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Copyright Alert System To Launch Monday
An anonymous reader sends this excerpt from the Daily Dot:
"Starting next week, most U.S. Internet users will be subject to a new copyright enforcement system that could force them to complete educational programs, and even slow their Internet speeds to a crawl. A source with direct knowledge of the Copyright Alert System [said] the five participating Internet service providers will start the controversial program Monday. The ISPs — industry giants AT&T, Cablevision, Comcast, Time Warner, and Verizon — will launch their versions of the CAS on different days throughout the week. Comcast is expected to be the first, on Monday."
Of course, there are many ways around the Copyright Alert System, so it probably won't be terribly effective.
This is actually a pretty moderate approach compared to just suing single mothers for millions of dollars for downloading an MP3 once.
To offset political mods, replace Flamebait with Insightful.
En mass, then go for a class action lawsuit when they throttle you. Problem solved.
Security is NOT sexy.
For VPN providers.
I'm partial to AirVPN since they accept Bitcoins for payment and let you connect via Tor if that's what you want.
One of the "ways around CAS" is to get a business account, just like Starbucks would have for their free wifi. Verizon DSL for small business starts at $30/mo. Sign up for this, open your wifi, and pirate to your heart's content.
And the real pirates will continue to secretly proxy their stuff over encrypted channels.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
This seems designed to make everybody do mass disobedience (kind of like speeding). Or maybe it is a secret business plan by Mega for their new website that will make id of pirated material difficult? Then again, Usenet may stage a comeback....
in 3... 2... 1...
Can we PLEASE keep referring to it as "Six Strikes system"? Not the Industry-concocted, innocent-sounding "alert system" crap? Thank you.
I like how they think that after six strikes, throttling DL speeds to 256k will stop people form pirating.
For the last week, my internet has been down. I've been relegated to connecting to my neighbour's WiFi down the block, using my cellphone as a dongle for my computer. With this set up, I'm only able to get DL speeds on Bittorrent of 125k max. I still have no trouble downloading several movies and TV shows in a day, one at a time. Browsing the web and streaming video isn't a problem either.
This will only speed up the race to fully encrypted comms.
Good-bye
The people with clue will not be affected, the people with not enough knowledge, in the other hand, will end being punished for doing things that they don't understand or see as possibly wrong, or even without doing anything, as being used as proxies or unsecure wifi access points.
And considering what could be considered illegal this will be the perfect tool to put out of circulation inconvenient people or to push public opinion in the direction they want.
Don't they know to write properly?
In spanish we have a phrase: the "h" is mute (as it doesn't sound). People forget to write it where it belongs... but know the government too...
The acronym is not CAS, it is
C A S H
" force violators to take educational courses". where they can learn the 'company line'. I'll switch ISP's when one tries that shit with me, and when their are no ISP's to switch to, get away with as much as possible and make it a RULE to NOT purchase any IP media ever, regardless.
A solution to this would be if everyone just stopped going to theaters and stopped buying movies for about 6-12 months, it would bankrupt all these corps and there wouldn't be a lobby to try to criminalize this stuff. Sure no new GOOD movies for a few months but startups would think differently until they too got to big for their britches.
Now is the time to setup VPN servers and rent out access to those poor and repressed people =)
The producers, artists and performers don't own the copyright. So for who was this again?
Because I'd have to say I have a problem with that.
I don't use Bittorrent very often, but when I do, it's to download content that is entirely legitimate. I have to say that if they accuse you of infringing on copyright, you should be permitted to at the very least be able to say "No I didn't", and have that actually mean something.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
The Obama Administration pressured ISPs into adopting this scheme. Now we get private enforcement of copyrights without the usual defenses against such. No government involvement, so no due process. People should be more worried about this than they really are, especially considering the government's involvement.
"In prison you just have to shut your eyes and take it. Here you have to shut your eyes and give it."
I've never pirated anything. Whether you care to believe that, or not, is irrelevent to me.
I'll be unsurprised if I am flagged as a pirate, though.
"... or slow their Internet speeds to a crawl."
