting back

[eagl]

Every business (linux distro producers plus others) that rely on bittorrent as a primary means of distributing their product should join together and sue for anti-competitive practices. If MS can get sued and lose for including a media player in their OS bundle, then certainly a "watchdog group" that forces an ISP to block the primary distribution means of multiple companies can be held liable for lost business.

The music industry does not live in a digital vacuum and the sooner they (and lawmakers) figure out that they are just one medium-sized piece of the digital landscape, the better. Heck, any company that uses the internet should feel threatened that one industry can block use of the internet across the board, because it's only a matter of time before the precedent set here will be used by some other group to shut off, say, TCP-IP because that's how computers communicate to each other to do something or another that is illegal somewhere.

Blizzard?

[Nicolas MONNET]

Blizzard belongs to Vivendi-Universal. Universal, as in Universal Music ...

Re:Blizzard?

[FiniteElementalist]

Blizzard distributes World of Warcraft patches using P2P, specifically with a modified bittorrent client. Although the system does allow for distribution by non-P2P methods, it is at much lower speed.

Blocking off all unencrypted P2P would require them to switch to encrypted, reduce the quality of service to their customers, and/or cost them more to improve other ways to distribute patches. This is a very legitimate use of the technology and I doubt they would be pleased to be blocked off like this.

Invent, not rewrite

[Quietti]

As we migrate to IPv6, we should adopt the approach of developing all new protocols with port randomness and encryption-by-design in mind, then gradually phase out old protocols. Even basic infrastructure protocols could be phased out: think of the day UUCP was replaced by SMTP; both coexisted for a while, but nowadays UUCP is virtually unheard of.

thierry.dachelet@sabam.be

[andr0meda]

Maybe someone needs to, eh, post some, eh, email or something..

thierry.dachelet@sabam.be

Oh?

[MikShapi]

Bittorrent (or the next generation of P2P, be that whatever) will simply adjust.

I can think offhand of at least two simple ways -
1. Encapsulate bittorrent in SSL over plain port-80 HTTP.
2. Either randomize or approximate flow pattern of any legit application that would be way too painful for any ISP to block.

The sheer scale of false positives, bad vibes, pissed customers and support load an ISP would encounter from any form of selective blocking of high-profile legit customer data will make it totally impractical to do.

Re:Oh?

[MikShapi]

|sed 's/80/443/'

Come on! It won't work!

[i_b_don]

How many times do we have to go over this? there are only three things in life that are certain: Death, taxes, and the guarantee that teen-age boys will find a way to DL their prOn.

Now that's a battle the government will NEVER win.

d

Re:Good

[mjwx]

They are just "TV" now, they no longer broadcast music.

Re:what needs to happen

[Opportunist]

You're free to use that crap. I won't. I enjoy the right to use the internet to send and receive the packets I want to send and receive. I don't need MS, governments or other organisations to tell me what packets are "good" for me and which one aren't.

I do not want the internet to become the next nanny state. Our real countries are already bad enough at it.