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ISPs To Filter Traffic For Copyright Holders?
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.'"
The friendly way about it is not to mess with people's traffic in the first place. Once you have filtering equipment in place it can easily be misused to filter out anything any power with enough money might wish to black out.
You do not want to open that box...
Anybody home? More and more p2p apps are including encrypted p2p sessions at the application layer. Did anybody think about that?
Everybody, flip off the cable/adsl and get a mobile broadband contract. It's cheaper, you're not constrained by wires, and (believe it or not) it's quicker. I went the whole hog, partly because I can't get a SIM on contract, and used a Sierra Aircard 720 with a T-Mobile SIM on pay-as-you-go. I pay £10/mo for 40kbps always-on, don't miss broadband one iota because I can get online anywhere on the planet on an unmetered cellular connection.
Also, don't ever underestimate the bandwidth potential of a pack of blank DVDs and a parcel post.
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
"Piracy" (copyright infringement) is only allowed to continue because it makes ISPs more money than the alternative.
;)
ISPs know too well that without piracy, there would be little demand for expensive broadband connections. Of course, on the other hand, it has to be kept under control, lest it starts costing ISPs too much money.
Once legal alternatives become more profitable to ISPs, pirate networks will dry up overnight. The recent assault on net neutrality is an attempt to get there... making legal download service pay for "protection".
Yet, there is a more sensible way: the universal hosting marketplace. Imagine a P2P network where anyone can host files, and is guaranteed to be paid for each upload. ISPs could provide a large chunk of the capacity (à la Usenet), and make a bundle from that.
Give financial value to uploads, and the most active file sharers will view illegal file sharing as a financial loss. Similarly, piracy will become an observable, tangible loss to ISPs.
Until now, piracy was producers' problem. Give value to bandwidth, and it becomes everyone's problem.
Disclaimer: I am currently working on an open-source solution to achieve just that (see sig). Feel free to join us.
Also, if ISP's start "sniffing" for copyrighted traffic, wouldn't that nullify their Common Carrier status? IANAL, but wouldn't this then make them liable for the content of *all* the traffic that flows over their network?
Xenon, where's my money? -Borno
Ive had this exact plan for 3 years now. FYI its $33NZD for the plan with $1NZD per GB after that. The ISP even provides a tool bar app to monitor the recorded usage in real time. The usage the ISP reports is so very close to my actual usage that I don't think there is any unwanted traffic coming from anywhere. NZ has terrible net options, but the pay as you go option is really the most sensible way for most