So, pretty much business as usual then?
one notice and I use a swedish vpn and verizon's marketing department doesn't get my data....oh well
and since a year of vpn costs less than 2 new blu ray disks i come out pretty far ahead
Oh, you can do that.
For $35.00 U.S.
"The ferrets, they're every where I tell you!"
Oh noes, stick with hijacked corporate APs so you don't get your residential neighbors in trouble. Wifi security is still a joke on 99% of deployed routers. This policy is so anti consumer, I can't wait to hear about the class action.
like phone lines, water, and electricity. Would you accept an unelected corporate group like Hollywood policing your phone conversations and throttling the line if they didn't like what they overheard you saying? Or throttling your water supply if they objected to the flowers growing in your yard?
Inform your elected officials. Make it clear that we will not tolerate these for-profit commercial groups invading our privacy and abusing public resources. Apply citizen utility rights to internet access.
(By the way, expect small captured governments like New Zealand to bend to corporate influence, but how is this stuff not struck down in modern social leaning nations such as France?)
State of the art copyright 'protection' methods use signature databases. Companies acting as 'agents' on behalf of copyright 'owners' scan various forms of their clients 'property' to create signatures that can be tested against video/sound streams, or against packet streams intercepted at the ISP using 'deep packet inspection'.
Now, here we are talking about the later- the ISP inspecting the 'signature' of data traffic to the users. Firstly, false positives will swamp the system. We have already seen have legal live video streams have been closed down by automated signature testing systems. But let us instead consider the 'valid' matches.
To fight back, users will need packet streams that are unique to the user. While this is frequently described as 'end to end' encryption, simpler solutions also work. The 'deep packet' signature test fails if the data stream suffers ANY per user modification, and that can include a simple XORing of most of the packet via an XOR key at the head of the packet. This really isn't 'encryption' but data 'morphing' where the same data can have a massive number of different forms, confusing or defeating a 'signature' based approach.
Data morphing can be done with near zero computational processing, unlike proper encryption. The goal is simply to ensure the same data has a vast number of different forms. And included 4-byte XOR key, for instance, has 4000 million variants, if memory serves, requiring this number of signatures in the database to dumbly recognise ONE packet.
Now, today, governments benefit greatly from the mostly open nature of data transmitted across the net. Intelligence agencies must be doing their nut over useless proposals that simply have the effect of moving us ALL to obscured forms of net traffic. The new US system will ensure EVERYONE will come to the conclusion "I do not want my ISP sniffing my traffic".
PS Automated (or Human) takedowns of non-live material can never work. If the worst comes to the worst, people will simply post encrypted 'zips' with no description, and tell people to "watch this space". Seven days later (or whatever), the password will be posted alongside a description of contents. Sure, this still allows the uploaders to be targeted, but their has NEVER been a time when uploaders were unable to be targeted.
Since survey after survey shows that 'pirates' are also the biggest purchasers of 'legal' content, we already know that the solution is in providing the legal services people want (which means EVERYTHING available EVERYWHERE for use on ALL devices). The tech war should not be wasted on 'downloaders' but on finding better ways to get paid content available universally.
What were those, the famous last words of a few Anonymous script kiddies right before they got arrested?
Finding someone who is "anonymous" on the Internet is hard, in the same way that cracking a new hardware-based DRM scheme is hard. It can take a lot of work, at least if you're the first person trying to do it, but ultimately trying to establish two-way communications over the Internet and yet remain completely anonymous is just as futile as trying to lock up content that you're also showing to someone. There may be many levels of indirection that are difficult to follow, but it's impossible to do what you actually need to do and yet still remain 100% safe from hostile activity.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
I'd love for someone to explain to me how this isn't practically collusion. I am all eyes.
Encrypted connections to known usenet providers will probably get you "struck" the same as encrypted torrenting will, and everyone (according to the US Dept of Justice) who uses Mega is a pirate.
This will only speed up the race to fully encrypted comms.
Which will promptly be declared illegal in itself and probably with worse penalties than the original copyright infringement, unless you're connecting to an organisation sufficiently rich to allow it like a bank or government. Consider the way that merely circumventing technical measures protecting a copyrighted work is enough to make your actions illegal in many countries now even if your actual use of the work would have otherwise been completely legal. Just mention something about terrorism or child pornography and add the copyright thing as a rider, and every bought-and-paid-for politician this side of Mars will be voting for it to protect the public or something.
