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."
When WoW stops working because the updates are blocked the Hord and the Alliance might finally put their differences aside to fight a bigger foe!
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.
So the ISP has ESP for P2P unless you're L33T enough to have L2TP or PPTP?
Wiki, website, books, TV.. the air. They are all just mediums in which information is shared. Why do you ( and others.. ) seem to think they one is more trustworthy than another?
The disappearing pencil trick. Let me show you it.
Jamendo uses it to distribute Creative Commons-licensed music, all of it with the explicit permission of its copyright holders.
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.
But a hit song can bankrupt struggling musicians if they just supply regular HTTP downloads; p2p enables mass distribution at a very low cost.
It's very important to get the message through to lawmakers and the public that filesharing, while it can be abused, is inherently perfectly legitimate, and should be kept both legal and technically possible.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
There are already claims that its possible to distinguish the protocols inside encrypted channels based on packet size and timming with quite high accuracy
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.
Sure, it might sound plausible when the RIAA/MPAA paints a picture of P2P = piracy and stack up all the "favorable facts" but there's no way something like that would pass. You don't hear much from other uses because they have no interest in political mudslinging, but they're there. While all the countries of the EU have their own laws, I know at least my own (which isn't part of EU but.. long story) has freedom of speech written into the constitution. Trying to block legitimate speech because it's not approved by the "authorities" would fall so flat on its face in court it'd be an embarrasment to any politician that passed it.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
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.
Citizens banned from cities streets in a move to prevent mugging.
And there will probably be at least one guy shouting "LEROY JENKINS!"
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 only feasible solution at this point to to encrypt streams between clients and servers. the obligatory reply about performance may be crossing your mind right now, but is there actually any other solution?
Globally, legislation is being forced through parliaments, to take away our rights. This legislation has come in many forms, but the result of it is that someone wants to access and read your streams of data for whatever reason.
The only way to render this closer to impossible is to stop them being able to read your private correspondence with a web information service provider. The cost for this privacy - faster servers - will be a small price to pay.
Decrypting private data is generally regarded as a serious offence in most countries, and while, only the USA security organisations have access to Verisign's root servers, they will not admit this in public, because it would take away their advantage.
Participatory Governance : The only feasible option for a real democracy, where everyone really does have a say.
I'm free for raid tonight at 8pm GMT. Bagsie not tanking Merkel.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
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.
No, they see the point perfectly clear. Their view is that people need to stop thinking that they can get free stuff from the internet. The last sentence of this BBC article sums up the industry's position pretty well:
"We don't believe that society can allow the free consumption of content to persist"
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
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...
All our models for running a society and an economy use scarcity as a starting point; there is more demand for something than supply, and thus there must be a strong rule of law to make sure the resource is distributed properly (although I think its fair to say plenty of people disagree on the definition of 'properly')
Data is not scare though. In a P2P network, every person who demands also by definition supplies, thus demand can never outstrip supply.
They will lose this battle for mathematical rather than political reasons (the level of control they desire is impossible, and if they understood the technology they would know that) - but it interests me as a foreshadowing of a possible future.
Our society could well die from a resources shortage, but we might be able to save ourselves. Three technologies currently being researched, controlled nuclear fusion, autonomous robots, and universal fabrication, could conceivably bring the abundance we see in data to the majority of physical products and services. I listed them in order of the maturity of each field, but I believe that in my lifetime (I am 27 for reference) we could see them all reach a point where want can be effectively eliminated.
Of course, there are some people, the same people we are complaining about now, who don't want to see that. Desperate people are controllable people.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
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!
Five bucks says he'll be the one with the bomb.
/sig
The Judean People's Front?
Is that I can live pretty well without them. Who knows, I may even get more work done.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
Fuck off! We're the People's Front of Judea.
This comment is for entertainment purposes only. Any similarity to real insight or information is purely coincidental.
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
And the thing is, dinosaurs didn't even use toothpaste. That's how far out of whack the laws are with the technology - toothpaste and dinosaurs don't even exist in the same world. How can a dinosaur even attempt to squeeze the toothpaste back in to the tube - the toothpaste is millions of years away in the future, being squeezed out more and more while the dinosaur is powerless to stop it. All it can do is waggle its little front legs and roar in frustration. For all it's mighty strength and razor-sharp teeth, it is impotent in the face of future toothpaste.
