ISPs to Ban P2P With New European Telecom Package? 367
An anonymous reader writes "ZeroPaid is reporting that ISPs could be turned into the copyright police through European legislation that received a number of 'intellectual property' amendments. Many of these amendments can be found here. Judging by the amendments, ISPs could be mandated to block legitimate traffic in an effort to 'prevent' illegitimate traffic. To help stop this legislation, you can check out the action page. Additional coverage can be found on EDRI and Open Rights Group."
Storming the EU parliment shouting "FOR THE HORDE" (Score:5, Funny)
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Well I think half of them will shout - FOR THE ALLIANCE.
But other than that - you are probably correct!
Re:Storming the EU parliment shouting "FOR THE HOR (Score:5, Funny)
And there will probably be at least one guy shouting "LEROY JENKINS!"
Re:Storming the EU parliment shouting "FOR THE HOR (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Storming the EU parliment shouting "FOR THE HOR (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Storming the EU parliment shouting "FOR THE HOR (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Storming the EU parliment shouting "FOR THE HOR (Score:5, Funny)
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Splitters!
Re:Storming the EU parliment shouting "FOR THE HOR (Score:4, Funny)
Fuck off! We're the Judean People's Front.
Re:Storming the EU parliment shouting "FOR THE HOR (Score:4, Funny)
Fuck off! We're the Front of Judea's People.
Re:Storming the EU parliment shouting "FOR THE HOR (Score:4, Funny)
What has the EU done for us anyway...
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The Roads.
Ok, granted, but apart from the roads, the education, the water, the open borders, the peace, and the standardised banana sizes, what has the EU *really* done for us ?
Re:Storming the EU parliment shouting "FOR THE HOR (Score:2)
Caldari might make peace with Gallente too ... ... they'll ruin all the game stories with that law ... how are we going to set up gatecamps in Maila (security status 0.4) after gatecamping together in Bruxelles (sec. status 0.0 around the railway station after 9PM)?
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Bruxelles is very real. It's in Belgium system, in EU controlled territory. EU is a real life alliance of real life corporations.
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no matter ... if it will be for defeating this dumb law, probably CCP will keep my account running and training until the end of the universe :-P
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I guess they still don't get it yet (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I guess they still don't get it yet (Score:4, Insightful)
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See how much copyright laws are costing us?
We the people need to fight them at every corner.
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I use P2P to get WoW updates, OpenSUSE, and other distro's.
P2P could conceivable run on any port using any protocol. We could embed the traffic as the echo request in ICMP. It could be embedded in directed sub delegated DNS using techniques like the Flash reverse proxy hack.
The only way they can possible block P2P in any future form is to block all inbound & outbound traffic with the exception of outbound HTTP, which is then heavily inspected. HTTPS would have to be through their proxy, which they
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Re:I guess they still don't get it yet (Score:5, Insightful)
How is that a troll? We have politicians who find nothing wrong with admitting on television that they don't know what a browser is. The internet could be switched off tomorrow for all they care. If they need to send something, there's always fax.
Re:I guess they still don't get it yet (Score:4, Insightful)
But at least the copyright holders can sit down and relax for the next 100 years...
Too bad they can't "surf" on the internet, because its shutdown...
No, they'll be able to sit down for about a month, until someone finds a way to circumvent the restrictions and the arms race moves up another notch. As usual, it's the legitimate users who will be left out in the cold by this.
Re:I guess they still don't get it yet (Score:5, Insightful)
They can only relax for a few months, because ISPs still need to allow some access through their systems. So all that is needed, is to create ways to translate data into whatever form they do allow, so it gets through their system and then translate it back on the other side. The ISPs are just a barrier/bridge to the Internet, so no matter what new walls they create for data, new ways can be found to get data past their control. (Its not the ideal solution and not the most optimal solution, but unfortunately, as we live in a world where some people are determined to control others, then everyone else has no choice).
Unfortunately a minority of people, seek power over others and they are obsessed with finding new ways to control other people (for their own gain), but what they fail to realize, is their acts of control create a pressure for change away from their control. The power seekers throughout history have tried to create a bias in their favor, but it never lasts.
Will ISPs want a drop in demand? (Score:4, Insightful)
They've spent years telling people they need bandwidth to download music, etc.
Are they now going to tell us we don't need it any more, that a much cheaper line will suffice?
Re:I guess they still don't get it yet (Score:5, Funny)
I really think they are missing the point
Politicians missing the point? I am SHOCKED!
