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Networking Government Your Rights Online Politics

Internet Filtering Lobby Forms 140

mbone writes "Wired's David Kravets reports on a new lobbying effort to support the filtering of internet traffic called Arts & Labs. Coverage is available at PC World as well. The lobby's members include AT&T, Cisco Systems, Microsoft, NBC Universal, Viacom and the Songwriters Guild of America. Their web site says, 'network operators must have the flexibility to manage and expand their networks to defend against net pollution and illegal file-trafficking which threatens to congest and delay the network for all consumers.' Does it seem that this is an attempt to categorize P2P with spam and malware, or is it just me?"
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Internet Filtering Lobby Forms

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  • 'must' (Score:2, Insightful)

    by slimjim8094 ( 941042 )

    Why must? Just think, with more consumer choice, this could be a 'specialty' ISP that you made a conscious decision to subscribe to.

    As it is, they're trying to say 'existing ISP need to be able to filter'. Why's that? It sure isn't about customer choice; otherwise it would be a 'could' or a 'should'

    And we're back to net neutrality again, but this time with a pretty 'think of the children' mask.

    • Re:'must' (Score:5, Interesting)

      by slimjim8094 ( 941042 ) on Friday September 26, 2008 @07:56PM (#25173185)

      Wait, disregard my above comment for dumbassery. This has nothing to do with children... I should go to bed.

      But I'll try to salvage it:

      Assuming there was consumer choice in the ISP market, why wouldn't you be able to choose 'granny ISP' that allowed email, websites, and iTunes but filtered porn, hack attempts, and would clean your computer for you if you got infected? And then there's the HARDCORE TORRENT provider with a (possibly) lower bandwidth, but no throttling and high upstream, with the assumption that people will torrent 24/7.

      As it is, they're selling a 'one-size-fits-all' plan of high-bandwidth, but we'll cut you off if you use it more than we want, and charge you more than you should pay.

      This is trying to shoehorn this strategy into a changing market. People are using IPTV and there are more people knowing how to use BitTorrent... but they don't want to upgrade their system to support new uses. So, to fend off the law knocking on their door, they're trying to get it named 'malware' because their system can't handle it and it hurts other people sometimes.

      • Basically, because if they did that, the hardcore torrent providers would all go out of business, and the torrenters would flock to the granny ISPs and start complaining about them.

        Everyday users subsidise those who use more in the current system. That is why companies are trying to ban, or restrict heavy users. The more they do, the more profit they get. They don't want to cater to them - they want them to go away.
        • Also eventually all ISPs would become like cable channels - they are not regulated by the FCC, and yet they still censor every little nipple slip or nudity or sex scene. Cable channels justify this censorship "because children might be watching" and ISPs would do the same thing for the same reason. (Goodbye playboy.com, goodbye violent websites.)

          I prefer that ISPs remain *neutral* and censor nothing. Let ME figure-out what I will or will not access.

          I'm sick of cable corporations acting like surrogate par

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by inKubus ( 199753 )

        What you have here is a bunch of broadcasters trying to turn the internet into the same one-way, one-sided medium they've always enjoyed. Guess what, they did it to radio, they did it to TV, they did it to publishing. But the thing is, the internet is CHEAP. Digital bits of data are extremely cheap to move around. So there's no arguement like there was with the airwaves that we might "run out of space". So, naturally, the new villian is "illegal" activites. They could care less about the illegality of

    • Re:'must' (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 26, 2008 @08:03PM (#25173283)

      I like that, "think of the children."

      ISP's need to be able to filter whatever they want because of the children...or because they could then charge content providers extra if they want. Once you do away with net neutrality, we can rely on big businesses to help themselves. But don't worry, the robber barons will donate some money to the poor unfortunates that will no longer be able to compete. Or maybe they'll donate condoms to Africa with some of that money. Sorry, but I'm not feeling overly optimistic about the ability of most big businesses to play fairly, without getting laws passed that favor them.

      Maybe some year when I'm not being asked to bail out slimeball businessmen with my taxes, I'll feel differently. BTW, 700 billion isn't much. Just take the net worth of the richest man in the world, multiply it by 13 or 14, and you're in the neighborhood. I was looking at figures and comments about social security, and it's called the largest government giveaway program. I think it'll be surpassed shortly.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Maybe some year when I'm not being asked to bail out slimeball businessmen with my taxes, I'll feel differently. BTW, 700 billion isn't much. Just take the net worth of the richest man in the world, multiply it by 13 or 14, and you're in the neighborhood. I was looking at figures and comments about social security, and it's called the largest government giveaway program. I think it'll be surpassed shortly.

        Yeah... and then you didn't yet include the 1500 billion of emergency credit the fed bank gave to banks in the past week.

