MPAA Boss Makes Case for ISP Content Filtering

creaton writes "At the annual UBS Global & Media Communications Conference yesterday, MPAA boss Dan Glickman banged on the copyright filtering drum during a 45-minute speech. Glickman called piracy the MPAA's #1 issue and told the audience that it cost the studios $6 billion annually. His solution: technology, especially in the form of ISP filtering. 'The ISP community is going to be at the forefront of this in the future because they have everything to lose and nothing to gain by not seeing that the content is being properly protected ... and I think that's a great opportunity.' AT&T has already said it plans to filter content, but others may be more reluctant to go along, notes Ars Technica: 'ISPs that are concerned with being, well, ISPs aren't likely to see many benefits from installing some sort of industrial-strength packet-sniffing and filtering solution at the core of their network. It costs money, customers won't like the idea, and the potential for backlash remains high.'"

Comments

Neat

[Dunbal]

No one has told this guy about encryption yet?

Re:Neat

[junglee_iitk]

Encryption is only for criminals.

Captain Copyright told me last night.

Re:Neat

[caffeinemessiah]

No one has told this guy about encryption yet?

This is why the recent BitTorrent lawsuit against Comcast is so important...once they realize that they can't look inside encrypted packets, they're just going to block all p2p traffic. But even that is going to be hard, because at the encrypted UDP packet level, what really distinguishes a BT packet from, say, a Skype packet which is also encrypted by default? Screw encryption, what differentiates a DRM-free MP3 flying in from iTunes or Amazon from one coming through a modified BT protocol which uses port 80 and fake http headers?

In short, this is the dumbest idea and any implementation will be necessarily half-assed and is going to affect people.

Re:Neat

[wamerocity]

I think we should take a note from modern day politics. I think they should stop referring to music that people downloaded without paying as "stolen" or "illegal" but we should refer it "undocumented music" or is on a "guest-listenership plan"

After all, people are just taking the music that no one wants to buy, right? :D

Re:Neat

[Luscious868]

I'm not a pirate, I'm an undocumented customer.

Re:Neat

[R2.0]

I saw a bumber sticker: "If illegal aliens are undocumented immigrants, then drug dealers are unlicensed pharmacists"

Re:Neat

[Cajun Hell]

Screw encryption, what differentiates a DRM-free MP3 flying in from iTunes or Amazon from one coming through a modified BT protocol which uses port 80 and fake http headers?

iTMS and Amazon are on the whitelist. Comcast "consumers" don't need to talk to anyone other than Time Warner, Disney, and News Corp anyway. When they let you connect to Apple or Amazon, you should be grateful for the favor.

Re:Neat

[ShieldW0lf]

Makes a very good argument for the spontaneous creation of a grassroots mesh network by the citizenry. I suppose that's why the US Gov are criminalizing open Wi-Fi. Well, they're not criminalizing it, but all they have to do is send someone out with some illegal images to set you up, don't they? In a pinch, they can always re-define obscene.

Wrong.

[Spy der Mann]

Glickman called piracy the MPAA's #1 issue

No, the MPAA's #1 issue is their high prices and crappy movies.

Re:Wrong.

[AndersOSU]

I disagree. I think movies have in general been pretty good (contrast with the music industry) and the prices are for the most part fair (although theater tickets could stand to be $2-3 cheeper).

The MPAA doesn't have a problem. It's making money hand over fist. I'm sure Dan Glickman wants more money, but don't we all. The MPAA's core business is selling seats in theaters, and they're doing fairly well, not as well as in the mid-90's but that's a measure of the overall health of the economy. The MPAA could sit back, not make any technological changes, and they'd still do well for probably about a decade (again, contrast with the music industry).

If I were pressed to name the MPAA's #1 issue, I'd probably say consumer ambivalence over HD-DVD and Blu-Ray. I wouldn't say piracy.

Re:Wrong.

[Spy der Mann]

like they can really do anything against piracy?