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Re:I guess they still don't get it yet (Score:5, Insightful)
UPDATE: Politician are to be banned from speaking in order to prevent their lies from escaping their lips.
Re:I guess they still don't get it yet (Score:5, Interesting)
The interviewer asked if she meant all kind of sharing, like if he had a document he had written him self on his computer and wanted to share it, would it be illegal? And the great lawmaker answered: "We are talking about files here, not documents and stuff like that."
The point is: They haven't got a clue! The haven't the faintest idea what they're talking about. But that doesn't stop them from passing laws...
No Free Content (Score:5, Informative)
I really think they are missing the point of how this technology has made an impact on how we get our content from the internet.
No, they see the point perfectly clear. Their view is that people need to stop thinking that they can get free stuff from the internet. The last sentence of this BBC article [bbc.co.uk]sums up the industry's position pretty well:
"We don't believe that society can allow the free consumption of content to persist"
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You mean the free consumption of infinately reproductable content?
I think we all can see the Industrys position, they dont want to evolve and create new business models so they are paying off politicians to pass laws so they dont have to.
Having actually read both the article and the proposed legislation itself none of it makes sense.
Pirates will find ways around it, and those of us who legally consume things from P2P will be screwed. They clearly havent heard of VPN's based in countrys without amazing indus
centralise, regulate and control (Score:5, Insightful)
So far the internet has been seen as a necessary evil. Something that has some benefits (outsourcing, e-commerce) and some small disadvantages. Now we have a situation where a large pressure group (the media) want to change the order of things and are using their influence to put a halt to this unregulated area.
Governments like the idea of people paying for things. That way they get to tax them more and also put in place commercial frameworks where it is in the suppliers interests to toe the line. (For some reason they haven't managed this with the drugs trade - yet). It also allows them to regulate the content, by controlling the providers. So far, because of their general cluelessness in technical areas, governments haven't come up with an effective way to do this - while keeping the veneer of freedom/democracy that they like people to think they have. Just as soon as they can come up with a "think of the children" strategy that works, they'll implement it and the internet will become a top-down hierarchy with laws, penalties and controls.
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(For some reason they haven't managed this with the drugs trade - yet).
Actually, they have: coffee, tea, alcohol and tobacco are all taxed. And alcohol is one of the hardest drugs you can get your hands on, legally or illegally.
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And they try to suppress "hard" drugs completely, which is by definition not compatible with having a taxed and regulated commercial network.
The cartels that run those drugs anyway have to stay hidden from the law, thus you won't see them filing tax declarations for their business.
Re:No Free Content (Score:4, Insightful)
"We don't believe that society can allow the free consumption of content to persist"
That quote made me think and I realized that my whole life is based on free consumption of content: radio (streaming/podcast), music, documentaries, tv shows, movies, porn, games.
The web and p2p are by far my main source of entertainment and information, this stuff is what I spend most of my free time on, this is who I am.
Trying to put an end to that is no less than a direct attack on my way of life.
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"We don't believe that society can allow the free consumption of content to persist"
So I can still pay my 30€ each month as long as I don't plug anything into the ADSL box ?
If I close my eyes while reading /., does it still qualify as "free consumption of content" ? Or should I browse Digg ? After all pretty much everyone agrees that it's content-free.
Re:I guess they still don't get it yet (Score:5, Insightful)
They aren't missing the point at all. The understand the point perfectly and that is why they don't like it.
P2P, especially torrenting, massively decentralises the process of distributing information. For centuries such technology has been held only be a self-selecting elite, who have appointed themselves as gatekeepers for societies discourse, believing they know what is best for us mere plebs to think. People using their bandwidth to help each other broadcast information instead of just downloading it from corporate and government sources scare the EU parliament. They can't be controlled, you see.
It is part of a wider move to reshape society that has been going on for at least a century.
If you imagine society as a tree structure, with the leaders at the top and the citizens at the bottom, and connections between members of society. Some of these are vertical ones that transcend the 'levels' of the tree, and represent the unequal relationships we have with those more powerful than us or less powerful. Some connections are horizontal ones between peers and equals. The method of control that has been preferred by western civilisation is the elimination of horizontal connections in society to make people more dependent on vertical ones.
In terms of the Internet, this is reflected by the constant legislation aimed at eliminating the Internet as a global communication network with a low barrier for entry for those wishing to transmit, and turning it into a mere conduit for delivering products and services of those in power. That is what the Internet has been to these people for the past 15 years - the fact we can use it for our own needs is to them a fault which needs to be corrected.
