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AT&T to Help MPAA Filter the Internet?
Save the Internet writes "Ars Technica is reporting that the MPAA is trying to convince major ISPs to do content filtering. Now, merely wanting it is one thing, but the more important point is that 'AT&T has agreed to start filtering content at some mysterious point in the future.' We're left to wonder about the legal implications of that, but given that AT&T already has the ability to wiretap everything for the NSA, it was only a matter of time before they found a way to profit from it, too."
Arr, where isOliver Wendell Jones and his swashbuckling Banana PC when ye need them!
Avast, all the p2p sites need to do is mask the activity by sendin' and receivin' "noise" (content of random or random packets of encoded content with pre-arranged means of embedding send and receive commands, encoded by phrases passed by other means.) Arr, I be reading too many cryptographer tales.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
No we're not. When AT&T permitted NSA to infiltrate/subvert its network in order to monitor all domestic and foreign Intarweb traffic, it broke enough privacy laws that the legal consequences would require the dissolution of the company.
Unlike Arthur Andersen and the Enron scandal, AT&T and the other US telcos are "too big to fail". Because no penalty can be assessed without bankrupting AT&T, no penalty can be assessed, period.
Now that the precedent has been set for some crimes (to date, those involving national security), there's nothing to stop it from being applied to other crimes (namely, those involving copying pictures of a cartoon mouse, or sounds emitted from a plastic-titted starlet).
As prophesized by the late, great Douglas Adams, the legal implications to AT&T are as follows:
"Have you any idea how much damage that bulldozer would suffer if I just let it roll straight over you?" said Mr. Prosser.
"How much?" asked Arthur.
"None at all," replied Prosser.
ISPs burn themselves by getting into content filtering. Force them make a choice between "common carrier" status, where they aren't responsible for the traffic they carry, and being subject to suit over delivering damaging traffic, like viruses and DOS attacks.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Aye, the more ye be tightenin' yer grip, MPAA and AT&T, the more p2p content and customers will slip through yer fingars!
arr, wrong idiom!
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
The first time some porn gets through their filters, I'm going to sue their ass. Hey, just because I typed, "hot teen lesbian action" doesn't mean I actually want to see that stuff!
-- Will program for bandwidth
Not as I understand it (any lawyers feel free to correct me) but Telcos are common carriers only as applies to their voice networks. For reasons I don't fully understand, so-called "data services" are exempt.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Companies such as Endace. A start up from a NZ university, they've been on the Deloitte/Unlimited 50 fastest growing companies for several years (peaking at 1000% growth).
Someone has to make the product to enable this functionality, and if this goes ahead, it will prove very lucrative.
The Mothership
Neither MPAA nor ISPs should be able to see the content we are exchanging and be in the position to filter it. Even with SSL, where the server can theoretically be accessed by anyone, the computational requirements of establishing a session will choke the filters. Add some captchas and you are gold.
How many times must this myth bubble to the surface? ISPs ARE NOT COMMON CARRIERS (at least in the USA).
If ISPs were common carriers, there would be no 'net neutrality' debate - it'd be a settled matter.
-Isaac
I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. For Entertainment Purposes Only.
It fits the pattern we've been seeing from them. Remember, this is the company that pillaged South Africa's economy, rewrote its privacy policy to give itself more leniency, lobbies against net neutrality, and fights open-access wireless.
And don't forget, they shut down the time service too. Bastards.
On the 0th day, God created C
Until they can figure out how to filter spam effectively and efficiently, this is just vapor. What do they plan on doing? "Oh look a .mp3 file, lets block it" type filter? That's retarded.
FTFA:
"...given the money and time that will be required to implement such a system..."
Indeed. Did you guys not learn anything from DRM? How about copy protection? Maybe the anti-virus arms race will jog your memory? Oh wait, I know how about 09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0? Still nothing?
There's always going to be faster gun, and you cannot "invent" a solution around that.
boycott slashdot February 10th - 17th check out: altSlashdot.org
I am not a law expert but isn't there some provision about ATT being a common carrier that gives them certain privileges and responsibilities. The later pertaining to being not concerned with content on the lines? If ATT can filter content then does that mean she is NOT a common carrier and not allowed the benefits (easements through private property without paying rent for it, use of governmental immanent domain to gain easements, etc?