        It's not the same soup though, it's got a whole different taste! The social security money goes to poor or sick people, ordinary human beings. But the 700 billion goes to..... the banks who caused this shit in the first place! The man in the street is being ripped of *TWICE* this time, once by the banks, and now by the taxman!

        Americans! Land of freedom! Where are your protests, where

        • The best part of the situation is I'm a college student, and couldn't get a measly student loan this year because of all this bullshit. TERI is completely frozen.

          • The same thing happened to PHEAA - they can't sell off their student loans, so they just... stopped this year :\

            I think it's ridiculous that we're bailing these people out; it's disgusting that they are so important to the economy that their collapse will cause a huge failure.

            • Well the alternative is that YOUR bank closes-down, and takes your life savings with it. (And before you "it's insured", remember that the reason the Fed is asking Congress for help, is because they are almost out of money. FDIC can't return your money to you if the Fed's wallet is empty.)

              >>>BTW, 700 billion isn't much

              Not much??? At my upper-middle class salary, it would still take *7 million years* for me to earn that much money. That sounds like a really big bill to my ears.

              • Uh... I never said it wasn't much.
                And I don't really have much in the bank. Maybe a thousand dollars (most of it goes to my education). Also, I would HOPE that Wacopse Federal Credit Union would be a little more responsible than to increase short-term profits by killing themselves long-term (they're non-profit).

                • Well I have $50,000 in one bank, $60,000 in another, and $80,000 in a third bank.

                  And I'm worried. Like I said the Fed is running out of money. Last I heard they only have 0.2 trillion in reserve. Which means if the whole banking system starts to collapse (as happened in 1929 and 30), the Fed won't be able to insure everyone's savings. The money will simply disappear, and I will have lost a huge chunk of money.

                  That's why the Fed went to Congress; the Federal Reserve is teetering on the edge of bankruptcy

                  • May be time to invest that money elsewhere.
                    There's no way we, as a nation, are coming out of this unscathed. At least I'm lucky enough to be in school, with pretty decent scholarships, right now. Don't have to deal with the 'real world' as much as you guys.

        • I wrote a scathing letter to all of my congressmen, and all but one of them (Idaho) are opposing the plan, one quite vocally at that (Bill Sali). I don't know what other people are doing besides complaining about it on slashdot.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by MeNeXT ( 200840 )

        Yes "think of the children"

        If they can filter illegal content then for sure they can filter child porn. Hold them responsible for all the content that passes through the network. Lets call these service providers Content Service Providers so the general public will not mix the 2 up. ISP are gust carriers and CSP will be responsible for ALL the content. If they can filter music then the can filter child porn.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      This is a pretty transparent attempt to change the "Internet" into a broadcast service - like TV. It's a money grab for the big corporations. I guess they decided since Washington is bent on bailing out all the banks, it's time to ask for their own big handout at the expense of the taxpayers.

      Check out the site. Their "Creativity Online" section has this description:

      There are a variety of reliable and legal places to enjoy great content online. Visit our Creativity Online database to learn about the grea

  • No surprise (Score:4, Insightful)

    by MiKM ( 752717 ) on Friday September 26, 2008 @07:48PM (#25173091)

    And Cisco has the means to produce filtering equipment, while Microsoft has recently secured a patent to watermark music and track it through the internet.

    After reading the summary, I wasn't surprised that Cisco is in it for the money.

    • Re:No surprise (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Baton Rogue ( 1353707 ) on Friday September 26, 2008 @08:30PM (#25173499)
      Well aren't they all in it for the money? AT&T, Cisco and MS for the products and services that will be used for this, and NBC, Viacom and the music industry for the "stolen" revenues that this is trying to prevent. How is it not obvious this is all about money?
      • by MiKM ( 752717 )
        Well, yes, it all boils down to money in the end. My point was that all the other companies are directly affected by piracy - it makes sense that they are vouching to curb it. Cisco isn't affected by piracy, or if it is, not to the same extent. Based on the article, it seems that Cisco is only in this so they can sell the hardware to implement it.
        • Cisco is affected by sales of bandwidth handling equipment. They would much rather sell new equipment, with new patents and computationally topheavy features such as sophisticated filtering, than another round of cheap GigE switches. And their customers would rather buy one smart unit, and pay lower bandwidth costs, than fill racks with P2P supporting hardware. For a business network, I'd buy it in a heartbeat: our employees have no business running Bittorrent from their desktop on the business network, eve

    • Really this should be a customer relations issue. Not just political, we should be contacting the public affairs department of these companies directly and tell them this is not acceptable. Unlike politicians, corporations are not used to that sort of pressure tactic and they might back down.
    • et tu, Cisco? (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      I *am* surprised. After helping China suppress the human rights [wikipedia.org] of their own people, I thought Cisco might be smart enough to lay low for a while. They are putting their reputation through the shredder.

