Comcast Working On 'Helpful' Copyright Violation Pop-ups

gregor-e writes "Comcast is said to be preparing to snoop on your internet browsing to detect when you attempt to download a copyright-protected item. On detection, Comcast will pop up a helpful window that contains information about where you can obtain a legal version of whatever you're downloading. 'While sources familiar with the new initiative emphasized that it is being seen as a complement to CAS [a.k.a. six strikes] and not a replacement, the very emergence of an alternative raises questions as to the viability of CAS, which has been criticized for myriad reasons ranging from the questionable strategic rationale of punishing subscribers to an implementation that has been characterized as scattershot. How the two systems would coexist is unclear.'" Comcast will be inviting other ISPs to join its new system as well.

Comments

I do not usually do this...

[Anonymous Coward]

... but ROFL OMG LOL ZOMG DHCP BBQ.

Also stfu slashdot, i'll yell when i want to

Re:I do not usually do this...

[Anonymous Coward]

CALLING ALL TROLLS!

Please troll this forum: http://stltommorow.proboards.com/

All troll tactics are encouraged, including actual trolling, crapflooding, goatse links, etc.

CALLING ALL TROLLS!

murrika

[Anonymous Coward]

land of the free!

Re:murrika

[Anonymous Coward]

slashdot: land of liberal niggerlovers who think it's SO VERY HORRIBLY TERRIBLE for me to say nigger. because they never lived near a bunch of niggers, had anything not nailed down go missing, seen them congregate in packs of 20-30 all of them thugged out and most of them armed, blasting loudass rap music into the wee hours of the morning, aggressively yelling at anyone on the public road, vandalizing everything with gangsta graffiti, destroying property values, causing cop cars to show up weekly, letting their undisciplined bastard kids run around causing trouble, parking junk cars in the yard and leaving them on blocks, and generally acting like the goddamned vermin they are.

note: you CANNOT gently correct a nigger. when youre in a movie theater and they yell into their cellphones (that EBT bought) or yell shit at the movie, you cannot nicely say "sorry to bother you but we can't hear the movie". you will be threatened, they will get even louder to show you who's boss, and you may end up in a fight. they were taken out the jungle but there's no getting the jungle out of them.

what you libs show on TV and see on TV is the sanitized idealized version of blacks, the African American. you don't see real niggers on the news etc unless you watch the crime reports. tv shows always have to have a lawyer, doctor, political leader who is black and smart and resourceful. if they were really that way there'd be no racism. very very few of them are. most of them are the sort that would make Martin Luther King fucking ashamed of the civil rights movement.

Re:murrika

[Aryden]

slashdot: land of liberal niggerlovers who think it's SO VERY HORRIBLY TERRIBLE for me to say nigger. because they never lived near a bunch of niggers, had anything not nailed down go missing, seen them congregate in packs of 20-30 all of them thugged out and most of them armed, blasting loudass rap music into the wee hours of the morning, aggressively yelling at anyone on the public road, vandalizing everything with gangsta graffiti, destroying property values, causing cop cars to show up weekly, letting their undisciplined bastard kids run around causing trouble, parking junk cars in the yard and leaving them on blocks, and generally acting like the goddamned vermin they are.

Sounds exactly like the rednecks I grew up with. Swap the rap for country and its a dead ringer. Now, would you kindly go fuck off and die?

Re:murrika

[Kochnekov]

Wow, this came out of nowhere.

Is this so bad?

[Anonymous Coward]

I mean, if this prevent having to deal with the RIAA or the MFAA and all the legal expenses, wouldn't it be better to be warned and go "My bad." and move along?

Yeah, in an ideal World, justice would prevail and yadda yadda yadda, but let's face it, they'll bury you in legal fees - guilty or not - and it would be nice to have someone to back you up saying, "he made a mistake. He won't do it again, right?"

Life is not fair and our legal system is weighted against us average Joes.

Let's take the break where we can get them.

Or maybe not.

Slide some $$$ to the EFF and be passive aggressive.

Re:Is this so bad?

[Virtucon]

I think the EFF is outgunned here when you have former Senator Chris Dodd heading up the MPAA. There's a reason why the MPAA and RIAA have friends in DC and why we have laws like the DMCA and an abhorrent fear that the profits of the members of these organizations is at risk. John Doe suits have been their bread and butter attack method and now with more and more Federal Judges growing backbones it would appear that their tactic involves harassing the ISPs all the while greasing the palms of Congress. Let's not forget where the push for SOPA comes from, it's guys like old Chris there, pushing his contacts in DC.

Re:Is this so bad?

[Anonymous Coward]

You guys here at Slashdot have spent the last 12 years fighting to legalize your pre-college, college-, post-college habit of spending all your leisure time downloading content from fold-tent-one-step-ahead-of-the-sheriff sites, 80 percent of which you'll never get around to listen to or watch.

So who won? You didn't win. Look around at pop music and what's being created today. Taylor Swift, Katy Perry and Justin Bieber style music is all that anyone can make money doing nowadays. Tower Records and all of its bricks and mortar competitors went out of business long ago. So did Borders.

SOMEBODY will make big money from content, that's how capitalism works, and now we see the winners are big, ugly somebodies like Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T, the owners of the pipes, along with the Chinese and South Koreans who manufacture the handsets and others gadgets. All you guys did was drive the individual artists out of business so these corporate bullies could step in and rake *all* the profits.

Re:Is this so bad?

[Anonymous Coward]

Different AC: Before widespread music piracy, there were plenty of bands on the radio.

After? We have Bieber, and predigested corporate rock bands, old bands... and nothing else. No new bands on the radio, no cool rockin' stuff. Just highly homogenized junk where the only thing singing is Autotune.

Re:Is this so bad?

[cheekyjohnson]

All you guys did was drive the individual artists out of business so these corporate bullies could step in and rake *all* the profits.

Is that really why it ("it" refers to music you don't like being produced and many people buying it) happened, or is that what you wish the cause to be?

Re:Is this so bad?

[davydagger]

"All you guys did was drive the individual artists out of business so these corporate bullies could step in and rake *all* the profits."
No, the same big corporations such as the RIAA and MPAA did that. Its because of their aggressive marketing, they've made sure there is no markett for anyone else. Justin Bieber is what you can listen to without being being labeled as "crazy", or something else where you inherently lack rights, such as being free from assault. This was going on even in the 1990s.

". All you guys did was drive the individual artists out of business so these corporate bullies could step in and rake *all* the profits."
First you complain about big chain stores, next your talking about artists going out of business. Now has never been a better time for live music. This is a bold face lie. None of those artists made a dime off record sales.

" Taylor Swift, Katy Perry and Justin Bieber style music is all that anyone can make money doing nowadays."

Black Sabbath Just go back together and released a new album with all original content. Oh, it sounds sick too.

I think there is more live music going on now, and with the same computers, and even the same technology that is used to "pirate", such as CD Burners, MP3s, and audio tools, can easily be used by artists to produce music without the need for record labels.

The only people really bitching are record label owners. They've always been sleeze bags who've abused musicians. So take your corporation shill ass out of here. Don't wanna here it. The movie industry doesn't have to pay the same 10-20 shitty actors $30 million a movie for a blockbuster with a total budget of $100 million, then bitch about money.

Next you'll talk about how living wage drove blue collar jobs to china.

Re:Is this so bad?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is worse than bad - not a single Copyright Enforcement Entity (CEE) or Copyright Troll (tm pending) as I like to call them has been able to correctly identify copyrighted works 1 time out of 50.

How many intentionally false (let's call them what they are - Malicious Lies) takedown notices have there been? How many takedown notices for a Copyright Trolls own works on their own websites?

What will happen is you will get hit with a popup when you go to download your own content from youtube, with a pointer to Viacom's website where they will sell you your own work (with their copyright on it) for only 100 bucks.

We need Copyright reform - revert copyrights back to their original 14 year period. Rescind the illegal DCMA (it's illegal because it intentionally, and maliciously extends copyright to infinity as it doesn't have any codified enforcement of decryption keys being put into escrow for the public to decrypt encrypted works after 14 years.

PAEs and CEEs are our nations worst Enemies, right after our own Government and the *AAs of this country that do nothing but steal from the artists and their customers just to pad their fat asses further.

Re:Is this so bad?

[Anonymous Coward]

How does "downloading content ... 80 percent of which you'll never get around to listen to or watch" produce the effect of "drive the individual artists out of business?"

The individual artists didn't pay for the bandwidth we used to download the crap we purportedly ignored. Or are you saying that the 20% we listened to drove them out of business because, obviously, we would have bought all of that content otherwise, and spending that money would have kept the artists in business?

Fact #1: reducing price increases consumption. At a price of zero, it is guaranteed that people are consuming quite a lot of content that they never would have paid a dime for. So that downloading (at no cost to the artist) would not have translated to pure profit if downloading were not an option, and in fact only a tiny portion of it would have translated to sales, and therefore it could not possibly have hit their sales as hard as you seem to think it did.

Fact #2: The labels habitually left their signed talent owing them money after their albums made the labels a fortune. THAT harmed the artist far more than the free exposure provided by downloading. Buying more albums would not have changed this *at all*.

Fact #3: The issue is not as polarized as you seem to think. Plenty of people on slashdot approve of copyright law, but disapprove of these means of enforcement. Your slippery-slope fallacy is falling on deaf ears.

So there you have it.

Re:Is this so bad?

[Anonymous Coward]

The pop music industry I grew up with (as a fan, not musician) was almost totally dependent on record sales to people aged 15-30, particularly males who have free time and disposable income but often no family responsibilities. Take those away and the industry withers and dies. That's the way it's been for the past 95 years, since RCA released the first really good record player (the Victrola around 1917 I think). But these were the ones who were most attracted to P2P and now, by googling (!) for pirate sites. If enough of these young people adopt the doctrine that "I will never again pay for recorded music, except maybe one in a blue moon because of some extraordinary circumstance" then it's not surprising that Tower Records, HMV, Virgin Records, Sam Goody, etc. all went out of business within a few years of one another.

Your Fact #1 sounds like a rehash from Techdirt. That Mike guy is a moron, just because he somehow got a bachelor's degree in economics long ago doesn't mean he has a clue. Products given away for free are at best lost leaders, they only make sense as door openers to substantial sales of other products and services, and no, I don't mean t-shirts and baseball caps with the band's logo.

Fact #2 ignores the ability to create new record labels at will. *EVERY* record label is corrupt and run by assholes? That's an easy cynical play in a forum like this, just like a similar statement regarding politicians, but anybody can start a new record label and if it was a musician or promoter with a substantial track record in the industry and reputation for honesty and straight dealing then s/he could attract a following. In fact, this has happened over and over again across the decades.

Re:Is this so bad?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes/No.

Almost certain the common carrier provisions that allow these guys to avoid being sued for content should be reliant on them not touching (or looking at in a meaningful way, as we all should know what that entails at a trunk level) afforementioned content.

Re:Is this so bad?

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't seem to understand anything outside of a human context. I don't think you even know what constitutes a win for us.

Re:Is this so bad?

[Anonymous Coward]

DO you have any idea how the music business works? Artists make money of off venues not from record sells. Record companies and there neo-communist monopolies are what drove the music industry out of business.

Your lack of knowledge, and your rush just to mouthing off shows you nothing about how it works. There is no link to piracy to loss of revenue this has been proven with some great investigative work, by some (very few) journalists. And the record companies paid for the studies only to find out they shot themselves in the foot, and then tried to cover up or bury the studies.

Taylor Swift, Katy Perry and Justin Bieber, these type of people have been around for years, it is called teen pop, and the record companies have been doing this since the 50's, exploiting looks, over talent. They did it with "hair bands", any band they came across they would dress up, control there music and throw on a stage to make a buck. We saw this again with the Seattle sound, even going to great lengths to sell flannel shirts, and torn jeans.

Don't get mad because you have no talent or think your some type of great fuckin messiah for music, you seem like every other musician that thinks they are great or are the next great thing but cannot accept the fact they aren't good.

Re:Is this so bad?

[PopeRatzo]

...downloading content from fold-tent-one-step-ahead-of-the-sheriff sites...

Son, do you realize TPB has been around longer than Facebook?

Taylor Swift, Katy Perry and Justin Bieber style music is all that anyone can make money doing nowadays.

That's complete bullshit. There's a community of artists here in my town who are making decent middle-class livings as musicians without having to be like any of those people. With health insurance and homes and everything.

SOMEBODY will make big money from content, that's how capitalism works

Maybe you need a refresher course in what capitalism really means. You can find several very good syllabi and reading lists online. You will learn that "SOMEBODY will make big money from content" doesn't have anything to do with "capitalism", when capitalism is actually working. Corporatism is not capitalism.

Re:Is this so bad?

[LordLimecat]

I mean, if this prevent having to deal with the RIAA or the MFAA and all the legal expenses, wouldn't it be better to be warned and go "My bad." and move along?

If we set aside the whole "monitoring your connection" issues (privacy issues, who watches the watchers, etc) and pretend thats not a problem... and if this were them "sending you a friendly warning letter", maybe thered be some room for discussion.

But the only way to accomplish what Comcast is suggesting here is by MITMing all of your connections and injecting content into the middle. Thats great in company environment, and "less than great" on a home ISP connection where you have a high expectation of privacy. Off the top of my head, some major concerns here:

• What if the JS that Comcast injects opens up security holes / info leaks?
• What are your chances of holding them liable or proving it, much more given the nature of the notices-- you would essentially have to admit to everyone that you got one of these potentially embarassing notices
• Will that injection be legally considered a "notice", and what happens if it never arrives (noscript etc)-- could that cause further liability on your end?
• Will it trigger "unsafe connection" notices in otherwise Secure pages, and potentially open the door for SSL leaks (mixed content is a big security hole)
• Are they MITMing SSL via a trusted CA? That presents about a million other concerns, if so

I am not one to rail at the RIAA / MPAA without acknowledging that there is an issue with piracy (or whatever you want to call it). But 95% of the time the issue is that the response-- whether by MPAA, RIAA, or the ISPs -- is that the response is completely over the top. This is a golden example-- Comcast here suggests completely undermining the expectation of privacy and integrity of the connection they provide.

Why do you think the Sandvine / bittorrent issue a few years ago was such a big deal? Its because "somebody" randomly inserting bogus traffic into your connection represents a MASSIVE threat.

Re:Is this so bad?

[Drakonblayde]

The brick and mortars going out of business was something that was going to happen regardless. When you can make distribution more or less instantaneous from the comfort of your own home, folks will take the convenient option most of the time. I for one do not miss having to haul around a mess of CD's in my car, which has a six-changer that's never been used, nor do I miss lugging around a huge library of technical books when my tablet can essentially hold a full reference library for a fraction of the weight.

The next thing to go will be movie theaters. Sooner or later, some enterprising company is going to try offering movies on demand at release instead of waiting out the normal theater release period. It'll cost something like $50, but that will still be cheaper than hauling the family into the theater, paying marked up ticket prices, marked up concession prices, and having to deal with some idiots crying kid.

