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."
Weird (Score:1, Interesting)
I've always thought that encrypted and suitably tunneled P2P traffic cannot be blocked without blocking the non-P2P traffic whose protocol is used as a channel. Do they want to shut down the Internet?
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:Weird (Score:5, Interesting)
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: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.
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...
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.
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.
Re:No way to kill P2P without killing the ISP mark (Score:1, Interesting)
If they can't get what they want, they can trot on down to the library and use the Internet there or buy a laptop and use the free WiFi around at a coffeehouse or other place of business. We are at the point where using free sources of Internet connectivity make sense if all of your ISP choices suck.
ISPs need to be more aware of this. Sure, they can implement Sandvine all they want and try to tier their bandwidth for maximum theoretical profit instead of maximum return on investment and maximum customer satisfaction. I can also tell them to pound sand and walk down to the corner coffee shop, buy a $1 cup of coffee, and check my email.
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.
So, how long? / torrent relays? (Score:0, Interesting)
How long will it be before ISPs end up becoming WSPs (Web service providers)?
It is becoming downright pathetic.
Even more so are the people who are caving to such a desperate industry.
Either get with the fucking times, or stop producing, period.
In other news, isn't there some site (torrent relay or something) that allows torrenting through a web browser?
Would a system created solely for doing this be able to defeat them?
Obviously this would require several servers from people willing to pay for bandwidth, maybe people could even help by running a web server, it would be similar to Tor in a sense.
Re:Weird (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:I guess they still don't get it yet (Score:3, Interesting)
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 a criminal conviction. Somehow the state seizing your property winds up in the civil system where the burden of proof is much lower.
The Founding Fathers are probably spinning in their graves over that one.
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.
Re:No Free Content (Score:3, Interesting)
"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.
Meanwhile in Brazl.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I read the extracts of the proposed amendments (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:
It seems that the amendments are aimed at preventing abuses resulting from attempts to block copyright infringement, and that DRM devices should not be mandatory, and if there are DRM devices/software, it should not interfere with somebody's personal data or use that personal data ... though my Legalese could be defective and I might misread
It is also true that the texts quoted by laquadrature.net do not forbid DRM.