p2pnet - rss feed: MPAA wants ISPs to unplug file sharers
p2pnet news | MPAA News:- With Hollywood’s MPAA lurking darkly off-stage, Japan is only a motion away from ordering ISPs to pull the plug on copyright-infringers.
And now the movie industry enforcer wants American service providers to do the same.
MPAA CTO Jim Williams claims it’s, “in the best interests of Internet providers to sift through data traveling across their networks and interrupt transmissions that violate copyright law,” says CNET News.
“Much of the Internet is being clogged up with stolen goods,” he said at a technology policy conference. “Basically you have a bunch of free riders who are hogging the bandwidth (and taking) it away from legitimate consumers.”
Williams’ demands are part and parcel of a plan being implemented in carefully orchestrated steps to bring ‘consumers’ to heel, ‘educating’ them with stick and carrot to accept the major studios’ versions of reality.
The RIAA, the MPAA’s opposite number in the music industry, is doing exactly the same and using exactly the same techniques, if somewhat more vigorously.
As far as ISPs as corporate copyright cops goes, in Canada, last year p2pnet ran a post detailing Bell Sympatico’s efforts to throttle P2P downloads.
The news slowly filtered through to the mainstream print and electronic media and Bell is now being hammered relentlessly both online and off.
In the US, Comcast was also tampering with its customers’ download, earning similar retribution.
Having ridden the whirlwind and found the experience unproductive, the company’s latest step is to try pretend it’s seen the error of its ways, forging a link with BitTorrent which, in 2006, did a Napster, becoming a corporate application.
But as networking and protocol expert Robb Topolski sums it up, “This deal is treachery, relies on how much we can trust the word of Comcast, and leaves the public interests out in the cold.”
‘More capacity for their paying customers’
Although shaping traffic is one thing, and disconnecting file sharers altogether is another, they represent either end of the same customer-unfriendly wedge.
The entertainment cartels have for years been after ISPs to, “block access to offshore piracy havens or inspect the traffic to block transfers that are unlawful,” says CNET, going on to quote Williams as saying:
“If they [ISPs] can reduce some of the infringing content, then there will be more capacity for their paying customers.”
This is, of course, the same argument being used in Canada by Bell.
Here, however, customers are fighting back strongly, abandoning Bell for such as TekSavvy, an Ontario provider whose business philosophy is currently based on treating its customers with respect instead of labelling them as potential criminals.
TekSavvy doesn’t cap its bandwidth.
As CEO Rocky Gaudrault recently explained to p2pnet >>>
TekSavvy and all third party ISPs are paying for a ’slice’ of this network, so no, it’s not Bell’s at that point. They’re paid to make sure the infrastructure remains in good shape, but they’re not paid to police it!
The flaw in Bell’s thought is in their not understanding that we’ve paid for the right to this space. We’ve paid for multiple Gig-E connections for the data to flow back to; we’ve paid for the DSL aggregation interface (AHSSPI) and we’re also paying on a per user basis (approx $20/month) to have the data relayed directly back to our main point of Interconnect.
So, in short, no, they don’t have rights to this network segment.
An easy analogy would be a landlord, who is managing an apartment, gives himself a key to come in and out as he pleases and on top of that decides which of the tenants’ friends they let in!
I’m not sure about you, but I’m fairly certain, one; the tenant would call the police, but two; you’d land up with a very big black-eye!
Across the border, “Another milestone in the copyright lobby’s push for filtering came in January, when AT&T said it was voluntarily experimenting with copyright-filtering technologies and was working with the MPAA and the Recording Industry Association of America,” says CNET.
“AT&T said it was testing a range of filtering technologies,” it says, adding >>>
There’s a big difference, of course, between copyright filtering that’s done voluntarily by broadband providers and filtering done because it’s mandated by law. The MPAA made it clear on Thursday that it’s not calling for new legislation - “we don’t need additional laws” - at least right now. The RIAA has said the same thing, recently too.
On one hand, that reticence could simply be a sign of political pragmatism on the part of the MPAA and RIAA: they’d likely be outgunned on Capitol Hill by the hundreds of lobbyists that broadband providers could (and would) dispatch to shoot down any such proposal.
But on the other hand, major copyright holders are mounting an international push for filtering. Canada’s copyright lobby has pushed for legally-mandated filtering. A Belgian court has said that Internet service providers can be forced to block copyrighted material, a ruling that copyright holders applauded. A European Union committee has rejected the idea, at least temporarily. U2’s manager loves filtering.
When contacted with complaints by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, Verizon routinely deletes from its servers material posted by customers that it reviews and concludes will violate child pornography laws. If Verizon already polices its users for child pornography reasons, the MPAA argues, it should be able to do the same for copyrighted material too.