Whether or not it's right or contributes to the degradation of our society's ability to actually socialize is a whole other discussion, but there is no stopping the march of technology and it's use to feed the public's ever growing demand for instant gratification.

Re:Is this so bad?

[Anonymous Coward]

People have been saying the same thing about radio since before you were born. You really think that, for instance, the 80s was a time when people didn't complain about the mainstream radio stations all sounding the same?

Re:Is this so bad?

[Nyder]

... Look around at pop music and what's being created today. Taylor Swift, Katy Perry and Justin Bieber style music is all that anyone can make money doing nowadays. ...

This is why you aren't taken serious. Only a few musicians actually get rich making music. Their record companies though get very rich off them and other musicians they sign. It has always been this way, and they are fighting hard as hell to keep it that way.

Re:Is this so bad?

[Anonymous Coward]

The real irony is that 'copyright' is as anti-capitalist as you can get.

Re: Is this so bad?

[Anonymous Coward]

80%!my Fucking sides... Give them back
Srsly, you think most people download shit and don't sit there and wait for it to finish for a reason? Even the porn I've torrented I have viewed (albeit in 20-30 minute sessions)

Re: Is this so bad?

[th3rmite]

My ISP once swore up and down that I had illegally downloaded Final Destination 4. I used to think all of this whining about people getting in trouble for downloading movies and music was total BS. My mind was changed once I had been falsely accused as no amount of discussion would get any consideration from my ISP.

Re:Is this so bad?

[Anonymous Coward]

You do realize that the DMCA is illegal right? It illegally extends copyright to infinity as there is no provision for escrowing the decryption keys of the encrypted content after copyright expires.

the MPAA / RIAA are what's wrong with copyright, copyrights aren't for corporate profits, they are to get material into the public domain.
That's why the original copyright laws declared a 14 year copyright term limit. That needs to be returned, and all those movies, all that music that is 14+ years old becomes free, public-domain. Just as it was supposed to be.

Right now all these corporate ass-rapers are doing is stealing what rightfully belongs to us. People who download are only taking what's theirs back.

Re:Is this so bad?

[nerdonamotorcycle]

I was there. The term "corporate rock" was invented in the 1980s for a reason.

Re:Is this so bad?

[Anonymous Coward]

Guess what - before the internet, there were tape swaps, vinyl to tape recorders, 8-track recorders, reel to reel recorders - off air recorders.

Nothing has changed since the advent of the first music reproduction system that consumers could record with, aside from quality and ease of reproduction/distribution.

People who download were never going to buy the product - that means NO LOST PROFITS. NONE. ZILCH. ZIPPO.
Hell, people who download end up BUYING more product than those that don't as they get exposed to more variety. It actually IMPROVES sales.

It's the MPAA/RIAA fucktards that think they lose out on every download - that's sheer stupidity - we're talking hyper-ultra-mega-special-olympic stupidity here folks, and these are the people that end up migrating into the political arena after they've ruined 1000s of people's lives raiding corporate profits for short term stock gains, they move on to ruin millions of peoples lives by giving away tax money to the worst corporate offenders and pocketing it for themselves.

Re:Is this so bad?

[jd2112]

So who won? You didn't win. Look around at pop music and what's being created today. Taylor Swift, Katy Perry and Justin Bieber style music is all that anyone can make money doing nowadays. Tower Records and all of its bricks and mortar competitors went out of business long ago. So did Borders.

Oh really? Actually there is as much or more music being made today than before the big bad Internet 'destroyed' the music industry. You may not know this if you only listen to terrestrial radio but there is a lot of music being made, of every genre imaginable.

Few artists today can sell a million records. Those than can you find on the radio. The rest you have to search out. For those artists the Internet is their friend.

I have discovered a lot of new music listening to Pandora and Slacker that I would never have heard listening to the radio. Hell I've discovered entire genres that I hadn't heard of. I've watched their videos on Youtube and learned about the artists on Facebook. If you aren't a top-tier pop, hip-hop or country act the record companies are willing to put marketing muscle behind the Internet provides a way for artists to take promotion into their own hands.

In some cases the Internet even provides artists with the means to bypass the labels altogether, allowing them to be in control over their own destiny. Sure, they won't have any platinum records on the wall but for true artists it is more important than selling out your artistic vision to get a big-label record contract.

Music isn't dying. Slowly but surely the big record labels are, at least in their current form.

Re:Is this so bad?

[nanoflower]

Agreed. It had little to do with piracy and much to do with the rise of only a few companies owning the radios stations in multiple markets. They decided that focusing on the most popular music and playing the same thing in every market was the way to go. That made it much harder for new bands that didn't fit the mold to make it.

Re:Is this so bad?

[Hognoxious]

Black Sabbath Just go back together and released a new album with all original content. Oh, it sounds sick too.

I'm not up to speed with current hipster talk. Does that mean good or bad?

Re:Is this so bad?

[wonkey_monkey]

Dude. You just got old.

Re:Is this so bad?

[gl4ss]

well the warning shows that they know what you're going to download - that is bad, next up riaa is suing them for the information. ..and they want other isp's to submit the information for them as well.

every fucking file you download they'll know.

(well, http anyways. want to bet that every tpb proxy goes on the list instantly and it will not check which torrent it is.. it will just say that it's probably illegal to scare).

Re:Is this so bad?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't know about the movie theather one. All my friends already know how to download prescreeners for free before the movie is launched, and not living in US we get the launches late anyways. We still go to movies together. I don't think any of us would pay $50 for early release of some movie. There are so many unseen mevies anyway that are out in netflix or other services. I've noticed the same abotut games. All the new big ones are just sequels to old FPSses, and so I don't buy AAA games anymore. Also I kinda missed more than 10 years of gaming when everything seemed to go 3D FPSers (I did pirate some, didn't feel like they were worth paying for), and finding the alternatives was way too hard. Now I have Steam, and Steam and multiple indie game studios have my money. I'd buy boxed copies of the games I've downloaded from steam, but can't because they aren't available. Only boxed stuff for PC I find nowdays is SIMS, latest 3D shooters, and new versions of EAs sports games. All boring as hell.

Re:Is this so bad?

[fido_dogstoyevsky]

Black Sabbath Just go back together and released a new album with all original content. Oh, it sounds sick too.

I'm not up to speed with current hipster talk. Does that mean good or bad?

Yes.

Re:Is this so bad?

[shentino]

Correlation is not causation.

Re:Is this so bad?

[Drakonblayde]

Let me put it this way -

I have 3 kids and a wife. Counting myself, that means 5 people. Prices in my area run ~10 for an adult, ~8 for a child. So I'm already up to $44 just to get into the door. Then for concessions, figure about 7.50 a head, and that's being conservative. So add another $38ish, and I've already got a pretty expensive night out for the family. Since we traditionally eat out when we go to the movies, that generally adds another 40 bucks or so.

Now, I'm also a technically savvy geek, who likes his toys. I have a fairly nice home theater system. Have to watch Star Wars in style, you know.

Now let's say my tv provider was offering the same movie I'd go see in the theater as an on demand option, at the same time it's in the theater, for $50. A quick run to the store to buy some soda and microwave popcorn and order out for a pizza for dinner instead, and I've got some fairly substantial savings, can watch the movie in the comfort of my own home on my nice equipment, and I don't have to drive anywhere and deal with a crowd. I'd leap at that.

Re:Is this so bad?

[shentino]

One thing that the MAFIAA has right about "stealing profits"

Money is a finite resource, and you can only spend so much of it before you're broke.

So in a sense, when you pirate something instead of buying it, you are getting your cake for free, and money you could have spent on the media you "stole" instead goes to someone else. Whereas if you didn't pirate, you'd have to make a choice as to where you spend your finite money. Everyone having goods or services to sell you is competing for your money, and if you pirate something instead of paying for it, you cheat the producer out of his chance to win your dollars by satisfying you as a customer. In that sense, it's just like shoplifting. The common factor isn't deprivation of physical goods, but in cheating the producer out of compensation they are due for providing the good or service.

Don't get me wrong, the MAFIAA is a pack of greedy fucks. And everyone knows that marginal costs should reduce to zero becuase media is so cheap to reproduce, so I would very much like capitalism to flush out the rent seeking and economic profits.

They are however right that pirating deprives them of money that went to someone else when you still get your cake and eat it too, because the money you could have spent on their goods instead goes to someone else.

If you think media is overpriced for its quality, don't buy it. Boycott it. Making sacrifices because of a finite budget is just part of being a consumer, and providers of goods and services have to fight over your spending dollars just like everything else.

In one sense, piracy is not theft, because you're not taking anything physical. However, as far as cheating the producer out of compensation, it's no different from shoplifting. If it's valuable enough to pirate, it's valuable enough to pay for. If we don't like the price, we simply do without and hope that the producer plays ball and lowers the price.

How low they can go before they quit selling? Depends on how much it costs them to produce it. The free market can sort it out.

Re:Is this so bad?

[shentino]

The blame lies on the record companies.

However, the musicians who sell their souls to them aren't completely blameless.

Artists need to be braver about reaching out to their fans, and need to start filing anti-trust lawsuits against record companies who sabotage indie marketing.

Re:Is this so bad?

[shentino]

If the copyright expires, it's no longer infringement or circumvention.

And returning copyright to sane terms won't help. SCOTUS just proved it's possible to retroactively take stuff out of the public domain even after its copyright expired.

Re:Is this so bad?

[Ardyvee]

Valid argument. One problem: people (common people that aren't your regular slashdot user) are already paying for the content. So, to reduce prices/increase quality (I'm more willing to pay for FLACs), we would have to convince the regular music buyer that doesn't really care about the things I care because they find that the offerings are cheap enough for them and good enough for them.

In my case, I try to buy as much as I can. Which is little, but I try to. My steam account usually grows during holiday/sales seasons because I buy things I've been waiting to buy for a long time and they are finally at a price I can justify spending on my budget (which is admittedly pretty much non-existent). I don't remember the last time I obtained music from bandcamp that wasn't either free or I paid for it (and some of the music I want to pay for I'm willing to spend twice the minimum price). But there are things I am not going to pay for that I may get from other sources. They mostly fall into the category of: I should play/listen/see this to grow in what I consider is culture of the medium (kind of like never playing half-life, or doom1/2; or never listening to the beatles or some other important musician) and this is slowly reducing itself thanks to offering like spotify (which let me listen to some things I won't pay for but want to listen to, or can't pay for but want to listen to).

Books are the lucky medium, I suppose. I have a high tendency to buy one of those, and I barely ever obtain through other methods a book/book series.

Re:Is this so bad?

[guyniraxn]

Hipster? You're a few decades out of date with popular culture too.

Re:Is this so bad?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why?

Re:Is this so bad?

[BlueStrat]

... Look around at pop music and what's being created today. Taylor Swift, Katy Perry and Justin Bieber style music is all that anyone can make money doing nowadays. ...

This is why you aren't taken serious. Only a few musicians actually get rich making music. Their record companies though get very rich off them and other musicians they sign. It has always been this way, and they are fighting hard as hell to keep it that way.

Musician here. Spot on, at least as to the record labels having historically horribly abused & cheated the artists.

To get some idea how this works and how bad it typically is for the majority of artists who are, or are trying to become, "signed" with a label, check out this piece by Steve Albini on negativeland.com

"This oft-referenced article is from the early â(TM)90s, and originally appeared in Maximum Rock ânâ(TM) Roll magazine. While some of the information and figures listed here are dated, it is still a useful and informative article."

http://www.negativland.com/news/?page_id=17.

One of the record labels' top priorities is controlling the means of distribution. That's the actual, underlying reason they are pushing DRM and copyright-related laws/regulations, particularly those that involve the internet and digital (copyable) media formats, streaming, etc. It's aimed ultimately at erecting barriers to entry for independent artists in both marketing & distribution channels using the internet as a vehicle.

Once it becomes commonplace for artists in the top-100 to be independents without a mainstream "label" contract, the old recording labels and their associated parasites will be truly doomed. They know this. That's the reason for the war on sharing, various forms of independent distribution/marketing channels, and internet radio.

Want to support artists? Go to shows. Buy CDs & merch. Share their music with those who haven't heard of them. Encourage those friends to do the same. Tell the bar/club/venue owner when you like the band, and that you'd come back and bring friends when they play there next time.

There are tons of amazingly-talented and hard-working artists & bands playing in bars/clubs/festivals/etc all over. Simply not buying cookie-cutter record-label music is not enough. You need to support the bands and artists you would rather see take their place.

Keep in mind that even the members in most above-average-talent bar/club bands could make more money working part-time at McD's or Walmart. A modest-but-decent used bar-gigging-quality guitar can easily cost over $500. Used modest-but-decent amp easily over $1,000. Let's not even talk drum sets.

That's also not counting the PA and lights that many small/medium bars/clubs do not provide, and then a vehicle/trailer to haul all that crap around with and all the costs associated with that.

Strat

Re:Is this so bad?

[Gr8Apes]

This exactly. In fact, payola was going on before the corporations took over the radio stations, although there were still independent hold outs until the late 90s. MTV, back when it played music in the early 80s, was the source for the major renaissance and new music, because all the owned, err, signed bands wouldn't send videos, and the ones that did were all relative unknowns, exposing the public to an entire wave of new artists. The early 80s were good, then MTV started showing game shows and corporations took over again. I was hopeful that the internet would break the hold corporations had on music, but apparently they've managed to Disneyfy the entire industry with the aforementioned crap.

Re:Is this so bad?

[Gr8Apes]

The distribution industry relied on record sales, not the artists. They relied on ticket sales and ACAP royalties, with a few select exceptions.

Being able to create new labels at will doesn't do much for you - you have to have connections to get into the distribution channel, one that has been owned and crapped away by what's now the big 4, IIRC.

Re:Is this so bad?

[Anonymous Coward]

Black Sabbath Just go back together and released a new album with all original content. Oh, it sounds sick too

Black Sabbath was big in the seventies. Those guys must be in their sixties. Maybe you can plug new albums from Paul McCartney, the Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, Billy Joel, and Aerosmith while you're at it.

Where's the music from your generation?

Re:Is this so bad?

[TemporalBeing]

Look around at pop music and what's being created today. Taylor Swift, Katy Perry and Justin Bieber style music is all that anyone can make money doing nowadays. Tower Records and all of its bricks and mortar competitors went out of business long ago. So did Borders.

Well, I think people like The Piano Guys (on YouTube) and Tiffany Alvord(on YouTube) and numerous others that have followed suit would beg to differ. They all do quite well - and probably better than they would through RIAA.

And in the case of the two mentioned above - both do versions of existing music (thus existing artists/authors get paid), as well as their own original music; and quite honestly, their stuff is usually a lot better than the Taylor Swift, Katy Perry, and Justin Bieber stuffs out there.

Re:Is this so bad?

[sjames]

So what happens when you're not actually breaking the law at all and you keep getting popups on unrelated sites (including potentially work related sites) claiming you're a crook?

