UK ISPs Resistant to Monitoring Users

ethericalzen writes "An article from BBC News online states that ISPs in the UK are resistant to the government's desires for monitoring their users' data. The government seeks to have ISPs turn off the access of users who are 'persistent pirates'. The ISPs are citing technical and legal reasons for why they do not wish to do this. Legals reasons include surveillance laws which prohibit ISPs from monitoring a user's data unless compelled by a warrant. Technical reasons include an inability to accurately identify copyrighted material that is legally being transferred over p2p clients, and copyrighted material that is being transferred illegally over p2p clients."

Comments

Oh yea.

[Anonymous Coward]

We all know how Evil those P2P users are.

Tubes again?

[esocid]

A spokesman for the Internet Service Providers Association (ISPA) said the 2002 E-Commerce Regulations defined net firms as "mere conduits" and not responsible for the contents of the traffic flowing across their networks.

Is that a british term for tubes?

Re:Tubes again?

[moderatorrater]

No, it sounds like they're actually applying something of a legal term to them. Instead of some dumb-ass congressman trying to explain what they are, they're explaining the regulations that apply to them.

Re:Tubes again?

[jd]

Well, "mere" is the old English word for lake or large body of water. A conduit is a transport system. So, net firms are therefore responsible for the pipes linking reservoirs together.

Re:Tubes again?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, "mere" is the old English word for lake or large body of water. A conduit is a transport system. So, net firms are therefore responsible for the pipes linking reservoirs together.

So what you're saying is that my ISP is responsible for my hosepipe ban. Bastards.

Slashdot users...

[das_schmitt]

I would never socialize with a Slashdot user. Sorry guys :\ Blame yourselves.

SLASHDOT SUX0RZ

[Anonymous Coward]

_0_
\''\
'=o='
.|!|
.| |
goatse in the uk is coming sometime a-may-bee-yuh

Again

[Badbone]

Yet again, /. posts a story from ars technica. You're slipping Zonk!

Re:Again

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe you'd be happy if news sites fought to copyright each news story as-it-happens? That way, every site can have ****exclusive**** news, w00t!

If it were "spammers" instead of "file sharers"

[MacDork]

most of /. would cheer this on. Pure hypocrisy.

Re:If it were "spammers" instead of "file sharers"

[TheRealMindChild]

Not only did you put words in everyones mouth... you condemn them for you thinking they said/are saying it. Good show.

Re:If it were "spammers" instead of "file sharers"

[Penguinisto]

Err, you do know that there is a difference between voluntarily downloading something between two consenting parties (P2P user and peer(s)), and blasting unwanted crap out to unwilling recipients (spam), right?

One is a normal (albeit sometimes infringing) transaction, while the other is an unwarranted invasion of others' file storage space and bandwidth.

QED, no hypocrisy.

/P

Re:If it were "spammers" instead of "file sharers"

[MacDork]

Err, you do know that there is a difference between voluntarily downloading something between two consenting parties (P2P user and peer(s)), and blasting unwanted crap out to unwilling recipients (spam), right?

That's nice doublethink you have there. I didn't realize the RIAA was consenting to your file sharing. Oh, that's right... they aren't. That's why they propose disconnecting anyone suspected of illegally sharing files. Just like slashbots would propose that ISPs disconnect anyone suspected of illegally sending unsolicited email. Like I said, pure hypocrisy.

Re:If it were "spammers" instead of "file sharers"

[Penguinisto]

Err, you do know that there is a difference between voluntarily downloading something between two consenting parties (P2P user and peer(s)), and blasting unwanted crap out to unwilling recipients (spam), right?

That's nice doublethink you have there.

So in other words, you have no idea.

I didn't realize the RIAA was consenting to your file sharing. Oh, that's right... they aren't.

I don't know or care what the RIAA thinks about the files I share (hint: the only ones I've ever bothered sharing are all CC, copylefted, pub-domain, or GPL-licensed), so how about you not ruin what little credibility you might have by making stupid assumptions like that, m'kay?