Copyright reform needs to happen before we get to everyone encrypting everything by default, or it's in danger of being the catalyst for something far worse than anything the **AA and their international brethren have ever done.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
If I've read right, this isn't the ISP detecting BT traffic or anything. The MAFIAA still has to find your IP and issue the alert. So as long as I'm keeping trackers proxied, using DHT, and blacklisting the copyright goons, does that mean no strikes?
Fortunately DtecNet can't see what Usenet providers you're connecting to. Oh wait, you don't have any idea how the six strikes system works and even if you did you'd just spout conspiracy theories anyway.
From the 2nd fine article:
If you feel "wrongly accused" then there is a $35 'review fee' to see precisely what you are accused of. It's refunded if you win, but if the Copyright Alert System is so sure of itself then why charge at all? Why not let individuals know what they are accused of without this stipulation that the fee is to stop "frivolous appeals?"
You actually have to pay money to see what this non-government cabal is accusing you of? It costs them next to nothing to tell you what the exact accusation is. It's just a few more bytes in the warning email or in a web page linked to by the email. I could maybe understand having to pay a fee to contest the charges but it is truly Kafkaesque to have to pay a fee just to find out what the charges are.
We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
-- Anais Nin
DUDE! That thing sticking outta the side of his head... is his tongue in his cheek... next you're supposed to laugh... and now we know why there are no savant comedians...
I have money and I'm willing to use it!
I only want to have to deal with one thing though. I don't want a hulu, and a netflix, and an iTunes, an amazon, etc. I just want something that I can plug into my TV and just type in what I want and then watch/listen to it.
Yeah, I get it. The content owners need to wheel and deal and figure out licensing and who can distribute what, etc. and whathave you. Well, guess what? I don't give a fuck. That's not my problem! And I'll be DAMNED if I have to watch advertising.
Right now the only thing that fits the bill is an elaborate setup of open source & home grown software with usenet and bit torrent running in my piracy VM. I recently added a seedbox to the mix, so that bit torrent downloads happen on a server that I rent pretty much anonymously. End result is that me (or my wife) types in what we want in a little search box, (with some optional parameters for video quality, etc.) and a few minutes later what we want shows up in a folder. Works for movies, works for music, works for TV, and it works for auto-downloading TV shows as they air too. Usenet and seedbox cost money and it took some know-how to set up but it's cheaper than the netflix/hulu thing and the selection is as good as it'll ever get. Plus I don't have to watch ads.
Our species needs new mental frameworks for dealing with information and ideas now that this internet thing has come along. Trying to regulate information sharing is doomed to fail if the information gets "out" onto the web. The sooner we, as a species, can come to grips with this, the better. I see myself as a pioneer in this new digital age.
Join the revolution! Get a VPS, a VPN, a seedbox, or all of the above.
or are you really that stupid?
I sincerely hope you're just one-upping the tongue-in-cheekiness of the parent poster. It was so thick, people walking around my cubicle slowed to a crawl.
"Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right" - Salvor Hardin
Several video games come with Ubuntu, and some of these appear similar to popular non-free commercial games. If the owner of copyright in one of those games complains, then everyone who downloaded Ubuntu might be getting a nastygram.
I would be curious to see how this will effect the smaller movie production companies. Currently I have a subscription to Netflix but I admit I do stream and download more alternative content off the internetz, and also big budget Hollywood films. I still go to movies in the theater though, because I have always loved the experience. I can't imagine ever owning a cable TV ever again though, and there's only one video store left in my town. I do not like Apple or their products as I have had some bad experiences, so iTunes is out. I suppose I could rent content off Amazon, but I really doubt it has the variety of programs and movies available that there are in the wild. It's a strange situation, as I am a huge cinephile and I'm always the first to talk about movies past and present to friends and spread the word. I can't imagine I am the only one in this scenario. What will happen when people such as myself, who have become accustomed to having a huge reservoir of programming, especially stuff outside the mainstream at their fingertips for little or no cost are left out in the cold. Hmm... without the incredible word of mouth situation that the internet has given us, it seems like the Indy film industry is going to take a major hit. And that just sucks.