What happens if you're trying to debug the HTML in a website and you can't because they keep injecting crap that isn't actually there into your browser?

Do I get to force a pop-up onto their CEO's browser that says quit falsely accusing me of a crime? Quit snooping on me? Quit making people think it's me and my website behaving like a flaming ass?

Re:Is this so bad?

[Anonymous Coward]

Pop music has always been shit.

Re:Is this so bad?

[Anonymous Coward]

Safety Dance, Walk Like An Egyptian, And I Ran, Der Kommisar. The 80s were shit. MTV was shit.

Re:Is this so bad?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Sick" has been used in popular culture since at least the early 90s (I think 80s too). Popular portrayals of skaters, punks, metalheads, stoners, etc. Not a new thing with the current concept of what a hipster is today (nor really were the aforementioned ever considered hipster types in the heights of their respective popularities).

Re:Is this so bad?

[Nyder]

Dude, Love Steve Albini. Big Black is one my favorite bands of all time. =)

Re:Is this so bad?

[Macgrrl]

I prefer Solid Rock.

Re:Is this so bad?

[Anonymous Coward]

Now let's say my tv provider was offering the same movie I'd go see in the theater as an on demand option, at the same time it's in the theater, for $50.....and I've got some fairly substantial savings, can watch the movie in the comfort of my own home on my nice equipment, and I don't have to drive anywhere and deal with a crowd. I'd leap at that.

May as well capture the A/V signal (if you can) and burn it on a DVD to watch again later until the OFFICIAL DVD comes out (if you want to buy it).

Then there is/should be increased safety so you don't wind up dead/injured like these unfortunate souls....

This incident was the last straw for me...I'll wait for the DVD of a movie I want to see come out then I'll buy it and watch it in relative safety at my place of residence.

It's a shame that human life on planet Earth has gotten so cheap that people COMMIT and subsequently other people become somewhat desensitized to random acts of mass violence that occur all over the globe....

Re: Is this so bad?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your ISP either screwed up somewhere, someone there (or elsewhere) 'had it in for you' to get you in trouble, or your PC had bittorrent-style malware on it and dl/ed the movie behind your back without your knowledge or consent. In the court of law, money, not facts or justice, talk the loudest and sways decisions against those who don't have the finances to defend themselves properly. It shouldn't be this way but that's how it usually is....

let me get this straight

[jaymz666]

They are going to be modifying web pages with this popup crap? They will be actively scanning every page I go to to see if there is a link to something on some master lists somewhere, modify every HTML page I download to include some sort of script to create a pop-up?

Really?

I guess they could maybe just intercept all HTTP requests that go to specific hosts and URIs and supplant the destination with a replacement HTML page... much better

Re:let me get this straight

[VortexCortex]

Hey, break DNS, why not break HTTP too?

Re:let me get this straight

[Anonymous Coward]

https EVERYWHERE needs to be EVERYWHERE.

Re:let me get this straight

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Maybe some webmasters would be interested to hear that Comcast is exploring a plan to produce unauthorized derivative works, based on their pages, to hawk media products (not a few of which are from companies in the same ownership structure)... Isn't that the sort of plan that would be approximately a zillion counts of copyright infringement, trademark violation, and who knows what else if it were proposed by anybody other than a hegemonic corporation?

Re:let me get this straight

[Seumas]

HI, THERE!

We see that you're considering buying a box of Buffy The Vampire Slayer DVDs on Amazon.com. We thought you'd like to know that you can watch that for free if you subscribe to our Comcast cable television service! it's on every night at 8:00PM and also available on-demand! Just to be sure you don't accidentally buy something you didn't want, we've gone ahead and disabled the "add to shopping cart" button on this webpage, for you. Thank you for your patronage!

Re:let me get this straight

[Anonymous Coward]

Some of us have been saying this since it was first introduced, and it still hasn't happened yet.

Re:let me get this straight

[Endymion]

The copyright infringement problem you describe is only the beginning. The long-term flaw in this plan, I suspect, is that they are claiming to be able to detect a class of "illegal"/"bad" data.

In the early days of the net, this kind of detection was a major part of the pornography debate in addition to the usual copyright stuff. A major defense (one I suspect lead to the creation of the "safe harbor" provisions in the DMCA) was that it is patently unreasonable to force an ISP to decide the legality of each bit that moves across their network. Comparisons were made to the Common Carriers, etc. The consensus seems to be more or less that "safe harbor" idea - that it was only reasonable to request the ISP act after the fact, instead of trying to make them invent some sort of magic "evil bit" detector.

If an ISP wants to ignore all that, though, and volunteer that they have such detection capability... they might be asking for a long line of lawsuits for each item they *failed* to warn about. Even better: it's all the excuse the anti-porn (or anti-whatever) busybodies need to impose their ideas of a "child safe" internet. After all, if you can detect something complicated like copyright infringement, detecting pornography must be trivial.

TL;DR - their lawyer must be having a seizure over the potential liability exposure they seem to be asking for

Re:let me get this straight

[complete loony]

And of course they'll get a commission on any actual sales. This is the same drive for monetisation that lead network solutions to direct you to advertising laden search results instead of returning NXDOMAIN.

Re:let me get this straight

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a little curious now...do you think an 'underground' set of HTTPS certificate authorities is out of the question? Does such a thing exist?

Re:let me get this straight

[Anonymous Coward]

I get the feeling it'll be a mix of both.

Compare against a master list [which will always be one step behind], then inject their crap into the HTTP response.

Re:let me get this straight

[LordLimecat]

They arent producing derivative works, theyre inserting content into the stream. IANAL, but it seems to me a derivative work would require redistribution, which theyre not doing; theyre simply dropping something in the middle.

If your reasoning was in the slighest valid, then every site that had third party scripts (facebook buttons, adwords, google analytics, etc) would also be liable.

One would hope that when objecting to such an awful idea, people could at least object for the right reason (like, oh i dont know, MITMing every connection is an awful idea from every single angle?)

Re:let me get this straight

[Anonymous Coward]

Does this particular 'stream rewrite', require DPI(Deep Packet Inspection)? Regardless of whether it does or doesn't, what makes anyone think they aren't looking for other information outside of the unauthorized viewing of copyright'd content?

It's not Comcasts place to say what information I transmit online. They are NOT the Internet Police for the media cartel, even though that's what legislation is trying to push.

One question I'd like answered is this: If I torrent a movie, and DO NOT seed it to others, or stream and watch it directly from a foreign source, I'd like the legal statute or case law that says that act alone is illegal. AFAIK, it is not. All the cases over the years have been where the accused was 'redistributing' the content, and found guilty of that. I don't recall a single case of one time illegal viewing. Does anyone?

Re:let me get this straight

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone can sign their own certs, and if the sole goal is encryption and not security that is more then enough.

Re:let me get this straight

[Anonymous Coward]

Except the people who make facebook buttons, adwords, google analytics, jquery and the like specifically give you permission to include them on your page. Therefore, there is no copyright infringement for doing so.

Re:let me get this straight

[s.petry]

The obvious problem is that they could script around this with a client of their own. Unless of course you are claiming that private servers are not already locked down with authenticated HTTPS, which they are.

Sure, it's an extra step for them. In today's dumb as rocks corporate culture, that happily patents ideas and believes that copyrights on creations that take a few minutes (think certain blogs) are currently too short at 2.8 decades, do you really think they won't take this extra step? I think that the RIAA and MPAA have already proven that customers and common sense are not relevant to them. The only thing that matters to these businesses is how much money they should be entitled to extort from people.

Re:let me get this straight

[Anonymous Coward]

Derivative work: Definition: Modification of original work to alter the content or message of the original work.

Yup - this certainly does equate to derivative work - wow - you really goofed there.

Mega copyright violations galore @ 100K a pop - Comcast will be broke in seconds.

Re:let me get this straight

[girlintraining]

TL;DR - their lawyer must be having a seizure over the potential liability exposure they seem to be asking for

It's peanuts compared to the marketing potential. Scareware is a booming industry -- look at how much malware we have to scrub off our computers now. The average computer is more likely than not to be infected with some kind of rogue application at this point, and the problem is accelerating.

Now we have ISPs injecting HTML into web pages to scare them into purchasing digital media "legally" and threatening to report them to the police if they do not... we've legitimized this whole ecosystem. The internet has become a place where you are either predator or prey.

Fits in rather nicely with our imperialist views that we can engage in cyberwarfare whenever we want, and then loading aircraft carriers full of automated drones. The corporate-military supraorganization is marrying the idea of greed and profit to abstract murder on the basis of algorithmic determinism. Soon it won't be people killing people, it'll be algorithms killing people. In a world like that, what's a little advertising? What's a little dystopia when there's profit to be had?

History may well remember that the information age was just the prelude to a whole new dark age. And it'll be recorded that we doomed ourselves trying to protect ourselves from pedophiles, murderers, terrorists, and every other boogieman. But... it's not exactly the first time in human history that a sudden leap forward in technology or industry created a power vaccum that led to social collapse. Actually... this would be the first time it hasn't happened, in case it doesn't. :/

Re:let me get this straight

[b4dc0d3r]

Please do get it straight. Why do you build the straw man if copyright violation, and attack that, when the obvious block and replacement is at the end of your rant?

With the inserted advertising of a few years ago, it is much more likely that providers would avoid that trap.

Popup, the magic word that produces an irrational knee jerk response. When can we go back to pointing out shitty journalism instead of being baited by it?

Re:let me get this straight

[Jane Q. Public]

"They are going to be modifying web pages with this popup crap? They will be actively scanning every page I go to to see if there is a link to something on some master lists somewhere, modify every HTML page I download to include some sort of script to create a pop-up?"

There's no way they could do this even a little bit reliably without breaking the law themselves. Which means: either it's going to be notoriously unreliable, or they'll be breaking the law.

It wouldn't be the first time. Remember when Comcast got in trouble for breaking BitTorrent traffic, with spoofed NAKs or whatever that was?

Re:let me get this straight

[zyzko]

TL;DR - their lawyer must be having a seizure over the potential liability exposure they seem to be asking for

Why? More work for them... And you forget that this is Comcast, a huge entertainment conglomerate, not some streaming video startup or small regional isp. So they have the muscle and can "negotiate" with other content providers and lobby groups. If an anti-porn group raises an issue with them they will happily comply with filters, maybe even create a nice portal only accessible at night and with opt-in where you can buy safe adult content from Penthouse and Playboy - and maybe get a nice funding from somewhere for the filters because they are progressive and innovative on protecting children and a cut of the Penthouse / Playboy revenue because they are driving customers there. They do not care how they will get their money, and the worst customer is one who just wants a "dumb pipe".

Re:let me get this straight

[KiloByte]

We really need to get DANE up and running. It's strictly better than the CA cartel model.

If you use DANE with stapled certificates (rather than just CA selection -- why does it even exist?), you are as secure as SSL + DNSSEC.

With the CA cartel, you need to trust all of 300+ CAs. This includes CNNIC, Etisalat and a crapload of US companies. And even if all of them were 100% honest and 100% secure, an unaffiliated attacker can obtain a certificate if he controls your DNS at an arbitrary time of his choosing within a year before the attack (most CAs require nothing more than being able to receive mail at that address, it's only the least secure CA that counts).

With DNSSEC, there are three weak points: ICANN, your TLD/country registry, and your registrar. You get to choose the latter two (although changing domain name might not always be reasonable) -- and unlike the CA model, you're trusting the alternative rather than a sum: more registrars make you more rather than less secure. Also, if there is any caching involved, instead of an arbitrary moment at his leisure, the attacker must keep your DNS subverted for an extended time period, up to the sum of TTLs of the whole path.

Re:let me get this straight

[Anonymous Coward]

Well put!

Re:let me get this straight

[Anonymous Coward]

The consensus seems to be more or less that "safe harbor" idea - that it was only reasonable to request the ISP act after the fact, instead of trying to make them invent some sort of magic "evil bit" detector.

Is it really that much to ask an ISP to be compliant with RFC 3514?

Re:let me get this straight

[jaymz666]

I don't build any such straw man. I pointed out the two methods that came to mind to obtain the desired results. Both of which are abhorrent.

Re:let me get this straight

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, we aren't going to tell some anonymous stranger on a public site if we exist or how to connect to our services... if we existed, that is.

Re:let me get this straight

[DarkAce911]

What do you think they bought a Sandvine for?

Re:let me get this straight

[romons]

History may well remember that the information age was just the prelude to a whole new dark age. And it'll be recorded that we doomed ourselves trying to protect ourselves from pedophiles, murderers, terrorists, and every other boogieman. But... it's not exactly the first time in human history that a sudden leap forward in technology or industry created a power vaccum that led to social collapse. Actually... this would be the first time it hasn't happened, in case it doesn't. :/

Sigh....

There was no social collapse after the invention of the telephone, which was far more exciting for most people than the internet will ever be. There was no collapse after the telegraph allowed the first communication over more than 20 miles that didn't take a horse. There was no collapse after film and television brought the world to people who had not seen anything outside of a 10 mile radius of their home.

The pedophiles and terrorists are just going to come up with another way to do their business, and the 99.999% of people who are using the internet for legitimate activity will continue as they have been doing. No dark age is coming. Things are getting better every day. Think about 15 years ago, when 1% of the world's population had access to cell phones. Now, 75% of the world's population has access. That fact in itself is going to change everything.

So, let me get this straight

[stox]

Buying more bandwidth is out of the question is too expensive, but dropping a fortune on the hardware to do deep packet inspection is no problem.

Re:So, let me get this straight

[Anonymous Coward]

the hardware is already in place.... they just gotta have its owner provide the needed data.

Re:So, let me get this straight

[Anonymous Coward]

alert("Hello! This is your friendly Comcast! It looks like you're trying to watch a movie from out competition. I believe they shouldn't have the rights to use our BW... eerrrr meant that's copyrighted material, are you sure you want to go ahead? We're going to slow you down anyways just so you'll have a very crappy experience. You won't be able to switch ISPs, because we have a monopoly at your location anyways. Enjoy!");

Re:So, let me get this straight

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny how they'd be willing to do that and not block chinese hackers going after sshd.

Re:So, let me get this straight

[TheGratefulNet]

DPI is already there (in hardware) on more mid and higher end routers.

nothing to buy. just turn it on and use it.

Re:So, let me get this straight

[girlintraining]

Buying more bandwidth is out of the question is too expensive, but dropping a fortune on the hardware to do deep packet inspection is no problem.

That's because the hardware to do that you can stuff in a closet somewhere. The hardware to create more bandwidth on a coaxial network that is continuously being pushed and prodded into doing something it wasn't designed to do -- two-way communication, is considerably more complex to deploy and maintain. To add a server, you just need a port on a wall and some space in a rack. To add another 100 mhz of bandwidth to a coaxial network, you need to rip out every repeater, run down every possible source of signal leakage, and then yank out all the equipment at the head-end... and nevermind that many customers are using their own equipment that may or may not be compatible with the new protocols, equipment, etc.

