back to article AT&T to crush copyrighted network packets

AT&T says it's time to start filtering copyrighted content at the network level. During a panel discussion at the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES), The New York Times reports, the communications giant joined Microsoft and NBC Universal in arguing that internet service providers - like AT&T itself - should be …

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  1. Brian Miller

    OK, encrypt the streams

    So then the file sharing protocols will encrypt their streams, like some already do. Then what? Turn off, or severely throttle back, large usage of network resources? Anyways, they won't be able to block it. Presumably AT&T is being paid by somebody to create the sniffing software to do this. I don't think that they would be making that comment without someone funding the actual software development, and the addition of hardware that can handle the traffic.

  2. Tom
    Unhappy

    Who decides what's legal?

    I'd be interested to see how such a system would effect legitimate uses of copyrighted material.

    I see no way that it could distinguish between a member of a band sending an mp3 of their own work to a friend or fellow band member (surely a legitimate use of copyrighted material), and someone else sending the same mp3 to a few friends, illegally.

    There's lots of other situations that such a system could cause problems with, I'm sure.

  3. Steve Roper
    Pirate

    And how exactly

    do they plan to deal with the surge in encrypted torrents? Are they going to throttle ALL encrypted traffic? All this will achieve will be to cause an even greater rise in the use of encryption to hide P2P traffic.

    This has all the effectiveness of stomping on a tube of toothpaste!

  4. Adrian Crooks

    It's not what you do, it's how you do it

    Or so I've been told. The large corporations whip themselves into a frenzy with brute force methods when they should really be considering social engineering more. In the end the law abiding people suffer.

  5. Jon Green
    Flame

    Totally impractical.

    1. The privacy consequences of sniffing network packets routinely will keep lawyers in nice suits and fancy cars indefinitely;

    2. By doing packet monitoring and filtering of this nature, ISPs would surely lose their common carrier status, opening up a massive can of worms;

    3. What would the proposers of this daft idea suggest be used to (a) identify copyright material, and (b) distinguish between material that's being transferred with the owners' permissions? After all, the internet's used to copy media between producer and publisher, too!

    4. It wouldn't make any difference, anyway. Instead of downloading in the clear, common download platforms would just use SSL or similar to make the packet contents opaque to scanners, and other tricks to make it tough to identify packets that are being used to pass copyright material. This measure would damage legitimate network users through "false positives", without any significant effect on the copyright thieves at which it's targeted.

  6. Ole Juul

    Scary

    There is something strange going on here. It's scary when these big companies get together to conspire against the public. Why would AT&T have any interest in P2P or copyrights? Do they stand to make any money from filtering, or do they just belong to the same church? Do they want to kill the fast growing P2P email?

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  8. Ray Simard

    Playing God

    What a can of rattlesnakes this is likely to become.

    Fingerprinting packets at the network level looking for the appearance of copyrighted material? Never mind if someone happens to have the right to transfer something; never mind if it's covered by fair use; never mind if the copyright claim (or conclusion of same by the fingerprinting algorithm) doesn't meet legal requrements; never mind that the accuracy of detection of "bad" traffic is likely to be highly uneven...

    That old aphorism, that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely seems at work here: this reeks a lot more of lust for power and control than anything else.

    Oh, to be able to resurrect the end-to-end model...

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Stop

    re: Who decides what's legal?

    Easy answer: No one. They'll just nuke all "suspicious" traffic. After all, to them you're guilty until proven guilty you miserable pirating naughty person you.

    <RANT>

    This has nothing to justice or what's right or wrong. It's about power. The pigopolists have it and you don't. The plan is simple. Make the law so convoluted and preposterous that no one can survive without making some transgression. Then, since everyone is guilty, one can round up the ones that make trouble for the ruling elite. If you're rich, no worries, you can afford the protracted lawsuits and the DA probably won't bring charges anyway. If you're not rich, you're screwed.

    Is this state of affairs actually news to anyone? Didn't you read _1984_ or see _Brazil_? It's not like you haven't been warned. You're paying them to do this to you.

    It's going to take a hell of a lot more effort than whinging online to change what's going to happen to you all. It's probably already too late to start a real revolution, but you can start by stopping giving them your money. Don't buy CDs or DVDs, kill you TV, cancel your cable & satellite. Get angry, get active, join a political party and take over your local precinct. Start your own ISP. Get a law degree and take pro-bono cases for the EFF. Get off your ass and do something.