And even if it could get to the toothpaste it couldn't even brush its teeth because its tiny arms won't reach its terrible mouth. How the mighty fall - not through asteroid strike or an ice age, but through lack of toothpaste. We have all the toothpaste, here in the future. True, much is gone forever, washed down the plugholes of the past, but the lion's share of the toothpaste is still to come, and we shall spread it far out of the tube, beyond this horizon, beyond the reach of the dinosaurs of the past with their smelly breath and dirty teeth. Yes indeed, my friend - the toothpaste is, indeed, well and truly out of the tube, and the dummies and the desperate can only stand and quiver. Stand and quiver.
this worries me the most :
"Free Software is not compatible with standards used to try to restrict the run of a  lawful application  : Free Software can be studied and modified by the user himself to check the security of the software or to create a new lawful application as Free Soffware authors grant the right to do so to every user. And technologies used to check if an application is lawful consider user modified software as unlawful. So beside pushing dangerous technologies for privacy, this amendment mays create by itself a barrier in the internal market even if an ISO standard of treacherous computing emerges like the following (http://www.iso.org/iso/iso_catalogue/catalogue_tc/catalogue_detail.htm?csnumber=50970)."
Famous last words:"but...."
You know what, its a fair cop.
People compare the current actions of the US with the Nazis and on that basis it is far from unreasonable to extend the analogy and compare the EU to Communists.
We do much the same stuff, except instead of invoking national pride and military glory we simply tell you we are doing whats best for you, and you will understand one day, you poor deluded child.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
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
the obvious fix to this, is to fill the empty space with zeroes (which encrypted will appear as random noise) to encrypted sockets.
It's not good enough to do only for bittorrent, since the exploit can be potentially be used for similar things against other protocols.
Blah blah sig blah blah blah irony blah blah
Splitters!
Caesar si viveret, ad remum dareris.
As I said in another post, you can attempt to encrypt it, change ports, fiddle with the timing, run a VPN, or simply wave your hands in the air as misdirection, but the fact is that to be effective a P2P program MUST send gigabytes of data upstream to multiple destinations. It's inherent in the nature of the beast.
All one has to do to spot it is meter the connection and count bytes...
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
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.
Apparently, you don't grok how "Trusted Computing" works. It works on a "white list" principal. If any of the software/OS/applications/BIOS/hardware isn't on the white list, then the machine in question will not certify as "trusted" when queried when you attempt to connect to your ISP or any other "trusted" machine, appliance, or service. Any time you attempt to connect, "T.C." authorization servers verify the "trusted" or "not trusted" state of the machine with a hash generated from the machines' hardware/software and the unique keys stored in the silicon against hashes/keys on a "T.C." authorization server.
Currently, the "T.C." chip is a discrete IC on the motherboard. It will soon be integrated directly onto the CPU wafer. There's no "getting to" the keys contained, as they never leave the IC, never resides in RAM or on a data bus. So unless you have advanced, very expensive equipment for reverse-engineering and fabricating microchips at the micron level you're out of luck. Even were someone to succeed, all that trouble and expense would only allow *one* machine to falsify a "trusted" state, and only until it was discovered and its' unique keys revoked at the T.C. authorization servers, all but "bricking" the machine as far as any use in conjunction with the "trusted" network.
I truly believe this will be the next major battle in the arms race between those who wish to control information and people, and those that want freedom, and might very well be the last if they succeed. They've already committed themselves to this path and fired the first shot with the inclusion of the outboard "T.C." chip on many/most(?) motherboards. If they succeed in fully rolling this system out, times will surely get "interesting" indeed, in that bad old Chinese curse kind of way.
Cheers!
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
You're a silly sausage.
Glad you agree.
This shit is going to escalate until it's too late. Telcos make money anyway through landline and cellphones rates, cable TV and stuff, so I wouldn't expect them to fear losing customers. People should consider getting the necessary equipment to set up a pirate radio station like they did in the 60s and 70s, but this time by using common Wi-Fi equipment. I wish every home recycled an old PC with wireless card setting up a minimum file server, a dynamic routing daemon (OLSR, b.a.t.m.a.n., etc) and a p2p client.
Wikipedia does give a list of featured and good articles.
Some may find it rather telling that of the almost 2.5m articles on WP, only 6,500 make the grade for either of the lists
This comment is for entertainment purposes only. Any similarity to real insight or information is purely coincidental.
Fuck off! We're the Judean People's Front.
G4 Hackintosh
Great to see all these technical and social objections to the Telecoms Package but, unfortunately, i don't think many MEPs read Slashdot so make sure you express these concerns in writing to your rep in Brussels. And this is a matter of urgency, because the amendments will be voted on this Monday 7 July. Get to writing everyone!
