RIAA and ISPs to police your traffic starting July 12 | Hacker News Reader

RIAA and ISPs to police your traffic starting July 12

arstechnica.com

57 pointsevo_915 comments

This is strictly political agreement with very little effect in the real world. The ISPs want to be able to say "look, we're already doing everything we can to stop piracy, no additional legislation please", whereas the RIAA wants to be able to claim "look, we're already cooperating intensely with ISPs to stop piracy and it isn't working, more legislation please".

So now the empty suits on both sides are happy and can report this wonderful political victory to their bosses, whilst actually having accomplished fuck all.

Wow - this agreement has been in effect for a year? TL;DR: The delay in implementation has been bureaucratic.

To quote Ars:

""The system" according to Torrent Freak, involves major labels monitoring BitTorrent and other peer-to-peer networks for copyright infringement, and then reporting that infringement to ISPs, who will monitor their networks for the transgressors."

I know labels and so on monitor networks in a variety of ways, but ISPs folding and given entertainment co's an open window into customer identity and raw traffic seems like unhealthy collusion.

Shouldn't this come into conflict with various privacy legislation?

ISPs giving entertainment co's an open window into customer identity and raw traffic

Good thing they're not doing that.

In the past, I understand entertainment co's have identified transgressors from looking at the IPs that are making movies available for download, for instance, and then subpoena-ing account holder info for that IP from the ISP. Or similarly, finding the IP that a torrent is being served from, or whatever.

What I read from Ars is that now entertainment co's will have some means of "...monitoring BitTorrent and other peer-to-peer networks" that bypasses the steps required today.

What's that mechanism? And whatever it is, is there anyway that a giving entertainment co's a means of monitoring ISPs customers isn't corrosive to privacy?

They're doing the same kind of monitoring they used to do. It might be better, because now I think they're required to document how their monitoring works and (supposedly) independent experts can comment on the accuracy of these systems.

Although stopping "piracy" is something that's not without merit, isn't this like the post-office opening all your mail to make sure you're not trading bootleg tapes and CDs with your friends?

tangentially @ "isn't this like the post-office opening all your mail"...

Iran does exactly this. When my grandmom used to send stuff here from Iran, sometimes the letter or package got to the US already shredded open and in a plastic bag from USPS saying sorry it was already like this when we got it. Same in the other direction.

Just sayin...

Aziz, the entity is called "The Islamic Republic of" Iran, not Iran. Iran does not materially exist at the moment. Please do not soil the name.

Iran.

Deal with it.

One of my friend got a notice from Optimum Online for downloading Adobe Photoshop sometime last year. So I think yes, there is marginal policing that is going on form ISPs already.

I think this probably is a better solution than RIAA going after people and suing them for absurd amounts of money. While I don't agree on policing on principle, this could be the least acceptable alternative.

Though, I think this is also a good time maybe for VPN services to mushroom around other parts of the world that could be used from USA? (Though, technically you are more easily traceable when using a VPN, since you have signed up with some identifiable information.)

> One of my friend got a notice from Optimum Online for downloading Adobe Photoshop sometime last year. So I think yes, there is marginal policing that is going on form ISPs already.

That wasn't necessarily the ISP intercepting traffic. When you download a torrent, everyone else active in that torrent gets your IP address.

Existing discussion here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3711430

Ars/TorrentFreak have done a better job explaining the system than CNet.

FYI: this has been going on here in South Africa for some time... The first I heard of someone being issued a warning was around 2008, not sure exactly how long it has been going on though.

One thing to note is that by and large the ISP just emails you to say 'we are obligated to inform you that Warner Bros is getting uppety' ...I have friends who have received several of these over the years without any further action having been taken.

Bad thing that this is going to happen, good thing that usenet is out of the picture (for now). Another thing that will most likely happen is that they will use this chance to data mine and use our data for their own good. How good does SSL downloading protect from this?

Finally! A million thanks! Mark Klein didn't change user complacency, but this will.

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