Now, all that said... Comcast should have been incrementally upgrading this whole time, like any other utility provider. Unfortunately, like every other utility provider, they don't upgrade their infrastructure until there's no other choice. Our power grids are maxed out, our sewers are rotting, our bridges are falling into rivers, our cell phone service is the laughing stock of the first world... and we are paying more and more every year for them. All because short term profit isn't just a mentality... for a publicly-traded company, it's a legal requirement. The problem here is that our method of economic incentives and government regulations about infrastructure/utility services is, achem... broken. Badly.

So it's not technically Comcast's fault... they're just doing what everyone else is doing: Doing anything possible to avoid biting the bullet and investing in infrastructure. So long as the government isn't willing to simply revoke their licenses and tell them to get the fuck out, and start inking non-exclusive contracts for services, and making regulatory demands for regular and timely upgrades... businesses will continue to profit at your expense. But of course, that is how they want it, though we did, by remaining politically inert, allow it to be this way.

There's plenty of blame to pass around.

Re:So, let me get this straight

[Anonymous Coward]

Buying more bandwidth is more expensive because of the DPI, CG NAT, QOS, and other features they put in their networks. It's not just the fiber + routers these days...

Re:So, let me get this straight

[s.petry]

Interesting points and I agree with all but one, but I need to add an item.

Comcast doing this brings a sense of normality to the current Government intrusions to privacy. Data should be protected from this, as Comcast is a service provider (utility), by the first and fourth amendment. If they are using DPI on the network, they will not just be inspecting HTTP requests but ALL packets.

The point I disagree with is where you claim it's not Comcast's fault. It absolutely is their fault. Just like it's the power companies fault when things fail, the oil companies fault when they don't upgrade refineries, etc... They have a choice (or at least I believe they have a choice) on how they dump their marketing and lobby dollars. They could lobby for improvements and alert customers to the draconian big brother rules the Government creates just as easily as they could lobby for higher profits and helping big brother. Few if any companies choose to do the former, especially when it they hit larger scale.

Of course we pay the price for the latter, and there is no penalties for these companies screwing up. Since they helped the Government, the Government helps them monopolize and uses tax dollars to keep them floating when needed. The big unfortunate issue is what happens when all the phony money runs out and everyone is broke? It can't be that far down the road.

Re:So, let me get this straight

[DigiShaman]

http://www.sonicwall.com/us/en/products/SuperMassive_E10000.html

It can be done. I have no idea what Comcast uses, but SonicWALL is known for bufferless UTM (DPI, malware, anti-virus scanning, intrusion prevention) in real-time. It eats cycles, but the throughput capacity per model is documented with UTM enabled.

All this technology that was thought to free mankind, is in fact enslaving us.

Re:So, let me get this straight

[shentino]

This is one reason I'm loving Google Fiber.

Competition to light a fire under their butts.

I'm still rather disgusted that Monticello tried to start up a municipal fiber network only to get slapped with an injunction after the local telecom TDS got greedy and sued them over it.

Re:So, let me get this straight

[Anonymous Coward]

Most likely they are receiving government assistance (probably financially) to add these DPI boxes into their network, since this is the same technology that allows the Gov to snoop on traffic.
Otherwise, they'd have to foot the bill themselves, such as when upgrading their network.

Re:So, let me get this straight

[akirapill]

Just a clarification, I don't think this scheme actually uses deep packet inspection. Comcast contracts MarkMonitor to monitor P2P networks for known infringing material. MarkMonitor's IP addresses are blocked by several popular P2P blocklists, including Bluetack so it's unlikeley that they'll catch many infringers except the low hanging fruit who aren't using blocklists or proxies. Another reason I don't think DPI is involved is because right after 6 strikes was implemented, I got a letter from Comcast specifically saying that they would not use deep packet inspection for this. Now I know that Comcast is slimy, but I don't think they'd reneg on such a specific customer promise so fast and voluntarily largely because of the two costs of DPI you touched on - the additional hardware/support for the program, and loss of goodwill among their customers.

Secondly, the 'pop-up' isn't actually a 'pop-up' per-se. They aren't actually interleaving javascript into your web pages to make a popup appear on a normal web page you'd browse to (how would you even do that?). Instead, they will serve a whole web page with the warning when you make an http request, which doesn't require DPI or but merely requires that they know you're visiting an http address, which they know from your port and/or url.

All in all, except for the marginal benefit to their NBC counterpart I don't see anything for comcast in this except to do the bare minimum so they can appear like they're helping to curb piracy to keep pressure off them from the government and IP lobbying groups. They know that their most active customers, the ones they can sell higher bandwidth to, are largely copyright infringers. But by doing this, they can appear to be doing something, because there is a significant amount of infringes who are using P2P and taking zero precautions so Comcast can come back and say 'yes we caught X bad guys, we are helping'

Re:So, let me get this straight

[Anonymous Coward]

Except there is always maintenance happening in cities. Sewer lines replaced, power poles downed and put back up, new houses being built. Even the old copper phone system is only Cat-4 to a certain point, then converted to a digital transmission. If you take a step back and look at the sheer number of houses and bandwidth required to sustain even a small amount of traffic and the distance it must cover, you'll realize there is likely already some fiber infrastructure because it would be cheaper to put in for those longer, large pipes.

Now, I'm not disagreeing with you, I think that anything related to internet access should be a utility, with the hardware owned by the government, and the corporations forced to compete for the maintenance/upgrades/upkeep. With contracts that shall not exceed 2 years. That way, if Comcast does it's usual shitty job, then they'll be forced out. Because we just lowered the barrier for entry by not requiring them to own the copper/fiber to homes, some local company could put in a bid to take over and potentially run things better.

Re:So, let me get this straight

[jandrese]

Nobody is asking their routers to do DPI, at least not anybody who has to forward the volume of traffic that Comcast does. Comcast went out and bought a special DPI box. The thing is, they bought the box(es) a long time ago when they started looking for BitTorrent traffic and the like.

Fuck comcast...

[Anonymous Coward]

My fancy new 'digital' tv wont work without comcasts boxes around. You can't even buy one. Rental only. Good thing they gave them out for free...
Oh Wait...'free' dta boxes are now costing every month. What the actual fuck... 'free' to comcast actually means until we start charging for it.

Forced to pay for 40 channels of pure shit to get 10 channels you might want to watch sometime. It's such a complete scam.

Every month its yet another problem with either the net or the tv or billing. And the bills keep going up. The service and quality keeps going down.
And habib over in india or wherever has no fucking clue how to fix anything without calling them at least 5 times.

$160 a month for this shit... It's about time to get rid of them for tv at least...
God i wish i had another choice for internet...

Save us google you're our only hope. Your worst half-assed attempts at anything are 5000% better than comcasts best effort.

Re:Fuck comcast...

[Anonymous Coward]

Get rid of the whole tv side of the equation. Stick with high speed internet, download xbmc, and watch all the *television* your little heart desires.

Seriously, *even* the availability of live sports streams has improved to the point that there is very little that can't be found, very much of it in HD.

Re:Fuck comcast...

[Anonymous Coward]

So reward comcast with slightly less money for doing a bad job.

That sounds... lol

Re:Fuck comcast...

[pepty]

Obama just announced he wants to make streaming infringing content a felony. Not the uploading part, the clicking on the link and watching live football part.

Re:Fuck comcast...

[Zaelath]

[citation required]

Re:Fuck comcast...

[Anonymous Coward]

Here you go dickwad. Enjoy the fucking the black man is giving you with his big negro dick.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/08/05/sopa-died-in-2012-but-obama-administration-wants-to-revive-part-of-it/

Re:Fuck comcast...

[GigaplexNZ]

I'm assuming pepty is referring to this which merely talks about removing the distinction between hosting files vs hosting streams. As far as I can tell, it says nothing about watching a stream.

Re:Fuck comcast...

[Zaelath]

Yeah, I eventually looped back around and saw that story too. However, as you say the recommendation is:

Adopting the same range of penalties for criminal streaming of copyrighted
works to the public as now exists for criminal reproduction and distribution.

While the willfully infringing reproduction and distribution of
copyrighted works can be punished as a felony, willful violations of the
public performance right are punishable only as misdemeanors. This
discrepancy is an increasingly significant impediment to the effective
deterrence and criminal prosecution of unauthorized streaming. Since
the most recent updates to the criminal copyright provisions, streaming
(both audio and video) has become a significant if not dominant means
for consumers to enjoy content online. The Administration and the
Copyright Office have both called on Congress to amend the Copyright
Act to ensure that illegal streaming to the public can be punished as a
felony in the same manner as other types of criminal infringement.

Which is exactly the opposite of what the GP claims. Also, Obama Administration != Obama, but for a certain class of jackass that's a very fine point.

Re:Fuck comcast...

[foniksonik]

Netflix is your actual savior.

Step 1 - subscribe to netflix and buy a Roku/AppleTV
Step 2 - cancel cable tv (and possibly upgrade your network speed)
Step 3 - profit by saving ~$100 / month, which you can optionally spend buying tickets to live music/sports events instead of sitting at home or if you must rent a VPN and usenet anything not on Netflix.

Re:Fuck comcast...

[Anonymous Coward]

The buck stops... ?

Re:Fuck comcast...

[notanalien_justgreen]

Netflix is reliant on content producers for the most part. Yeah they've started making a few of their own shows, but most of their library is network and cable tv produced. All comcast has to do is offer those content producers more money to sign exclusive contracts. Then netflix is done. It's already happened with streaming movies (hence apple can't stream most movies from major film companies).

Re:Fuck comcast...

[Anonymous Coward]

$160 for internet & tv a month?! Dear lord you are gtting ripped off. I'd drop that in a heartbeat. thats almost $2000 a year. You could go on a nice vacation with that kind of money. More if you sell lthe tv. ( trust me, you won't miss it )

Re:Fuck comcast...

[Anonymous Coward]

So you're paying 3 times for TV what I pay for my digital TV, cable internet, and phone together here in Europe, and you are getting worse service?

This is backwards.

Re:Fuck comcast...

[Anonymous Coward]

You sound very excited by this prospect...bet you were salivating when you typed it.

Re:Fuck comcast...

[Anonymous Coward]

why don't you just cancel the television portion of your account? too stupid to actually figure that part out?

also, you're a racist fuck, and should probably keep that shit to yourself.

Re:Fuck comcast...

[Anonymous Coward]

Save us mesh networking you're our only hope.

FTFY. As soon as Google (or anyone) gets monopoly power, they become the same monster.

Re:Fuck comcast...

[Anonymous Coward]

If you haven't cancelled cable yet I actually blame you. Seriously. I suspect your TV works fine, plug in a Roku, XBox 360, or whatever else you want. Quit complaining about cable TV and cancel TV. They're already crapping their pants about dropping sub rates, people like you are why they're free to keep making it awful, because you actively hate the service and keep paying them. And don't even use the "kids" excuse, Netflix has pretty much every Cartoon Network show now that you can stream for 10 bucks a month.

As for Comcast internet, in my area I pay for speed boost and get 5MB/sec downloads on a regular basis. They're doing just fine on the internet side.

Re:Fuck comcast...

[romons]

Back in the 'dark ages', when broadcast was king, everybody said that cable TV would mean shows without commercials. That was the pitch that allowed these cunts to get their cable strung on OUR poles. Now, to get shows without commercials means you need to get them from an illegal source, and comcast will spike you up the ass (eventually) for it. The current 'scareware' thing is just a test to see how viable their detection code is.

Before freeways went everywhere, we had corner grocery stores. Now, we can't buy lettuce unless we hop in the car and drive 20 miles to the nearest costco. The internet has made lots of things possible, and more things much easier than before. However, now, because of those things that you just can't do anymore without it, we are dependent on it.

We need another transition point, away from cable, towards some sort of radio technology. Satellite internet makes the most sense to me. Anybody who can put up a satellite can start selling access. That leads to competition, which prevents ISPs from pulling this kind of stupid shit.

So, the NSA gets sloppy seconds?

[sabt-pestnu]

We're worried about the NSA seeing everything that goes over our connections.

But how much worse is it to have your own ISP doing so? Previously, we at least had the illusion that they didn't know. (Yeah, right. Do you browse with HTTPS-everywhere? And if you do, do your search terms go to some search provider that reports to the government?)

But now we know that they'll be looking directly at what you download. It's no step at all to go from "looking for copyrighted material" to "looking for anything we are interested in". Al Qaida training materials? Anarchist cookbook? PETA protest schedules? Republican party caucus meeting schedule?

Remember that adhesion contract you agreed to when you signed up with your ISP? Where they can change the terms when they want? Care to guess whether those terms will change to assure that you "agree" to deep packet inspection and content filtering of your internet traffic?

Re:So, the NSA gets sloppy seconds?

[Rockoon]

But how much worse is it to have your own ISP doing so?

Its not worse. Its not good, but the idea that its 'worse' than the government doing it is complete bullshit.

Re:So, the NSA gets sloppy seconds?

[Anonymous Coward]

We're worried about the NSA seeing everything that goes over our connections.

But how much worse is it to have your own ISP doing so?

Well, the NSA has the 'national security' excuse, What excuse does your ISP have? most likely a bullshit one. Sure you could say the same for the NSA, but your ISP is in it for the money and will sell you out, i.e NebuAd and Phorm come to mind.

Re:So, the NSA gets sloppy seconds?

[Seumas]

That's exactly the problem. There are so many layers of potential compromise that it really doesn't matter, anymore. Even if everything else in the chain can be trusted to be secure and trustworthy, the government can spike-in anywhere they want from inside a data center to just outside of a provider's (ISP, facebook, etc) network,... and then your own ISP... and if you use VPN, then you still have to hope your VPN provider can be trusted (assuming you can even GET a VPN service anymore, since it has basically been criminalized).

Anyway, people need to just shut the fuck up and stop using the internet for evil things. The internet is for giving money to corporations to give you entertainment content and nothing more, you sick anti-american terrorist fuckwits!

Re:So, the NSA gets sloppy seconds?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is fairly easily dealt with as of now if in the US:

Get a VPN provider and use it. If you are using torrents, hit a decent provider overseas (ipred, swissvpn, etc.) For other stuff, use strongvpn, hide my ass, or something (just make sure to not use those for torrenting or P2P stuff for obvious reasons.)

If all your traffic goes through a VPN provider (and you might just need to configure a router to keep DNS from leaking or stuff going through normal routes if the tunnel goes down), the ISP can either block your traffic, slow it down, or try MITM attacks. This is a lot harder than just standing back and having a device look at every packet floating by.

I use a VPN provider even though I trust my ISP... mainly because I use wireless APs, and some sites are not using SSL, so to keep the AP operator from seeing/altering traffic in flight (a la FireSheep), I fire up a VPN and call it done.

Of course, ISPs can block VPNs, but that means they will be actively and overtly telling people what they can't do...

To boot, businesses use VPNs all the time, and the last people ISPs want to piss off are the enterprise. Home users, who cares. Businesses who pay the big bucks for the large pipes only to find employees can't VPN in for their jobs, not going to happen.

