Senator Proposes to Monitor All P2P Traffic for Illegal Files

mytrip writes "Senator Joe Biden (D-Del) has proposed an ambitious plan, costing on the order of $1 billion, aimed at curtailing illegal activities via P2P networks. His plan involves utilizing new software to monitor peer-to-peer traffic on an ongoing basis. 'At an afternoon Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing about child exploitation on the Internet, Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.) said he was under the impression it's "pretty easy to pick out the person engaged in either transmitting or downloading violent scenes of rape, molestation" simply by looking at file names. He urged use of those techniques by investigators to help nab the most egregious offenders."

Comments

Of Course

[gx5000]

Of course they can do this... They can also stop spam dead in its router or switch feeds... We know where the viruses are originating from, and spam and and and... Since these greasy rogues produce over 90% of the e-mail, then one can take from that that they're also paying big bills to do this... The Golden rule persists, and this InterTubeTechnocrat hasn't a clue.... The thing is probably a work around for the FCC accounting which states that ISP's cannot restrict (reads choke P2P) network feed or else they lose their blanket immunity to prosecution on content.... this guy is trying to build them a trap door...ain't gonna work.

Likely proposed by the ISPs

[ween14]

If I was an ISP who wanted to slow the use of P2P on my network, I only have a few options.

Comcast tried the first option, which is to drop the connections. The outrage on tech sites was massive, and eventually led to them being investigated by the FCC.

Barring that option, why not put the burden on the government to handle the filtering. Heck, that is even better because now you don't have to pay for it anymore, your customers pay for it through their taxes.

Just follow the money...

[i_want_you_to_throw_]

I am sure that Sen Biden's idea has nothing to do with the fact that he has taken $178,358 from the TV/Movies/Music lobby in this last cycle. The ROI on paying off a politician is insane. Just look at Orrin Hatch and the DMCA.

Re:We need to demolish the two-party system

[Alpha830RulZ]

Actually, just having three parties would change the political dynamic pretty dramatically. My Pol Sci professor described this as the Burger King Problem.

Visualize a small town, with one main street. A McDonalds comes into town, and locates at one end of the town, let's call it the east end.

Now let's say Burger King wants to come into the same town. Where is the most logical place for the BK to locate? Answer: right next to the McDonalds, on the side that is closer to the most people.

In politics we see this in the clustering of positions. It makes sens for the Democrats to be just slightly more liberal than the Republicans, so that they can capture the votes of people that are somewhat liberal republicans. If they adopt a very liberal stance, then there is no way of knowing how people in the middle will vote.

We see this in Hillary Clinton, who in other times might have been described as a moderate republican, by here views. This stance makes sense, so that she can capture the middle of the spectrum. We saw this in the last 7 years, as democrats scrambled to be almost as conservative as the republicans, because that is what made political sense.

If you have a third player in the mix, let alone many players, that destablizes this balance. Then you'll start seeing a spectrum of views, rather than polarized (abortion) or highly similar (war on terrorism) positions. It's just game theory, which seems to be the meme of the day.