Nice point. People will still get sent to jail, but that won't stop piracy. Eventually, they'll have to admit that the only way to minimize (not stop) piracy is to step on the citizens' legal rights like privacy and free speech.

But even with that, they can't control the world and enforce the same laws without stepping on the other nations' rights.

And not even that will stop piracy.

Re:Wrong.

[techpawn]

Glickman called piracy the MPAA's #1 issue

No, the MPAA's #1 issue is their high prices and crappy movies.

I wonder where the ongoing WGA strike fell on this list of issues

Re:Wrong.

[TallMatt]

I think subscriptions like Netflix are part of the reason why people are not going to the theaters as much as they used to, not the economy. Instead of paying $10 to drive in traffic and sit in a crappy theater, I can watch as many movies as I want at home in comfort, for the whole month! Now with HD-DVD and a nice surround system, there is almost no reason to go to the theater as far as I am concerned.

Re:Wrong.

[AndersOSU]

I have a netflix subscription, and it hasn't stopped me from going to the theater. What it has done is stop me from going to blockbuster (or jumping on thepiratebay). While this is certainly an anecdote, I wouldn't be surprised if it were the general trend.

If I were to guess why theater attendance is a bit down from a decade ago, I'd point to gas prices, and less spending money, but also to the fact that with videogames and the internet there is more competing for our entertainment dollar (or hour) than there was 10 years ago.

Re:Wrong.

[jandrese]

Actually, Netflix doesn't hurt theater sales too much, but it's murder on DVD sales. DVDs have been taking it in the rear for the past year or so and the MPAA is using it as an excuse to get lawmakers to pass legislation to stop them thar pirates who be stealing arr sales.

I have to admit, after getting Netflix my urge to actually buy DVDs dried up pretty quick. I'll still get stuff here and there (especially if I plan to show it to friends/lend it out), but for the most part my collection has been stagnant for a couple of years now.

Re:Wrong.

[sakdoctor]

Windows genuine advantage is on strike?

Re:Wrong.

[Shakrai]

I wonder where the ongoing WGA strike fell on this list of issues

Well, you have to understand... the studios didn't want the strike. The WGA are a greedy bunch of bastards that expect royalties off internet sales and other so-called "new media". Yeah, right! The studios have no way of knowing how much that new media is worth, so how are they going to pay royalties to the writers?

Don't the writers know that it's clearly impossible for the studios to calculate how much something is worth.... unless it's being pirated of course, then it's clearly worth billions of dollars and costs thousands of jobs ;)

In all seriousness though (and so my whole post isn't sarcasm), J. Michael Straczynski (creator of Babylon 5) has some interesting things to say about the writers strike. It's a good perspective into what motivates the rank and file of the WGA.

Re:Wrong.

[Shakrai]

And not even that will stop piracy.

If they had half a clue they'd take a page from the credit card companies.

Visa and Mastercard don't try to stop all credit card fraud. They look to reduce it to manageable levels. If a solution is going to cost more to implment then it's going to save then they probably aren't going to run with it. If it's going to cost them more in customer goodwill then it gains them in fraud prevention they probably aren't going to run with it.

The same with piracy. They will never be able to stop all piracy. Steps should probably be taken to go after the worst offenders (I have little sympathy for people trying to engage in piracy for profit) but going after Grandma for downloading an episode of Law & Order is going to cost them more in goodwill then will gain them in prevention. And it still won't stop piracy.

Visa and Mastercard could stop a ton of credit card fraud by allowing (requiring?) merchants to ID customers, replacing signature verification with some sort of shared secret (PIN code?), etc, etc. Most of this isn't likely to happen, because it would cost them more in customer goodwill (do you want to show your license every time you swipe your card?) and sales then the amount of fraud it would prevent.

Re:Wrong.

[Stanislav_J]

f they had half a clue they'd take a page from the credit card companies.