Meanwhile, any two points in a P2P session are still made voluntarily. Weasel all you want, but you cannot change that primary fact - and the IFPI affiliate owns neither of those connections, so they don't get any say-so - aside from launching a lawsuit against the distributor once a determination is made that the distribution was an infringement (and even then they must remain within the bounds of law).

Besides, what does the Recording Industry Association of America have to do with asking (let alone demanding) anything from a British ISP, genius?

Just like slashbots would propose that ISPs disconnect anyone suspected of illegally sending unsolicited email.

An example (relevant this time, plz) would be nice. Of course, trying to get you to stop with gross generalizations, and idiotic attempts to prove a flamebaited point with wildly unrelated strawmen arguments? Well, it would be a lost cause, but see if you can overcome them anyway, my dear little troll...

/P

Re:If it were "spammers" instead of "file sharers"

[MacDork]

So in other words, you have no idea.

No, I believe I followed that by pointing out you are assuming legal traffic on P2P and illegal traffic on email to justify your stance. There are both spam and legitimate mailing lists. How does an ISP know the difference? They don't know any more than they know the difference between a Linux ISO and a copy of a hollywood movie. It's doublethink. Sorry if you weren't bright enough to catch that one. I'll try to spell everything out for you in this post so you can keep up.

Meanwhile, any two points in a P2P session are still made voluntarily.

You keep ignoring that there are three parties involved in the P2P issue. The copyright owners in many cases have not agreed to anything in respect to the distribution of their imaginary property. You don't win any debate by sticking your fingers in your ears and shouting "NAH NAH NAH, I CAN'T HEAR YOU."

Besides, what does the Recording Industry Association of America have to do with asking (let alone demanding) anything from a British ISP, genius?

That's right, nitpick the semantics because you're losing the argument. Maybe you'd like to point out a few errors in my spelling or punctuation next?

An example (relevant this time, plz) would be nice

The fact that you're denying the sentiment even exists suggests you're being disingenuous. I believe I've provided you with adequate examples at this point. Feel free to shout strawman until you're blue in the face though. Saying it over and over again doesn't make it come true.

Re:If it were "spammers" instead of "file sharers"

[Cal Paterson]

No, I believe I followed that by pointing out you are assuming legal traffic on P2P and illegal traffic on email to justify your stance. There are both spam and legitimate mailing lists. How does an ISP know the difference? They don't know any more than they know the difference between a Linux ISO and a copy of a hollywood movie. It's doublethink. Sorry if you weren't bright enough to catch that one. I'll try to spell everything out for you in this post so you can keep up.

Must people don't try and add strength to their argument by employing newspeak terms. In the book, newspeak was employed by the antagonist. Unless you are intentionally suggesting that you are the antagonist from 1984, why are you using this vocabulary?

The original posters point is that are there not three people involved in a p2p transaction. There are only two. The poster rejects the concept of "imaginary property" and the concept of copyright. So do I. The law is wrong.

Re:If it were "spammers" instead of "file sharers"

[MacDork]

Must people don't try and add strength to their argument by employing newspeak terms. In the book, newspeak was employed by the antagonist. Unless you are intentionally suggesting that you are the antagonist from 1984, why are you using this vocabulary?

I'm using the term in a descriptive nature. I'm not sure how it could be used to forward my argument.

To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again: and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself. That was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word 'doublethink' involved the use of doublethink. ... Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.

For those who are familiar with the book, it's clearly defined and I felt doublethink was a much more adequate term to describe this case than hypocrisy. A hypocrite might actually see, concede, and attempt to explain away his use of contradictory logic. Doublethink leaves you unable to even see it. Penguinisto argued for several posts about whether or not such an attitude regarding spam even exists on /. Even after providing several examples to the contrary, he couldn't even touch the point I was making about the hypocritical nature of slashdot posters. In the above post, I spell out the plainly contradictory logic because he is continuing to insistently ignore it. He's a doubleplusgood duckspeaker comrade. He doesn't even need to think. His argument emanates solely from his larynx, or his fingertips in this case. It's a simple reflex. No brain activity required.

The original posters point is that are there not three people involved in a p2p transaction. There are only two. The poster rejects the concept of "imaginary property" and the concept of copyright. So do I. The law is wrong.

