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AT&T Announces Plans to Filter Copyright Content
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Wed Jun 13, 2007 05:06 PM
from the bad-idea dept.
from the bad-idea dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The LA Times reports that AT&T has announced plans to work with the Hollywood movie studios and major recording labels to implement new content filtering systems on their network. The plans raise many troubling legal issues including privacy concerns, false positive filtering, and liability for failure to filter."
Related Stories
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Will AT&T Start Filtering Your Connection? 213 comments
We have another essay from Bennett Haselton for you to peruse. "Last week's coverage of AT&T's newly announced "anti-piracy
initiative"
mostly downplayed the key part of AT&T's proposal,
which is filtering what their end users can access in the first place, not
finding pirates
or suing them after the fact.
Friday's Associated Press article, which was
reprinted
on many news sites
with headlines like "AT&T to Help Hollywood Track Down Internet Pirates"
and "AT&T to ID Offshore Web Pirates",
actually said only that "the effort is primarily aimed at pirates who set
up operations in other countries" --
and since you can't really "aim" at pirates in Russia and China with
anything except missiles, the
statement suggests not identifying pirates or tracking them down, but
pre-emptively blocking people
from connecting to their servers. Only the Red Herring nailed it
with their article title,
"AT&T
to Block Pirated Content"." Follow the magical URL to read the rest of Bennett's words on the matter.
[+]
AT&T Invests in Filtered Networking 152 comments
Filtered Coward writes "Last summer, AT&T announced its intention to begin filtering copyrighted content at some point. The telecom has now bought a chunk of Vobile, whose core product is VideoDNA. "Like other systems of its kind, VideoDNA develops a unique signature from every frame of video. The signature is meant to be robust enough to survive various transformations and edits, and it can then be used to run matches against incoming content.' Vobile claims that VideoDNA is good enough to be used on video when transmitted over a network. 'Based on the complexity of the problem, we suspect that anything initially deployed by AT&T will fall far short of a robust P2P video filter. But should AT&T truly have its eyes on just such a prize, the company would be in a powerful position to impose its own policies on the entire US, since it owns major parts of the Internet backbone.'"
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Oh good... (Score:5, Insightful)
ISPs are not common carriers. (Score:4, Informative)
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Communications Decency Act Section 230 (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Communications Decency Act Section 230 (Score:5, Insightful)
But IANAL either, so the cycle of speculation continues.
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Re:Oh good... (Score:4, Insightful)
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It'll be neat... (Score:5, Interesting)
Easily defeated (Score:3, Insightful)
So much for my business (Score:3, Interesting)
Encryption forever!
Re:So much for my business (Score:5, Funny)
Talk about a choice between Giant Douchebag and Turd Sandwich...
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No surprise here (Score:4, Informative)
Most notable is the current lawsuit against them alleging collusion with the NSA in massive illegal domestic wiretapping [eff.org].
Dinosaur Managers: Please Retire! (Score:5, Insightful)
Practically every business I know is managed by someone who started managing before the personal computer revolution. It surprises me, but in more than a decade they don't seem to have learned anything. They hit blindly without understanding what they are doing, or even caring what they are doing.
We are seeing in our culture HUGE disrespect for technically knowledgeable people. The wild imaginings of someone who knows nothing are considered better than the counsel of those who have learned how things work.
Re:Dinosaur Managers: Please Retire! (Score:5, Insightful)
We're talking about a culturally pervasive issue, though. Although I hate to bring it into a discussion here for various obvious reasons, Al Gore's Truth movie raises this point quite significantly. We have nothing but contempt for the only people actually qualified to make decisions on a scientific basis in this country.
Frankly, I blame this on religion, which has a stranglehold on many aspects of our existence here.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
This may not sound right to some, but it's dead on! Especially certain religions, which seem focused on the 'fact' that their God beats all and and that makes them right and everyone else wrong. No comment on which ones.
AT&T is NOT AT&T, it is SBC. (Score:5, Informative)
My understanding is that everything else of value in the original AT&T was sold piece-by-piece, and SBC bought mostly just the name. My understanding is that the SBC trademark was worse than useless because the company is so abusive. So, the managers bought another name.
Apparently, for $16 Billion SBC got AT&T's VOIP [businessweek.com] customers, and the AT&T name.
AT&T's VOIP customers were Sheila and Gerald Funk, who have since moved to Elbonia. Wait... That last sentence my contain an error.
So, what we are seeing is SBC mismanagement under a new name. Soon just saying the name AT&T will cause people to become upset.
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SSL For All My Friends! (Score:5, Interesting)
If we act now, while we still can, before AT&T and their telco/cableco cartel shuts us down.
Re:SSL For All My Friends! (Score:5, Funny)
We're almost convinced, but I think we need a few more random bold tags before it can happen...