Deep packet inspection is like someone opening your mail to see what sort of letter it contains. This is an illegal search. The ones performing the search don't even have any authority. An individual corporation like Comcast snooping through your connections is a wire tap being performed by a private party. I believe this is illegal activity and I would like to see Comcast sued in court over this. Who has a good lawyer and some money for this? Let's protect the right to privacy.
P.S. Let's not get in to a bunch of paranoid "no privacy already" bullshit because we don't have to accept that reality. Don't allow yourself to be so apathetic. Illegal behavior can be prosecuted.
P.P.S. Fuck CAPTCHA
Your reading comprehension skills match your knowledge of where the industry is going. 'Six Strikes' sets a precedent. When it doesn't work well enough, the industry will easily persuade politicians to force the ISPs to use methods already widely deployed by music/video streaming companies.
Let me make this so simple, even you can understand. Takedowns at Youtube, for instance, began with copyright owners having to identify infringing work themselves, and then make direct appeals to Google. As soon as the principle was established that Google was aware of massive amounts of infringing content, and that removing this content with takedown requests was far too slow, various courts DEMANDED (note that word) that Google develop technology solutions that could automatically recognize infringing content from lists of data provided by the owners.
Up to now, ISPs have acted as 'common carriers'- responsible for NOT knowing what traffic passes over their network. 'Six Strikes' reverses this position. Now the ISP is engaged in being a PARTY TO the process of identifying infringing content. Sooner or later, the ISPs will be obliged to use the same 'state of the art' as Google and others.
Now DPI can take many forms. As used by the intelligence agencies, it is obviously about reconstructing the data streams in their entirety, using databases of all common protocols used by higher network layers. Anti-piracy DPI does NOT need this mega-expensive approach. Signature matching is a statistical method that looks for patterns in runs of bytes. I am interested why you are so determined to distract people from anti-piracy solutions currently being implemented by signature-matching software companies across the planet. I would guess you financially benefit from such work, and desperately hope your solutions can be mandated for use by ISPs before countermeasures become widespread.
Of course, some might split-hairs as to whether signature matching counts as DPI, but that is irrelevant to my point.
To be honest, you sound a lot like the people who shill forums telling people that the government has 'magic' tech that can recover properly erased hard-drive files, or retrieve files from smashed drives. Or like the shills that deny the government has DPI equipment attached to ALL networks provided by the major telecoms companies in the USA. Funny how people who shill to a common purpose will use completely opposite arguments when it serves their purpose. In reality the government will do whatever tech allows it to do within cost constraints UNLESS the people fight back.
Just wait until they start using drones to enforce it....
Cancel your account.
Oh, that would be an inconvenience to you? God forbid you should have to go without Facebook and Twitter for a while, and actually start living life the way it was meant to be lived. God forbid you should actually have to pick up the phone and CALL SOMEONE rather then leaving a message on somebodies virtual wall.
Americans just don't fucking get it. Nothing will ever change unless you're willing to sacrifice stuff on your end to make a point. It's all just big talk and whining until something actually needs to be done, then everyone quickly adopts the mentality that "Oh someone else will take care of it for me".
Seriously, if you don't have the balls to call up your ISP and tell them to fuck off (hint: if everyone did this, they'd change their views on these issues REALLY FAST), then shut the fuck up. You have no right to complain about this shit. Don't tell me you need the internet because you don't. The whole problem with your society is that you THINK you do, because corporations and companies love that kind of crap. "I need my Facebook, therefore I need internet, and since there's only one ISP that services me I have no choice if they decide to change their terms of service".
Your entire society is ass backwards. You're so enslaved to the corporations it's hilarious in a sad kind of way. Companies think it's their right to have you as their customer, and that they can do whatever they want as a result. In reality, companies should think it's a privilege to have you as your customer because you're willing to pay them for something you see of value. If you don't like what they're selling then they need to know that you have the guts to go without it, because that will force them to change their services offered into something you find more palpable. This is the way it is in a good portion of the rest of the world.
