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?

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

[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)

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...

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.