And now you're doing it too. I'm not arguing the right or wrong of P2P. That is off topic. I'm pointing out that /. readers, on the whole, are a bunch of hypocrites. They are against disconnecting users for suspected illegal P2P use, but in favor of disconnecting users suspected of sending unsolicited commercial email. Legitimate and illegitimate uses of both protocols are equally difficult to distinguish. Yet most of you are perfectly fine with that, or at least you will be until some legislator exploits your hypocrisy to create laws regarding one only to embrace/extend/extinguish the other. It's obvious to me what will happen, and most of you will never see it coming until it's far too late. Either you defend everyone's right to free speech, or you are not defending free speech.

Re:If it were "spammers" instead of "file sharers"

[Cal Paterson]

And now you're doing it too. I'm not arguing the right or wrong of P2P. That is off topic. I'm pointing out that /. readers, on the whole, are a bunch of hypocrites. They are against disconnecting users for suspected illegal P2P use, but in favor of disconnecting users suspected of sending unsolicited commercial email. Legitimate and illegitimate uses of both protocols are equally difficult to distinguish. Yet most of you are perfectly fine with that, or at least you will be until some legislator exploits your hypocrisy to create laws regarding one only to embrace/extend/extinguish the other. It's obvious to me what will happen, and most of you will never see it coming until it's far too late. Either you defend everyone's right to free speech, or you are not defending free speech.

And this is just not the case. Firstly, slashdotters will probably find it hard to be hypocritical, seeing as they are a group of people with only a similar background and not a coherent ideology. Secondly, you are not distinguishing between government intervention (which is the case with copyright infringement) and private intervention (which is largely the case with spam). I have no objection to the latter. This is the probable libertarian position, and a lot of slashdotters are libertarians, so this view is probably fairly common. The "hypocrisy" you see is likely due to you not distinguishing between government and private action.

Traffic management

[esocid]

"If you exceed that threshold we will drop your speed for five hours from when the excess is recorded,"

This is what happened at the university I went to. It only applied to your upload bandwidth but if you exceeded whatever imaginary number they didn't disclose to you, you would get an email and your bandwidth slashed for a day or two. I'm sure a percentage of this was due to people's computers getting hijacked by trojans/viruses because they insisted that you not connect to the network without having some sort of AV (if you ran windows) and would target specific IPs in the dorms that were either hijacked or simply uploading via p2p.
I'm not quite sure what would happen if any ISPs did that here since no one yet has any pay per usage service, although Time Warner is proposing something like that. It'll be interesting to see what effect, if any, the situation in the UK will have over in the US.

Re:Traffic management

[clark0r]

i use this isp.

the numbers are published, the speed cap is temporary and they only do it in the hours specified, to those who are heavy users. i'm a heavy downloader, so i just schedule all my downloads for 1am onwards, seems to work for me.

also - they keep increasing speeds for users free of charge, and with these increases come increased caps and usage limits in those set hours.

Didn't use the magic word!

[Chris Burke]

Legals reasons include surveillance laws which prohibit ISPs from monitoring a user's data unless compelled by a warrant.

Silly UK government! The secret password to get around the law isn't "piracy", it's "TERROR"!

Re:Didn't use the magic word!

[ddrichardson]

I know where you're coming from but that excuse doesn't fly with a large proportion of the populace after 30 years of republican terrorism and the government knows it.

Re:Didn't use the magic word!

[Chris Burke]

Uh, okay, well how about this:

9/11 TERRORISTS WITH US OR AGAINST US 9/11 THINK OF THE CHILDREN TERROR TERROR!

There, did that turn your brain off? No? Shit! Why does this crap only work in America?!

Re:Didn't use the magic word!

[frogzilla]

Well done sir! I tip my hat to you.

Re:Didn't use the magic word!

[PitaBred]

Because our Baby Boomers grew up differently than the rest of the world's I'd wager. There's still a sense of honor and balance, as well as self-sacrifice in the rest of the world's population that is very much hard to find in America as of late.

Re:Didn't use the magic word!

[Anonymous Coward]

Could it be because the 9/11 attacks only occurred in, *gasp*, America?!