      • You say that like if they would care about their reputation amongst those who are their smallest (that is, not worth much trouble) clients...

  • Hah! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 26, 2008 @07:54PM (#25173157)

    I would -love- for this lobby group to be made to define clearly those terms - particularly "Net Pollution" - and explain their FOOLPROOF ways to identify them.

    Not that this would make them worth listening to, but it would be a lot closer.

    • by MeNeXT ( 200840 )

      Net pollution = child pron

      Since they claim to be able to filter content why do they permit child pron on their equipment. Hold them responsible for all content.

  • Sounds like a ploy (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Lord Kano ( 13027 ) on Friday September 26, 2008 @07:55PM (#25173177) Homepage Journal

    I'm suspicious of this. I concede that illegal filesharing is a problem, but it sounds more like an attempt to turn the internet into a tightly controlled broadcase medium, like television.

    No more freerepublic and no more dailykos.

    LK

    • by Joe U ( 443617 )

      No more freerepublic and no more dailykos.

      You still have a modem? If so, you're safe, just much much slower.

    • by timmarhy ( 659436 ) on Friday September 26, 2008 @08:32PM (#25173511)
      "I concede that illegal filesharing is a problem"

      is it really though? we've had torrent sites for years now and it hasn't killed itunes, which is competing at 99c vs free. i don't see any of the big studio's going through tough times because of it.

      • by Kjella ( 173770 )

        i don't see any of the big studio's going through tough times because of it.

        Have you really paid attention? CD sales are way down, far more than online sales are up. Look at EMI or Warner's stock performance and you see they've constantly disappointed these last years. Sony and Univeral (Vivendi) aren't quite as easy since they're a mix so you'd have to read their annual report, but music is definately not what's going well. Most people now use portable music players, not CDs and so CDs are just a meaningless transport medium for getting it on your player. More and more people are

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by MrNaz ( 730548 )

          Have you really paid attention? CD sales are way down, far more than online sales are up.

          Could that possibly be because the last 3-5 years have seen huge drops in consumer spending overall? Correlation is not causation.

          Copying 100GB of a well sorted collection of pretty much all famous bands in recent history is just absurd convienience. Did you hear Apple dropped their biggest iPod model because even the packrats didn't need more space? It's not a problem. Not in terms of bandwidth, storage or anything. I

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by Tuoqui ( 1091447 )

          Have you really paid attention? CD sales are way down, far more than online sales are up.

          Could it be because oh I dont know... People have huge racks of CD's already? People didnt rush out to buy CD's when they came out because they still had lots on vinyl.

          They're losing sales because guess what every single song is a formulaic ripoff. Who needs Brittany Spears Ripoff #2987 when you have Brittany Spears Ripoffs #1-8.

          Or maybe it could be that people arent buying because they heard about the Sony Rootkit Fiasco? Who wants a CD that is going to $*&# your computer up?

          Or it could be because of t

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Klaus_1250 ( 987230 )
          Every iPod sold is 100 mp3's not bought. Every iPhone sold is 200 mp3's not bought. Every overpriced telco-subscription with insane sms costs is about 30-50 mp3's not bought (and that is every month). Music is being killed by gadgets, video, gaming, messaging, etc. Everyone seems to have picked the budget consumers had for music and now try to call it their own. I used to buy 10 - 20 CD's a year, now I buy games, DVD's and hardware/gadgets.
          • by gilgongo ( 57446 )

            "Music is being killed "

            Not from where I'm standing. There's more live music, more bands, more creation of music and musical forms now than ever before as far as I can tell.

            Did you mean "CD sales by old, shit, or otherwise irrelevant artists" are being killed? If so, I'd agree with that - and long may that death continue.

        • by MeNeXT ( 200840 )

          How many times can you buy Hotel California from the eagles? they have more compilations than they have songs.....

          You have it on tape, on LP maybe on 8 track, on CD so why do they keep releasing the same albums and expect people to buy. Most new stuff sucks and people own the old stuff. Sales are where they should be. If I don't like the music I will not buy it. Most radio stations kill POP within a couple of weeks since they over play the songs.

          On another point the cost of production, all the way to the co

        • the record labels' own data showed that cd sales have been declining since the early 90s, AND it also showed that the decline in CD sales in 2000s were LOWER than the decline in 90s. not only that, but when it is also compared to the cassette tape sale trends of before, they show a similar pattern.

          therefore there is NO correlation between filesharing, torrenting, piracy or even counterfeit cds and cd sales.