Verizon strongly disagrees. Richard Lynch, Verizon’s executive vice president and chief technology officer, said here on Thursday:
Our philosophy, a well-considered philosophy I might add, is that we are not the enforcers of the Internet. Our job is to deliver the bitstreams that our customers either ask for or send. We feel pretty strong about that…Can I even realistically assume that I could do those kinds of things? I’m not sure I could if I wanted to, but I don’t think that’s our job.
Stay tuned.
Jon Newton - p2pnet
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March 28th, 2008 at 1:00 pm
In other words, the MPAA wants to avoid the legal costs and the bad PR associated with suing people, and instead make the ISPs look like the bad guys.
March 28th, 2008 at 2:16 pm
Well
I want the ISP’s to unplug the MPAA and the RIAA from online access.
I don’t think they should have websites, email, porn and online gambling either
March 28th, 2008 at 2:46 pm
As always it is do it for us. Get someone else to pick up the tab for what they want. Notice that you don’t see them offering to pay for the supposed service.
Canadian ISPs have already found out that doing this network filtering is costing them a bundle. Comcast has in it’s wisdom decided it better return to the old ways of letting through bit torrent or legislation is going to make them do it. With businesses discovering that the reduction in costs is well worth the use of torrents to spread their apps and reduce their costs, the filtering is coming into direct problems with other businesses besides that of what the MPAA and RIAA want done.
I have yet to hear something on the lines of returning fair use laws to their past stature from the megacorporations. They push their agendas which none of the public wants. That they are not putting up with it as customers is why the music labels have been forced to removed DRM. Movies time is limited before they too will have to face the idea that DRM is an expensive solution that isn’t working, won’t work, and isn’t worth the trouble. Improving the quality, the customer experience, and providing what can not be gotten elsewhere is the only key to their survival in the long term. If they can’t do that, protectionism will not help them to stay afloat.
March 28th, 2008 at 3:08 pm
“More capacity for their paying customers”.
Umm… Can anyone tell me a way to use a company’s network without paying for it? Cause by the way the MAFIAA makes it sound, there are millions of people hacking their internet connection and receiving free internet.
March 28th, 2008 at 4:02 pm
I wonder what would happen if an ISP said ok, that they’ll do it, but that they’ll pass the MAFIAA all the associated bills, including the one with the deficit in income from all the people who dump the ISP for another.
March 28th, 2008 at 7:51 pm
Maybe we need an ISP tax on music. People who buy music have to pay a mandatory tax to prop up the failing internet industry. After all, if people are buying music, they’re certainly not downloading.
Anyway, I wonder if people can claim that deep packet inspection is a form of wiretapping? Hmmm… Might not fly, but might be fun to try.
March 28th, 2008 at 8:08 pm
Congratulations Jon,
You, at least, are beginning to make a big difference for internet freedom. Your story was quoted in an ongoing court case Lava vs. Amurao at http://www.ilrweb.com/viewILRPDFfull.asp?filename=lava_amurao_080326DeftsReplyMemoDiscovInLimine
thusly:
The issue, moreover, is not of significance only to the parties to this action. It has been raised
in many other cases around the country. “The Massachusetts State police have banned the company,
it’s been accused of operating without a licence in Oregon, Florida, Texas and New York, and
similar charges have been levelled at it in Michigan.” MediaSentry: have you checked your state?,
at http://www.p2pnet.net/story/15391 (last visited March 26, 2008). A judicial declaration in this
state would have significant impact not only on this case but many others.
Keep up the fight for the quiet millions like me.
March 28th, 2008 at 8:11 pm
Everyone should filter out the peer Guardian blocking list not only on thier client but on their server too. This would effectively shutdown the only interesting part of internet (the part produced by the people and not the corporations) for the entertainement industry. Let’s do it!
Corporations are the enemies. To save our democracies we have to detroy most corporations , starting with the most outrageous.
Target number one: Vivendi/Universal.
Once it is destroy we will focus on target number two.
March 29th, 2008 at 7:20 pm
If ISPs “unplugged” file sharers, they’d lose so much money.
March 31st, 2008 at 7:24 am
Original post did not get through.
Please fix.
March 31st, 2008 at 7:27 am
Apparently only very short posts get throgh.
March 31st, 2008 at 7:28 am
“Much of the Internet is being clogged up with stolen goods,” he said at a technology policy conference. “Basically you have a bunch of free riders who are hogging the bandwidth (and taking) it away from legitimate consumers.”
Sure, and speaking of stolen goods…..
As a songwriter heir who and righs holder of copyrights that has never (I swear this is true) been paid any royalries (not a single cent, and the music is very good indeed), why should I care or object if the hundreds pirate recordings (about one half by RIAA member record companies) are moving over the Internet?
Why should RIAA pirates objet to the sharing of their songs if they, along with the music publishers, are themselves the major pirates and royalty thieves?