    </RANT>

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Linux

    This is totally out of control

    Sounds like the stupid government will move to outlaw/weaken encryption again. This will only help the identity theft crackheads break into our financial accounts. Hollywood and the elite's money is more important, after all.

    I've been expecting this and more for a long time: Digital cameras that "see" trademarks in the scene and won't record the image. (Try snapping a shot of the Eiffel Tower at night, the camera refuses to store the image.) Hard drives that look for images of known actors, trademarks in video/image scenes. Audio recorders that won't allow you to record your own piano playing and singing tunes that are copyrighted. These nightmares and more await us all. There's virtually nothing they can't put on FPGA's anymore.

  11. Ray Simard
    Thumb Down

    Self-fulfilling prophecies

    With threats like this, DRM litigation feeding-frenzies, debacles like the Sony BMG rootkit, bizarre tricks ostensibly intended to restrict pirating of material and the like but actually limiting people's choices of what they can and cannot do with their own systems, people will increasingly consider themselves presumed criminals. Quite a few of those who would otherwise choose to purchase materials legitimately by their own sense of right and personal integrity will resent the label and live down to the expectations already laid upon them. Why choose to respect the monoliths that have already scorned you?

    Absurdities like the $220,000-plus judgment against the woman who put some music up on file-sharing systems will polarize the public against the industries.

    Treat someone like an adversary and you will make him one.

  12. Jon Minhinnick
    Black Helicopters

    All your packets are belong to us

    'nuff said...

  13. Nexox Enigma

    Oh gods

    Looks like I'm going to be more and more interested in becoming an ISP. I wonder if you could get enough reasonable people to move into a neighborhood maybe you could all split the cost of a reasonable connection from a Tier 1 (possibly more than one for extra safety,) and do it so that one person gets to act as the ISP, with all the legal freedoms that provides.

    It sounds crazy, but wouldn't it be awesome if you could trust your ISP?

    Like I said, it sounds crazy.

  14. heystoopid
    Pirate

    Alas

    Alas doomed to fail ultimately as for every action there is a reaction !

    So let the war of countermeasures begin in earnest !

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Alien

    Common carrier

    As stated above surely this would be more trouble than it's worth?

    They have zero chance of actually being successful with this, but in making the attempt they surely lose any chance of claiming common carrier status?

    Why should they even think about bothering to do it, they have no particular need to do this, and I can only see downsides and no upside - unless various copyright holders are throwing big bundles of cash about?

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Coat

    "Polarizing the public"

    The public is already polarized - you can see it on forums and websites posting their displeasure online, albeit not doing anything about it other than that.

    First you have the pirates, that believe they have the right to take everything for free - which isn't true.

    And then you have the copyright nuts, which either don't have the technical skills necessary to pirate something, or have more than enough money to throw around buying all kinds of filth comming from BigMusic or BigMovie, and thus believe that everyone can and should buy everything they use, at the prices dictated by others.

    All this, when the answer lies in the middle - there are some things which should be free - for example 128kbps mp3 versions of songs, which are decent quality to sample, but leave something to be desired ; or DVD versions of movies - which again, are nice to sample, but far from good.

    All these would act as "samplers".

    You get the mp3's, you listen, and if you like, you buy the physical high quality media, and promotional items, and of course - the experience of going to a concert.

    Or, you get the movie samplers, you watch, and if they're good, you buy the HD version, or go to a cinema to enjoy the movie with your friends.

    But, that would mean having the choice to filter what you like from everything being launched at the same time, and being able to make an informed decision on what you invest your money in.

    And that means the possibility of decreased revenue from the next "The Sequel of the Sequel 4", or the current airhead music celebrity...

    And we couldn't have that, could we ?

    I'll get my coat.

  17. Anonymous Coward
    Dead Vulture

    100% Success, or Die

    This message has a copyright - it's not explicit but it exists merely by me writing it. So, how do *I* get AT&T to restrict distribution? Where do I apply?

    AT&T only has to fail once to block copyright of some rich artist and everybody will be meeting in court and only the lawyers will end up richer.