The common theme within some of the comments here seems to be "let's build an open network". Although this is somewhat idealistic, it's not outside the realms of possibility. Cities are already smothered with open wireless networks, whether intentionally or not, and there's no way you can regulate the traffic among them. And P2P, although used on the "International Network", is essentially a local service... a closed group of people, usually from countries that speak the same language, sharing files with each other internally without a *requirement* for international transit.
P2P moving to such networks is an obvious possibility. Again, by heavy-handed and back-handed approaches (suing people without evidence, slipping clauses/laws into other laws by political maneouvering, etc.), the media industries are forcing people to use more and more ingenious solutions to sensibly meet their requirements (i.e. they'd like some sensibly-priced music that they can use, please). And as each solution's flaws are found, new solutions (without those flaws) present themselves. Regulation of traffic flowing over regulated internet channels? Remove the regulation by using *other* channels.
We seem to have come full circle - from the initial Internet, where private, unregulated networks joined up to decrease costs and increase connectivity, to a world where everyone has their own private network behind an ISP's public network, to (hopefully) a place where all the private networks peer with each other *without the intervention of an ISP*, except this time via radios. The only problem is international transit (Joe Bloggs can't exactly run a fibre over the English Channel), but the chances are that programs like Tor, etc. as well as the odd rogue network that connects to someone's actual ISP connection will solve that.
Maybe when 802.11n or its successor grows in popularity, we will see home networks that, even with enormous interference, crowded channels, limited range, primitive routing etc. are quite capable of peering with a number of geographical neighbours and passing traffic intelligently at a reasonable speed. You don't even have to take account of "ISP T&C's" because you don't NEED to pass the traffic to the Internet at every possible point, only to be able to pass it on to someone else.
I had a quick look and all of the community wifi projects I can find in my country are very small and localised, or don't exist any more. If there was one operating near me, I'd gladly hook up an old Linksys and an enormous antenna and let it freely pass traffic - everything would have to be encrypted, anyway, because an open network is an open network but if all it needs is to be "plugged in", and not actually connected to anything else physically, or to the Internet, there's no reason we can't each have a little cube in our homes that costs about £10 and lets us connect to every house in the street and pass traffic. If there was the possibility of such a "darknet" running over it (free VoIP calls, free music, free movies, no Internet charges, etc.) I'm sure every student would have one.
Then, not only do the music industry etc. run into the problem of *detecting* the traffic in the first place (no black boxes on a private net, a physical presence required in every locality, and being able to defeat the encryption), but that if done properly, traffic's transit route, origin, etc. are impossible to determine. They may try to close the system down, of course, but then you have a much larger problem - you're effectively trying to shut down the entire Internet. Except all the "nodes" are private individuals, without contracts, without liability, without regulation, and, if they are cheap enough, rogue solar-powered blackboxes stuck in hidden locations around towns and cities and replaced whenever they are discovered. Just how do you shut that down without bringing a country into riots?
The real Internet2 isn't going to be an academic project aimed at pushing Gb/s over international fibre, it's going to be a nationwide collection of cheap Gumstix with a solar panel and wifi, sold at cost price, one per home, that let's people escape most of the communication regulation foisted upon them.
Fuck off! We're the Front of Judea's People.
What has the EU done for us anyway...
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
My reading of the proposed amendment is the exact opposite - (my emphasis added):
It seems to me that this directive prohibits making it a legal requirement that equipment contains DRM or other control mechanisms. Manufacturers can put that stuff in their products if they want but it seems to me that this amendment says you can't stop manufacturers leaving it out and if they do you can't stop them shipping their products between member states.
I know it is probably too much to ask on Slashdot but could someone else read the proposed amendments carefully, think about them and if they think I have got it wrong explain exactly how and why they interpret the words in that way.
I know it is probably too much to ask on Slashdot but could someone else read the proposed amendments carefully, think about them and if they think I have got it wrong explain exactly how and why they interpret the words in that way.
This is something I was unclear about. The paragraph immediately below that directly contradicted it - whether or not those amendments are proposed or they've been written into the legislation I don't know.
One thing I would point out - legislated TPM or not, if every ISP in the country is legally obliged to do everything in their power to prevent customer copyright infringement and TPM offers this promise, how long before the ISP makes "you must have a TPM-enabled PC" a condition of service, at least for domestic connections?
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!
Don't you get it? If you die in Belgium, YOU DIE IN REAL LIFE.
Everything clever I considered putting here I got from other slashdot sigs.