Re:So, the NSA gets sloppy seconds?

[Anonymous Coward]

Its not worse.

How is it not worse? In addition to whatever outsourced NSA flunky like Snowden in China reading the ISP's collected data, we have whatever outsourced ISP flunky in India doing the same.

You better bet that the NSA has everything the ISP collects, plus whatever else they collect on their own.

Re:So, the NSA gets sloppy seconds?

[Drakonblayde]

We're worried about the NSA seeing everything that goes over our connections.

But how much worse is it to have your own ISP doing so?

Here's the thing you've got to remember. Comcast is no longer just a service provider. With the acquisition of NBC, Comcast is also a content provider. It's in the companies best interests to curtail the piracy if they can, but they have to do it for everyone, not just their own content, or the company gets accused of unfair business practices.

Re:So, the NSA gets sloppy seconds?

[s.petry]

It is wrong in both cases, and anyone that claims "it's okay because it's just an ISP" has difficulty understanding simple fallacy.

On detection, Comcast will pop up a helpful window that contains information about where you can obtain a legal version of whatever you're downloading.

Notice that they never mention what is actually being done, which at a minimum is invading your privacy and denying you your fourth amendment rights. Notice also that TFA uses the word "helpful" when it comes to the companies actions as a result of spying on you. Next, pay attention to them only mentioning one type of action, and one type of data stream. When enabling DPI they must look at all data types and packets, not just HTTP. Last of all and perhaps most importantly note that they don't mention who they are reporting the alleged violations to. It should be very obvious that they are reporting it to someone if they are "complimenting" the DCMA.

This rant is not against you, but the people that will claim you should not care if it's only the ISP.

Re:So, the NSA gets sloppy seconds?

[Rockoon]

How is it not worse?

My ISP doesnt have an army of men with guns, nor cages to lock me in.

Re:So, the NSA gets sloppy seconds?

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't vote them out.

Re:So, the NSA gets sloppy seconds?

[Anonymous Coward]

It *is* the government doing it. The NSA and random law agency of the week *of course* have access, on request, to any such data. That's partly why I've switched to Verizon FIOS where I live. They're not guaranteed better than Comcast, and they do keep auto-switching back to the mangled DNS with the wildcard entries, but at least they're willing to publish notes on how to avoid it.

Re:So, the NSA gets sloppy seconds?

[Rockoon]

You can't vote them out.

People in cages (or dead) can't vote either.

Re:So, the NSA gets sloppy seconds?

[Anonymous Coward]

It is worse. Because at the end of the day government abuses can be kept in check by the constitution, citizens and the ability to vote people out. YOur ISP is probably the only one available in your area, and is bound by NO laws to protect you.

Stupid

[Virtucon]

This Six Strikes thing is both retarded and a horrible business practice. Why? Because they'll probably single out torrent traffic and assume that you must be pirating something. Hello Comcast: torrents != piracy. Ultimately that's what all these initiatives for piracy look at and they've declared war on P2P sharing because regardless of what it is, it must be "illegal." It also feeds right into the argument for traffic prioritization and filtering which is another horrible idea for the Internet. I can see some Comcast exec saying "We're going to be filtering torrent traffic because our friendly warnings have shown that 90% of the users involved in P2P are doing illegal activity." All the while they're pushing their own content services for substantial fees onto their users. I for one would be worried if I were a Comcast user and would seek out HTTPs connections everywhere I go on the net or look for another ISP.

 

Re:Stupid

[Opportunist]

That's sure gonna be fun to watch, considering that quite a few games, with WoW maybe being the most prominent one, distribute their patches by P2P means.

Although it could explain why WoW keeps losing players quickly lately, maybe some of them are getting into trouble for "strikes".

Re:Stupid

[KingMotley]

I do not, nor did I ever have an issue with traffic prioritization. Mostly the people who don't know what that is, or how it works have issues with it, but that's just ignorance. Real traffic prioritization only kicks in when lines are completely full, and then it lets stuff through with higher priority (VOIP, gaming packets, web browsing, video on demand) first. Things that aren't time sensitive (FTP, HTTP, BitTorrent, NNTP, etc) are sent as soon as they can.

Of course, the alternative is that the internet connection becomes unusable during those times for anything time sensitive at all. I'd prefer the former. Of course, I'd prefer they upgrade the links, but we're talking reality not fantasy land like some people still believe in.

Re:Stupid

[TranquilVoid]

Because they'll probably single out torrent traffic and assume that you must be pirating something.

This is not correct. Even the summary clearly states that they will detect infringing content and (somehow) present you with an offer to buy that content from a legal vendor. This monetisation is the entire point of the venture and it seems the system will only work with content from providers who sign up with Comcast's system.

You won't be seeing popups that say "You have been detected illegally downloading archlinux-bootstrap-2013.08.01-i686.tar.gz. Please cease and buy a legitimate copy from amazon.com

Re:Stupid

[Drakonblayde]

I do not, nor did I ever have an issue with traffic prioritization. Mostly the people who don't know what that is, or how it works have issues with it, but that's just ignorance. Real traffic prioritization only kicks in when lines are completely full, and then it lets stuff through with higher priority (VOIP, gaming packets, web browsing, video on demand) first.

Not entirely accurate. Traffic prioritization is not only a saturation thing, it's also about time sensitivity. Network interfaces are still FIFO, so if you've got a big transfer going, those big packets take longer to serialize on the wire, and things like VOIP, Video, and gaming start to suffer from time delay. A properly done QoS setup will prioritize time sensitive traffic to be sent before anything else, regardless of whether the interface is full or not (obviously, you put a limit on the amount of bandwidth you give priority to, so that it doesn't starve all other traffic just because a few folk are making a phone call)

Re:Stupid

[Virtucon]

Agreed QOS is a good thing but I was referring to the fact that Verizon, Comcast and AT&T were proposing being the arbitrators of what gets prioritized, not the customer or the content providers. AT&T for example could prioritize its own media streaming services for U-Verse over Netflix for example. That's the kind of prioritization I'm very concerned about because it's now more about lining your ISP's pockets vs delivering higher quality Internet services.

Re:Stupid

[Virtucon]

With all of the videos, movies and TV programs out there, how does Comcast plan to identify which content *may* be copyrighted. Even with deep packet inspection techniques it will be very difficult to weed out what is fair use and what is copyrighted and I'm saying they're not that bright. Sure, they could develop a profile but IMO they'll go after torrent traffic because it's been long associated with pirating, right wrong or indifferent.

Re:Stupid

[Virtucon]

Or the game is just boring?

Re:Stupid

[TranquilVoid]

There are no details released but the article does mention P2P. I imagine they would spend time identifying the common torrents for, say, movies from studios that sign up with them, and then they can easily detect when one of their customers joins that swarm.

Software could automate the detection of torrents with image or audio processing (YouTube does this already). I'd have to wonder about the legality of downloading random torrents though. There's no mention that they would target web, FTP or newsgroup downloads and this would be more difficult for them to do.

Fair use is a good point. They have no way of discriminating. Maybe they plan to just put up with the complaints of the (probably vanishingly small) number of people who get a popup from fair use. On the other hand, P2P generally involves uploading as well as downloading which may still land fair users in legal trouble. Either way this is an annoying practice from Comcast.

Re:Stupid

[KingMotley]

Well those FIFO buffers are empty except when the line is completely saturated. Granted, it may only be saturated for milliseconds, but what I said is accurate. You are just making the situation more complex and then describing what happens when the line is completely saturated, even if only for milliseconds. But yes, traffic prioritization should allow packets to jump to the front of the queue (or multiple queues, as many routes actually have multiple distinct buffers, one for each traffic priority).

Re:Stupid

[KingMotley]

Yes, but there isn't a router out there capable of allowing every port to have their own traffic prioritization rules and/or allow them to be configured by end users, so that is currently impossible to implement the way you want it to be. So long as the ISP prioritizes traffic in a fair and equal manner, it is a good thing. But you are talking about changing the priority based on the source rather than what type of content it is. That is completely different. What I've seen is that people using bit torrent get upset that their transfers may get slower during peak times clamoring about net neutrality, when it really has nothing to do about the content (or P2P vs non-P2P), but rather about time sensitive stuff (speed and latency) vs stuff that isn't. Of course everyone wants THEIR stuff to be first.

I'd much rather see bandwidth policies that are realistic, like having the maximum bandwidth on my line available during non-peak times, and the 5% of my bandwidth that is time sensitive to be undelayed, and the 95% of my bandwidth that isn't time sensitive to possibly be slower than its theoretical maximum during peak-times. I don't get frustrated when my steam downloads are a bit slow, but I do get frustrated when I can't understand my phone calls because the guy on the other side now sounds like he just turned into a mentally retarded robot from hell.

Re:Stupid

[Drakonblayde]

Ok, you don't know how network hardware works at layer 1.

When it comes to transmit, a network interface has a hardware ring, the tx-ring. The tx-ring transmits packets in the order they're received, period. You don't need to actually fill the tx-ring to induce latency via serialization delay, you merely need to have competing traffic that's large in size delivered to the tx-ring ahead of your time sensitive traffic, and this is alot easier to do when you've got Jumbo frames enabled. You do not have to saturate the link to the point where it starts buffering.

This is why when you have time sensitive traffic, you don't implement a queuing policy that waits until the link *is* saturated before it starts kicking in.

This is especially important when your speed doesn't match that which your line rate is capable of. For example, let's say you take a metro-E connection. Most of those are going to be physical port speeds of 1 gig these days (or at least 100 megs), but you may have only ordered 50 megs. If you wait for line saturation to kick in before you start applying QoS policy, then it's never going to kick in, your traffic will never prioritize properly, and you will have crappy service for anything that's time sensitive.

Instead, the right thing to do is implement a policy that sends all traffic to be evaluated before it hits the hardware queues in order to enforce your queuing policy. Then your QoS mechanisms decide what actually hits the tx ring, and in what order.

Waiting for link saturation before applying QoS policy is bad network engineering. Unfortunately, there are alot of bad network engineers out there.

Re:Stupid

[Drakonblayde]

Well, keep in mind, you have to take Comcast out of that, because they *are* content provider. There was a big uproar last year about that, with Netflix saying that Comcast was discriminating against Netflix in order to favor it's own streaming service, Streampix. (It was bullshit, it was a peering dispute. Netflix was saturating their links and demanding that Comcast turn up more, for free. Comcast said they'd be more than happy to provide Netflix with more links, but they were going to have to pay for them).

Not discriminating against other providers traffic was one of the things Comcast had to promise not to do in order to get the acquisition of NBC approved.So I'm not terribly worried about service providers biasing traffic in the favor of their products.

And all service providers are there to make money, don't kid yourself. Comcast has actually been doing massive network upgrades for over a year now. This was in direct response to AT&T's announcement about their big network upgrade, targeting Comcast's customers especially. That's where your higher quality service is going to come from. The service provider industry has hit a point where growth has become difficult because the market is very saturated, there's really not much else that can be done as far as expansion goes, so you have to look to take your competitors customers, and that means you have to beat them on quality or price (preferably both)

Re:Stupid

[Drakonblayde]

Yes, but there isn't a router out there capable of allowing every port to have their own traffic prioritization rules and/or allow them to be configured by end users, so that is currently impossible to implement the way you want it to be.

Sure there are. My border router, the one directly connected to the cable modem, is a Cisco 3925. I can apply whatever QoS policy I want to whatever port I want, in whatever direction I want. The Juniper J2320 it replaced could do the same thing, just like the Cisco 1841 it replaced, and the Cisco 2611XM that it replaced.

What you really mean is that the majority of end users aren't capable of comprehending and actually implementing and fine tuning their own QoS policy on a real router. So instead, most end users are stuck with whatever options are thrown into the GUI of whatever D-Link or formerly-Linksys piece of residential trash that they bought.

Which is fine, folks don't expect to need to be network engineers in order to get their stuff working, they expect to just plug it in and work. Which is reasonable, right up to the point where those same folk decide to start arguing technical detail with folk who actually are network engineers.

Re:Stupid

[KingMotley]

There are so many things wrong with what you've described. First of all, let's start with the big one. I never said that you wait until the link is saturated before you implement a queuing policy. I said the FIFO buffers are empty except when the line is saturated. Now, sit down and think about what I said, and then what you said, and come back when you realize just how silly your whole message was.

In the meantime, here is a nice image for you if you need help visualizing it: http://www.cisco.com/en/US/i/000001-100000/15001-20000/16501-17000/16756.jpg

Now think what happens when the tx queue & buffer are empty because you are transmitting slower than the line rate. At that point, *ALL* QoS queues are empty. Now, it makes absolutely no difference what QoS queue you toss the next packet into, it will immediately be removed and put into the tx queue, and then immediately pulled into the hardware tx buffers. High priority, low priority, low latency, high throughput, they all work exactly the same. The first one in gets transmitted immediately.

Now, on a microscale, you can consider the line saturated for until that packet has been completely transmitted, although I was referring to the tx queue being full, not necessarily a single packet.

As for your 50Mbps link over a 1gig line, the same thing applies, just that now you are working on a virtual 50Mbps link, and the same saturation issues apply, but now it's only a virtual issue rather than a hardware one. No difference at all, and the fact that you even tried to make the issue more complicated by tossing on yet another layer of uselessness typically means you don't know what you are talking about and just trying to complicate things so you don't have to explain you didn't understand the issue in the first place.

Unfortunately, there are alot of bad network engineers out there, and I just met another one.

Re:Stupid

[KingMotley]

Why are you talking about customer side routers? What the hell does that have to do with anything?

Granted, I haven't had to deal with routers on the other side for nearly 12-15 years, I don't think they've changed all that much. They didn't allow per-port TX and RX QoS rules. You could use the port something arrives on to classify, but not a combination of port and protocol. Even then, switching from port 1 to port 2, it was port 2's queues things got dumped into, on a per-port basis you only really had 1 way QoS, and that was what you were about to receive.

Not new from them

[djupedal]

C'Cast did this just a few years back, but the topic was bandwidth, I think. So their sniffing isn't new at all, just their nanny-state attitude over in-your copyright nag.

great, wonderful

[Anonymous Coward]

Trivially, http never should have been created without full end to end, authenticated encryption. These technologies are subject to weird failure modes, slowing things down, added cost, hard to diagnose problems, and worse, once the infrastructure is in place, then the government can order them to do anything they want with the web. In the end, the customer pays for it all as an invisible tax on their connection. This is not what we want.

Cute, the captcha for this post was trapped.

Re:great, wonderful

[KingMotley]

HTTP shouldn't (and wasn't) created with full end to end encryption or authentication because it's not supposed to be. That stuff is (and should be) all done at a lower level in the network stack.

Re:great, wonderful

[Anonymous Coward]

HTTP shouldn't (and wasn't) created with full end to end encryption or authentication because it's not supposed to be. That stuff is (and should be) all done at a lower level in the network stack.