  18. Danny Thompson
    Pirate

    Market forces

    This will be a temporary state of affairs. Market forces dictate that once AT&T, or any ISP that follows in their tracks, put this plan into action and upset enough customers there will be an alternative spring up. It may well be a network of "community ISPs", or it may be one of the incumbent commercial giants.

    But for sure, the RIAA/MPAA (and their knob-sucking cronies in UK and Europe) will not win this battle for their own existence. Once their hostile intentions to the paying consumer become more publicly known there will be a backlash. What they need to remember is that we "like" music and video but we certainly don't "need" it to live!

    Put AT&T's pronouncement down to sabre rattling. It'll amount to nothing.

    Pirate symbol chosen because RIAA/MPAA support the stealing money from the performers by ridiculously high fees to "protect" them! Talk about self-interest.

  19. David Urmston
    Happy

    Anyone noticed something ?

    Never mind "Return of The Machines", from over here in the UK the perspective is that many of these copyright protagonists have surnames which make them look like members of the "Mafia" !

    Remember the "Gansta" stories in the films,

    As they grew up in the hoods extorting dosh from the local entreprenuers, the big boys moved away from the dangerous passtimes of running illegal booze, gambling casinos and prostitution by pursuading the US government to legalise their various financial interests. The clever ones got fancy lawyers and bought their local and state Government Reps before buying into the Entertainments Business, which if you remember, is totally legit and a good cover for laundering cash from other illegal interests.

    In a few decades the hoodlum cretins have crawled out of the gutters of Chicago, New York, etc, and bought luxurious gafs in places like Montanna (read Jared Diamonds book, "Collapse"). Ha, Ha, Ha, Ha, Ha......

    Bye the way, isn't it possible to design new encryption algorythms that the file "copywrong owners" don't have. Web 2.0 anyone ?

    I am currently working on a taser that can detect folks who want to make money out of other peep's art. I'm following the train of thought that these suckers never actually listen to music or watch films, cos' they are too busy counting their dwindling unethical profits and don't have the time. There must be a missing common sense gene, or something that's detectable by it's absence, without having to ask them to "lick this sir", or "breathe into the bag sir" ?

    I'm outta here .

  20. Andy ORourke
    Alert

    A simple solution?

    Look, we all know that pirated data is transmitted across ISP networks, there have even been a few successful law suits to prove it. Now right or wrong the owners of copyright material do have the law on their side but, IMHO if the ISP's are willing to spend millions of dollars and man hours to detect, block or throttle this kind of traffic surely it would be cheaper all round for each ISP to pay a levy to the recoding industry Ass and other bodies in various countries and forget trying to do this because, for all the reasons already stated it is probably going to be a huge mess.

  21. michael

    hold on a sec

    what about all the legail transfering of coprighted stuff ie amazon and itunes how the fudge will this tell the difference?

  22. Joe M

    Nuts!

    Is there something in the water that executives at these large corporation drink? Or are they preselected for stupidity?

    I have tried about a dozen different encrypted feeds for various services. They all stink!

    I'm salivating at the thought of ISPs or backbone providers being forced to filter packets based on content. Quick as a wink large scale packet encryption will become commercially feasable, the technology will be refined and propagated, the server and other resources will materialise to support it and the DRM nightmare, as well as busybody government snooping and Bill Gates trying to own the airwaves, will fade to just a bad memory. Thank you AT&T!

  23. Claus P. Nielsen
    Black Helicopters

    AT&T Biting the hand that feeds it?

    As some of the above comments have stated, AT&T must have a not so obvious financial interrest hidden somewhere in this.

    Unless every other ISP are ordered to implement the same restrictions, AT&T would loose customers in droves immediately after implementing such a policy. Customers will see no benefit from this and the mere risk of loosing packets from false positives should scare away any sensible customers (if I were a competitor, I would surely find a way to inject a few rumours into the mill so the not so sensible users are scared away too).

    So either AT&T are just showing a nice front towards their friends in the Ass.'s or they think that they have a better filtering technology than their competitors and are betting that they can get legislators to make this type of filtering mandatory (legislation would take care of the risk of loosing common carrier status).

    It seems like a really long shot to bet on filtering technology to be that good, but they may think that the experience they have had with spam filters have made them experts at filtering.

    In the end, all will depend on legislation though. Any unilateral move by AT&T would bury them.