Seriously though, if you look at ANY nation in the world that's had to deal with terrorism as a long term issue (England and Ireland, Russia and former USSR states, practically all of the Middle East) these kind of knee-jerk government (re)actions are immediately attacked as government attempts to seize more power. In comparison, the U.S. is the spoiled, naive brat after being bullied for the first time in their life.

Verbose = 1

[Itninja]

Seriously, is someone getting paid by the word here?

Technical reasons include an inability to accurately identify copyrighted material that is legally being transferred over p2p clients, and copyrighted material that is being transferred illegally over p2p clients.

Try this:

"Technical reasons include an inability to accurately identify the legality of copyrighted material that is being transferred over p2p clients."

Re:Verbose = 1

[ethericalzen]

Okay, so I had a few too many sodas this morning. My bad.

Yeah, right

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone in the UK protesting more monitoring of its people? I don't believe it.

United Kingdom: Twenty million people watching another twenty million people. A final twenty million kicking each other to death for fake Burberry baseball caps.

Re:Yeah, right

[91degrees]

A final twenty million kicking each other to death for fake Burberry baseball caps.

They're actually kicking each other so that they can film it and put it on youTube. So they're all watching each other as well.

I welcome this

[Malevolent Tester]

I'm glad the UK government is cracking down on file sharing. In particular, I'd like them to crack down on their own habit of sharing my personal information with every single bloated, inefficient, fuckwitted, semi-competent IT services provider who made a sufficient donation to the Labour party at the last election (Crapita, this means you)

Re:I welcome this

[ddrichardson]

Lets not forget junior members of staff downloading entire databases onto unencrypted DVDs and dropping them down the sofa or the Navy losing laptops with the details of an entire years worth of potential recruits...

Re:I welcome this

[mpcooke3]

Don't worry a lot of the data never actually reaches the incompetent IT service provider since it goes missing before it can get there.

Re:I welcome this

[Anonymous Coward]

try responding to #22438288
You did sound like you were from Airstrip One.

Re:I welcome this

[Anonymous Coward]

I wish I had mod points for this one.

Well said!

Re:I welcome this

[damburger]

How about MI6 workers getting shit faced at lunchtime and leaving a laptop with state secrets in the pub? Not something you'd see James Bond doing is it.

Re:I welcome this

[Dr_Barnowl]

No, he can hold his drink. But he probably gets his data copied by the KGB honeytrap he picked up at the local casino.

Clearly ...

[PhxBlue]

The next step will be for the British government to mandate the evil bit.

Re:Clearly ...

[Firefalcon]

The site is Slashdotted, so see the cached version:

http://64.233.183.104/search?q=cache:http%3A%2F%2Frfc.net%2Frfc3514.html

'persistent pirates' == everyone...

[Doug52392]

Those idiot lobbyists and corporate CEOs think ANYONE that uses BitTorrent is a pirate. But are they? Let's see, here's what I (at least attempt to because I have Comcast) use BitTorrent for:

1. Downloading large Linux install DVD images
2. Download legal, open-source programs
3. Download legally free files

The problem with this is that I bet NO ONE will actually sit there and read all the traffic logs. A computer will just flag customers who even so much as transfer a packet through a BitTorrent port as a 'persistent pirate' and cancel their service.

A computer can only say YES this person is using BitTorrent or NO he's not. The computer CAN NOT find out exactly what someone is downloading, and weather it's legal.

So if the UK wants to fall behind everyone in the Internet age and cancel EVERYONE out of the Internet, not much we can do but hope it doesn't happen.

Re:'persistent pirates' == everyone...

[Mr_Freedownload]

What they seem to forget is that p2p is used by everyday average joes and janes. The stuff they really want to stop but can't is the mass downloading and selling. What are they gonna kill after p2p? well thats ftp of course. If p2p stops then ftp will rise again but will return underground.

Re:'persistent pirates' == everyone...

[KublaiKhan]

Darknets work well, also. WASTE is fairly popular, for instance, though finding the right network is sometimes a bit of a slow process--they're secretive by nature and all that.

I suppose this could lead to a bit of a class system online--those who know where to find all the interesting bits, and those who are just regular users. Moreso than usual, anyway.

