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ISPs To Filter Traffic For Copyright Holders?

Posted by kdawson on from the superhighway-becomes-cop dept.

Dr. Zarkov writes "At a CES forum, representatives of AT&T and other ISPs discussed the need to filter traffic at the network level, to stop the transfer of copyrighted material. An AT&T spokesman said they 'would have to handle such network filtering delicately, and do more than just stop an upload dead in its tracks, or send a legalistic cease and desist form letter to a customer. "We've got to figure out a friendly way to do it, there's no doubt about it," he said.'"

6 of 367 comments (clear)

  1. Why does AT&T want this? by nb(a)Quibux · · Score: 5, Insightful
    In the article, AT&T's Mr. Cicconi is quoted as having said: "We are very interested in a technology based solution and we think a network-based solution is the optimal way to approach this."

    Why are they so interested in this? Because there will be pressure on smaller ISPs to do the same, with the difference that for smaller ISPs, roughly the same absolute cost divided by a much smaller number of customers is a much greater per-customer cost?

    1. Re:Why does AT&T want this? by Rosyna · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Why are they so interested in this?


      I still think it's because they oversold their network capacity and don't want to spend any new money on upgrading their infrastructure to match the capacity they advertise. The fix to this is to implement network filtering that prevents customer from using the bandwidth AT&T has sold them.
    2. Re:Why does AT&T want this? by Alexpkeaton1010 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The Parent is 100% correct. AT&T doesn't care at all about protecting content holders rights. The AT&T bosses look at the huge expense in upgrading the infrastructure and ask, "Why do we need to do this?". The poor engineers then have to explain that x% of there traffic is due to Youtube, y% is due to World of Warcraft, and z% is due to Bittorrent. To solve the Youtube and World of Warcraft problem, the answer to AT&T is of course a tiered internet where Google and Blizzard have to pay extra to guarantee that there packets get through. There is no one to charge for Bittorrent, so the answer is clearly to ban it. This is all about saving AT&T the cost of upgrading there infrastructure.

    3. Re:Why does AT&T want this? by Maniac-X · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Technically, everything is copyrighted. My website, your website, this website, all copyrighted. It may not be officially registered in the copyright office, but anything that is created by anyone is subject to (and protected by) copyright law. Does that mean that they're going to filter the copyrighted content on my personal website (ie, everything I created that's up there) as well? This is a legal breach of net neutrality. Comcast is already under investigation by the FCC for this, and they're looking at $195,000 per affected customer. I expect if AT&T goes through with this plan they'll be fined as well, so the bigwigs should really look at that while figuring their money-saving options. Spend X amount of money on upgrading their bandwidth capacity to fill demand, or spend $(customer*200,000) on fines for violating Net Neutrality.

      --
      (A)bort, (R)etry, (I)gnore?_
  2. i download copyrighted material everyday by LiquidCoooled · · Score: 5, Insightful

    i download copyrighted material everyday and if my ISP stopped it then I will be very annoyed.
    Practically every page I download has a copyright, including the one I am reading now.

    All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners. Comments are owned by the Poster. The Rest © 1997-2007 SourceForge, Inc.

    How can they differentiate unauthorized copyright from authorized?

    --
    liqbase :: faster than paper
  3. Re:And then they wonder by jedidiah · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Nope. It's upper management that insists on thinking of the stockholder as their ultimate customer rather than the person they actually sell to. This is an idea that's been popular on Wall Street for a long time now. Couple it with the "this quarter" mentality and you have a real recipe for disaster.

    A board chairman really shouldn't give a rats *ss what the stock price is.

    That represents money that the company has already raised.

    Management chooses to be not to be in it for the long haul and are incapable of providing any leadership.

    Mangement needs to be able to sell the idea of proper management too.

    --
    A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.