  24. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    But

    What if i download from Antigua? According to WTO rules they have the right to completely ignore any US intellectual property as the US screws them over online gambling.

    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/12/21/antigua_us/

  25. I. Aproveofitspendingonspecificprojects

    What plausible business model...

    the communications giant joined Microsoft and NBC Universal in arguing that internet service providers - like AT&T itself - should be sniffing your networks packets and blocking anything that copyright holders don't travelling over the wire.

    *****

    "Blocking anything that copyright holders don't" what?

    What is Microsoft doing in the censorship business? Who ever bought an operating systems package (or an office one for that matter) because they needed it to determine what copyright laws are throughout the world?

    Who's idea was that?

    One can understand an ISP's wish to be clean of whatever laws there are on copyright wherever they are based. One can see the point of NBC Universal being involved.

    Even if you twist things to include the fear Microsoft has that they can be scammed by the same file sharing pirates.

    But when you buy an OS, you don't expect to be actively involved in helping all these good people to sort out their problems -by default, do you?

  26. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    WiMAX?

    The end result of this is likely to be a public P2P internet. Everyone has a WiFi or WIMAX box and an aerial on the chimney/balcony, and the whole thing runs as an unmonitored uncontrolled mesh network, with ten million hops to go anywhere and torrents circulating all day. No need for public ISPs, because *everyone* is an ISP.

    Then those of us that want guaranteed QoS, no delays, and don't give a damn about sharing pirated DivX or MP3 files can just buy a pipe from the local telco and breathe in peace :)

  27. Anonymous Coward
    Joke

    Further consequences....

    So if they implement this on the networks, what is the impact going to be on network traffic? Am I going to be able to play games with the same ping or will I be reminded more of days on a 56k modem?

    If blocking P2P is truly the be-all and end-all of what an ISP is supposed to do, why not set the main routers to block any and all incoming connections. It's not like web and email traffic require it, and ftp can be dropped to passive mode...

    Lot's of other stuff would break (hosting at home, remote admin, skype, WoW updateing etc...), but who cares about all the implications, we "got" filesharing!

  28. Anonymous Coward
    Stop

    Too late

    Guys,

    You are just too late, the stuff is already in place, they only want to legalise it.. Using the P2P as a front end for the job

    Please see, and also read the papers on dailykos (ext links)

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narus

  29. Anonymous Coward
    Paris Hilton

    Is there a patent lawyer on the site?

    Quick, quick.

    I've just thought of an idea (which I can patent) using existing (non-patented) technology and which will make me mega rich!

    All it requires is for "subscribing" users to "rent" line space off me and I'll provide them with the music they want to hear.

    Basically, take two empty tin cans, punch a hole in one end of each can, cut the end completely off the other ends of the cans.

    Thread a piece of very long string through one of the holes in a can. Knot the string. Lay the "line" to the other person. They then do the same with their end of the string. Add an additional hole and piece of string for each subscriber.

    Cover the open end of the can with tissue paper, stretch until it is taut but not torn.

    One of you digs out that old wind-up Barking Dog thing, and play "vinyl" discs.

    Take turns in playing tunes.

    Hey presto! A subscrier p2pnetwork.

    The wonga should start rolling in, as soon as I deliver the back of the fag packet to the patent office.

    Mine's the glitter jacket, by the way.

    Tarra

    PS Why Paris Hilton?

    Hey, babe! p2p Jockey's are the latest sexy thing (well, in my dream anyway).

    I'm outa here. ba-doing ba-doing ba-doing....

  30. adnim

    Am I missing something?

    Is data (movie files, mp3, anything) not chopped up into iddy biddy packets for transission? How can a single packet be Identified as copyright material?

    How do they do this then? Re-assemble all the packets into the complete data stream and compare it to a database of all, I say ALL copyright material that exists? That's one massive amount of data to compare your data stream to.

    Or is the technology so smart that it can pick up 1,480 bytes of IP data and determine with no doubt that this packet is part of a data stream that contains copyright material, and that the end points of this data transmission do not have the rights to transmit/receive it.