Rant over. Seems you caught me at a philosophical moment.
Re:I guess they still don't get it yet (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I guess they still don't get it yet (Score:4, Insightful)
I feel that if there had been serious study of how material is created and distributed today, there could have been better solutions. Maybe if there had been a better ways to purchase material online more people would have. But to rigidly maintain an outdated structure benefits no one in the end.
I find myself agreeing with those that call politicans clueless concerning these matters. It is easier for them to listen to lobbyist or just skip this entire issue all together. Meaning that what laws are passes are not in the public interest, but either in the interest of the corporate lobby; or the interest of those within Government that want greater control of the distribution of information. Either way, we lose.
Maybe the future is to focus on creating better wireless devices. If everyone in my city had a wireless devices that were capable of merging into one large network, then I could send information from my computer to someone on the other side of the city (or country) aslong as there was a path and nodes for it to leapfrog across. This probably wouldn't be anything like as efficent as a landline, but done right it could provide a secondary internet of sorts; which would be a lot harder to regulate.
Re:I guess they still don't get it yet (Score:5, Interesting)
You can't steal data. Its a physically nonsensical concept. The only way I can see actual theft working is if you were to use quantum teleportation to extract the electrons from one persons computer and place them in your own.
Distribution of trash media is part of what helps level the playing field. It means that people used to getting their data through conventional means now get it through the new medium, and thus are looking in the right place to find user generated content.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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If this passes they might as well ban people from driving cars because they can be used to traffic illegal drugs
Laugh, but that might be too far from the truth. I'm not aware of how it works in the EU but here in the US we have asset forfeiture [wikipedia.org] laws that let the Government seize any property remotely connected to drugs. Drove your car to the dealers house to buy some pot? Kiss it goodbye if you are unlucky enough to live in one of the harsher states. As I recall some genius Congresscritter was proposing the same thing for piracy -- you'd forfeit your PC and any other hardware.
The cute part is they don't even need
Re:I guess they still don't get it yet (Score:5, Insightful)
ISP ESP (Score:4, Funny)
There are many legal uses for filesharing (Score:5, Interesting)
Jamendo [jamendo.com] uses it to distribute Creative Commons-licensed music, all of it with the explicit permission of its copyright holders.
BitTorrent is crucial to my musical aspirations, as distributing my music [geometricvisions.com] with it allows me to provide formats that would use a lot of bandwidth, such as FLAC, without incurring expensive bandwidth charges.
While musicians can host their music for free at places like MySpace, it's really best to for artists to have their own websites, and to host their own music. That way, growth in the popularity of their sites will enrich the artists, rather than the music hosting service.
But a hit song can bankrupt struggling musicians if they just supply regular HTTP downloads; p2p enables mass distribution at a very low cost.
It's very important to get the message through to lawmakers and the public that filesharing, while it can be abused, is inherently perfectly legitimate, and should be kept both legal and technically possible.
Re:There are many legal uses for filesharing (Score:5, Insightful)
BitTorrent is crucial to my musical aspirations, as distributing my music [geometricvisions.com] with it allows me to provide formats that would use a lot of bandwidth, such as FLAC, without incurring expensive bandwidth charges.
While musicians can host their music for free at places like MySpace, it's really best to for artists to have their own websites, and to host their own music. That way, growth in the popularity of their sites will enrich the artists, rather than the music hosting service.
And you think the record companies want that?
Of course they don't - but we shouldn't let them (Score:5, Insightful)
And yes I'm well aware of the corrupting influence of campaign donations and lobbyists. If those lead to bad laws being passed, it's because the voters don't care about their own rights.
There are definitely more voters than corporations, so it's well-within our abilities to put those who pass bad laws out of a job.
Re:There are many legal uses for filesharing (Score:5, Interesting)
It's very important to get the message through to lawmakers and the public that filesharing, while it can be abused, is inherently perfectly legitimate, and should be kept both legal and technically possible.
No problem, say, you wouldn't happen to have millions of pounds and a whole bunch of lobbyists/lawyers we could use would you?
That's what it will take.
The media companies see p2p as a deadly threat, so they will just keep hammering on about it, rewording, restating, and lobbying different groups, until they eventually get what they want.
That's how things seem to work in the US (not US bashing here, that's a genuine observation), and the technique is being applied in the EU by the same companies.
Not that the EU is perfect. Not for nothing is it known as the french farmers fan club. Those guys get pretty much anything they want.