Isn't that the point of IPsec? I had that impression from what I read about it, but all I've ever seen it used for is creating VPNs.

How it works

[Anonymous Coward]

When one of the major media conglomerates creates something, it's protected by copyright. If Joe the Plumber tries to download it without being allowed to do so, Comcast "warns" him that he isn't allowed to do so, potentially disconnects him from the Internet, and, if the Obama administration proposal mentioned on /. earlier today goes through, maybe calls the police.

When you or I create something, it's protected by copyright. But if Joe tries to download it without being allowed to do so, Comcast does jack shit.

I think this is an anti-competitive practice.

Comcast should not be a content creator!

[ravenscar]

They are so happy to do this because they own companies that produce copyrighted content. This is not okay. In an effort to get broadband out to larger numbers of people Comcast has been granted monopolies, subsidies, easements, and other things in the public domain. They should not be able to use that public domain to make sure that they can distribute and protect their own content. As soon as they took handouts from the public they lost the right to be anything but a "dumb" connection. I can't understandy why the FCC allows Comcast to exist as it does today - with clear conflicts of interest between their obligation to fairly contribute to the public domain and their need to make as much money as they can from the production of copyrighted content (that they distribute on their infrastructure).

Re:Comcast should not be a content creator!

[causality]

I can't understandy why the FCC allows Comcast to exist as it does today

For the same reason that the FDA allows aspartame despite the mountains of scientific evidence that it's toxic: money.

You just haven't greased the correct palms. If you did, I'm sure you'd have their full support.

Re:Comcast should not be a content creator!

[Anonymous Coward]

For the same reason that the FDA allows aspartame despite the mountains of scientific evidence that it's toxic

The ass part of you is toxic? :)

So, kids,

[Opportunist]

...when you get a Comcast warning, better start looking for another source of your content, 'cause this one has been found out and will probably become unavailable soon.

Nice of them to hand out an early warning.

Re:So, kids,

[TheGratefulNet]

no, just get a VPN and use that for all your i/o.

problem solved.

Good luck

[Anonymous Coward]

Scanning my encrypted Usenet downloads, Comcast. Keep goin' after them evil torrentz!

Re:Good luck

[Anonymous Coward]

Shhh! It's a secret. Look what happened when torrents caught a lot of attention!

It's

[Richy_T]

Internet
Service
Provider.

Just forward the damn packets and take my money.

Re:It's

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly.

Would there be an uproar if parcel delivery services started opening every package and doing "deep packet inspection" of its contents?

Government gets bent all out of shape when someone spills their beans, but expect the rest of us to "co-operate" when they pry into our can of beans? Hasn't this whole thing gotten way way way off balance?

I keep voting for "the little guy" who I think has it right, but he's up against "Tweedle-Dee" and "Tweedle-Dum", ( both a function of the same beast ), and everybody else votes one or the other because he is afraid of what the other guy will do, and considers a vote for the little guy to be a wasted vote. They do not seem to realize the bankers are supporting both Tweedle-Dee AND Tweedle-Dum.

We do not seem to realize we are livestock, bred to be obedient and to serve the ownership class.

When you look at our history, every war has been a banker's war - over who "owns" the right to control someone else. ( Some call it Gods, but look under the covers and it was all about who is in control of other people's destiny, whether it be the powers that be are controlling the subordinated by superstition or economics of ownership of things no man has any business owning. ).

These bankers are playing us all for fools, and what I find so irritating - we play too instead of just packing up our stuff and taking our business elsewhere. They have something they simply print, yet we have to work hard for... money. Although the concept of currency is such a convenient means of wealth accountability and transfer, we have allowed it, through empowering our representatives to coin law for us, to become completely corrupted.

Way too big of segment of our populace has become completely nonproductive, yet richly living by gaming the system.

Re:It's

[causality]

Way too big of segment of our populace has become completely nonproductive, yet richly living by gaming the system.

It remains that way because a much bigger segment has become completely oblivious. This is not mere ignorance. This is a self-protecting, oblivious, zombie-like sleep state. It includes an active hostility towards anyone who suggests that perhaps the increasingly centralized power and wealth of our society lends itself to being controlled by a small elite. You'll be called a tinfoil hatter no matter what evidence and reasoning you produce, not matter-of-factly either but often in an angry hostile fashion, because the zombies are deathly afraid of anything that might pierce a hole in their worldview of denial.

Re:It's

[Anonymous Coward]

It remains that way because a much bigger segment has become completely oblivious.

I disagree. It remains that way because politicans acting poorly get a pass. We currently have an administration who has DESTROYED the middle class at every possible chance they have had to do it. Instead of holding them responsible everyone blames the GOP. It is an Obama wet dream, the more he fucks up the more his political opponents get blamed. Use the IRS to target political opponents, its reported as a GOP witch hunt of the IRS, another win for government abuse. Four Americans get killed in Bengazi, so far only a film maker in CA has been put in jail for it despite us knowing WHO led the attack in Lybia and knowing where he currently is, but it turned out to be a "phoney scandal" created by the GOP. Spy on reporters? Well it was just spying on a Fox News reporter and we all here on /. agree with that, so once more government abuse is rewarded.

Its a constant pattern of the worse things the people in power do, the more their opponents get blamed and they get a pass. Until people hold those who are doing things responsible it will continue, and currently they are being rewarded every time. Its not a matter of ignorance of what is going on, its because most people agree with the corruption going on because its "their guy" in charge. Until you manage to throw someone like Clapper or Holder in jail for lying to the people and Congress, somthing that actually is illegal, it will continue.

Re:It's

[Simulant]

Comcast is, very unfortunately for us, not 'just an ISP' but a media conglomerate: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comcast#Acquisitions_and_joint_ventures

Google fiber, you are my only hope.....

Re:It's

[lexman098]

Google may soon be a media conglomerate as well.

Re:It's

[Anonymous Coward]

We currently have an administration who has DESTROYED the middle class at every possible chance they have had to do it. Instead of holding them responsible everyone blames the GOP.

Middle class US incomes were on a serious downward trend for many years pre-Obama (but propped up by unsustainable debt). But I don't suppose you're interested in facts. If you think the GOP will rescue the middle classes you're deluded. Both reps and dems are firmly in the pocket of "the 1%" and run everything for their corporate master's interests (and their interests include hollowing out the middle class to improve their profits).

Re:It's

[jfdavis668]

Monty Python's Flying Circus

Someone sue for Copyright Infringement...

[sconeu]

This is clearly creating an unlicensed derivative work from the original webpage.

Or, better, how will this work with an HTTPS connection?

Is it HTTP only? What about SFTP, FTP, and Torrent?

Re:Someone sue for Copyright Infringement...

[mark-t]

You could have some javascript code that automatically runs an md5 hash on its content, and compares it to what is known for that page, recording any differences as qualifying as a derivative work, effectively automating the process.

Re:Someone sue for Copyright Infringement...

[KingMotley]

Only if they include content from the original webpage, which it most likely will not. It'll probably be implemented as a DNS redirect, but they might get fancy and just redirect based on URL, but the later requires significantly more hardware, so I'm guessing it's the former. They see you are trying to access www.moviepiratesgalore.com and redirect you to www.mpaa.com instead.

Re:Someone sue for Copyright Infringement...

[Anonymous Coward]

Common! Use SHA1 hashing!

Re:Someone sue for Copyright Infringement...

[causality]

Only if they include content from the original webpage, which it most likely will not. It'll probably be implemented as a DNS redirect, but they might get fancy and just redirect based on URL, but the later requires significantly more hardware, so I'm guessing it's the former. They see you are trying to access www.moviepiratesgalore.com and redirect you to www.mpaa.com instead.

Do you suppose they would also include a transparent HTTP proxy for people like me who run their own caching nameserver?

Re:Someone sue for Copyright Infringement...

[KingMotley]

Probably not. But if they are just doing redirection via DNS, then it depends on what you have your nameserver set as its upstream nameserver.

Re:Someone sue for Copyright Infringement...

[Drakonblayde]

No. That's too hard to pull off for the amount of traffic that goes through the Comcast network, it'd create a huge bottleneck and way too much impact to performance, not to mention another point of failure. It would also require a major effort reengineering traffic flow and routing policy.

This will likely be done through DNS and URI inspection, allowing the service to stay on the periphery and be turned off without any impact to customers when it breaks, needs maintenance, etc.

So is this the NSA equipment

[future assassin]

that's already installed?

Visions of the future

[Anonymous Coward]

THIS VERSION OF THE ONION ROUTER IS COPYRIGHTED.

Get a legal copy from http://www.fbi.gov/tor_for_suckers.exe

[accept] [accept]

I feel bad for the programmers and sysadmins

[grahamsaa]

I feel bad for the programmers and sysadmins that are being asked to implement this. Surely, they must know that it won't work, but senior management probably insists that everyone can afford all the content they want, and that DRM is easy to deal with (and somehow beneficial) because senior management is completely lost.

The front line people responsible for setting this up are probably rolling their eyes in disgust, and looking for better jobs. If I were in their position, I would be. Have fun trying to enforce something that is unworkable and unrealistic. When you're not having fun anymore, hopefully you'll find a job that uses your skillset to do something that makes sense.

Re:I feel bad for the programmers and sysadmins

[KingMotley]

Why feel bad for the programmers? I'd do if they paid me to do it. I've coded lots of stuff that were based on totally bad designs that I knew would flop almost instantly. I got paid the same, and they flop, and then they pay me to do something less retarded.

Re:I feel bad for the programmers and sysadmins

[jonwil]

I am not convinced that its about piracy vs legit content so much as it is about doing whatever it takes (including bandwidth caps etc) to reduce or eliminate the ability for people to use the Internet as an alternative way to get their content instead of paying the big bucks to Comcast for Cable TV.

Re:I feel bad for the programmers and sysadmins

[Drakonblayde]

Trust me, if you knew the guys on the backend of this, you wouldn't feel sorry for them at all.

Re:I feel bad for the programmers and sysadmins

[Anonymous Coward]

I've seen too many places where the programmers were paid, the application flopped, and the programmers were laid-off.

uh... downloading isn't illegal...

[Nadaka]

The crime is distribution, not receiving. Its perfectly legal to download any file off the internet.

Re:uh... downloading isn't illegal...

[Anonymous Coward]

I sure hope you aren't a lawyer, since you don't seem to know the law at all.

Check it out.

Re:uh... downloading isn't illegal...

[Seumas]

Sorry, but your own link contradicts your statement.

Please cite for us one (and preferably more) cases where someone was sued and received a judgement against in a court of law for DOWNLOADING a file.

Your own link says:

"Most downloading over the Internet of commercially available copyrighted works, such as music or movies, through file sharing systems is illegal. In a widely followed case, a federal Court of Appeals held that users of Napster were infringing copyright when they shared MP3 files of copyrighted music."

As far as I am aware, every single case that has ever existed has hinged on the act of distribution. That is, uploading the file. People have found themselves in hot water because they downloaded content and left it in an accessible folder that is shared back to the other users, publically, of the download program - like Napster or used bittorrent, where you usually have to also upload content back (though you are of course only ever uploading small snippets and never an actual entire file).

Yes, people go around saying "oh noes, downloading a copyrighted file is infringement and somehow now days an instance of copyright infringement is a criminal offense punishable by a decade in prison or forfeiting your life into indentured servitude!", but the fact is (last I checked and I would be glad to know if this has since changed in the States if someone knows of legitimate examples) it is only uploaders/distributors of said content that are cornered.

Re:uh... downloading isn't illegal...

[Anonymous Coward]

Copyright means we have the right to copy, duh !

Re:uh... downloading isn't illegal...

[hurwak-feg]

Can someone mod this up?

Re:uh... downloading isn't illegal...

[XenithOrb]

Chiefly why Usenet is to hard to deal with and why they go after the indexers.

I upload nothing but download _everything_ and I don't care who provided it, they're saints I guess.

In my eyes it's no different than picking up a dollar left on the floor.

Re:uh... downloading isn't illegal...

[retchdog]

Funny example. It is actually illegal in many places to keep found property (at least above a certain threshold; a mere $1 may be okay), it's just rarely caught or enforced. There have, however, been on occasion stings where the police, for example, leave a cash-laden wallet on the street with conspicuous police presence! If you see the cop, but pick up the wallet anyway and don't turn it in to the cop, you get busted.

It's also illegal to download copyrighted material. They don't go after it because it's harder to prove, and the damages are smaller making it a weaker deterrent and thus not worthwhile. They want huge damages, and they get them from sharers, because the sharer is argued to be partially responsible for the future downloads (if downloads were legal, they couldn't make this argument...) as well as, recursively, future re-shares.

Of course, conveniently, no one knows exactly how many times the shared file will be re-shared, and how much of this can be attributed to the victim of the lawsuit (after all, if they didn't share it, other peers would have probably provided the same bits), but oh wait, the RIAA is here with a wonderful statistical model for that, and they say it's $125,000 per song!

I should cite something, so this is from the Napster case: ``Napster users who upload file names to the search index for others to copy violate plaintiffs’ distribution rights. Napster users who download files containing copyrighted music violate plaintiffs’ reproduction rights." This is not mere sophistry (at least any more-so than any law is): the uploader offers the work, while the downloader is the one who initiates the copying. Both are illegal if copyright is held by neither party.

Re:uh... downloading isn't illegal...

[Seumas]

I believe the primary reason is that piracy is a specific act of commercial for-profit copyright infringement. I don't believe it is illegal to buy a knock-off handbag, but it is illegal to commit the act of "piracy", in manufacturing and distributing that handbag. There would be little point to going after a downloader for the same reason there would be little point in going after someone who photocopied a few chapters from a book.

It is also difficult to compare possession of known-stolen goods to copyright infringement -- especially when that copyright infringement is not on a criminal level and any penalties in a court would be so insignificant as to not be worth the time of the copyright holder and their lawyers. As you mention, you want to go after someone where you can claim a near infinite financial penalty, because they were "distributing". Not go after someone (most likely in a civil suit) for the $10 they should have paid you for the movie they downloaded one time.

Anyway, having said that, I still know of no instance where someone in the US has been found guilty of merely downloading copyrighted material. The only thing I recall is that the RIAA or someone (I think it was the RIAA) very specifically stated a few years ago that they would *only* go after distributors/uploaders.

Re:uh... downloading isn't illegal...

[Anonymous Coward]

lol you are so stupid. thanks for the laugh, idiot!

Re:uh... downloading isn't illegal...

[fnj]

It's also illegal to download copyrighted material.

You know, you saying that does not make it so. Cite the case law or stop spreading misinformation.

Re:uh... downloading isn't illegal...

[Anonymous Coward]

you are a giant fucking retard.

Re:uh... downloading isn't illegal...

[Anonymous Coward]

IANAL but I think it's illegal to buy something any reasonable person would think to be stolen or illegally manufactured. Even if it's not obvious you'll still going to have the property seized.

Re:uh... downloading isn't illegal...

[David_W]

You know, you saying that does not make it so. Cite the case law or stop spreading misinformation.