Re:'persistent pirates' == everyone...

[Altus]

Kind of cyber-punk isn't it?

Re:'persistent pirates' == everyone...

[bob.appleyard]

Deep packet sniffing can be employed, but that would be terribly costly. Considering the amount of traffic that a typical UK ISP would be dealing with, you're already talking about some massively parallel computer just to handle that. To then go and do some pattern matching stuff on every packet to see if it's a case of copyright infringement would not only be hell to actually code, it would take a ridiculous amount of computing power. What's worse, this could be defeated by encryption.

Some kind of shallow packet sniff could be done to check for hashes of copyrighted material, and ban people referring to that hash. That requires a database of infringing hashes, and new materials could be appearing all the time. It would also require knowledge of how every P2P protocol communicated these hashes. There is always the chance of mistaking some unrelated innocent communication with an illicit one, that will increase with the size of the copyright database and the number of protocols checked. And this can be defeated with encryption too.

There is another way of approaching this problem. Take a protocol, say, BitTorrent. You could use your database of copyrighted works, and check out trackers of those works for whether UK IP addresses are connected. You have a problem choosing which trackers to check, as you usually only get a name and a description. This one can't be beaten by encryption, but some elaborate series of proxies could elude it.

One of the common weaknesses with all of these approaches, beyond what has already been mentioned, is that the infringing works must first be identified. This could be done by downloading all the files and then manually checking them or by using some kind of fingerprinting technique. This is going to be either expensive in terms of equipment (big server farms for fingerprint analysis) or in terms of people checking the files manually.

The problem here isn't really technical, it's economic. Although most of the costs of blocking customers will have to be done by the ISPs, it will probably be up to the media companies to pay for identifying (say) trackers/hashes for copyrighted works. As this brief analysis seems to suggest that most of the cost is in the identification stage by a long margin, there would have to be a significant payout to justify this investment. I'm not convinced that it's there.

The other aspect of this is that the actual costs of P2P file sharing can only be guessed. Without at least some kind of checking described above it will remain that way. You don't know how many people are sharing this stuff, and you don't know how many of them would have bought it if they couldn't share the stuff. These are unknown risks, so deciding what kind of effort should be expended in avoiding them is a very very difficult task. It's hard to tell whether you've spent more money preventing the risk than the risk would have actually cost. Inevitably, they will have to choose whether to step off the ledge and actually do something on a big scale, or give up altogether. It seems to me that option with least risk business-wise would be to give up trying to stop it and use other means to reduce the probability of it occurring such as lowering prices or offering a better service than pirates.

Re:'persistent pirates' == everyone...

[Nefarious Wheel]

Deep packet sniffing can be employed, but that ...

Kind of glad I don't have mod points at the moment. I'd go nuts trying to choose between interesting, insightful or informative.

Re:'persistent pirates' == everyone...

[ScrewMaster]

Sure they can, and in a way that would make government types drool. All they have to do is set up a government-maintained white list of all "legitimate" torrent trackers, and force ISPs to block access to any tracker not on the list. Of course, anyone with enough money/influence will be able to buy himself onto that list, which is why I said officials will like the idea. Plenty of opportunity for more bribes.

Re:'persistent pirates' == everyone...

[countach]

Actually, I've legally downloaded non-open source programs with the blessing of the copyright owner, because I bought the software key from them and they like to distribute the binary via bittorrent.

Re:'persistent pirates' == everyone...

[damburger]

Well, the UK just slashed the physics research budget by £80 million, so why not cripple the Internet as well?

Re:'persistent pirates' == everyone...

[jonaskoelker]

Thank you! It's an interesting example, underscoring what I've intuitively known for a while: the things you need to do as a blocker, if you want a low rate of false positives* are

* Determine what the transferred information is; this is tricky if encrypted, or encoded in a non-standard way.

* Determine if the transferred information is copyrighted; this is non-trivial as there may be many different representations of a sound, video or even text. I've heard of hashing sounds such that the hashes are similar if the sounds sound alike, but how do you do the same for text (capturing translations or minor rewrites)?