A hit song bankrupting struggling musicians (Score:2)
It costs about a buck a gig these days for reliable transfer from my hosting company. Seventeen cents if you use an ounce of planning and get an account with Amazon S3.
A hit song is what, 4 MB? So 1 GB supports 250 users. One *million* users is, cranks the math, $680. If a million people are listening to your music, you laugh in the general direction of $680 worth of hosting bills. (Which is, in any case, far cheaper than your gear, recording studio time, software, and PC for uploading the stuff was.)
B
Most musicians can't use unmanaged hosting (Score:2)
If a musician is to run their own website at all, all but a few would need managed hosting, where the bandwidth is much more expensive.
I know this very well, because I'm designing the website for a musician who wasn't capable of downloading and installing Adobe Reader on her own computer - and she was completely flummoxed when I sent her a link to my MP3s.
This is not an unintelligent woman; she is a virtuoso pianis
Fixing Problems (Score:5, Insightful)
Besides, the only people pushing for this type of legislation are large companies and their shareholders. As a regular Joe, I can say I can disagree strongly with this.
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I can't see large companies (like ISP) trying to push this. It opens a serious can of worms.
In Ireland for example we have a law that prevents the ISP from being sued for content that passes through their servers based on the fact that they don't analyze the data. It was a big deal some years back over the USENET alt.binaries.* being available.
By blocking certain kinds of traffic they are effectively determining what is legal. As such if something illegal was to get through it would be the ISP at fault.
Not going to happen... (Score:5, Interesting)
Sure, it might sound plausible when the RIAA/MPAA paints a picture of P2P = piracy and stack up all the "favorable facts" but there's no way something like that would pass. You don't hear much from other uses because they have no interest in political mudslinging, but they're there. While all the countries of the EU have their own laws, I know at least my own (which isn't part of EU but.. long story) has freedom of speech written into the constitution. Trying to block legitimate speech because it's not approved by the "authorities" would fall so flat on its face in court it'd be an embarrasment to any politician that passed it.
Re:Not going to happen... (Score:5, Informative)
You must be new here. I'd like to welcome you to the wonderful world of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act
There's plenty speech that isn't legal as copyright is a restriction on freedom of speech itself (as is libel, slander, fraud, deceptive marketing, threats, shouting "fire" in a crowded theater abd so on), but they all go towards the content of the speech not the means of its transmission. If I record my own political speech, convert it to mp3 and put it up on bittorrent except bittorrent doesn't work because it's been shut down by the state apparatink, do you understand where I'm going with this? There's a reason "freedom of the press" is in the first amendment, look at the old Soviet Union or the current China, when the government can shut down any media they want you're well on the way to fascism.
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>> If I record my own political speech, convert it to mp3 and put it up on bittorrent except bittorrent doesn't work because it's been shut down by the state apparatink, do you understand where I'm going with this?
That would help - political speech is also protected, and often violently so. If a semi-major candidate started using P2P to distribute his campaign communications, then shutting down that media channel would be a huge no-no. I'm not saying it would stop it on its own, but it would certai
In other news (Score:5, Funny)
Citizens banned from cities streets in a move to prevent mugging.
No way to kill P2P without killing the ISP market! (Score:5, Insightful)
2. As they will close the P2P protocols, new ones will arise.
3. Investments for heavy throttling will never pay back as people will find new interesting ways to bypass it or to switch to a different ISP!
Re:No way to kill P2P without killing the ISP mark (Score:5, Insightful)
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In five years time, I doubt that a typical USA or UK resident will have more than two or three broadband ISPs from whom they can obtain service
Two or three? We should all be that "lucky". Most people around here only have one they can choose from. The lucky few live close enough to the central offices to get DSL -- most are stuck with cable as their sole option.
Re:No way to kill P2P without killing the ISP mark (Score:5, Funny)
And even if it could get to the toothpaste it couldn't even brush its teeth because its tiny arms won't reach its terrible mouth. How the mighty fall - not through asteroid strike or an ice age, but through lack of toothpaste. We have all the toothpaste, here in the future. True, much is gone forever, washed down the plugholes of the past, but the lion's share of the toothpaste is still to come, and we shall spread it far out of the tube, beyond this horizon, beyond the reach of the dinosaurs of the past with their smelly breath and dirty teeth. Yes indeed, my friend - the toothpaste is, indeed, well and truly out of the tube, and the dummies and the desperate can only stand and quiver. Stand and quiver.