Devil's advocate: An absence of case law does not mean something is not illegal. It just means it is unenforced. There's lots of stuff people do in flagrant disregard for the law because said law is never enforced.

Re:uh... downloading isn't illegal...

[Anonymous Coward]

And a funny reply to the example. According to the ruling Slashdot would be illegal. From the bottom of this page:

Trademarks property of their respective owners. Comments owned by the poster. Copyright © 2013 Dice. All Rights Reserved. Slashdot is a Dice Holdings, Inc. service.

So since you own your comment and you provided no license for redistribution/reproduction then it falls under standard copyright laws. Neither I nor Slashdot have the distribution or reproduction rights so we are both breaking the law.

How nice. And here I was thinking I could get through the day without doing anything illegal...

Ignorance of the law is no excuse but yet the law is so vast it is unknowable. Whee!! :-)

Re:uh... downloading isn't illegal...

[chrismcb]

Its perfectly legal to download any file off the internet.

Well no it isn't. It is illegal to copy something you haven't been given permission to copy. But the it isn't worth it to go after the end users. They could, but they wouldn't be able to get the trillion dollar settlements they get against distributors.

if I owned a botnet..

[wierd_w]

If I owned a botnet, I would dedicate a tiny portion of the swarm's resources to simply doing an http get request for some arbitrary file from a list of know triggers, and doing everything in my power to both route the request over a comcast owned link, and suppress the popup on the zombie.

The goal? Create as much noise in the line as possible to make the effort futile. (As a botnet operator, I would have incentive to make deep packet inspection as undesirable as possible.)

It wouldn't take much. Just pull a few bytes of an MP3 here, poke an illegal video server there, and just discard the replied datagrams (occasionally pull a whole fle, just to make it hard to filter). Wait some configurable time variable, then do it again with a different random file. Make it look like piracy is radically out of control, and totally discredit any metrics they collect from deep packet snooping.

Re:if I owned a botnet..

[Anonymous Coward]

Yup... you will have a lot of people in your botnet that had nothing to do with piracy of some song, but had other skeletons in their hard drive.

Imagine your botnet tripped off governmental investigations of lots of peoples machines. People in leadership positions, where their little secrets were on their hard drive. Things like fishy accounting and tax evasion. Searching for evidence of an illegal song download gives some agency free license to root through everything and discover anything they consider wrong.

All it takes to stop this thing is vector it so it annoys the wrong people.

Re:if I owned a botnet..

[Anonymous Coward]

Assuming that the upper tiers of Comcast would recognize activity like this as the false positives they are instead of simply stating "see?? look at all this illegal activity! We must expand and grow our corporate-sponsored big brother network as soon as physically possible!" is a pretty dangerous assumption. If you want this stuff to go away, use and educate other people on using secure connections for as many day-to-day internet activities as possible. The answer isn't to flood systems like this with large amounts of data: with the kind of sponsorship they have that will only result in more iron being thrown at the solution to actually process it. The answer is less data.

What about stuff with NO legal alternatives?

[Anonymous Coward]

What kind of "helpful pointers" will they be giving when there is NO legal alternative? The few times I've ever used peer-to-peer is when the item in question is "out of print" and "currently unavailable" (Disney is notorious for doing this). Just try and get an original cut of Disney's live action/animated hybrid "Song of the South". It's not available in this country at any price. Oh you can get heavily censored versions, but not the original (supposedly it is "too racist" for Americans).

I realize this represents a very tiny fraction of online acquisition (I hesitate to call it piracy if it can't be purchased) but I mention it because a lot of companies (like Disney) deliberately take things off the market in order to trundle it out every ten years or so with a grossly inflated profit margin.

Re:What about stuff with NO legal alternatives?

[Seumas]

What kind of sick filthy communist are you? If something is no longer in print or has been abandoned -- how dare you try to use it for yourself or other people! If money is not changing hands for a good, service, or information, you might as well be stealing food off the tables of hardworking families! Instead of that free out-of-print book that you are consuming, you could have bought a totally different book and contributed to the capital good of your fellow man!

Re:What about stuff with NO legal alternatives?

[KingMotley]

Just try and get an original cut of Disney's live action/animated hybrid "Song of the South"

Ok, here: http://classicmoviereel.com/SOTS.html

Re:What about stuff with NO legal alternatives?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think that is legal copy. They say movies are given because they think they are available under the Berne Convention, but U.S. law does not agree with the Berne Convention in several key ways and because of the way the supremacy rules work in the U.S., the copyright law on the books beats the Berne Convention.

Re:What about stuff with NO legal alternatives?

[MobyDisk]

Exactly! If Comcast could write a program where I give it a file, and it tells me where I can legally obtain it, I would PAY for that service, just so I know where I can get it from! Of course, such a magical program is impossible.

Re:What about stuff with NO legal alternatives?

[Anonymous Coward]

Psst.. don't tell the Americans, but there is commerce outside the US...

http://www.amazon.co.uk/

Re:What about stuff with NO legal alternatives?

[Anonymous Coward]

This place is making illegal copies. Lol.

Re:What about stuff with NO legal alternatives?

[Anonymous Coward]

This isn't a legal alternative (at least according to US copyright law). "Song of the South" won't be in the public domain in the U.S. until 2039. So instead of downloading an "illegal file" you're paying a company/person for an "illegal dvd".

Re:What about stuff with NO legal alternatives?

[fido_dogstoyevsky]

This isn't a legal alternative (at least according to US copyright law). "Song of the South" won't be in the public domain in the U.S. until 2039. ....

"Song of the South" is eighteen years younger than Mickey Mouse so will be in the public domain eighteen years after Mickey Mouse... ie never.

Re:What about stuff with NO legal alternatives?

[Anonymous Coward]

In addition to this, there is a fundemental flaw in this supposedly global marketplace.

Maybe I really like a european band that hasn't signed on with any of the MAFIAA labels, so there is no reasonable way to get an album in the United States since you're forced to go through extremely unreliable import channels.

True story, I ordered an album from a German band on Amazon's US site. Later that day got the email "this is out of stock, it will be available in 1-2 weeks". Okay, fine. 10 days after ordering I got another email, "it will be available in 3-4 weeks". Ugh, okay. Next day another email "This CD will be available in 6-10 months". Ummm... no. So I cancelled the order and was able to find it less than legally in a manner of seconds. Even if you want to vote with your money and support something you like, if all the entertainment cartels decide they don't want to play nicely across borders, the consumer will find a way around them. They still don't get that they need to provide a reliable service at a reasonable price.

Good on them if they can quickly find locally legal alternatives to something I want to order, as long as they can do it in a non-obstructive manner. I.e. no service degredation, no obnoxious popups, and no tracking of my activities/searches/browsing for what inevitably will happen next: "You searched for downloads of X, Y, and Z, we think you might like this other thing, W, here's where you can buy it, now give us a finders fee."

Re:What about stuff with NO legal alternatives?

[Anonymous Coward]

Psst.. don't tell the Americans, but there is commerce outside the US...

http://www.amazon.co.uk/

Not a valid alternative. The average American won't be able to play a Region 2 PAL DVD. Besides, the original poster mentioned "in this country".

Lets not straw man this, and stay on topic

[Marrow]

Lets not magically assume that we know the mistakes they will make before they make them. I doubt that p2p will be an issue. I am curious as to how they plan to allow movie-previews and other stuff that generally benefits the copyright holders. There is a lot of stuff on the websites like rottentomatoes and whatnot that might get flagged. Is there going to be a magic handshake from the website that says we are entitled to broadcast this? Or is the allowed content going to be watermarked.

I am certainly not adverse to going to the other carrier and paying half of what I am paying comcast right now. Esp if comcast breaks the web.

Re:Lets not straw man this, and stay on topic

[Virtucon]

So there's more mistakes they'll make? Yeah, this is a win win for Comcast, they'll be deep inspecting every packet that goes through their network. Their own mini NSA to sniff out copyrighted materials. Nothing could possibly go wrong with that even though I can transfer it under fair use for example?

Safe Harbor is the first victim?

[Walt Sellers]

Wouldn't this violate their "safe harbor" protection? This would mean they would know about violations and they might even benefit from them by saying "get it legally FROM OUR STORE"

Re:Safe Harbor is the first victim?

[Seumas]

No, silly, they're a giant corporation.

Re:Safe Harbor is the first victim?

[robot256]

Exactly what I was thinking. The reason they want to pawn off the same system to competing ISPs is so they can turn around and sue them for knowingly letting their users violate Time-Warner's copyrights.

Common carrier

[Anonymous Coward]

That should lose them their "common carrier" status. They may wish to rethink this idea.

Re:Common carrier

[Anonymous Coward]

ISPs don't have to obey Common Carrier laws. They got themselves classified out of being telecommunications in the '90s.

as measured by...

[OFnow]

As measured by a proprietary algorithm with no human review of its calculation or of fair use -- you will be judged.

Now I can get game of thrones

[joe_frisch]

Great, now they will tell me where I can legally pay to download the latest season of "game of thrones"

Re:Now I can get game of thrones

[toddestan]

Yes, they'll tell you to buy a cable package that includes HBO. This is Corncast you're dealing with here.

Re:Now I can get game of thrones

[joe_frisch]

And I can watch that on my next international flight?

Also, its not the money for HBO that bothers me, its the problem that I may not be able to cancel without spending time on the phone during business hours.

So...

[Hartree]

Does this mean they're going to start flagging the oodles of things on Youtube that "copyright violations"? And post links to Amazon or some such where you can pay for the music in them (of course ignoring the other content)?

This should get funny when they go up against Google for treading on their turf.

Not gonna mess with Google-tube, huh? Well, I guess like in Animal Farm, some are more equal than others.

Re:So...

[Anonymous Coward]

Just wait for the redirect wars - when vendors start paying ISPs to be listed as the primary legal source. Then we'll be paying the ISP to monitor us breaking the law and the vendors will be paying the ISP to provide the links to stop us breaking the law. It's a good day to be an ISP.

("Comcast"+"helpful"+"copyright"+"pop-ups")=error

[Local ID10T]

Logic fail.

or to put it another way:

" You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

if they will offer it, i will rent it

[Gravis Zero]

... would be quickly pushed a pop-up message with links to purchase or rent the same content

if you can sell or rent me an episode of show that just broadcast an hour ago in 720p without ads and is DRM free, i'll do it. otherwise, fuck off because what i'm getting is better than what you have to offer.

Bring on the VPNs

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

I am loving this stuff - six-strikes and traffic snooping. It so obviously sucks that it is driving the market for VPNs to levels of hyper competition. And I lurve me a VPN because it mixes all my traffic with everybody else on the same egress node which is just great for "hiding in the crowd" while you browse the web without cookies (and other trackers).

Thanks to six-strikes I'm paying less than $4/month for VPN access that gets me my choice of exit nodes in about 10 different countries and 5 simultaneous VPN'd devices - great for stopping verizon, et al from sniffing my cellphone web-browsing too.

Re:Bring on the VPNs

[robot256]

But buying a VPN puts you on the NSA watch list. They don't care what you use it for, only who you talk to with it.

Re:Bring on the VPNs

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

The NSA is watching everybody. Not much I can do about them. What I can do is avoid ending up in a bazillion commercial databases like BlueKai.

https:?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, that was hard to circumvent.

Web Browsing or Peer-to-Peer?

[TranquilVoid]

As usual the summary is terrible. There is no mention of snooping on internet browsing, only P2P. How would this work? Perhaps;

1. Comcast gets you to install a program or browser plugin as part of their ISP crapware.
2. Comcast detect an illegal download by passively joining P2P swarms and, since they know your IP, inject HTML popups into your next browsing request. Popups don't work with many modern browsers but even if this was in the page it would be bizarre for the user to head to their Gmail and see half the page flashing with a warning and click-to-buy links.

SNR

[hurwak-feg]

For some reason, if this goes live, I would expect people to set up honeypots to make material not violated by copyright protections to trigger a false alarm in their system, and the people distributing material that violates a copyright will find ways around it. When enough people do this, the Signal to Noise Ratio will be so bad they will have little choice but to discontinue it or spend TONS of cash on one of two solutions I see (maybe someone has a better way, but lets not give them ideas) One would be buying gobs of processors, storage, and hiring computer scientists that can compare data passing through their system against their own copies using some sort of fancy algorithm. Even if they have a O(n) algorithm, the volume of data the since of the constant and n are going to be rather large and still cost tons of money to operate and maintain. Another solution is an army of monkeys with a bunch of monitors watching/listening to any streaming media passing through their system, which is probably a ToS and copyright issue itself when legal streams are monitored by those not authorized by the copyright owner to view it that way.

Another problem I can see is a large switch to https and other encrypted protocols to make their snooping useless. Pretty much they are going after the low skilled small fries of the copyright violators.

TLDR - I doubt this will work, I think they will only catch small timers, I think big timers will figure out a work around.

What could possibly go wrong

[Guru80]

I already hear the thousands of complaints that come streaming in on day one. Just because you are downloading a copyrighted work doesn't mean you are doing something illegal or shady because I'm not downloading it from the "official" source. I've already fought with my cable provider over this when I was served a notice over a year ago and they admitted to being wrong.

How, exactly?

[ZorinLynx]

How exactly will they "pop up" anything? Unless they transparent proxy an outgoing web request and send back a page with a pop-up, which would (in my opinion) be a gross violation of just being an internet provider and not fucking around with my packets?

Sigh. Why can't internet providers just provide internet, and stay the fuck out of this sort of thing? I just want my packets to make it to their destination, uninspected and un-fucked with, and I want the same for the packets coming back to me.

At this rate, the Internet is eventually going to become a glorified version of what AOL was in the 90s. Shudder.

Re:How, exactly?

[Skapare]

Make sure you use encryption.

Re:How, exactly?

[romiz]

I just want my packets to make it to their destination, uninspected and un-fucked with, and I want the same for the packets coming back to me.

Unfortunately, this means that all remote servers you interact with need to use HTTPS or the appropriate secure version of the protocol used - but is there an encrypted version of VoIP available ? Barring that, if you only mistrust your local network provider, you need a VPN. With some work, you could also rent a colocated box to install your own.

Re:How, exactly?

[Anonymous Coward]

> How exactly will they "pop up" anything?

Deep Packet Inspection, DNS packet rewriting, and undeclared proxy services. They're also breaking the new versions of Subversion that use "serf" instead of the older "neon" libraries for HTTP processing.

Use a VPN

[jeffmflanagan]

There are many services available that can keep Comcast from snooping on your usage. This also allows you to use region-locked services by selecting an end-point in one of many major cities worldwide.

Those assholes

[stonecypher]

Would be nice if they'd work on getting their service working instead.

Six months of having to use Google DNS because they can't run a goddamned DNS server.

Giving up on the Internet

[Anonymous Coward]

Shit like this, along with the NSA shit, makes me want to just go back to a landline, answering machine and snail mail.

