ISPs Could Profit From Download Pirates
As Kevin had previously reported the RIAA had withdrawn from legal action against music-sharing individuals. The duty of policing the internet from pirates has since passed on to the the individual internet service providers; however, the void left by the RIAA’s has begun to be filled by third party anti-piracy firms. One such firm, Nexicon, had devised a new profit sharing plan in hopes to attract ISPs to sign up for their service.
In an interview with CNET, Jerry Scroggin, the owner of an ISP operating out of Louisiana, said he was contacted by Nexicon with a profit sharing proposal. What Nexicon proposed was to share with the ISP a portion of the settlement obtained from the individual caught file-sharing illegally. Nexicon offers a number of different anti-piracy services but one of their more inventive strategies is what they are calling the “Get Amnesty” program.
Nexicon claims that they are able to intelligently filter the internet traffic of an individual and ascertain whether they are sharing copyrighted content over programs such as LimeWire, BitTorrent and Newsgroups. Upon successful verification of the illegal act, Nexicon would contact the individual and offer them a chance to settle the allegation before proceeding to court through the “Get Amnesty” program. This is the “new revenue” stream Nexicon will share with the ISPs.
When asked if he would be interested in such a service, Scroggin wasn’t particularly impressed with the whole approach. He mentions correctly that Nexicon’s services are not provided for free and that the profit sharing would only occur if the Amnesty program was successful. For a smaller ISP such as Scroggin’s operation, this is not the most economical way to police the bandwidth. However, if the approach Nexicon has taken is to be echoed by other anti-piracy firms, it could spell a very difficult road ahead for legitimate users.
None of the anti-piracy firms have actual historic data to support their claims of intelligent detection and then there is the question of false positives. If you found yourself legally downloading data through a BitTorrent transfer protocol, would you be flagged by these third party services? When CNET asked a Nexicon representative, he said that the company “uses a combination of automated and human systems to flag copyright violations and send take-down notices…the system is less likely to accuse someone by mistake.” Less likely is certainly not never. As Scroggin so truthfully said, “I would still wind up losing customers.”
If your ISP decided to employ such tactics, the thing to remember is that there are often choices. But if you are without an alternative service provider, then we may all be headed towards a slippery slope with internet policing in the future.
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That company's "Get Amnesty" program is pure blackmail. Give us money or we'll turn you in. I can't see ISPs going for this considering that probably 75% of internet users download at least one illegal file every month.
"Nexicon claims that they are able to intelligently filter the internet traffic of an individual and ascertain whether they are sharing copyrighted content over programs such as LimeWire, BitTorrent and Newsgroups."
So users should use SSL, Freenet, and Tor. Thanks for the tip!
"Upon successful verification of the illegal act, Nexicon would contact the individual and offer them a chance to settle the allegation before proceeding to court through the “Get Amnesty” program. This is the “new revenue” stream Nexicon will share with the ISPs."
And if the individual counter-sues does Nexicon share the cost with the ISP?
I think that maybe we need some privacy legislation to protect internet users from having their ISPs looking at their traffic. I don't want my ISP spying on everything I look at online.
I think that maybe we need some privacy legislation to protect internet users from having their ISPs looking at their traffic. I don't want my ISP spying on everything I look at online.
Don't make any assumptions about who is monitoring your traffic. Use encryption if you're worried about it. Laws don't mean anything on the world-wide Internet.
Is there anyway to encrypt torrents? Wouldn't your peers also need to be using the encryption? Could I run my traffic encrypted to a proxy, so at least my ISP couldn't tell what it was? Also, for torrents, does encryption add a significant amount of overhead, considering your moving many small chunks of data?
And while laws don't mean anything, corporations and government institutions still have to follow them. I'm not afraid of criminals, I am afraid of corporations and governments.
I'm not afraid of criminals, I am afraid of corporations and governments.
QFT.
Corporatising law enforcement? Transparency for you, secrecy for them. Our democracy is an utter falacy if things such as this are allowed to go on. This will set a precedent for monitoring everything we do online. Its not the final step in the erosion of Internet freedom. Be vigilant now, or be enslaved tomorrow.
[citation][nom]gm0n3y[/nom]Is there anyway to encrypt torrents?[citation]
Yes there is. Most torrent programs support encrypting the outgoing data stream and limiting incoming streams to those using encryption only. On uTorrent (for example) go to Options -> Preferences -> Bittorrent set outgoing to 'Forced' and disable 'Allow icoming legacy connections'.
Of course this does not stop anyone connecting to a (illegal??) tracker you are using and seeing you IP address in the list of peers, nor will it prevent ISP from knowing you are using torrents - the pattern of incoming/outgoing data and IP connections are very distinctive - but it will stop casual packets sniffing from seeing the data you are transmitting.
Stuart
Is there anyway to encrypt torrents?
^^Messed that one up
What's next
The US postal service is opening all mail to check if you are mailing something illegal ?
Police will routinely stop all traffic and search your trunk and pockets to make sure you are not transporting contraband?
And then the final step; cavity searches at each Starbucks to make sure you are not trying to bring in your own donut to eat with your $3 cup of overpriced coffee.
Gotta say that I don't like this idea at all. I highly doubt that there is software that can determine the legitimacy of any given file. Especially given the standard encryption protocols that most pirates are using. And no.. it doesn't make a substantial difference in overhead. I think because of this, false positives would be the norm instead of rare exceptions.
If you can encrypt and disguise the illegal torrent traffic, then how would they know if it is legitimate or illegal? ISPs should just allow you to use up to your maximum speed no provisos (and utilize that speed as much as you want, but caps are another issue).
Yep, pure greed.
Piracy cases, in the US, are handled in civil court. All the plaintiff has to do is prove that it was more likely that you engaged in piracy than you did not. In other words there was a 51% likelyhood that you were sharing copyrighted files. ISP make mistakes in their IP databases all the time and they often fall out of sync. If an ISP stands to profit they may even alter the database to strenghten their case.
Even if you are accused of copyright infringement (and are innocent), either you pay up for "amnesty" or you pay a lawyer thousands to conduct the court arraignment, obtain evidence, have your computer analyzed by an expert, and hold preliminary court hearings. Your legal fees can soar to tens of thousands if the case goes to court.