Counting bytes... (Score:2)
Books, music, and movies are multi-billion dollar industries. Did everyone just expect to be able to steal them blind and continue to get away with it?
Further, only dummies, and the desperate, would think that the continuous downloading and uploading of gigabytes of data from a home DSL or cable connection to hundreds of other connections doing the same exact thing is a pattern that can't be spotted, tracked, and dealt with.
You can attempt to encrypt it, change ports, or do whatever, but the fact is that to
Encryption is the Next step (Score:5, Interesting)
Globally, legislation is being forced through parliaments, to take away our rights. This legislation has come in many forms, but the result of it is that someone wants to access and read your streams of data for whatever reason.
The only way to render this closer to impossible is to stop them being able to read your private correspondence with a web information service provider. The cost for this privacy - faster servers - will be a small price to pay.
Decrypting private data is generally regarded as a serious offence in most countries, and while, only the USA security organisations have access to Verisign's root servers, they will not admit this in public, because it would take away their advantage.
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Though P2P services will continue to evolve. If they close one door, another is opened. It's been that way since long before Napster, when people used IRC's DCC and newsgroups to share files. Filesharing can't be stopped without destroying the internet, because the internet was created to share files.
Unfortunately, because they control the network destroying the inter
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They don't get abundance (Score:5, Interesting)
All our models for running a society and an economy use scarcity as a starting point; there is more demand for something than supply, and thus there must be a strong rule of law to make sure the resource is distributed properly (although I think its fair to say plenty of people disagree on the definition of 'properly')
Data is not scare though. In a P2P network, every person who demands also by definition supplies, thus demand can never outstrip supply.
They will lose this battle for mathematical rather than political reasons (the level of control they desire is impossible, and if they understood the technology they would know that) - but it interests me as a foreshadowing of a possible future.
Our society could well die from a resources shortage, but we might be able to save ourselves. Three technologies currently being researched, controlled nuclear fusion, autonomous robots, and universal fabrication, could conceivably bring the abundance we see in data to the majority of physical products and services. I listed them in order of the maturity of each field, but I believe that in my lifetime (I am 27 for reference) we could see them all reach a point where want can be effectively eliminated.
Of course, there are some people, the same people we are complaining about now, who don't want to see that. Desperate people are controllable people.
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Not true. Most consumer connections have a much faster download speed than upload speed, so most users can't supply exactly what they demand, only a fraction of that.
(In terms of content, though, you're right -- if someone wants it, they'll be able to supply it later, assuming they have bandwidth and they're sharing it.)
The nice thing about music and movies (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:The nice thing about music and movies (Score:5, Funny)
I may even get more work done.
Now if only somebody could ban the Slashdot as well.
Additionally use of open source not compatible (Score:3, Insightful)
this worries me the most :
"Free Software is not compatible with standards used to try to restrict the run of a  lawful application  : Free Software can be studied and modified by the user himself to check the security of the software or to create a new lawful application as Free Soffware authors grant the right to do so to every user. And technologies used to check if an application is lawful consider user modified software as unlawful. So beside pushing dangerous technologies for privacy, this amendment mays create by itself a barrier in the internal market even if an ISO standard of treacherous computing emerges like the following (http://www.iso.org/iso/iso_catalogue/catalogue_tc/catalogue_detail.htm?csnumber=50970)."
utterly clueless (Score:5, Insightful)
let's go out on a limb, and say the "internet police" can do this (as it is incredibly daunting): we are going to go out and define every node of the internet as "client" and "server". that's a leap of faith, and resources, but lets just go and say that someone can do this
the "client" can only consume, and never serve traffic. ok. so you can never make a form request. you can never upload a youtube video. you can never send an email. you can't chat
oh, ok, ok, you can serve some things... certain ports, certain packet headers are ok... we'll just filter out any unauthorized served content
wtf?
so let's make a second huge leap and say the "internet police" can (with whatever magical resources) identify all nodes as client/ server AND police all traffic formats as allowed/ not allowed. and these are two huge suspensions of disbelief, that anyone can have the willpower and the mandate and the resources to do these two things
now you STILL have issues like:
1. obfuscation. why can't i encrypt my copy of "iron man" as a bunch of supposed form requests. i can't label p2p traffic with a bogus packet header? i can't encrypt it? i can't send it down an "authorized" port?