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Re:SSL For All My Friends! (Score:5, Informative)
How do you think SSH works? There is no third-party certificate server, and man-in-the-middle certainly can't defeat it.
To install a private certificate server under Apache is trivial; see for example my post [slashdot.org]. (On Windows, it is a little more complex, as that post indicates.)
The purpose of the third-party certificate is to provide some degree of trust that you are going to the web site you think you are, so that you can have some confidence that you aren't submitting your credit card number to an imposter. If all you are interested in is encryption and the prevention of man-in-the-middle interception, SSL with a private certificate server will work fine. The encryption is accomplished via public key cryptography, which allows you to exchange the private key used for the encrypted session. A third party is not required for public key cryptography to work.
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Won't work. (Score:5, Insightful)
And by people, I mean that a few clever hackers will implement it and everyone will just use it (kind of like bittorrent).
Of course, they could start by blocking youtube... that'll make them really popular.
Well, the figure for losses about bootlegs I can kind of believe. After all you have to pay cash for a bootleg, and that is real money which isn't going to the copyright holder. The figure for online piracy seems like one of those bogus ones. It is only a loss if the person would otherwise have paid. I doubt that they have a good way of measuring that.
And finally, can we PLEASE get some accuracy in the titles. Everything (bar public domain) is under copyright. If they filtered out copyright content, there would be nothing left for the customers. How would they even find the public domain content without any search engine's copyrighted front (and filtered) page?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
So there's AT&T, forced to fight a war it can not possibly win and each time they tighten the screws they'll piss off more of their customer base. And the data retention costs will just keep going up and up. Oh yeah. They really want to open that can of worms.
He
Do we really need more laws? (Score:5, Interesting)
Instead of sending everything by postcard, send everything by envelope (encrypted), and stop expecting every lawyer, politician, company, government agency, and identity thief to respect your privacy.
So I'd better make other plans (Score:5, Funny)
I'm guessing they're not going to like a file transfer of casablanca.mov
Time for Telecommunications Monopolies to End (Score:3, Insightful)
If AT&T is going to start watching every single thing its users does and the users have no recourse whatsoever, I say it is time to end the monopoly that cable and wired ISPs and phone companies have in most areas and let competition reign. If I had the choice between a company that is going to spy on me and give anything they think is suspicious to the RIAA/MPAA or paying a few extra bucks to a company that will truly honor my privacy, the choice would be extremely easy.
Instead, I'm stuck with one cable company and one DSL company servicing my area. Thanks, local government.
piratebay blocked (Score:5, Informative)
This is all well and good if it's like a parental control thing but I'm a 50 year old paying customer and I'm not used to getting flipped off by my ISP. I suppose I should be looking over my shoulder.
Odd thought (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
You do understand... (Score:4, Interesting)
Clearly not thinking... (Score:5, Insightful)
The fact of the matter is that the vast majority of the content flowing through AT&T's networks are copyrighted. It's not sufficient that a work is copyrighted, but rather that the exchange itself is a violation of copyright. But how can the computer know? If you have a license to the work through some asset purchase, it's not infringing; if you have a license agreement that grants certain rights to obtain/distribute copies, it's not infringement; if you are using the content for academic research, the purpose of criticism, or in parody, it's not infringing. So, how is their computer system to know, a priori, of the legal arrangements, or your intent to use a work? What if you live in a jurisdiction that doesn't recognize the copyright (e.g., it may be public domain because the copyright expired in your jurisdiction).
The point is that it's technically not feasible to police copyrights. AT&T may be inerefering with network traffic on behalf of a third party for fun and profit, but they are most certainly not protecting copyrights. It's a little disingenuous.
How can they possibly judge intent? (Score:4, Insightful)
Nevermind the fact that if they're going to start protecting the interests of the major studios, why aren't they going to "protect" the interests of the rest of us? How do they know the difference between me uploading my photography to my website and someone else sending copies around that infringe on my copyrights?
The entire concept is ridiculous. There is technically no difference between a legal and an illegal transfer. It's all in the offline licenses and agreements that have (or have not) been made.
Re:Ouch. (Score:5, Insightful)
I mean, how stupid can you get?
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Re:Ouch. (Score:5, Insightful)
Is AT&T suggesting they can somehow go up against an encrypted, data-heavy connection using random ports? Or even well-known ports like 443? You can't very well just block long transfers, either. If you do that, P2P clients will be programmed to cycle connections, only transmitting one MB or such per connection before resetting.
Best to build for the capacity you sell to your users. If you can't handle what you sold, downgrade their plans, raise prices, or install new lines.
I'm not for piracy at all, but the ISPs should stay out of criminal and civil matters altogether until they have a public order from a judge instructing them otherwise.
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Re:Ouch. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
And what they will probably do is ag
Encrypt everything (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Encrypt everything (Score:5, Interesting)
For years I've routinely encrypted as much of my communications as I can (e.g., when I control both ends of the connection) and the overhead is completely invisible.