          'hey people are downloading albums. it HAS to lower cd sales' -> no such stupidity exists. th
    • by Stanislav_J ( 947290 ) on Friday September 26, 2008 @09:03PM (#25173761)

      I'm suspicious of this. I concede that illegal filesharing is a problem, but it sounds more like an attempt to turn the internet into a tightly controlled broadcase medium, like television.

      It's already well on the way there. The Internet in the "good ol' days" was like one gigantic public forum where anybody with a cheap modem, a shareware program, and a free web host could establish a beachhead from which they could proclaim their likes and dislikes, hopes and dreams, hobbies and avocations, opinions and rants to the world. And while, of course, that element is still a part of the Net, look how dominated it has become by huge corporate commercial websites. Some of us still search for the individual blogs and sites that enrich our lives, but increasingly a lot of Net users probably spend most of their time with the Big Boys.

      I foresee an increasingly widening divide between content providers and content consumers. "Net neutrality" is just the tip of the iceberg in the effort to clamp down on and marginalize the little guys. See, technically right now, even TV and newspapers DO afford an opportunity for anyone to broadcast their thing to the masses -- IF you have the money. I see the Net heading in the same direction. I believe that eventually the ability to put up your own website is going to cost ya, and cost big.....no more cheapie/freebie blogs and such. Your internet connection will remain affordable -- on a par with cable TV or subscribing to a magazine -- as long as you are just consuming the content that the corporations want you to see and hear. But if you want to actually speak to the masses instead of being a passive lump, well, show us the money and we'll see. If you want to buy even a single 30-second ad on the smallest TV station, it will run you at least hundreds, probably thousands of dollars. I see the Internet as eventually degenerating into the same unbalanced affair -- it will largely cease to be an interactive medium, and become another mass medium for the dissemination of what the folks with the power and the money want you to see.

      But it was fun while it lasted...

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by EdIII ( 1114411 ) *

        Wrong. Well, not your observation, but the end result.

        The Internet will have to remain a 2-way communications medium. It can't function without being so. That's a technical limitation that cannot be overcome.

        "They", which I assume you mean the Big Content Providers, will not be able to cause you to be charged more to provide content from your residence, since increasing the cost of the upstream more than 10x the cost of the downstream will not work in any market. Even if Big Content Providers merge with

        • The Internet will have to remain a 2-way communications medium. It can't function without being so. That's a technical limitation that cannot be overcome.

          your side of communication can be reduced to only 'selecting content'. and the content you can select would be the content selection those fucktards in the roster of that crap of a foundation allows.

        • The Internet will have to remain a 2-way communications medium. It can't function without being so. That's a technical limitation that cannot be overcome.

          "They", which I assume you mean the Big Content Providers, will not be able to cause you to be charged more to provide content from your residence, since increasing the cost of the upstream more than 10x the cost of the downstream will not work in any market. Even if Big Content Providers merge with bandwidth providers, they still will not be able to stop you from having upstream bandwidth, albeit less than your downstream.

          I'm not talking about bandwidth at the source (from your computer to and from wherever) and I'm not talking about 1-way versus 2-way communication (obviously, the Net HAS to be "2-way" to some extent as you are sending commands and requests to view various content every time you click on something).

          What I am saying is this: if you want to have a website, blog, online store, etc., that content has to be "parked" -- hosted -- somewhere on somebody's server. And that's what ultimately will be made prohibitive

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • my friend. youare WAY foolish and naive.

      it IS a ploy.

      noone can ever push self-centered agendas in politics honestly. they always package it as something 'good for the people'. let me give you examples of similar ploys throughout history :

      all crusades, both muslim's crusade starting in 700AD and christian's crusade starting 1090AD were for 'furthering' their respective religions, leaders said. actually, they were both done for conquest and pillage and colonization.

      all the measures that installed
  • so let's make believe you could separate all boxes in the internet as either server or client

    you still need to allow something upstream (filling out forms, emailing)

    then its just a matter of p2p traffic masquerading as allowed two-way protocols

    sure the network providers can put more complicated filters in, but its a simple arms race, and p2p developers will merely obfuscate better

    you can throttle upstream taffic, sure. so i'll get my bootleg movie in 8 days, not 8 hours

    what else? outlaw encryption? so no one can use their bank online anymore?

    network providers: you will spend more money enforcing a p2p ban than if you just did your fucking job: provide your customers with access to something you don't control, and never can, due to the nature of the web, and shut the fuck up

    is there some horrible scarcity of fibre? is the network clogged?

    then take some of the money we fucking pay you, and lay some more fibre, assholes

    • by FST777 ( 913657 ) <frans-jan@van-s t e e n b e e k .net> on Friday September 26, 2008 @08:19PM (#25173399) Homepage
      Not my way to say it, but: exactly. I pay my ISP to provide me with connectivity and an IP address. It really should be my choice and my responsibility what I do with that service. If you want to combat illegal file sharing or illegal child porn, you should track down the providers and the big users and sue them. Don't use the ISPs to do that job.