* Determine whether the receiver has a valid license to the work (as the parent example points out). Basically, a computer has to know about meatspace state of affairs (which can of course be changed unbeknownst to the computer in question).

(*no, the people forcing ISPs to block don't really care, because magically they won't be affected)

In the USA...

[the4thdimension]

Hey, if it were the US they would comply and keep it under wraps... after all, the government agencies will do what they can to get you immunity later, amirite?

Hmm; some ISP sanity at last

[ricebowl]

The ISPs are citing technical and legal reasons for why they do not wish to do this. Legals reasons include surveillance laws which prohibit ISPs from monitoring a user's data unless compelled by a warrant.

But, looking at the American example of attempting to make illegal surveillance being retro-actively legal/non-impeachable (I'm not a lawyer so that may be entirely the wrong term), how long until we brits see the law changed to reduce by half the obstacles?

Who would have thought it?

[Odiumjunkie]

> The ISPs are citing technical and legal reasons for why they do not wish to do this.

Uhm, how about not wanting to be forced to abondon ten percent of their paying customers as a reason not to wish to do this?

Re:Who would have thought it?

[Anonymous Coward]

OTOH if it is those 10% who creates 90% of their traffic, they might. But of course the resources needed for this are not trivial, so it might be cheaper and easier to upgrade bandwidth.

Re:Who would have thought it?

[Dr_Barnowl]

They create 90% of that traffic by buying the highest rate packages, which by far have the highest margins on them.

Overhead makes up a high percentage of the charge for the lower tiers ; so if you're paying four times the charge for the top tier, you're giving them a much higher profit margin. By necessity, those top 10% must be on the top tier, so they're more like 30% of their profit margin.

Apologies

[ethericalzen]

This was my first article submission. My apologies for not catching the "Legals" typo. That's supposed to be "Legal". Also, if my summary did not give enough detailed information I'd love critique so as to provide better information.

Thanks!

Re:Apologies

[Anonymous Coward]

You misused "resistant".

resistant: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&rls=en&hs=hh&q=define%3A+resistant&btnG=Search

"An article from BBC News online states that ISPs in the UK are resistant to the government's desires for monitoring their users' data.

No, they're not resistant, like flame resistant cloth, they resist the government's desires, etc.:

resist: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&rls=en&q=define%3Aresist&btnG=Search

"An article from BBC News online states that ISPs in the UK are resisting the government's desire to monitor their users' data.

There, *much* better.

HTH. HAND.

P.S. If you're wondering why the editor didn't correct it, well, there's really only one proper reply to that: "You must be new here".

Re:Apologies

[ethericalzen]

Sadly, yes. I am new here. =-(

Thanks for pointing that out! I must have been asleep at the wheel yet again. Wow...that was kind of dumb of me lol.

Slashdot cheers the murder of suspected spammers

[MacDork]

You must be new here. Read all about it. Try the first post, +5 Insightful. Care to make any other ridiculous attempts at an indignant response.

There's always Retroactive Immunity!

[erroneus]

Isn't there anything the PEOPLE can do to have this and other such attrocities repealed?

Re:Slashdot cheers the murder of suspected spammer

[Penguinisto]

You must be new here. Read all about it. Try the first post, +5 Insightful. Care to make any other ridiculous attempts at an indignant response.

How about some relevant evidence, instead of that half-stuffed strawman you just trotted out? You claimed that, in paraphrase, /. would happily demand that governments destroy ISP users' privacy rights at whim in order to catch spammers. Please show us an example where this allegedly happened.

/P

But in practice, they're all for it

[mrsmiggs]

Bargain basement ISP Tiscali have already operated a similar scheme in cahoots with the BPI, but it's all fallen apart because Tiscali want the BPI to pay for the privilege of sending warnings and chucking people off. The most intriguing part is that the BPI are doing the investigation and instead of monitoring the packets of each connection they are monitoring the known torrents and connections to those torrents, which is clearly a far more practical idea than monitoring all packets. The Register have the full story

too little too late...

[owlnation]

Night is slowly falling over the UK.

Re:too little too late...

[An ominous Cow art]

Night is slowly falling over the UK. ... and only the owls give a hoot.

Re:too little too late...