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Re:Encrypt everything (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm assuming that if ATT goes to the NSA and says "Please help us pass a law that says that stuff can't be encrypted" and the NSA sees low-grade crpyto they will reply "You pussies, we solved that stuff in kindergarden". But if they see high-level crypto, they may start screaming "national security" and do something that is stupid, unconstitutional, or both.
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Re:Encrypt everything (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Ouch. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Ouch. (Score:5, Funny)
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Try Again (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Ouch. (Score:5, Insightful)
Bingo. That's the whole idea. This internet thing has been nothing but a headache to those in power anyway. You get foul-mouthed hippie bloggers who say bad things about our sainted politicians, you have web sites that actually help people find the lowest prices on products, and there are even ways for people on the internet to send messages that are hard to eavesdrop. We can't have that, now, can we?
The ideal internet for the people who run things would be a place where people shop, watch movies and TV (but only what they pay for) and buy songs from iTunes and msTunes and sonyTunes and warnerTunes. It's OK for folks to talk to one another, as long as they do it over a clear channel (say!) and they can post pictures of their dogs and babies but not police beating protesters or (God forbid!) that troublemaker Michael Moore.
Once this mess of an internet gets straightened out, people will have all the freedom they could want, as long as it's within these reasonable parameters.
Oh, I forgot: THE CHILDREN! THE CHILDREN!
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How do you really detect in real time? (Score:5, Interesting)
Sure, you can detect ssh, etc, known protocals and block them.
But if today the server encripted an MP3 file with rot13 no computer would automatically detect it as an mp3. And tomarow they just do it different. Tomarrow they make a jpg out of it. Change the extention and Bob's your uncle.
An application is written that everytime it starts it downloads a plugin with todays encription standard. There is no way they could even think of keeping up without breaking things for there customers on a daily basis.
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Re:Ouch. (Score:4, Insightful)
For example, where I live the only broadband I can get is Comcast. If they fucked over the customers like AT&T I'd have no other choice.
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Re:Ouch. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Ouch. (Score:5, Interesting)
Now, whether or not they'll have many customers when it's all over is another story. The moment my ISP starts making decisions for me about what I can and cannot download is the day I find another provider. If there aren't any other providers, then I'm going to drive to Washington, D.C. (probably none of us will be able to actually board aircraft at that point), grab Orrin Hatch and a few other select Congresspeople by their lapels and shake some sense into them.
What's amazing about this is the level of influence the media companies are able to wield, in both the government and private sectors. Honestly, they must have some part of their organization whose only job it is to dig up dirt on Congressmen and corporate CEOs. Otherwise I can't see why AT&T would just roll over on this.
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
This leads me to wonder, if they don't have common-carrier status to data transmission, why hasn't anyone brought the big telcos up for allowing illegal material to go across on their data lines? Seems to me if there wasn't CC status given to data, those types of cases would be slam dunks.
Plus, if they try doing this for copyright violations, what's to keep
Re:Ouch. (Score:5, Informative)
I don't know if there is any case law yet on this, but at first blush it would seem that the more selectivity the carrier applies to what content is allowed and what is blocked, the less clear it is that they are within the protection of the safe harbor. And while it might seem paradoxical that the carrier could become more liable for copyright infringement for blocking some infringing materials, there is a good reason for this—it makes a carrier choose whether it wants copyright to be the responsibility of the users (and thus, it is "hands off"), or whether it wants to seek the potential rewards (in terms of favorable details with copyright holders to monitor and enforce) along with the potential costs (in terms of liability to those whose rights are violated despite the carrier's intervention) of taking a "hands on" policy.
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Loss of Common Carrier Status? Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's an entirely different story when you have two resourceful parties who want to communicate and will deploy all sorts of resourceful defenses and countermeasures -- starting with end-to-end encryption -- to ensure that they can continue to communicate. Stopping spam is absolutely trivial by comparison.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
No, you'd need to be somewhat cryptographically secure. If you just pay lip-service to the concept, you'll trip off a digital arms war between file sharing and AT&T's filter upgrades. It's better to be secure up front so that AT&T gets the idea that there's no way of enforcing these filters.
It's not that difficult to exchange symmetrical keys using an asymmetr
Re:Fairly easy to by-pass filtering (Score:5, Insightful)
I still think one of the most brilliant developments in practical cryptography was SSH. The idea of simply caching the public key on the first connection and checking to see if it has changed on later connections is vulnerable to a man-in-the-middle attack on that very first connection, but it still solves 99% of the problem with 1% of the effort. That's the proper model for any new effort to routinely encrypt everything, all the time, to make the haystacks as big as we can.
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Re:Fairly easy to by-pass filtering (Score:4, Informative)
As for traffic filtering and shaping, the battle between ISP and user will end only when they agree on QoS markings and policies that are advantageous to both. This can happen.
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