    I make music for fun and for pleasure. OK so nobody wants it ;) But I can say with all honesty I don't care who listens to it or gets a copy for free. I only object to others making money from my work. So it will be copyright. Now how will they distinguish packets containing copyright material which the owner approves of free non-profit making dissemination, from the copyrighted data of those who pray to the dollar and insist we pay multiple times for the same thing?

    I like high quality sound, I download mp3's to discover if I like the latest album from (enter name of "real musicians" here). then I go and buy the CD. I then rip that CD to which ever format (usually lossless) I want, so I can listen where and when I want. This is a habit I am considering breaking away from. The artists get next to nothing, whilst all the middle men take the big money. I may well start downloading for free and find a way of sending payment directly to the artist. I do not mind paying a fee for music I appreciate. I just want the artists themselves to get the biggest slice of the pie.

  31. Mark

    @John Green

    Have you thought about point 1: the lawyers are saying to AT&T "We're open to lawsuits because of copyright abuse. How about we block copyrighted works?" and then guess who gets money for lawsuits for reading confidential information or blocking legitimate content (EVERYTHING is copyrighted)?

    Yes, that's right, the lawyers.

  32. Ash
    Pirate

    Welcome to Dystopia

    Enjoy your stay; We demand it.

  33. Sean Ellis
    Go

    Remember, YOUR work is copyrighted too

    If you have a web page, if you upload your bedroom synthesizer noodlings, if you take a few snapshots and put them on Flickr, all of this is automatically your copyright.

    Is AT+T ready to filter everything, by everyone?

    It is time for a mass campaign of civil disobedience - anyone, everyone with a personal website should contact AT+T and ask them to filter this content as it goes onto their network. Impose bizarre and unworkable conditions. (... And *this* page is licensed only for IP addresses where the four values are solutions of this Diophantine equation...)

    How will they deal with this? How can they argue that your copyright is somehow unimportant, when the pre-eminence of copyright is their whole argument?

  34. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    AT&T

    Can get f----d along with any other ISP.

    Have fun sniffing my ecc (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elliptic_Curve_Cryptography) perfect dark streams mother ------rs

  35. CSQuake
    Pirate

    Another Comcast scenario ...

    It'll never work ...

    Why did they even bother announcing it?! lol

  36. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    hmm

    anyway perfect dark and ecc aside.

    Seen as everything we write,draw, create etc is copyrighted it could be good fun as we control our copyright. So you can create a webpage and instead of securing it just tell all the ISP's that they are only allowed to let ip's x,y and z to connect otherwise they're breaching your copyrights.

    Interestnig...

  37. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    Why is it............

    That companies which alone are worth billions more than the entire record or movie industry put together feel the need to get on there knees and lick ass? When will techies finally grow a backbone and tell the RIAA and the MPIAA to go f*ck themselves?

    From where I am sat, techies in general are great at bitching and complaining but when it comes to actually standing up for themselves and what is right, they will crumble at the first hurdle every single time, whether it is P2P or having some poxy accountant butcher your department.

    If M$, HP, et al had mad a stand at the beginning of the P2P movement then the music industry would have either been bankrupted or forced to do what is right and we wouldn't have the DCMA and the other useless laws that protect the pigopolists.

    If the ISPs and Telecoms companies make a stand now and say, even THINK about taking us to court about this and we will filter YOUR websites and YOUR traffic, then the RIAA will curl up and run off with their tail between their legs. Instead you have a bunch of technical companies going with the whip in their own hands saying "here we go, whip us"! Pathetic!!

  38. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Huh!?!

    So from reading a little bit on this subject after reading this article and the comments it seems several solutions to utterly defeat this strategy already exist without the file sharers getting their sweat on:

    1. Encryption of traffic on p2p

    2. SSL encryption of the sites

    3. VPN file transfers

    4. IP camouflage

    5. Legal Issues

    So this here "network solution" doesn't seem likely and if it did then the kiddies in the p2p world will probably just implement the above or shock invent something else.

    Why do large companies spend money on this stuff, don't shareholders get upset about people spending money on designing stuff that wont work? Why are they even bothered what travels over their network. I mean i didn't sue the government for allowing the burglar who robbed me to use the roads to make his escape.

  39. Anonymous Coward
    Coat

    Tier1

    AboveNet

    Savvis

    Verio

    Global Crossing

    Level 3

    Time Warner Telecom

    Cogent

    Customers would just ask to be routed through any other Tier1 provider for their torrent boxes or dedicated servers. Usenet providers already offer routing like this through port selection or control panels.