Visa and Mastercard don't try to stop all credit card fraud. They look to reduce it to manageable levels. If a solution is going to cost more to implment then it's going to save then they probably aren't going to run with it. If it's going to cost them more in customer goodwill then it gains them in fraud prevention they probably aren't going to run with it.

Exactly. Another example: stores could reduce shoplifting to zero by physically searching every person who leaves the store, but the store owner knows that (a)the payroll for all those security folks probably would exceed the value of the goods lost to theft, and (b)patting down customers and searching their personal handbags and pockets is not a very good way to insure return business to your store. So, you put a few cameras in electronics, designer goods, etc., electronically tag your high dollar items, train personnel to watch for suspicious activity, and that's about it. Some stuff will still go out the door free. You can minimize it, control it to some extent, but you can never eliminate it. In the case of online piracy, really the only way to completely eliminate digital piracy is to shut down the Internet. (I shouldn't post that -- might give some congresscritters ideas...)

Re:Wrong.

[cez]

Nope. You have to work to be on strike!


...zing!

Can I borrow his dictionary?

[ByOhTek]

The ISP community is going to be at the forefront of this in the future because they have everything to lose and nothing to gain by not seeing that the content is being properly protected

I'm fairly sure it is either incorrect on "nothing" and "everything", or "lose" and "gain"...

Re:Can I borrow his dictionary?

[Elemenope]

Yeah, I had the same reaction. If ISP customers buy internet service for (among other reasons) clandestinely downloading movies, then that customer is one more customer you might not have had before. The only thing ISPs have to lose by limiting downloads is more customers.

...Unless you take his quote as a veiled threat, i.e. "You'll have everything to lose and nothing to gain by not seeing things our way, since we will bend legislators over our knee to provide us with the tools to bitchslap you into line if you don't come around." I'd say that's a logical reading of the quote that seems to conform well with the **IA modus operandi and way of thinking.

Re:Can I borrow his dictionary?

[Anonymous Coward]

The ISPs will have to get equipment that can tell the difference between encrypted BitTorrent traffic & all other encrypted and non-encrypted traffic. Eventually, the equipment requirements to do that will cost as much as any bandwidth savings.

That still wont address other issues like legal BitTorrent use, the large amount of false positives they'll get, customer complaints about Service X being slow for some reason.

Theres no way this will be s good thing for ISPs in the long term.

also...

if ISPs join together and reject this, theres a chance they can use a common carrier type of defence but once they try to actively filter BitTorrent, wont they be blamed every time they fail.

Interesting response if you get a letter from the MAFIAA... My ISP filters piracy so I shouldn't be able to download anything illegal and if I can its their fault.

Make the MPAA pay for it

[Paul Bristow]

Easy answer. If it REALLY costs the MPAA companies $6bn a year, they should be willing to pay quite a lot to have it done. Say, somewhere around 50% of the "pirated" revenue. So ask them to pay the ISPs $3bn a year and see if they are so keen. How many other investments do you know with a guaranteed 100% return?

Re:Make the MPAA pay for it

[KeatonMill]

See the problem here is that the MPAA is calculating this $6 billion/year number by saying multiplying the number of pirated copies (a number they can only estimate and they probably highball it) times the retail cost of a legitimate copy.

The problem with this is that it completely bypasses all microeconomic theory.

In simple terms, there are a huge number of people that will consume your good if it doesn't cost them anything (or next to nothing), but as soon as you raise the price a little bit, the number of people willing to buy the good drops substantially. This is called the price elasticity of demand.

While there is some limited evidence that the market for piracy has shrank the overall market, it's difficult to tell how much of an effect piracy really has. There are so many other factors (dilution of purchase points, ease of access to new/unsigned bands, etc) that there's some evidence that the total market for media has actually increased substantially, but the record labels are being left out of the equation.

Piracy isn't good, but it is a result of a free society and the deadweight loss (basically: if you tax someone or restrict prices via regulation, the decrease in income from the economy is greater than the income from the tax, so there's 'lost' production that never occurs) incurred by preventing it is astronomical.