[Ash-Fox]

Night is slowly falling over the UK.

Experts warn that the nation will be cast into darkness for the next eight hours.

Lack of knowledge makes this a bitch

[MindPrison]

As always , the government - usually due to absolutely severe lack of knowledge - have to comply with the business out there that usually FEAR more than actually KNOW whats going on.

Fact is:

1) The industry have NO clue if the "piracy" either gains or damages their sales, it's pure guessing - no statistics.
2) The government have to enforce the law, if someone breaks it - they create new laws so it won't happen again, unfortunately this is often based on fear rather than knowledge. You listen to the corporates that doesn't have a clue, and you certainly won't listen to the thieves (eg. pirates).
3) No way in this life or the next one will ANY ISP or the government EVER be able to monitor the petabytes of data that flows trough their lines each day, there would not even be enough workers for that...even in an overpopulated world. Even if you write intelligent software...someone has to decipher all that information and only a "human" so far . can make the final judgement on whatever case.
4) You'll only sort out the "clean people" from the "pirates" as the pirates usually are the "savy ones" that only will go deeper (tor anyone?) while the "common morons" are left to take the fall for the rest with their amateur mistakes.

Man....I sometimes wonder who the "clowns" who got the bright idea to make it the law to force ISP's keep records of all user data-transfers 1-2 years on backlog, it most certainly wasn't anyone with any computer knowledge whatsoever.

Re:Lack of knowledge makes this a bitch

[ScrewMaster]

You're making the assumption that the government (any government) will bother with anything complex or intelligent (since lawmakers are rarely either, it seems.) All they'll do is decide what a "normal" Internet user should be allowed to do, and kick-off/arrest/imprison anyone that tries to do anything they don't think is acceptable. So that would include email (forced through the ISP's mail server, so that it can be properly monitored and recorded), browsing (only through government-approved ports and using government-approved protocols), VoIP (only if one's ISP offers such a service, so that it can be properly monitored and recorded) and maybe FTP. Then just pass a law which says that no-one can use any protocol or Internet-aware application without having prior approval granted by some "Bureau/Ministry of Protocol Management".

Problem solved, at least to the bureaucratic mind. And it would work, too, for the most part, if they made the penalties for non-compliance heinous enough.

Re:Lack of knowledge makes this a bitch

[Dr_Barnowl]

No chance.

Buy some webspace on a *nix provider, one that insists on SSH for management. Get approval. Tunnel all your traffic through a secure proxy outside the UK.

Re:Lack of knowledge makes this a bitch

[Ash-Fox]

3) No way in this life or the next one will ANY ISP or the government EVER be able to monitor the petabytes of data that flows trough their lines each day, there would not even be enough workers for that...even in an overpopulated world. Even if you write intelligent software...someone has to decipher all that information and only a "human" so far . can make the final judgement on whatever case.

The great Chinese firewall seems to be pretty close.

Re:Slashdot cheers the murder of suspected spammer

[MacDork]

Ok Penguinisto, I'll google it for you. How about this story. Wow, look at all the "Insightful" comments. More ISPs should do this... blah blah blah. Hypocrites. The little bit of discussion about privacy that exists there is not in the +5 Interesting comments, it's in the unrated/buried comments. I'd say that's pretty clear evidence that slashdot, in general, is not terribly concerned about privacy when it comes to eliminating spam. Care to add anything to discussion, or simple deny fact after fact as though they didn't exist?

Re:Slashdot cheers the murder of suspected spammer

[Penguinisto]

ISP blocks trojan-infected machines back in 2003? Gee... that's relevant (not).

No actual spammers being cut off then, eh? No suspected spammers being disconnected at the behest of an outside party (which is what you and the IFPI are advocating)? Nothing even remotely relevant at all aside from the fact that if a trojaned machine is sending out spam it therefore gets cut off?

Thought so.

Wow, look at all the "Insightful" comments.

Wow indeed... most of them discussing the current state of ISP abuse desks, I even found this cool comment... think the IFPI would be nearly as kind about assisting users in clearing out any infringing content, or will they just sue/extort the unholy crap out of 'em? I'm thinking the latter, meself.

