Slashdot Mirror
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.
Can we PLEASE keep referring to it as "Six Strikes system"? Not the Industry-concocted, innocent-sounding "alert system" crap? Thank you.
This will only speed up the race to fully encrypted comms.
Good-bye
" 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.
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!"
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.
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?
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...
Offering to make my house payment, are we?
ProTip: This is Slashdot, not Facebook. Many of us not only work from home, we're also employed doing something other than stuffing envelopes.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.