Slashdot Mirror
ISPs to Ban P2P With New European Telecom Package?
An anonymous reader writes "ZeroPaid is reporting that ISPs could be turned into the copyright police through European legislation that received a number of 'intellectual property' amendments. Many of these amendments can be found here. Judging by the amendments, ISPs could be mandated to block legitimate traffic in an effort to 'prevent' illegitimate traffic. To help stop this legislation, you can check out the action page. Additional coverage can be found on EDRI and Open Rights Group."
P2P isn't just about illegal file sharing, it's bigger than that. The way we download linux distros, the way we download game updates, hell even Pure Pwnage distributes their videos using P2P methods. I really think they are missing the point of how this technology has made an impact on how we get our content from the internet. If this passes they might as well ban people from driving cars because they can be used to traffic illegal drugs.
BitTorrent is crucial to my musical aspirations, as distributing my music with it allows me to provide formats that would use a lot of bandwidth, such as FLAC, without incurring expensive bandwidth charges.
While musicians can host their music for free at places like MySpace, it's really best to for artists to have their own websites, and to host their own music. That way, growth in the popularity of their sites will enrich the artists, rather than the music hosting service.
And you think the record companies want that?
This type of solution solves nothing (People will always find ways to share files illegally, just like people will always find ways to do illegal drugs), increases tension (Any regulatory legislation or law increases tension between those that create and enforce the laws and those the law is being enforced upon), and removes a useful service. (Peer to Peer is used for many purposes outside of illegal file sharing.)
Besides, the only people pushing for this type of legislation are large companies and their shareholders. As a regular Joe, I can say I can disagree strongly with this.
And yes I'm well aware of the corrupting influence of campaign donations and lobbyists. If those lead to bad laws being passed, it's because the voters don't care about their own rights.
There are definitely more voters than corporations, so it's well-within our abilities to put those who pass bad laws out of a job.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
1. A lot of customers, especially home ones, use internet almost just for the P2P applications.
2. As they will close the P2P protocols, new ones will arise.
3. Investments for heavy throttling will never pay back as people will find new interesting ways to bypass it or to switch to a different ISP!
Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
The proposed law, suggest that the state would pay for the ISP's losses, so it might even be profitable for ISP to cut a customer. This is not just about p2p anymore. This is about basic freedom/survival...
Oh yeah, mandatory Trusted Computing, the magic bullet. Because enumerating and safeguarding against all known good or bad software products has worked sooo well in corporate environments.
Last time I checked, online gaming had a massive problem with cheaters of all sorts, despite a decade's effort to secure their client code and to check against known badware. With no luck.
Good luck trying to keep an updated, effective list of all known intellectual-property-respecting, human-rights-compatible, hate-speech-free and politically-absolutely-correct software products.
Excuse me while I'm off to my hidden stash of guns and ammo, adding loads of paper and several unregistered mechanical typewriters to the loot.
Don't forget: the Soviet Union required the registration of any and all typewriters and printing devices with the authorities. Unregistered possession of such items was a felony and severely punished.
But in Soviet Europe, Trusted Computing registers YOU! Ihre Papiere bitte mein Herr!
So far the internet has been seen as a necessary evil. Something that has some benefits (outsourcing, e-commerce) and some small disadvantages. Now we have a situation where a large pressure group (the media) want to change the order of things and are using their influence to put a halt to this unregulated area.
Governments like the idea of people paying for things. That way they get to tax them more and also put in place commercial frameworks where it is in the suppliers interests to toe the line. (For some reason they haven't managed this with the drugs trade - yet). It also allows them to regulate the content, by controlling the providers. So far, because of their general cluelessness in technical areas, governments haven't come up with an effective way to do this - while keeping the veneer of freedom/democracy that they like people to think they have. Just as soon as they can come up with a "think of the children" strategy that works, they'll implement it and the internet will become a top-down hierarchy with laws, penalties and controls.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
let's go out on a limb, and say the "internet police" can do this (as it is incredibly daunting): we are going to go out and define every node of the internet as "client" and "server". that's a leap of faith, and resources, but lets just go and say that someone can do this
the "client" can only consume, and never serve traffic. ok. so you can never make a form request. you can never upload a youtube video. you can never send an email. you can't chat
oh, ok, ok, you can serve some things... certain ports, certain packet headers are ok... we'll just filter out any unauthorized served content
wtf?
so let's make a second huge leap and say the "internet police" can (with whatever magical resources) identify all nodes as client/ server AND police all traffic formats as allowed/ not allowed. and these are two huge suspensions of disbelief, that anyone can have the willpower and the mandate and the resources to do these two things
now you STILL have issues like:
1. obfuscation. why can't i encrypt my copy of "iron man" as a bunch of supposed form requests. i can't label p2p traffic with a bogus packet header? i can't encrypt it? i can't send it down an "authorized" port?
2. gateways. rogue servers that merely reflect data to another client. perhaps taken over. perhaps just tricked into using "allowed" modes of communication to communicate "iron man"
3. spoofing. trick the watchdogs into thinking p2p traffic is actually legit server to client traffic (ip spoofing but one example, there are a dozen more spoofs)
4. etc., etc. smarter people than me can think up a myriad more ways
it's a game of whack-a-mole. it's a pointless, endless, arms race: every technical effort to kill p2p merely results in the creation of hardier versions of p2p. furthermore, on one side you have a bunch of disorganized, passively interested, technically astute, and most importantly, POOR teenagers. millions of them. on the other side, you have a bunch of expensive hired guns, funded by a pool of money that is, get this, being siphoned off by the unorganized teenager's efforts. take a wild guess where i place my bet on who is going to win this contest
morons: the ONLY way to kill p2p is to pervert the nature of the internet to the point that anything compelling and useful about the internet is not also destroyed. if the information flow is not also free, and only one way, you stifle the creation of new services, and bureaucratically choke any existing useful ones. the internet becomes stagnant, passive, just a form television delivered over tcp/ip. the internet is killed
so how about another option for you: p2p isn't going away, and fucking get used to it! reality accept it, don't fight it, you stupid twits
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
"We don't believe that society can allow the free consumption of content to persist"
That quote made me think and I realized that my whole life is based on free consumption of content: radio (streaming/podcast), music, documentaries, tv shows, movies, porn, games.
The web and p2p are by far my main source of entertainment and information, this stuff is what I spend most of my free time on, this is who I am.
Trying to put an end to that is no less than a direct attack on my way of life.
Oh, come on. You should have said something more along the lines of, "I disagree completely with whatever the first post says". Remember, Insightful is better for your karma than Funny!