Grow some fucking balls and do it. Cancel your service. Make sure they know why. If you all do it, you'll figure out really quickly that you DO have the power to change things you don't like. Stop complaining about it on the internet and take action. And don't you dare tell me that you can't do it because you "need" internet or you "need" TV. Bullshit. At most, all you need is a phone line. Take the time you've saved from watching your stupid TV shows and surfing the internet and take up hiking or something. Stop being willful slaves to this kind of corporate idiocy.
I can't wait until my parents get one of these notices. I'm savvy enough to not really give a fuck unless I actually get throttled. I know the emails aren't personal and won't really think much of Comcast basically accusing me of breaking the law. My parents, on the other hand, will go full ballistic on Comcast at the first letter. How dare Comcast accuse them of this?
And I'm not a lawyer, but there do seem to be a number of reasons and corporations to sue over the throttling of a connection where there is no actual infringement occuring.
Meanwhile, real pirates will easily get around it.
I really don't see this lasting long.
Of course IP blacklists aren't 100% effective, but is Peerblock http://www.peerblock.com/ still a viable defense against known tracking agencies? - HEX
Horror & SciFi Erotic Nudes
The article says, "get cut down to slower-than-molasses speeds of 256kbps". While my connection is in theory supposed to be much faster than that, in practice that sounds pretty close to the speed I actually get.
Oh but they did give you a chance to say "No I didn't" before. They just used your response as a means of self-incrimination and tried to sue you right afterwards.
NOW, they just give you a chance to pay $35 upfront.
"Of course, there are many ways around the Copyright Alert System", hmmm , like getting rid of the jews
Are you sure it's his tongue? Might be the antenna. They're not supposed to be visible, but some people have bad reactions to the materials.
Not that this wasn't entirely predictable.
Find your local gov rep and see if they have open wifi.
Change your MAC.
Download some pop "music" on their internet connection.
Other ideas:
Do similar things to neighbors of the rep; along with plenty of political stuff with their name on it.
Find their IP address. UDP them bad traffic; they can drop it but the ISP may see them getting stuff and that might be enough.
Find out how to report and protect your "IP" then use the process to punish anybody who downloads empty.gif images etc. I drew that empty.gif image! it took a lot of work to make a gif that is invisible and it solves many HTML problems ... all these websites are not paying me!!
File claims against politicians for their use of clip art etc - which I bet often are violations.
Spoof their IP on a public tracker as having 100% and seeding (but obviously not connecting to anybody successfully.)
Distribute a linux.iso under a big movie name. class action.
No, it's after you get busted ripping other people off SIX TIMES. Someone who produces software or content, like myself, has to catch you stealing my work that I put my time into programing and file a complaint. I have to show exactly what software I wrote that you ripped off, when you did so, from where, etc. Then the ISP slows your connection so you can rip me off at a slower pace. Or, if you want the software I wrote, you can spend the $5 to buy it from me.
Or, in the case of most of the software I write, you don't even have to buy it. It's free. All you have to is follow the GPL or Apache license that I give it to you under. I had to file a cease and desist against Plesk because they were pirating Apache licensed software I wrote. It's FREE! I'm GIVING it to you. Why the hell they were stealing free software I'll never understand. Just leave the license file in the package, how hard is that?
Laws have already been passed which describe using Tor, and allowing exit-node ...........
{I cant describe to much, because what i write here may be used against me in a future lawsuit}
Beware of the NeoCons, for their desire is nothing short of absolute control.
Bush 2000-2008{ Increase the U.S. national debt from 3-trillion to 12-trillion. So the U.S. government will eventually default on its loan. The British Royals and their private industry companies will persuade the American people that it's cheaper, and in the U.S. citizens best interest to allow the the British Royals{Neo-Cons} to provide the service. {All roads will be toll roads now, Nuclear reactors start selling souvenir pieces of uranium, make you believe somehow that coal is clean and black lung is good, charge you more money for a smaller quantity of food by making you believe that lower calories are good and reason enough to pay more, make the American people believe that by giving up their guns they are protecting the children, and have the American people believe that what Neo-cons means is "New Conservative" not "New Police", have the American people believe that they are not dumb-ass for allowing their country to be taken over by the Neo-Cons.}
...BitTorrent client and tracker updates that report fake IP addresses, or if the packet inspection is going on at the local ISP level, reporting as another protocol or some other way of tricking the packer inspections.