Oh, and one comment modded up that agreed it was a good idea. I never realized that when it comes to slashdot user opinions, you think that "5 (the poster + mods)" == 10^7.5 ... so how do the laws of physics work on your planet? ;)

/P

Re:Slashdot cheers the murder of suspected spammer

[Anonymous Coward]

Is that your sample size? A single +5 post out of a thousand?

The fact that its a first post has no relevance either way.

Re:Slashdot cheers the murder of suspected spammer

[MacDork]

ISP blocks trojan-infected machines back in 2003?

Um, actually, the headline reads "Swedish ISP Blocks Computers That Send Spam." You're assuming that they are trojaned computers and not voluntary installs of "Make millions working from home" bots designed to send spam, just like the submitter did. What we know with certainty is: ISP blocks computers that send spam. The rest is conjecture. And with that came plenty of cheers from the slashdot crowd happy that they were doing it with no regard to privacy.

I noticed you conveniently ignored the score 1 privacy posts I pointed out. I've provided what you asked and now you're moving the bar. Will you continue to move the bar until I'm required to collect signed affidavits from more that 50% of slashbots for you to accept what is blatantly obvious to anyone who has read anything regarding spam and P2P at this website? I don't think I'll jump through any more of your flaming hoops. I'm sure you have an endless supply.

Re:Slashdot cheers the murder of suspected spammer

[MacDork]

Is that your sample size? A single +5 post out of a thousand?

No, I'm basing it on past experience. I've had plenty of discussions on this topic. Have a look at the parent of the post I linked there. Mr 4 digit ID Eric Smith suggest torture for suspected spammers. Others cheer on murder of suspected spammers. Disconnecting suspected spammers is a rather tame by comparison. I'm sure they'd be all for it, privacy be damned. Would anyone else like to dispute the -plainly obvious- slashdot sentiment regarding spammers?

Re:I welcome this insight provided by

[Anonymous Coward]

my Malevolent Tester Overlord!

As well as ...

[jjrff]

... toothpaste.

You know...

[Anonymous Coward]

Comments like that don't really work when anonymous.
They just make it seem like the poster is patting himself on the back.

Footbullet.

[Anonymous Coward]

Many Brits first discover new TV series through torrents, we also tend to get most shows imported quite a bit after their original US air dates, at which point they have been spoilered to f*ck in forums etc.

The real losers aren't the producers, but rather the cable/satellite channels, who get exclusives on series. No one I know in my age range (20-30) can be bothered subscribing to see the 3-4 programs they want a week. So instead they torrent, then purchase (frequently) the DVD sets. 80% of my DVD collection is based on films/series I've first seen online. I've also bought into shows/films on the basis of recommendations of free loaders, who are too cheap to buy anything as pety as entertainment, ever.

If I wasn't able to see shows/films before buying, I'd probably read more books, play more sports, or do more gaming instead. From the ISP's pov, now they've mostly begun offering pay/gig for heavy users (aka pirates), they have a lot to lose by going with the flow here. Piracy is what has driven the broadband internet revolution, these measures if widely adopted will simply be a footbullet of epic proportions to everyone involved.

The UK really is rapidly (already?) becoming a police state - did someone take 1984 to be a guide on nation building?

Youtube

[AIFEX]

So as a vast majority of the content on YouTube constitutes of copyright material (video rips, spoofs, audio tracks), does that mean that anyone accessing the latest J-Lo (I cringe) music video will be barred from the net like a patron of the Queen Vic?

Re:Slashdot cheers the murder of suspected spammer

[Stephen Samuel]

(infected) Spamming computers don't get shut down because somebody's spying on them. Spamming computers get shut down because somebody's complaining about them.

I've written scripts that rip apart (spam) emails, peel apart the headers, figure out which ISP is responsible for the machines that sent them to my MX (via the ICANN records) and (where possible) sends an automated complaint email to the 'abuse' address of the responsible provider.

If they get a couple of hundred such complaints from various sources, they don't have to listen in on the customer's line to conclude that there's a problem. About the only reason to listen in on your line at that point is to prove you innocent of the (numerous) allegations against you (in the case of malicious complaints).