      And even if you want the ISPs to do part of that job, have it done right. Don't give them more power, give them rules (like: if we find a certain IP-address offending the law, give us the appropriate name and address).

      I am glad that I'm not in danger of having my ISP sort out my traffic for me, yet. But if the USA implements this kind of ludicrous legislation, I'm sure the EU will follow in a few years "because it has proved to work at the other side of the Atlantic". We all know that it will only end with less freedom and more commerce (hence: either higher prices, or more advertising).
      • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

        by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Friday September 26, 2008 @10:40PM (#25174321)
        Comment removed based on user account deletion
        • its a two pronged fight. even if you somehow convinced me, philosophically, that fighting only supply was the way to go, i would get right back at you by saying that destroying the demand is an effective tactic to use in fighting the supply. besides, its also a good way of finding the supply

          any effort that focuses only on the supply, or only on the demand, is hamstrung

          • i would get right back at you by saying that destroying the demand is an effective tactic

            And how, pray tell, do you plan to destroy demand? At best, this is a mental illness we're dealing with... so your plan is to, what, just arrest every child-porn-viewing pedophile out there? Sorry bub, but that just ain't gonna work. At least going after the supplies, the people *actually* harming children, is feasible. Going after the consumers of this dreck is just playing whack-a-mole.

            On the bright side, it's a g

      • by Dan541 ( 1032000 )

        I'd rather let 1000 paedophiles go than to block even a single packet. What, they think criminals will simply throw in the towel?

        I can't speak for others but I'd rather keep that 1000 paedophiles where I can see them than chase them further underground.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      is there some horrible scarcity of fibre? is the network clogged?

      It's not that it's scarce, but that it's expensive. And it's not just the fiber that is expensive, it's the additional routers with the higher bandwidth they also need to purchase to be able to receive and send the data.
      And yes, the networks are clogged, if you ask them, with P2P traffic.

      then take some of the money we fucking pay you, and lay some more fibre, assholes

      It's not just that simple. You don't just string the fiber between telephone poles, you have to get rights to bury the fiber where necessary, and all that costs a lot more money than just the fiber itself.

      • by Wildclaw ( 15718 )

        It's not that it's scarce, but that it's expensive. And it's not just the fiber that is expensive, it's the additional routers with the higher bandwidth they also need to purchase to be able to receive and send the data.

        Which doesn't make any sense since many countries are able to handle higher bandwidths than the US at cheaper prices. And backbone bandwidth is so cheap (in the amount of data ISPs are talking about) that calling it expensive to send data just sounds ridicioulus.

        And please don't bring up T1. It is old and inefficent technology that is used to get money from companies that have little other choice.

        It's not just that simple. You don't just string the fiber between telephone poles, you have to get rights to bury the fiber where necessary, and all that costs a lot more money than just the fiber itself.

        So the US strong property laws comes back to bite them in their asses. OK, that coupled with communication compa

      • but i need to put the porn somewhere, so i buy a hard drive. the amount of pron i have now, would have cost me $5,000 in hard drives 10 years ago. today? $50

        because the technology gets better and better

        10 years ago, i used ethernet. now i use giganet. 10 years ago i was dial up. now i am cable modem. the technology gets better and better. capacity increases as a natural factor of better technology and economies of scale

        korea, japan, other countries: they have plenty of capacity, more than the usa, and i don

    • what else? outlaw encryption? so no one can use their bank online anymore?

      If it were up to the Clinton appointed FBI Director Louis Freeh [wikipedia.org] encryption would be outlawed [zdnet.com.au], at least to the extent that the government would have a backdoor in any encryption scheme.

      Remember when John Ashcroft [wikipedia.org] defended encryption and was against Clinton wanting to listen to people's e-mails? Funny how things change so quickly when you get more power.

  • Ruh roh! (Score:3, Funny)

    by Bobfrankly1 ( 1043848 ) on Friday September 26, 2008 @07:57PM (#25173211)
    A new lobbying group with known offenders AT&T and Viacom? That sounds dandy!
    *puts gun to head, pulls trigger*
  • Filtering content online is going to be an exercise in futility, not to mention an arms race.

    • Sounds like you've never been to China.

      • Re: (Score:1, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Have you? The filtering doesn't work. What works is propaganda, harsh punishments and frequent raids.

  • by merreborn ( 853723 ) on Friday September 26, 2008 @08:01PM (#25173267) Journal

    AT&T: Has a bussiness model based on overselling their bandwidth, and hoping that customers don't actually use it.
    Cisco: Wants to sell filtering hardware.
    NBC Universal, Viacom and the Songwriters Guild of America: Trying to save a business model that simply cannot survive in the age of digital distribution.

