ISPs to Ban P2P With New European Telecom Package?

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"

When WoW stops working because the updates are blocked the Hord and the Alliance might finally put their differences aside to fight a bigger foe!

Re:Storming the EU parliment shouting "FOR THE HOR

I'm free for raid tonight at 8pm GMT. Bagsie not tanking Merkel.

Re:Storming the EU parliment shouting "FOR THE HOR

The Judean People's Front?

Re:Storming the EU parliment shouting "FOR THE HOR

And there will probably be at least one guy shouting "LEROY JENKINS!"

Re:Storming the EU parliment shouting "FOR THE HOR

Five bucks says he'll be the one with the bomb.

I guess they still don't get it yet

P2P isn't just about illegal file sharing, it's bigger than that. The way we download linux distros, the way we download game updates, hell even Pure Pwnage distributes their videos using P2P methods. 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. If this passes they might as well ban people from driving cars because they can be used to traffic illegal drugs.

Re:I guess they still don't get it yet

I really think they are missing the point

Politicians missing the point? I am SHOCKED!

Re:I guess they still don't get it yet

One of our great lawmakers here once said in a TV interview that a good solution would be to simply ban file sharing!

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

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"

Re:I guess they still don't get it yet

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

If those in power want to kill the internet for the common man, what is there to stop the common man from killing the internet for those in power? I like the way the politician the parent was talking about put it - "We are talking about files here, not documents and stuff like that." Well guess what, documents are files. You ban our files and we will ban yours. You find a loophole to suit your purposes and we will abuse it to suit ours. The only insight that those in power haven't understood is that everything is joined at the hip here - what works for you works for me, and what won't work for you won't work for me.

There are many legal uses for filesharing

BitTorrent was originally designed to distribute Open Source software installation CD images.

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

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

... run the government. In democratic countries at least, the government serves at the pleasure of the people, not the corporations.

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

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.

Fixing Problems

This type of solution solves nothing (People will always find ways to share files illegally, just like people will always find ways to do illegal drugs), increases tension (Any regulatory legislation or law increases tension between those that create and enforce the laws and those the law is being enforced upon), and removes a useful service. (Peer to Peer is used for many purposes outside of illegal file sharing.)

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.

Not going to happen...

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...

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.

In other news

Citizens banned from cities streets in a move to prevent mugging.

No way to kill P2P without killing the ISP market!

1. A lot of customers, especially home ones, use internet almost just for the P2P applications.
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

The proposed law, suggest that the state would pay for the ISP's losses, so it might even be profitable for ISP to cut a customer. This is not just about p2p anymore. This is about basic freedom/survival...

Encryption is the Next step

The only feasible solution at this point to to encrypt streams between clients and servers. the obligatory reply about performance may be crossing your mind right now, but is there actually any other solution?
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

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:Weird

There are already claims that its possible to distinguish the protocols inside encrypted channels based on packet size and timming with quite high accuracy

Re:Weird

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!