- Minutus cantorum, minutus balorum, minutus carborata descendum pantorum.
IANAL, but I'll correct you anyway. :)
http://www.cybertelecom.org/notes/telecom_carrier.htm
http://www.cybertelecom.org/notes/jones.htm
thus far, the law (CA 1934, CALEA, 47 U.S.C. 153(h)(1991), etc.) does not differentiate between a "communications provider" that uses voice or analog signal, and one that does packet pushing for data (which lately, could also be voice). Of course, as soon as you go modifying what you're carrying (snooping on traffic, prioritizing traffic for whoever pays the most, etc.) that common carrier status is in jeopardy.
The law could of course be rewritten at any time, or interpreted differently by any judge.
illum oportet crescere me autem minui
--
So who is hotter? Ali or Ali's sister?
God I'm getting so fucking tired of this shit. It won't be long till the RIAA and MPAA will sue you just because you have a broadband connection. They'll simply claim that 'because you have broadband, you have the ability to pirate our works'. The record and movie industry need to shut the fuck up and quit forcing telcos to spy on us, the government does enough of that as it is. In any case, telcos need to loose their 'common carrier status' and be liable to lawsuits if they intend to do this.
"I bow to no man" - Riddick
I'm not so much worried about AT&T filtering their customers' traffic... I'm not one of them, and there are often enough other choices. The problem is that this is only true if they're not filtering all the traffic that flows through their backbone, much like the recent NSA todo. If your ISP has traffic that passes through AT&T's network (or heck, uses their infrastructure), are they therefore going to be filtered as well?
thus far, the law (CA 1934, CALEA, 47 U.S.C. 153(h)(1991), etc.) does not differentiate between a "communications provider" that uses voice or analog signal, and one that does packet pushing for data
The FCC and the Supreme Court seem to have decided upon a different interpretation. The court upheld the FCC's interpretation of the 1996 Telecommunications Act.
This quote is interesting:
The Court seemed to be somewhat uncomfortable, however, with the fact that the FCC's holding imposed common carrier obligations on high-speed digital subscriber line ("DSL") offerings by telephone companies, but not cable modem services--which compete head-to-head in the US internet access market.
and would indicate that the broadband offerings made by the Telcos are subject to common carriage regulation, whereas the cable outfits managed to avoid it. If that ruling still holds, it might put a bee in AT&T's bonnet.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
There, fixed that for ya.
1984 was supposed to be a warning, not an instruction manual.
ATT you want to see what will make me pay $50 a month for my Internet from the cable company? Start filtering and I'll drop your crappy $20 DSL that day.
I hope you don't have this for a cable company.
http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/09/04/2014236
http://torrentfreak.com/comcast-throttles-bittorrent-traffic-seeding-impossible/
Over the past weeks more and more Comcast users started to notice that their BitTorrent transfers were cut off. Most users report a significant decrease in download speeds, and even worse, they are unable to seed their downloads. A nightmare for people who want to keep up a positive ratio at private trackers and for the speed of BitTorrent transfers in general.
The truth shall set you free!
Laws and "status" are only important if the current government wants to prosecute them.
Obviously, the current government does not. And sadly, I suspect, it will be some time before we get one that does.
So lets see what will happen. People will start encrypting their connections. Then presumably AT&T will block or degrade encrypted connections ( thus causing security issues ). Now, queue stenography. TCP/Noise in images, audio and video clips. With a strong cipher encrypted data is mathematically indistinguishable from noise unless you have the key. Lets see their filters distinguish between an audio stream recorded using a noisy microphone and a stream containing an encrypted stream overlay. I'm sure their servers won't have any problem whatsoever trying to do image analysis on every single webcam simultaneously. Then you can proceed to trying to distinguish a noisy video from one with encrypted data embedded in it. Really, AT&T and pals, here is a message for you. The great firewall of China fails at censoring the net, and that one is run by the fucking government. You seriously think you can do better ( worse) than the PRC and still make a profit? Good fucking luck.