    Microsoft...

    Someone's gonna have to help me with that one. What's their role in this? Is it a continuation of their battle on software piracy?

    If anything, piracy of *other people's* IP drives sales of Windows.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      Microsoft has software patents on watermarking and tracking digital content, in particular music

    • Actually, piracy of Microsoft's IP also drives sales of Windows. Microsoft is just for piracy all around, when you get right down to it.

      As an incumbent and market leader, people are likely to pirate their products even when there are free alternatives available. By allowing this piracy to continue with minimal efforts to check it, more people use their software and the cycle continues. They extract revenue by targeting those same people, who have come to expect their software, when they join large, fat, slo

    • The benefits to Microsoft are manifold:

      1. Wants to sell DRM to other companies (to make piracy "harder")
      2. If BitTorrent is outlawed, only outlaws will have BitTorrent. Distributing distros just became a whole lot harder.
      3. Think they'll have a market share in the online music biz against iTunes if no one can pirate. (It's not antitrusty to weld it to your web browser if Apple has a larger market share!)

      In fact, the only people who lose by this are... the ones with souls!
    • by PPH ( 736903 )
      Microsoft: Offers their DRM solutions and the idea that anything else on the Interweb must automatically be Evil and be blocked.
    • by bmo ( 77928 )

      "Is it a continuation of their battle on software piracy?"

      No. Microsoft presumes that they are evil enough to wrest away part of the money that the audio and visual recording industry rakes in. They tried this with their drm encumbered music store and drm encumbered OS. They think they can eventually get their fingers in the pie.

      Microsoft, in this case, is delusional. Delusions of grandeur.

      The recording industry has had a hundred years to perfect evil. Microsoft is not old enough to have learned that m

    • by MeNeXT ( 200840 )

      Microsoft... easy DRM. Lock in to Windows. Keep the market keep out Linux.

      • Mod parent up

        The DRM lock-in is insidious: Anyone wishing to create and maintain a "useful" operating system will have to license DRM software from Microsoft; software which is, happily for Microsoft, incompatible with libre software, both in terms of licensing and technology. Keep in mind that Microsoft's DRM scheme goes down to the metal.

        In addition, and even more dangerous in my opinion, is the stated goal of increasing the "safety" of the internet by allowing ISPs to filter by application. And by applic

    • by Bob9113 ( 14996 )

      Microsoft...

      Someone's gonna have to help me with that one. What's their role in this? Is it a continuation of their battle on software piracy?

      Could be more than one reason, but here is one:

      Microsoft hates trying to influence the government. They are much better at twisting the arms of corporations, where money speaks more freely. Granting the networks the right to provide discriminatory service is a game Microsoft can win. They'll just pay them to downgrade the service of competitors. Suppose it took four h

  • So, let's face it... intellectual property piracy is rampant and rights owners need to do something about it. As the recent RIAA case news a day or two ago shows, it's important to prove that actual illegal distribution took place. So something is going to happen to slow the piracy.

    Would you rather have:
    1) active filtering, deep packet inspection, watermarking, etc
    OR
    2) transfer logs on a packet or file-level basis, so that they actually can prove an illegal copy was made.

    I think you're going to have to ch

    • by dgatwood ( 11270 )

      ... encryption doesn't hide the fact that a particular media was requested or to verify that it was from a trustworthy source.

      No, that's precisely what encryption is best at doing. Even at a trivial level, SSL prevents eavesdropping on web URLs. Encryption also provides you with the concept of digital signing, which lets you verify that something is unadulterated, i.e. that it is exactly the version provided by a trustworthy source.

      The fact is, piracy is an unsolvable problem. As soon as you prevent mass

  • Sooo... if the idea is DPI and VPNs block inspection then it's either a clipper chip [wikipedia.org] for VPNs or no VPNs, cause after all if you've got nothing to hide ....

    I can't blame them for trying this again but I really wish they'd prove they can act in the public good first. Hey - eliminate spam first, then you can take a shot at eliminateing my privacy.

  • People in Charge (Score:5, Informative)

    by neight108 ( 974915 ) on Friday September 26, 2008 @08:38PM (#25173567)
    Click on People [artsandlabs.com]

    2 Politicians
    1 President of the Songwriters Guild of America
    1 Lawyer

    need I say more?
  • by EdIII ( 1114411 ) * on Friday September 26, 2008 @08:40PM (#25173577)

    network operators must have the flexibility to manage and expand their networks to defend against net pollution and illegal file-trafficking which threatens to congest and delay the network for all consumers.