    Unless AT&T can offer dirt cheap bandwidth as a loss leader I would avoid increasing links to them, peering options could offer an AT&T bypass for an extra dollar a month which might make a lot of money for a Tier1 provider.

    Instead of net neutrality or non neutrality net the providers can offer a clear path through the internet from ISP to ISP travelling around the AT&T network. Also through balancing you could shove all your other traffic that doesn't involve this problem through existing AT&T links until you can finish the contract or renegotiate based on a lower price for restricted service.

  40. Billy Goat Gruff

    Pick your fight

    You know, Jammie wasn't a good postergirl for P2P. But she is probably typical of the sort of AT&T customer who hasn't got a clue but thinks she's anonymous. She will use encrypted packets if the software defaults to that, otherwise, she won't put any thought into it.

    I don't want my traffic filtered by RIAA cronies, but really, like Jammie, pick your fight and don't let them pick it for you.

    Fingerprinting packets is not really that difficult, even if they're zipped... if they're encrypted and the password isn't public knowledge then there's no need to fingerprint them. So this isn't any great hassle.

    Should AT&T filter traffic for RIAA? Yes, if they get paid enough. Will it affect anyone who sends their own music through P2P - no. Does it affect my copyrights - no. It only tracks the fingerprints of those files that the RIAA tags.

    Filesharing is obviously wrong - the **AA et al are also obviously wrong. But when you fight the pigolopists make sure *you* pick the fight. Stop levies on media (I only use writeable DVDs for data, never *AA stuff). Stop ISPs having to divulge personal details under some terrorist legislation.

    But allow them to charge whatever they want for their copyright and you decide whether it's worth it, or download it for free on the understanding they have to stop you and Jammie from taking the piss.

  41. Shonko Kid
    Black Helicopters

    Hate to be AT&T right now...

    If this is what they're trying to ply. Real bottom of the barrel stuff here.

    Utterly unworkable, as many have already noted. Technically unfeasible, you would need a monitoring point at each access node on the internet - and unless such was made law, then the market would see off any ISP that tried to pull off such a stunt. It relies on the end user being oblivious to such actions taking place, otherwise they will seek to easily circumvent (see above).

    Where (in the network model) do the plan on even implementing this - have a copyright bit on IP traffic? It would be trivial to get one of those nice little linux based routers and make it mask that off! At the application level - essentially force/encourage users to use crippleware? Good luck with that!

    And as for that Narus article on it-must-be-true-because-it's-on Wikipedia, the whole thing reads like it was written by some conspiracy nut whose had too much caffeine..

    Yes, AT&T must be in a very bad place right now, if this is there plan for the future.

    Let me now when the black 'copters arrive, I'll be listening to warez on KaZaa...

  42. Luis
    Alien

    All about evolution....

    The main problem lies in the western way of doing things. We have created and invented lots of things including the internet, Cultural revolutions, lots of ideas. But when did they really created this inventions, 60s, 70s. We have gone to the moon on 1969 and now we cant even guarantee that the rockets work . The Internet still works on V4 IP's and we are running out of addresses. Virtual machine software like vmware has been used in the old mainframes for ages. So not really nothing new besides more of the same but with more colors (Look at Mac Leopard and Windows Vista lots of new old features), by the way the IPhone is a PDA we already had those too. The companies are getting money from old ideas and not spending on creating the advances, not real R&D, fast cash of the same stuff. We are even going back to nuclear power, really advanced, NOT. Now companies are afraid that they will loose control of the cash cows. If you had good new things to offer you wouldnt worry about the old ones. And now there is china we are trying keep them away from making the use of the same concepts on their products, and yes we dont produce anything anymore they do, all made in china. So the only thing we have in Copyright so we do everyhting possible to retain status quo. This is all very sad. This should work like some other industries, 5 year of esclusivity and after public domain, this will make them evolve and create new things. If we did this we would not need to block the internet traffic. I reminde everyone democracy is the power of the people, people can change things and it's up to them to make shure the change happens

  43. Steve Evans
    Alert

    Ah...

    This must be utilising the little known "copyright" bit flag present in all tcp/ip packets.

    aka, how exactly do they plan on spotting copyright material?