Well AT&T' s broadband division is completely seperate from its telephone division for this very reason (well probably more than just this reason). ISP's are not afforded common carrier status, the are ESPs or Enhanced Service Providers under FCC regulations and held accountable (well kinda) to a different set of rules.
I'm sure I've mentioned this before.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
What in the hell is going on. The sad thing is.. IT WILL happen and you wont be able to do a dam fucking thing because that is how America works.
I for one, welcome our regular censoring, anti american corporate overlords.
The system is broken, and the country is dead.
Actually, there are numerous cases in the past (around 2000-2002) of "content owners" trying to sue OSPs and ISPs. When good lawyers have been involved on the part of the OSPs/ISPs, as long as take-down notices have been properly handled, the cases have been thrown out of court. Some smaller ISPs and OSPs - in some of the earliest(IIRC) have settled. That trend died after the "content owners" started losing the cases against bigger OSPs/ISPs. I seem to remember NetCom as being one of them. The initial problem - back then - was that some of the suits pre-dated the DMCA (the DMCA not always being a bad thing). In some of those earlier cases, judges (with no technical knowledge of how the Internet works) had even ruled against ISPs/OSPs - ones that would have been protected by the DMCA.
Now, there has been an argument that an ISP/OSP who does start filtering that "unfilterable" content is opening themselves up to tons of lawsuits for anything they miss - part of the argument is that they are no longer providing the role of (just) a transport mechanism, since they are picking what content does - or does not - go through their pipes.
This situation may grow into something that tests that legal theory. I've personally talked to lawyers who think such actions would damage an ISPs/OSPs Safe Harbor claim. But then again, it's not their opinion (since it hasn't been tried yet) that matters... it's the outcome of any lawsuits that stem from AT&T failing to filter content that they should have.
While they may get blanket immunity from the **AA over such errors, other content owners have been looking for a wedge in (again numerous lawsuits) to hold OSPs/ISPs liable. After all, it is far more profitable - I mean easier to recoup losses - to win a lawsuit against an AT&T than against John Doe.
This also brings in the grey area of certain judges deciding that if AT&T can manage to filter certain types of content or traffic, then everyone should - opening more doors to suing OSPs/ISPs. At least in that particular case, the OSPs/ISPs have one particular clause in the DMCA still in their favor - which is (poorly paraphrased) an exclusion from being required to do so if that method makes the service unusable or creates ridiculous undue hardship on the ISP/OSP (for instance, a 20 person ISP needing to hire a team of thousands, or install tens of thousands of servers to be able to filter traffic in real time). That part of the DMCA though is kind of vague on specifics... leaving it open to interpretation... thus, what AT&T can do, and afford to do... most ISPs/OSPs cannot - but would a judge of questionable technology and Internet knowledge understand that?
StarTrekPhase2 - The Five Year Mission Continues!
There was a court case involving AOL that illustrated this very principle. "Common carriers" are generally considered to be immune from prosecution or lawsuits pertaining to the content that passes through their system, because they do not originate that content. They are merely passing it from place to place at the behest of third parties, so they cannot be held responsible for that content.
ISPs have often been able to claim the "common carrier" defense in court when users tried to sue them for things having to do with content (libel, slander, etc. by third parties).
In the AOL case, someone in a moderated chatroom made defamatory comments about someone else in the chatroom. The offended party sued both the defamer and AOL. The lawyers for AOL tried to get AOL excused from the suit, using the common carrier defense. The judge disagreed. The problem is that AOL moderates (censors) its chatrooms. The judge ruled that if AOL chose to control the content, then AOL was responsible for that content.
In a way this is kind of ironic, because their chatrooms were moderated in an attempt to keep things "family friendly". But in reality, they can't have it both ways. And that really is justice.
So, you are correct. The basic idea is: you cannot claim the "common carrier" defense if you control the content that passes through your service. Filtering (like censoring) most definitely qualifies as "control". Carriers who control their content can be sued for that content. So if they filter, they can then be prosecuted for passing along, say, illegal porn that goes through. And it would be pretty easy for someone to set up such a "passing through". So they are sticking their heads in a noose.
Which, by the way, is fine with me.
Contrary to what that other poster wrote, that is the law and it is real.