    I am not concerned about the the "net pollution" being lumped in with the "illegal file-trafficking". Strictly speaking, that does not refer to P2P any more, than file transfers via FTP, Email, or instant messaging. Of course, big picture speaking, they are probably attacking P2P since that is the most popular way to share files among the masses.

    What interests me is the "threatens to congest and delay the network" part of that statement. That IS NOT THE FUCKING PROBLEM OF THE CONSUMER . That IS THE PROBLEM OF THE PROVIDERS . Whether or not the congestion is caused by legitimate or illicit traffic is wholly irrelevant.

    They oversold the bandwidth for years, and worse (oh so much worse), provided "unlimited" terms in their advertisements. Of course, there is no such thing as unlimited and only so much traffic can be handled by the providers various infrastructures. By and large, the masses are only using the Internet in the ways it was advertised that they could. They are blameless. Yes, I said blameless. You can complain about your "piggish" neighbor downloading 500 gigs a month and "taking" away from the available bandwidth at the street, but the real responsibility lies with the provider that told you both (and sold you both) the ability to use that bandwidth at the street in an unlimited way. Your neighbor is merely using "more" unlimited then you are.

    Congestion, and delays merely being part of that problem, are caused by the users having no incentive to behave themselves accordingly. That same behavior, exhibited in public, does not pass in private. You will get your ass handed to you on a platter if you cause network problems in a corporation, and in the homes there have been more than one argument started over it. I nearly killed my room mate just last night over network "behavior". Civility stepped in at the last moment, with a little awareness of the laws against homicide, and stopped me from using my considerable bulk to squash him.

    What is the cause of the lack of incentives? Unlimited of course. If you don't have a reason to behave, most of the time you won't. Human nature I guess.

    The solution is not filtering, which is just a fancy way of saying copyright enforcement. The theory being that copyright infringment makes up the major bulk of the illicit traffic. Possibly true for now, but in the future it will be replaced by high definition streaming video and the problem remains. Whole neighborhoods will be streaming movies (with draconian DRM even), with multiple streams from each house since, after all, American families don't want to watch content with EACH OTHER. God forbid. If you think all that traffic alone will not cause congestions and delays, think again.

    The solution, in my mind, is to increase capacity while changing the contracts under which users operate. Add a little QoS technology to it, meaning, actually FREAKIN implement it. The moment the user can transparently and easily understand the real costs of participating in that 60 gig torrent, they will start to exercise a little more judgment. Congestion will go down, satisfaction will go up, and no draconian control policies need be implemented. Not picking on torrents either. It will be a bad day for a lot of companies if families realize just how much it costs them to download those Hi-Def BD download titles at a few gigs a piece. You hit your monthly cap in two weeks and your lovely little teenagers will give you a 2-inch thick bill by the end of the month. None of that even possibly illicit either.

    Ha! The most important part of that quote is where they blamed their problems on all of us again, and of course, calling us criminals at the same time.

    • by Tuoqui ( 1091447 )

      They expect us to trust that their system will have no false positives and no false negatives when they cant even get SPAM FILTERING done properly...

      Lets frame it in the context of Japan... They have a cap of what is it? 200 gigs a day? Why cant the US get that sort of infrastructure? Is Fiber that expensive to set up? I thought it just used glass which is basically boiled sand and there is plenty of sand out there.

  • by Anonymous Coward
    First spyware and malware
    Next p2p traffic
    Soon censoring of any web contact at will.

    Might as well move to China now get over the wait.
  • Yeah right.... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Kjella ( 173770 ) on Friday September 26, 2008 @08:43PM (#25173603) Homepage

    Clogging the lines, sure... because you can't build out the lines right? I'm hoping this [vikenfibernett.no] will be my next ISP. It's in Norwegian but what you need to understand is only before and now. They just upgraded their customers from 10/3Mbit to 10/10Mbit, 25/5Mbit to 30/30Mbit and 50/25Mbit to 50/50Mbit for the same price. They don't even deliver a slower line if you're one of the 110,000 (of 4,5mio) people that can get this, with an estimated increase of 25,000 or so next year. Within the next decade bandwidth will be so plentiful the argument will completely cease to make sense. Just like Napster didn't kill the Internet, YouTube didn't kill the Internet, piracy will never kill the Internet. It'll expand with headroom to spare to the point where you can send live HDTV if you want. In the dotcom days we laid the backbone, now we're laying fiber on the end mile. From there, anything is possible.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by mishehu ( 712452 )
      Ma Bell (AT&T for those of you who don't know) has been refitting their cabinets lately for vdsl. When they screwed something up with my line and knocked my adsl off, I had one of the technicians come up and check. After he was done fixing it, I spoke with him a bit about this new service they're preparing for. Apparently it is his opinion that nobody would ever need 10 Mbps upstream, because nobody would ever be able to fill up a 10 Mbps pipe. I do believe that this type of attitude permeates Ma Be
  • Picture yourself (Score:2, Insightful)

    by ypctx ( 1324269 )
    calling to your ISP's tech support, trying to convince them that you really need to access more than us.cnn.com and that yes you already have restarted your modem.
    Welcome to the future brought to you by the reality-disconnected managerial know-it-all dumbasses.
    *turns off his ww2 backpack flamethrower*
  • The re-categorization or renaming of ideas, items, laws, etc. has been used many times in the past to achieve political/financial goals.