2. gateways. rogue servers that merely reflect data to another client. perhaps taken over. perhaps just tricked into using "allowed" modes of communication to communicate "iron man"
3. spoofing. trick the watchdogs into thinking p2p traffic is actually legit server to client traffic (ip spoofing but one example, there are a dozen more spoofs)
4. etc., etc. smarter people than me can think up a myriad more ways
it's a game of whack-a-mole. it's a pointless, endless, arms race: every technical effort to kill p2p merely results in the creation of hardier versions of p2p. furthermore, on one side you have a bunch of disorganized, passively interested, technically astute, and most importantly, POOR teenagers. millions of them. on the other side, you have a bunch of expensive hired guns, funded by a pool of money that is, get this, being siphoned off by the unorganized teenager's efforts. take a wild guess where i place my bet on who is going to win this contest
morons: the ONLY way to kill p2p is to pervert the nature of the internet to the point that anything compelling and useful about the internet is not also destroyed. if the information flow is not also free, and only one way, you stifle the creation of new services, and bureaucratically choke any existing useful ones. the internet becomes stagnant, passive, just a form television delivered over tcp/ip. the internet is killed
so how about another option for you: p2p isn't going away, and fucking get used to it! reality accept it, don't fight it, you stupid twits
Pirate WiFi? (Score:2, Insightful)
This shit is going to escalate until it's too late. Telcos make money anyway through landline and cellphones rates, cable TV and stuff, so I wouldn't expect them to fear losing customers. People should consider getting the necessary equipment to set up a pirate radio station like they did in the 60s and 70s, but this time by using common Wi-Fi equipment. I wish every home recycled an old PC with wireless card setting up a minimum file server, a dynamic routing daemon (OLSR, b.a.t.m.a.n., etc) and a p2p clie
Please object in writing to your MEP (Score:2, Insightful)
The common comment theme (Score:4, Interesting)
The common theme within some of the comments here seems to be "let's build an open network". Although this is somewhat idealistic, it's not outside the realms of possibility. Cities are already smothered with open wireless networks, whether intentionally or not, and there's no way you can regulate the traffic among them. And P2P, although used on the "International Network", is essentially a local service... a closed group of people, usually from countries that speak the same language, sharing files with each other internally without a *requirement* for international transit.
P2P moving to such networks is an obvious possibility. Again, by heavy-handed and back-handed approaches (suing people without evidence, slipping clauses/laws into other laws by political maneouvering, etc.), the media industries are forcing people to use more and more ingenious solutions to sensibly meet their requirements (i.e. they'd like some sensibly-priced music that they can use, please). And as each solution's flaws are found, new solutions (without those flaws) present themselves. Regulation of traffic flowing over regulated internet channels? Remove the regulation by using *other* channels.
We seem to have come full circle - from the initial Internet, where private, unregulated networks joined up to decrease costs and increase connectivity, to a world where everyone has their own private network behind an ISP's public network, to (hopefully) a place where all the private networks peer with each other *without the intervention of an ISP*, except this time via radios. The only problem is international transit (Joe Bloggs can't exactly run a fibre over the English Channel), but the chances are that programs like Tor, etc. as well as the odd rogue network that connects to someone's actual ISP connection will solve that.
Maybe when 802.11n or its successor grows in popularity, we will see home networks that, even with enormous interference, crowded channels, limited range, primitive routing etc. are quite capable of peering with a number of geographical neighbours and passing traffic intelligently at a reasonable speed. You don't even have to take account of "ISP T&C's" because you don't NEED to pass the traffic to the Internet at every possible point, only to be able to pass it on to someone else.
I had a quick look and all of the community wifi projects I can find in my country are very small and localised, or don't exist any more. If there was one operating near me, I'd gladly hook up an old Linksys and an enormous antenna and let it freely pass traffic - everything would have to be encrypted, anyway, because an open network is an open network but if all it needs is to be "plugged in", and not actually connected to anything else physically, or to the Internet, there's no reason we can't each have a little cube in our homes that costs about £10 and lets us connect to every house in the street and pass traffic. If there was the possibility of such a "darknet" running over it (free VoIP calls, free music, free movies, no Internet charges, etc.) I'm sure every student would have one.
Then, not only do the music industry etc. run into the problem of *detecting* the traffic in the first place (no black boxes on a private net, a physical presence required in every locality, and being able to defeat the encryption), but that if done properly, traffic's transit route, origin, etc. are impossible to determine. They may try to close the system down, of course, but then you have a much larger problem - you're effectively trying to shut down the entire Internet. Except all the "nodes" are private individuals, without contracts, without liability, without regulation, and, if they are cheap enough, rogue solar-powered blackboxes stuck in hidden locations around towns and cities and replaced whenever they are discovered. Just how do you shut that down without bringing a country into riots?