IANAE, BIAAEM (I am not an economist, but I am an economist major and I hope to get a PhD in economics down the road)

Re:Make the MPAA pay for it

[Anonymous Coward]

WTPOYSAIYHTWIANTITEIA? (What's the point of your stupid acronym if you have to write it all next to it to explain it anyways?)

Re:Make the MPAA pay for it

[CatPieMan]

I prefer to think of this as a Tiered system of movie quality. From highest to lowest quality

1) Willing to see more than once in theater -and/or- willing to run out within 48 hours of its release and purchase
2) Buy DVD first week it is out
3) Buy DVD at full price within 2 months of release
4) Buy DVD, maybe, eventually, at no more than 75% normal cost, or a 2-for-1 deal
5) I'll buy it if I see it in the $5 bin at Best Buy
6) Would watch it on TV/Airplane if nothing else on and I can't sleep.

If most of the $6B is from people pirating movies like Gigli, or the animated Spirit Stallion of the Simeron [sp?] just to see how bad it was, you can hardly count them as Tier 1-3. But the $6B probably DOES count them in the higher tiers. Very rarely does a movie found in tier 5 or 6 turn out to be good, although I did see Wild Hogs on an airplane and found The Magnificent 7 in the $5 pile, both of which were much better than anticipated.

Those who will go for tier 1-3 will buy the movie no matter what. Tier 4 people might buy the movie, but they might forget it existed with the latest over-hyped Harry Potter flick or w/ever. Tier 4 movies might end up just getting rented or Netflicked. Tier 5-6 movies are very likely to never be purchased, if simply because they are not worth seeing more than once.

That is Hollywood's problem. Too few of the films are worth seeing more than once, unless you are really drunk or nostalgic for a bad movie from your childhood. So it doesn't make sense for someone to spend $20-$25 for something that will take up space and never be watched again.

If the MPAA focused more on assisting ISPs

[bagboy]

on a method of locally delivering stored digital content (Video-On-Demand) for fees, such as subsidizing the cost of VOD servers, more content would make it to the end users legally. I would see that as a win-win-win (MPI,ISP,User) for everyone. They get their cut, the ISP doesn't have to pay for the excess bandwidth in/out of their network and the end users get quick access to VoD.

So...

[Creepy Crawler]

Everything except public domain and governmental reports will be filtered?

By definition, all text, pictures, and video have copyright applied to them at the moment of creation.

It will happen, and here's why...

[R2.0]

1) the DMCA allows for safe harbor IF ISP's don't otherwise filter content. So if they start filtering copyright, they can be held liable for other illegalities - 419 scams, stock fraud, child porn.

2) The **AA's will therefore lobby for an exception to the DMCA for their stuff.

3) Congress will grant it.

Any questions?

Hey guys! Great Idea here...!

[Penguinisto]

Let's get you ISP's to voluntarily revoke what little common carrier legal protections you have, all in the name of protecting our revenue from a dying business model! Wouldn't that be great!?

I hope AT&T doesn't mind getting dragged into pretty much every lawsuit involving one of their customers that comes down the pike now... "what do you mean you're not responsible for the child porn coming out of one of your client's computers!? You filter content now, don't you...?"

(I know, loopholes and such, but at least (IMHO only) the precedent and mechanisms to claim AT&T responsible for all their users' content is now in place. If they filter inbound, they can filter outbound. If they filter movies, they can filter pr0n. If they filter by discrete packet, they should (at least according to a plaintiff in such a lawsuit) be now collaterally responsible for the flow of data through their network.

/P

One Solution

[pat mcguire]

ISPs try to do the same thing with spam, and spam still arrives in my inbox. It seems logical then that the best way to get around ANY filter is to change the name to one with genitalia spelled in leetspeak. On an unrelated note, my download of TransP3N1Sformers[2006]DvDrip[Eng] - aXXo is almost done.