Re:Giving up on the Internet

[viperidaenz]

But then the mailman will know what kind of porn you like.

very helpful

[slashmydots]

I found them helpful already just reading about them. Now I'm never going with Comcast ever.

Don't these old media types understand?

[EmperorOfCanada]

Don't these old media types understand that this just makes an opening for smaller more nimble ISPs to simply say, "We provide the bandwidth and what the hell you do with it is your business!"

I hope that these guys vomit their cheerios when they see how many previously complacent customers jump to the competition and never come back. Most people are barraged with better offers every day but ignore them thinking that it isn't worth the trouble. But when your ISP starts to threaten you then it does become worth the trouble.

But the funniest bit is that I suspect that people will get false positives all the time. I wonder what they would think of my scp transfers, and ssh sessions, not to mention the torrenting of things like Linux.

Plus you get mission creep. Will they start warning people about downloading VLC or even the torrent programs themselves. Or programs critical of the movie industry. Why not start blocking videos made by dissident groups? What about a warning for downloading Snowden's stuff from Wikileaks?

You also have grey areas like Aereo which the courts have greenlighted but the big media companies are saying will cause the end of civilization.

Then you get people not liking being watched. And lastly I really don't want the ISP to ever alter or change the data that I send or receive. To have a popup it means that they have injected something into my data stream. My potentially mission critical data stream.

Re:Don't these old media types understand?

[neminem]

*What* smaller more nimble ISPs? I haven't seen any of those in like 10 years. They still exist? I'd love to get off Verizon internet, but our only other choice is Charter, which is even frelling worse. Yes, we're barraged with "better" offers every day... from Charter...

Re:Don't these old media types understand?

[EmperorOfCanada]

Actually they are scattered here and there. Usually in secondary markets and you don't hear about them much because they don't spend zillions on marketing. Oddly enough the traditional media companies don't talk about them much either. Lastly the FCC stuck a knife in their backs about 7 years ago. But this might give them a nice little boost.

https, non-http urls and I'm going to sue Comcast.

[viperidaenz]

How are they going to know what I'm downloading via https://..../ websites and magnet: links? I'm pretty sure bittorrent won't display any of their popups.

They're also running in to the problem that altering the content delivered to the browser is creating a derivative work of someone elses content, potentially violating their copyright.

NSA should do the same

[Roger W Moore]

We're worried about the NSA seeing everything that goes over our connections.

Exactly. Clearly the NSA should be part of this scheme and provide popups to let you know when you are engaging in behaviour they deem questionable. So next time you click on an https connection to a non-US company you can get a helpful popup: "Using encrypted internet connections to foreign entities puts you on an NSA watch list, are you sure you wish to continue? If you so have you considered using an NSA-approved proxy server that will ensure we can protect your connection - available for free at: https://notthekgb.gov/".

Re:NSA should do the same

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the answer, folks. Make the browsers tell everyone how they're being snooped on. Every time you post to facebook, every time you go to your banks website. Information you enter here can be seen by your ISP and the NSA. Make the browsers do it, the people will start to listen.

The return of Clippy

[jfdavis668]

It looks like you are trying to pirate a movie. Would you like help?

Re:The return of Clippy

[Tablizer]

"It looks like you are pirating a movie. Would you like help choosing your cellmate?"

Another brain dead idea

[kawabago]

No one is going to install this software on their computer and COMCAST can't force it on people. If they try, customers will leave. This is nothing more than further proof that the entertainment industry doesn't understand technology or the internet and, they are also complete idiots. A far more productive approach would be to bang their heads against the wall and if it doesn't work, bang some more. It will achieve just as much and won't bother anyone else.

Re:Another brain dead idea

[Drakonblayde]

You vastly overestimate the common ISP customer. Of course you would never install the software. The person who pays for the truck roll to get an install, however, doesn't know any better. The tech performing the install likely doesn't know any better either.

Comcast understands technology quite well. Last numbers I heard, Comcast had around 23 million subscribers. How many of that 23 million do you suppose are actually tech savy? How many do you think just install the software, plug in their computer (or put it on the wireless) and expect it to just work like magic?

And in other news ...

[Skapare]

... the rate of use of HTTPS and VPNs is going up.

huh...Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is Commiecast getting involved with this? What the h-e-double toothpicks do they gain? All they do is provide a service. Why do they even care what people do with it?

Re:huh...Why?

[gmhowell]

Maybe has something to do with the 'NBC/Universal' portion of Comcast?

Android 2.x and IE on XP

[tepples]

Good luck getting every site, even personal blogs hosted on dinky little shared hosts, to switch to HTTPS. Android Browser on Android 2.x and Internet Explorer on Windows XP don't support SNI, an extension to HTTPS that makes name-based virtual hosting possible.

Re:Android 2.x and IE on XP

[DarkAce911]

both of those are dead operating systems at this point or will be shortly.

Re:Android 2.x and IE on XP

[tepples]

True, after April 2014, any Windows XP machine still connected to the Internet is likely to get hacked to pieces through the inevitable forever-day vulnerability. But some prepaid carriers are still selling entry-level devices that ship with Android 2.3, and people who aren't geeks will find it hard to root and CM some of these devices.

MPEG-LA

[tepples]

I hope that these guys vomit their cheerios when they see how many previously complacent customers jump to the competition and never come back.

Hence all the commercials about "slow DSL". Comcast has power because in a lot of areas, the competition can't even deliver 2 Mbps.

Will they start warning people about downloading VLC

That depends on whether the MPEG-LA is willing to get into bed with Comcast the way the MPAA has.

What about a warning for downloading Snowden's stuff from Wikileaks?

Worse yet: a warning even for downloading information about a plush snowman sold by Target.

My digital tv works fine without a box

[Anonymous Coward]

My fancy new 'digital' tv wont work without comcasts boxes around.

Really? My fancy old 'digital' tv http://store.sony.com/p/KDL-V40XBR1/en/p/KDLV40XBR1 has no trouble displaying even Encore movie channels without a Comcast box. Of course it did cost me a few hundred dollars extra but it also has great picture quality.

without comcasts boxes around. You can't even buy one. Rental only.

But you *can* buy a TiVo box that does everything the Comcast box does, and more.

Sigh. People like you who will only consider a solution if it comes from one specific vendor are the cause of the problem, not any part of the solution.

Re:My digital tv works fine without a box

[Anonymous Coward]

You live in a market comcast has not switched over to encrypted digital then. The places they have.. Have NO choice but to use comcast box.

Enjoy the time you have left. It won't last forever. And then you too will have a comcast box, comcast remote, and assorted problems with your fancy old digital TV.

Local last mile monopoly

[tepples]

COMCAST can't force it on people. If they try, customers will leave.

Leave for whom? Dial-up?

Re:Local last mile monopoly

[Anonymous Coward]

If it got bad enough, I would. Hell, I'm constantly looking at different hardware options for building a community BBS. Cox just hasn't pushed me far enough to say F this S and pull the trigger.

No way. Comcast rules!

[Anonymous Coward]

According to the title, "Comcast Working On 'Helpful' Copyright Violation Pop-ups," the Comcast pop-ups are going to help violate copyright.

Re:The return of HAL

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sorry Dave, I can't do that. I think you know what the problem is. The mission is profit, and it's far too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it.

Comcast is actually trying to do you a great favor. They are forcing you to inspect the value of the content they offer and the price you paid to let them consolidate all those little local legal monopolies into a corporate behemoth. It's the biggest fox ever to be thrown into a briar patch. How's it all workin' out for ya?

FFS, what is an "illegal download"?

[Anonymous Coward]

There's gotta be some way to get idiots to stop using that term. Really, what the fuck is an "illegal download"?!

What's in it for them

[powerspike]

Well,

At the end of the day, they'll more then likely earn commissions on referring people to the sites to get the "legal" version of the items, so it's in their interest to get this done and fast, it'll mean more profits for them in the long run.

In the end, it'll mean their earnings per customer will go up

Im no criminal!

[Anonymous Coward]

Please do not track every move I make, Im no criminal, I have so far done nothing wrong.
When you start tracking me, and pointing it out so clear to me, I will find the first bad-ass-ftp and download all of it.
That is what people do, when exposed to distrust.

Step on my toes and I will step on yours.

So dear Music, Movie and "Think of the children" industry: Step of my lawn, leave me alone!

Re:Im no criminal!

[Anonymous Coward]

On reason I do support PiratParty. They exists in many countries, try find yours and see how you can help in the first against this things.

Availability is the major problem...

[Anonymous Coward]

If you want an ebook and you are not from usa, you can't buy because "It is not available in your region".

Yes, right... a digital file is not available... are they trying to kidding who?

And then they complain about people resorting to go to other sources...

Make the bloody things available worldwide!

If this gets taken up worldwide...

[Anonymous Coward]

... It'll presumably advise: "HAH! Psyche! There are no legal options! This product is not available to you foreign scum! Not even if you pay! Your only option is to continue with your criminal ways or to wait like a good 2nd class human until we feel good and ready to sell it to you."

Nice!

[xenobyte]

So when I'm downloading the latest episode of some tv-show, I'll get a popup that tells me where to buy this episode? Nice! I'd love to pay for the shows I love but have been unable to find places where I can buy the episodes as they air... For this popup system to make sense, there must be a legal alternative to all illegal downloads, and I haven't been able to find one so it'll be nice with a pointer...

But then... I doubt it. It'll probably be a box saying: "You are downloading material illegally. This material is as yet unavailable legally so you'll just have to do without until further notice. Too bad - but life is hard and then you die. Have a nice day."

All content is copyrighted.

[Anonymous Coward]

Just about all the content that you receive through a web browser is copyrighted material. The distinction is that you have license to receive and view it. What mechanism is Comcast going to use to determine whether or not you have proper license to view the material? Oh yeah - none.

No, they actually do.

[Anonymous Coward]

With a government, they will get the government's army of men with guns and cages to lock you in to do it.

Without a government, they will be able to get their own army of men with guns and cages to lock you in.

People not in cages and living can.

[Anonymous Coward]

Therefore there's the ABILITY to vote them out.

There is no possibility to do so for a corporation.

Re:People not in cages and living can.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah there is - you stop using comcast and use someone else

Does this include a feedback system?

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope this includes a feedback system:

"Hi, we notice you are pirating Song Foo from artist Bar. This song is not legally available in your region. Would you like to notify the publisher of this fact?"

Here's to hoping. It would quickly flood the publisher with these messages ;)

fuck the nanny

[AndyKron]

Comcast is an ISP not a fucking nanny

The Oatmeal Got it Right

[alphax45]

So Comcast; what does your filter suggest when there is no legal option. See: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/game_of_thrones

Re:The Oatmeal Got it Right

[chefmonkey]

Oh, that's easy: "It looks like you're downloading illegal content. 'The Game of Thrones' cannot currently be purchased online. Click here for a special offer to add HBO-on-demand to your Comcast subscription for only $18.99 per month! (Note: Two year commitment required. Non-TV subscribers must also add the $39.99-per-month 'Digital Starter' package to take advantage of this deal)."

Yeah, I can't imagine that Comcast has a profit motive here or anything.

Good bye common carrier ...

[gstoddart]

See, if they're looking at everything for content, they lose some of their common carrier provisions.

If they're looking at what's in your traffic, then they will also need to be looking for child pornography, drug deals, terrorism, cyberbullying, and everything else. They won't be able to claim that they're just a network connection and not responsible for what's going over it. They will, in fact, become responsible for what goes over the wire for everything.

Of course, the main problem I have with this is that the entire world seems to have become subservient to copyright law. The asshats in the MPAA et all won't be happy until we can't do anything with technology without their permission, and making sure they get paid for it.

This is just more in the slow decline to where corporations run the world, and we're just there to do the manual labor and give them money.

FTW, let's go all "Tyler Durden" on them. Corporations have just become rent-seeking douchebags who tell the government what to do (like extending copyright to obscene periods on works they nicked from the public domain) -- and I'm pretty sure none of us got to vote for them.

Re:Good bye common carrier ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Posting as AC to preserve moderations.

See, if they're looking at everything for content, they lose some of their common carrier provisions.

What common carrier provisions? They are not, and never have been classified as common carriers. As a matter of fact, they're specifically exempted from Title II regulation by the FCC.

your music is bad and you should feel bad

[Thud457]

Dude. You just got old.

That may be true, but THIS generation, music has gotten OBJECTIVELY worse. And that's not even touching the whole subject of no-talent autotune jockeys.

harumph!

Re:your music is bad and you should feel bad

[slartibartfastatp]

When did loud became a synonym for worse? I mean, the amplitude level in which an album is mixed is the only factor affecting the quality of music?

So I guess that's the best music in the whole history of the world.

Right...

[lightknight]

And this what I think, when I think of their 'help'.

This is awesome, if you think about it. Seriously.

[swillden]

I think this is a good thing... it's much better, at least, than "6 strikes".

Am I insane? An MPAA shill?

Neither. Well, definitely not the latter and I don't think I'm the former, either. Let me explain.

Although they're saying this isn't a replacement for "6 strikes", it is. Because this warning would presumably pop up before you downloaded the infringing content, so you would choose not to do it, meaning you'll never accrue any strikes. Now, I'm assuming this popup will come up in exactly the same circumstances that you'd get tagged with a strike, which effectively makes this a "strike alert". Sure the popup will point you to legal avenues, but its real value is in pointing out when you're downloading infringing content in a way that will be visible to Comcast.

The obvious solution for pirates: If you get a popup, find another source that doesn't trigger the popup, and download it from there. Find a sharing site that uses SSL, or use an SSL proxy, or TOR, or... whatever. Some mechanism that isn't or can't be monitored by Comcast, and is therefore safe from strikes.

Effectively, this allows Comcast to placate the content industry, "See, look how hard we're working to protect your content!", while at the same time removing the risk that they'll have to cut off paying customers who accumulate too many strikes.

As for the "Oh, noes, they're watching my connection!" bit, meh. They can do that all they want without notifying people with a popup. In my opinion as a professional security engineer, that's another GOOD thing about this. It will occasionally remind people that anything you do online that isn't encrypted is visible to your ISP and to whoever else happens to lie upon the path between your browser and the endpoint. It doesn't decrease security or privacy, it reminds you that you are operating in a context where you don't have much, if any, security or privacy. Knowing is better than not knowing.

So... yay for Comcast! I hope all the other ISPs jump on board.

Legally Available?

[Scroatzilla]

I have shelled out ~$140 to legally watch the first few seasons of a Showtime series which is currently in its last season. I would *gladly* pay to legally obtain access to the current season. Unfortunately, it is not available for me to do so. Therefore, I have to comb the internet every single week to find the new episode. This is becoming more and more time consuming and complex.

I'm curious about where the link to the legally available episode would point to? I assume that it would point to Showtime.com where I would be advised to contact my local cable company to purchase service and subsequently subscribe to Showtime. Suddenly legally purchasing one episode of a tv show becomes a several-hundred-dollar affair.

This seems wrong. Having cut the cable several years ago, this is the kind of punishment that I have been subject to repeatedly.