The real Internet2 isn't going to be an academic project aimed at pushing Gb/s over international fibre, it's going to be a nationwide collection of cheap Gumstix with a solar panel and wifi, sold at cost price, one per home, that let's people escape most of the communication regulation foisted upon them.
I RTFA so you don't have to (Score:2)
I hate to break it to you, but the legislation as proposed accounts for that. It suggests that countries would have to make it a legal requirement that terminals allowed to connect to the Internet had the technical means to ensure that they don't do anything illegal.
In other words, it legislates for mandatory Trusted Computing (the infamous "Palladium" chip).
I read the extracts of the proposed amendments too (Score:4, Informative)
My reading of the proposed amendment is the exact opposite - (my emphasis added):
It seems to me that this directive prohibits making it a legal requirement that equipment contains DRM or other control mechanisms. Manufacturers can put that stuff in their products if they want but it seems to me that this amendment says you can't stop manufacturers leaving it out and if they do you can't stop them shipping their products between member states.
I know it is probably too much to ask on Slashdot but could someone else read the proposed amendments carefully, think about them and if they think I have got it wrong explain exactly how and why they interpret the words in that way.
Re:I read the extracts of the proposed amendments (Score:4, Insightful)
I know it is probably too much to ask on Slashdot but could someone else read the proposed amendments carefully, think about them and if they think I have got it wrong explain exactly how and why they interpret the words in that way.
This is something I was unclear about. The paragraph immediately below that directly contradicted it - whether or not those amendments are proposed or they've been written into the legislation I don't know.
One thing I would point out - legislated TPM or not, if every ISP in the country is legally obliged to do everything in their power to prevent customer copyright infringement and TPM offers this promise, how long before the ISP makes "you must have a TPM-enabled PC" a condition of service, at least for domestic connections?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm afraid you might be right ...
and the paragraph 2 requires the member states to only inform the Commission , while the paragraph 3 says:
Meanwhile in Brazl.. (Score:3, Interesting)
FUD (Score:5, Informative)
a national regulatory authority may issue guidelines setting minimum quality of service requirements
. Nothing strange about it, it might even allow regulatory agencies to mandate ISPs to advertise more truthfully.
if appropriate, take other measures, in order to prevent degradation of services and slowing of traffic over networks,
Traffic shaping is not necessarily bad. Why should I have to wait 5+ seconds for a webpage to load just because the guy next door is downloading 24/7?
and to ensure that the ability of users to access or distribute lawful content or to run lawful applications and services of their choice is not unreasonably restricted.
This is where there can be disagreement on what this amendment is trying to accomplish. On the one hand, it might be used to restrict P2P sharing. This is La Quadrature's interpretation. On the other hand, however, this passage can also be construed as protecting our right to use our internet connection as we see fit, provided we are not engaging in illegal activities. For instance, should ISPs block or throttle all P2P traffic, a user might file a complaint with the regulatory authorities, which could judge that, since it unreasonably restricts the ability of users to access lawful content, such a measure is illegal.
Their analysis of Article 21 (4a) is not much more accurate. What is says is that, "when appropriate", ISPs may be forced to send "public interest information" to subscribers. The inclusions of
(c) means of protection against risks to personal security, privacy and personal data in using electronic communications services
argues against La Quadrature's (confused and barely understandable) analysis that this article refers to mandatory takedown notices. A more charitable -- and plain -- reading suggests that ISPs would be required to send a brochure to their customers to tell them that copyright infrigement in really bad. This is why both existing and new subscribers (who, obviously, haven't downloaded anything illegal yet), are mentioned. In all likelihood, the only thing this amendment will accomplish is that all subscribers will get a leaflet that explains why they should install a firewall and an anti-virus program.
It's FUD, pure and simple. Most of the arguments on La Quadrature's pages are either non sequiturs or slippery slope arguments ("may" does not equal "shall").
Yep. FUD. (Score:3, Informative)
Bingo. I'd like to see an analysis of these amendments written by somebody who does understand them in terms of all their implications, but the linked analysis is blatantly wrong in many aspects. One that stood out to me:
One question... (Score:3, Insightful)
We need to fight back (Score:3, Insightful)
Write whichever politician represents you and say that you do NOT want them to support the efforts by the copyright cartels to shut down legitimate content distribution in the name of fighting piracy. Tell them that you do NOT support piracy and the illegal copying of other peoples content without permission but that the law and court system should be used to find the people who violate copyright law and that ISPs should NOT be force to block
Tell them that if they support legislation that blocks legitimate uses of the internet in the name of fighting piracy, you will vote for someone else who does not support such legislation.