    Think hemp and Marijuana, the named was changed to start afresh with a new, controlled image(a bad one) and it was put into a much stricter category of drug as far as law and government control was concerned.

    It seems to be fairly effective too.

  • Not surprising after Comcast does something like limit bandwith. ________________ Abalastow Compendium [pbwiki.com]
  • So, if your customers want to use P2P applications and their ISP is hogging the bandwidth with Pay Per View or Video On Demand services, then these must be the pollution that needs blocking. Right?
  • They want to "police" the 'net, but they don't want any of the liability that comes with being the police. Like acting legally, and ethically, and within the rules themselves.

    This is nothing more than yet another thinly-veiled attempt to wrest more power over the traffic they carry (not even veiled, really, but the excuses are thin).

    Corporate-backed censorship, or "traffic shaping" or whatever language you want to use for it, has ALWAYS turned out to be a bad idea. The telephone companies do not try t
  • No it's not you. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Pig Hogger ( 10379 ) <pig@hogger.gmail@com> on Friday September 26, 2008 @09:25PM (#25173895) Journal

    It's just the bourgeois finally waking-up and wanting to put back the genie in the bottle, so they get back to the times where only the very rich can afford a printing press or a radio station or a TV studio so they can tell everybody what THEY approve of and nothing else.

    • "It's just the bourgeois finally waking-up and wanting to put back the genie in the bottle, so they get back to the times where only the very rich can afford a printing press or a radio station or a TV studio so they can tell everybody what THEY approve of and nothing else."

      It's part of the cycle of history. Eventually, masters remove the reasons for slaves no to kill them, and the cycle starts anew.

      • It's part of the cycle of history. Eventually, masters remove the reasons for slaves no to kill them, and the cycle starts anew.

        Hate to break it to you, but that cycle is dead. It's all downhill for the middle and lower classes, and all uphill for the upper clsses until the end of time now. Who owns the bigger guns? Military. Who owns the military? The upper class.
        Armed resistance, or for that matter, any form of resistance against the upper class will inevitably fail, because they can wipe you off the map

        • "Who owns the military? The upper class. Armed resistance, or for that matter, any form of resistance against the upper class will inevitably fail, because they can wipe you off the map or have you "disappeared" with just the push of a button."

          Having served in the military for 26 years, I note that the people in the military are not usually of the upper class. Even if every person in the military were magically turned into trained infantry and magically bought in to enslaving their families and friends (not

  • by Ranger ( 1783 ) on Friday September 26, 2008 @09:56PM (#25174091) Homepage
    The first thing I want to filter is the filtering lobby.
  • The FCC commissioners have betrayed how utterly ignorant they are.

    Look at this quote, not only does it show no clue, it even contradicts itself (emphasis mine)

    "We also note that because consumers are entitled to access the lawful internet content of their choice, providers, consistent with federal policy, may block transmissions of illegal content (e.g., child pornography) or transmissions that violate copyright law. To the extent, however, that providers choose to utilize practices that are not application

  • because their attempt at shitty copyright cop bill got floundered by bush administration and doj, they are trying to pull this stunt.

    check out the pieces of shit who are in on this :

    AT&T, Cisco Systems, Microsoft, NBC Universal, Viacom and the Songwriters Guild of America.

    note the bold part. if ANY ms fanboi dares to lecture me on ANYthing in slashdot again, i will give them hell.

    microsoft, is as of this moment, out of the i.t. & internet culture.
  • the subscribers of an individual isp that is big and large enough is indistinguishable from a sizeable market.

    if an isp is let to filter content in its own network, that is no different than letting them a monopoly over that particular market. if you are not in the 'allow' list of that isp, you cant ever access to subscribers on that network as an internet company or content provider.

    its against all kinds of international trade agreements and national laws on free trade and competition - noone is allo
  • Reduction of red tape in the form of forms is always a good idea.
    Reducing the influence of lobbies is too.

    If the internet is filtering lobby forms, it is even
    more useful than I already thought it is.

    Filter forms used by lobbies now!

"Conversion, fastidious Goddess, loves blood better than brick, and feasts most subtly on the human will." -- Virginia Woolf, "Mrs. Dalloway"

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