Freedom?

[Seumas]

People in this country always tout their freedom as the single greatest thing that differentiates them from many other countries. What we filter isn't so much important as the fact that we might filter at all. And if we filter the internet on a corporate or government level, how are we any different from countries like China?

And if ISPs should filter our content, then why shouldn't other service and content providers outside of the internet be responsible for censoring what we consume, say, do as well? Parents can filter what their children consume. I can filter what I can consume. It should stop there.

I don't have a problem with ISP filtering...

[TheRaven64]

...but they have to understand the flip side. If they are filtering the Internet then they must be legally accountable for everything that flows over their pipes. If I click on a link and get a virus then it's their responsibility for not filtering it. If I download something from someone who doesn't have distribution rights, same deal. If I come across classified documents, then they are guilty of trafficking in state secrets.

If they are willing to accept all of this liability, then I have no problems at all with them filtering network content. I'll still pick one of their competitors that doesn't, however.

Re:No your number one issue SHOULD BE

[Hatta]

I prefer my fucking movies to be indecent.

One VERY simple problem with this sort of thing

[erroneus]

And it's a point that is rarely if ever brought up.

These filtering systems, and by this I mean systems from Macrovision on VCRs on up to DVDs and internet video, serve not just to protect 'the content' but also serves to lock out any growing or potential competition. Just as the RIAA presumes that all MP3s are illegal, the MPAA presumes that all content online must also be illegal. How can any filter system like that ensure that legal content is permitted unhindered? And when 'legalized' video content is allowed through, what's there to prevent DRM or Watermarking from being stripped from the original data?

What these systems serve best, just as in the case of DVD CCS, not to protect the copyright...or really even the ability to copy, but the right of playback and content formatting and presentation control. How many times have you bought a DVD only to find that there are stupid commercials or previews that you are prevented from skipping? That's the REAL intent as far as I'm concerned.

mod parent up ;-)

[circletimessquare]

e=mc^2

so m=e/c^2

therefore, i owe you e/c^2 for the mass of yours i am using

do you take picodollars?

Piracy

[Anonymous Coward]

> Glickman called piracy the MPAA's #1 issue

Can't the Navy or Coast Guard help them with this?

pfft

[dgr73]

Filter away.. but wait, aren't they then blocking all traffic of a certain type (bittorrent for example), I mean, they can't really easily and reliably distinguish what is legal and what is illegal content, though i'm sure that certain companies will offer products/services that claim to do just that (hello MediaPretender). If you can only filter by traffic type and not based on content, then all one needs to do to make all the money in the world is:

-start a company that delivers content via bittorrent
-have a few friends "buy" products and then be unable to complete the download
-have them then proceed to mock this company
-file lawsuit against ISP, claim loss of business damages for $100k and $20M in punitive damages
-repeat

Then again, if bittorrent and all other dedicated P2P protocols are somehow filtered, there's still many protocols that can be "hijacked" to carry payloads but cannot really be filtered (IRC, NEWS.. heck, if you encrypt the content, even email).

Try as they might, illegal filesharing will never end.. it may only diminish if they start offering a reasonably priced and featured legal alternative.

Please repost

[PPH]

Could somebody repost Glickman's comments? My ISP had its "whiney bullshit" filter set on high and the original didn't come through.

So let me get this straight..

[devjj]

The RIAA and MPAA claim billions of dollars in damages due to piracy each year, yet when asked how much an individual download costs, they have no clue.

Get a clue: Clamping down on casual trading is not going to bring increased revenues. People aren't paying because they either see no value, or they feel the process is flawed. Making it harder to find these works won't make anyone suddenly feel as though there is value. People will just start to look elsewhere, or - as usual - get smarter, and find means around this. Virtually all deep packet inspection can be thwarted by encryption, so what exactly is there to be gained except more headaches for those running ISPs and higher prices for their customers?

I've watched that movie...

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

Worst. Porno. Ever.