Useless EU (Score:3, Insightful)
EU = EUSSR
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Wikipedia does give a list of featured [wikipedia.org] and good [wikipedia.org] articles.
Some may find it rather telling that of the almost 2.5m articles on WP, only 6,500 make the grade for either of the lists
Re:Weird (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
the obvious fix to this, is to fill the empty space with zeroes (which encrypted will appear as random noise) to encrypted sockets.
It's not good enough to do only for bittorrent, since the exploit can be potentially be used for similar things against other protocols.
But only in certain case (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
As I said in another post, you can attempt to encrypt it, change ports, fiddle with the timing, run a VPN, or simply wave your hands in the air as misdirection, but the fact is that to be effective a P2P program MUST send gigabytes of data upstream to multiple destinations. It's inherent in the nature of the beast.
All one has to do to spot it is meter the connection and count bytes...
Re:Weird (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh yeah, mandatory Trusted Computing, the magic bullet. Because enumerating and safeguarding against all known good or bad software products has worked sooo well in corporate environments.
Last time I checked, online gaming had a massive problem with cheaters of all sorts, despite a decade's effort to secure their client code and to check against known badware. With no luck.
Good luck trying to keep an updated, effective list of all known intellectual-property-respecting, human-rights-compatible, hate-speech-free and politically-absolutely-correct software products.
Excuse me while I'm off to my hidden stash of guns and ammo, adding loads of paper and several unregistered mechanical typewriters to the loot.
Don't forget: the Soviet Union required the registration of any and all typewriters and printing devices with the authorities. Unregistered possession of such items was a felony and severely punished.
But in Soviet Europe, Trusted Computing registers YOU! Ihre Papiere bitte mein Herr!
Re:Weird (Score:4, Insightful)
You know what, its a fair cop.
People compare the current actions of the US with the Nazis and on that basis it is far from unreasonable to extend the analogy and compare the EU to Communists.
We do much the same stuff, except instead of invoking national pride and military glory we simply tell you we are doing whats best for you, and you will understand one day, you poor deluded child.
Re:Weird (Score:5, Informative)
Oh yeah, mandatory Trusted Computing, the magic bullet. Because enumerating and safeguarding against all known good or bad software products has worked sooo well in corporate environments.
Apparently, you don't grok how "Trusted Computing" works. It works on a "white list" principal. If any of the software/OS/applications/BIOS/hardware isn't on the white list, then the machine in question will not certify as "trusted" when queried when you attempt to connect to your ISP or any other "trusted" machine, appliance, or service. Any time you attempt to connect, "T.C." authorization servers verify the "trusted" or "not trusted" state of the machine with a hash generated from the machines' hardware/software and the unique keys stored in the silicon against hashes/keys on a "T.C." authorization server.
Currently, the "T.C." chip is a discrete IC on the motherboard. It will soon be integrated directly onto the CPU wafer. There's no "getting to" the keys contained, as they never leave the IC, never resides in RAM or on a data bus. So unless you have advanced, very expensive equipment for reverse-engineering and fabricating microchips at the micron level you're out of luck. Even were someone to succeed, all that trouble and expense would only allow *one* machine to falsify a "trusted" state, and only until it was discovered and its' unique keys revoked at the T.C. authorization servers, all but "bricking" the machine as far as any use in conjunction with the "trusted" network.
I truly believe this will be the next major battle in the arms race between those who wish to control information and people, and those that want freedom, and might very well be the last if they succeed. They've already committed themselves to this path and fired the first shot with the inclusion of the outboard "T.C." chip on many/most(?) motherboards. If they succeed in fully rolling this system out, times will surely get "interesting" indeed, in that bad old Chinese curse kind of way.
Cheers!
Strat
Re: (Score:2)
That will be blocked aswell it's p2p.
I guuess Skype and Tor will also be blocked.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
You're a silly sausage.
Glad you agree.
Re:I agree (Score:5, Insightful)
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I'd go out, buy a couple books, and read them while I packed up the car and drove to Canada.
If it were shut down world-wide, i'd buy books and find an amish community, because without the internet high technology isn't all that high anymore, and current "entertainment" is only useful as noisy wall paper. (seriously, a white noise generator could easily replace my tv and provide more entertainment).