    Do they plan on inspecting every torrent available on the net, and then telling AT & T the checksum? Blimee what a job that's gonna be. Although maybe I should apply for it... I'd be the only person on the planet authorised to download copyright material and paid to do it at work!

    Note to self: Get job, take huge removable USB drive into office each day.

    Oh, what's that? Encrypted torrents? Oh they can just block anything encrypted, after all, if you're encrypting data, you must have something to hide.

    Ferkin' idiots.

  44. Hayden Clark Silver badge
    Thumb Down

    Why to the tech companies kowtow to the diddy media companies?

    'cos the media companies had the bright idea of "investing" in politicians, that's why!

  45. James Anderson

    Pointless to scan individual packets.

    I think we can give AT&T some credit for technical proficiency.

    After all some of that Bell Labs magic must have rubbed of on them at some point.

    So I think you will find what they are propsoing is not scanning every single packet on the web. Instead they will probably be looking for protocols that are SOMETIMES used by copyright violators and blocking then (BitTorent anyone).

    This seems likely as AT&T can make a business case for this:-

    If we block file sharing we can put off upgrading our 50 year old cabling for another five years.

  46. Peter Mc Aulay
    Coat

    Surely...

    If they break into my encrypted traffic streams they are violating the DMCA and/or the Computer Misuse Act!

  47. David Wilkinson
    Unhappy

    They will just detect and band entire technologies.

    traffic looks like p2p - block it

    Nevermind that I use p2p all the time to download Ultimate Boot CD, Knoppix and other Live Linux DVDs ..... I am sure that legitimate use is less than 2-5% maybe a bit more ...

    Probably about the same percentage for content on blank DVDs, mp3 players

    I started getting upset about this stuff when I had to use DVD Decrypter to copy my uncles wedding videos. Then they sued the free utility out of existence.

    If they are going to start banning products that have significant illegal usage, how about starting with guns.....

    The problem is that people would probably roll over on this. What percentage of customers has Comcast lost? What happens when everyone is equally bad?

    What if they decide blocking websites and forums next, just the really bad one's mind you....

  48. Billy Goat Gruff
    Thumb Up

    @They will just detect and band entire technologies.

    Isn't the point that they *wont* do this, leaving P2P free for non-RIAA stuff?

    To scan P2P it's as simple as scanning emails for viruses, or spam.

    You know the initial packet to start a P2P, you know the initial packet to initiate a file transfer, you know how to identify the first block of data - all you need is the **AA copyrighted data fingerprint.

    Sure, it's easy to bypass *but* it won't be easy to find anything that has a tagged fingerprint and the nature of P2P is that unless the checksum matches you will never be able to find genuine copyrighted files that have been tagged. Or at least from AT&T.

    This means that the P2P will be free to use for anything that isn't tagged by the *AA such as personal music. Whether anyone will want to download your music from P2P when they can do equally well from your webpage or myspace is something you will find out later.

    Otherwise I agree with many sentiments that society is being dictated to by commercial organisations but there are much better fights than genuine attempts to stop the freeloading Jammies of the world. As long as we're not all treated as criminals (ie banning P2P or making DVD copying illegal, or paying a levy for each DVD) then I think this is reasonable.

    I would appreciate it if they didnt fingerprint mp3s that you can no longer buy, though.

  49. Steve Medway
    Stop

    Postal Law v's Electronic law.

    It's against the law to intercept a letter or package in Blighty and I suspect the same is true in the good ol' USA.....

    If I send a .tgz file which may or may not contain copyrighted material to myself or a friend via P2P (or any electronic means) no company should have the right to peek into the file to check..... Do that with a snail mail and you'd end up in jail!

    Another case of technology being used to steal our basic rights............. :(

  50. CynnicG

    The End Of Civilization Is Nigh ...

    If you want to take this to its logical conclusion, think about deep packet inspection for copyrighted material, and automated infringement notification to the RIAA etc., being pervasive across all network connected infrastructure/appliances ...

    Read "The Mouse That Ate Civilization" by Steve Poling in the early October edition of the sublime Raygun Revival at http://raygunrevival.com/Published/RGR_0031_2007_10_01.pdf ....

    When will YOUR internet-enabled toaster (or fridge!) start informing on you?

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