You know it's coming.
Now when will we get to see the first Doctor of Copyright Education?
Ok great. How would I go about reporting all users of Pinterest, including all employees of Pinterest, Inc.? Let's start this program out with a bang just to point out the entire absurdity of selective enforcement on the Web.
I think kicking it off with a million or so forced educational programs on the first day would bury this program pretty quickly.
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
Ok, so what about games like World of Warcraft which use a P2P system to distribute legit patches? I wonder if any P2P type traffic will be potential victim of this, or if they're specifically looking just at BitTorrent users?
Oh waitaminute!!! According to WowWiki http://www.wowwiki.com/Blizzard_Downloader , the original Warcraft updater used BitTorrent code.
So, will this system be able to distinquish between legitimate uses of BitTorrent and pirate uses? Am I in danger of being flagged when one or all of the three four computers in my house with the World of Warcraft client gets an update?
Basically, I've never used a pirate BitTorrent... but I do have perfectly legal/allowed by the content holder BitTorrent traffic, so what are my chances of getting caught up in this (overly wide) dragnet?
The Digital Sorceress
2. Switch over to Usenet or a similiar site..
I never stopped using Usenet. When the ISPs killed off free access- most people didn't switch to a paid service like easynews or giganews and beginning circa 2008 there was definitely less diversity and obscurity in binaries posts. Maybe not easy to understand for every day users compared to torrents (formats, joiners, what to do with missing parts, etc.), but you're not uploading anything when you're downloading. Not to plug easynews, but they even have a web portal that joins all the parts for you and you can download everything at ISP speeds over HTTPS. Much better than dealing with trickle speeds you get from the more obscure torrents.
If you make your customers think they are not anonymous on your service, and especially if you hit them with false positives, they are going to call you, complain, file formal complaints with the states attorney general, and ultimately leave for services that protect their rights. They will also do things such as, for example, using SeaMonkey which by default attempts to establish a HTTPS session with everyone, and you will also create demand for encryption products that hide both the application and the traffic going over the wire. SSL is pretty insecure, but what if everyone used IPSEC and encrypted the L4 transport securely? Aah...
There's a humungous difference between aggressive enforcement of tautology and passive enforcement of the law.
Ehh.... what did he just say to us?
Someone flopped a steamer in the gene pool.
I'm reminded of the ISPs that shut out their own customers who were playing Blizzard's "World of Warcraft".... which uses bittorrent to distribute software patches among their subscribers.
Years ago, someone made a driver for linux that allowed one to transfer IP data packets using short wave radio. Thus, everyone out there tunes to a frequency and gets to see the network traffic. Since shortwave is mobile and doesn't go through routers, then no ISP or gov cop can 't monitor the traffic and slow it down. The only ways would be to jam the frequency.
Me, I like the telegram dot-dash approach to network traffic .......
The ISP is paid to provide a level of service. By reducing bandwidth they are reducing service. In conjunction prices should be reduced to match service. Seems like a clear issue for a class action.
Furthermore it seems like the copyright holders are acting in collusion to control and exert monopolistic pressure over another industry. Seems like that should be grounds to sue.
I see you haven't actually read anything at all regarding the system. Good job. The "six strikes" refers to the six steps in the process. It can be initiated for a single infringement. But you'd know that if you knew, oh, anything at all.
I suspect even using Tor will get you on this list, as counter-intuitive that may seem. Destroying privacy is the real driving force behind this system.
Whats better? I have 25/5 U/D here at home, and a debian server set up with transmission, so either would be easy enough for me to set up. I can download a movie in about 7-15 min depending on the swarm size. how much would that slow down? We usually arent waiting for a movie but sometimes its nice to get it quick. What are peoples Experiences??