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

[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

Just encrypt?

[dintech]

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

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.

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

[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)

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.

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...

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.

SABAM meets university resistance

[192939495969798999]

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

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.

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.