... people simply don't care about P2P blocking. It's faster to buy a CD for US$ 3, or a DVD for US$ 6, in any corner through any city.
-=-=-=-=
I know life isn't fair, but why can't it ever be un-fair in MY favor!?
a national regulatory authority may issue guidelines setting minimum quality of service requirements
. Nothing strange about it, it might even allow regulatory agencies to mandate ISPs to advertise more truthfully.
if appropriate, take other measures, in order to prevent degradation of services and slowing of traffic over networks,
Traffic shaping is not necessarily bad. Why should I have to wait 5+ seconds for a webpage to load just because the guy next door is downloading 24/7?
and to ensure that the ability of users to access or distribute lawful content or to run lawful applications and services of their choice is not unreasonably restricted.
This is where there can be disagreement on what this amendment is trying to accomplish. On the one hand, it might be used to restrict P2P sharing. This is La Quadrature's interpretation. On the other hand, however, this passage can also be construed as protecting our right to use our internet connection as we see fit, provided we are not engaging in illegal activities. For instance, should ISPs block or throttle all P2P traffic, a user might file a complaint with the regulatory authorities, which could judge that, since it unreasonably restricts the ability of users to access lawful content, such a measure is illegal.
Their analysis of Article 21 (4a) is not much more accurate. What is says is that, "when appropriate", ISPs may be forced to send "public interest information" to subscribers. The inclusions of
(c) means of protection against risks to personal security, privacy and personal data in using electronic communications services
argues against La Quadrature's (confused and barely understandable) analysis that this article refers to mandatory takedown notices. A more charitable -- and plain -- reading suggests that ISPs would be required to send a brochure to their customers to tell them that copyright infrigement in really bad. This is why both existing and new subscribers (who, obviously, haven't downloaded anything illegal yet), are mentioned. In all likelihood, the only thing this amendment will accomplish is that all subscribers will get a leaflet that explains why they should install a firewall and an anti-virus program.
It's FUD, pure and simple. Most of the arguments on La Quadrature's pages are either non sequiturs or slippery slope arguments ("may" does not equal "shall").
no matter ... if it will be for defeating this dumb law, probably CCP will keep my account running and training until the end of the universe :-P
.
if any two computers can no longer talk to each other, can we still call it "the internet?"
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
They've spent years telling people they need bandwidth to download music, etc.
Are they now going to tell us we don't need it any more, that a much cheaper line will suffice?
No sig today...
Write whichever politician represents you and say that you do NOT want them to support the efforts by the copyright cartels to shut down legitimate content distribution in the name of fighting piracy. Tell them that you do NOT support piracy and the illegal copying of other peoples content without permission but that the law and court system should be used to find the people who violate copyright law and that ISPs should NOT be force to block
Tell them that if they support legislation that blocks legitimate uses of the internet in the name of fighting piracy, you will vote for someone else who does not support such legislation.
I'll be shouting "for COWBOYNEAL" (damn caps restriction)
EU = EUSSR
Take Nobody's Word For It.
That's in a free society. We've been a slow march to "Better 1000 innocent be punished than one guilty man goes free."
Cynical Idealist
The Roads.
Ok, granted, but apart from the roads, the education, the water, the open borders, the peace, and the standardised banana sizes, what has the EU *really* done for us ?
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
I'd go out, buy a couple books, and read them while I packed up the car and drove to Canada.
If it were shut down world-wide, i'd buy books and find an amish community, because without the internet high technology isn't all that high anymore, and current "entertainment" is only useful as noisy wall paper. (seriously, a white noise generator could easily replace my tv and provide more entertainment).
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Bingo. I'd like to see an analysis of these amendments written by somebody who does understand them in terms of all their implications, but the linked analysis is blatantly wrong in many aspects. One that stood out to me:
This is interpreted by La Quadrature as mandating TPM. As I read it, it actually does the opposite: it states that member states are not allowed to require such measures: "Member States shall ensure ... that no mandatory requirements ... are imposed on terminal equipment [etc]". The directive as it stands without this amendment could be interpreted as requiring TPM.
I'm afraid you might be right ...
and the paragraph 2 requires the member states to only inform the Commission , while the paragraph 3 says:
It seems that the amendments are aimed at preventing abuses resulting from attempts to block copyright infringement, and that DRM devices should not be mandatory, and if there are DRM devices/software, it should not interfere with somebody's personal data or use that personal data ... though my Legalese could be defective and I might misread
It is also true that the texts quoted by laquadrature.net do not forbid DRM.