AT&T Gets Patent To Monitor and Track File-Sharing Traffic 75
An anonymous reader writes "Internet provider AT&T has patented a new technology that allows the company to accurately track content being shared via BitTorrent and other P2P networks. The company explains that the technology can be utilized to detect pirated downloads and combat congestion on its network. Whether the company is already using the system to track infringing content, or has plans to do so, is unknown."
Wishful thinking... (Score:5, Funny)
"Your users are infringing our copyrights!"
"You just infringed our Patent."
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"You all infringed our basic human rights"
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Their "content analysis module" must, according to their diagram, access "illegal" content to analyze it before they can track it.
Which means: if they use it, they are JUST AS GUILTY of "downloading" as whoever they're tracking. This is the very same problem that has stopped all the other tracking systems in their tracks, as it were.
The law DOES NOT exempt corporations.
Encypted VPNs FTW (Score:4, Interesting)
So i guess one should just factor the cost of VPN service into there comparison when deciding which ISP to chose
Re:Encypted VPNs FTW (Score:5, Interesting)
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Sorry my friend, but most of the VPN services used for this end do not keep records and are in places where they are not required to. Who the hell would use a VPN in US, land of the corporations?
I admire the geek's willingness to trust services based five to ten thousand miles distant whose true allegiances cannot be known.
If they sell you out you have no recourse.
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That isn't always the case. You need to inquire as to the policy of your VPN service. For example, ProXPN (a service I've been looking into) makes the following statements about their policy:
"proXPN, B.V. will only use personally identifiable information collected through our web site to contact users regarding only products and services offered by proXPN, B.V. We will NOT share this information with anyone. Period."
Our system only monitors a connection if a user is having connection issues so that we can improve our services to you.
Information about users that is maintained on our systems is protected using industry standard security measures.
We do not monitor or record activity on our network (not that we even could, as the connection is encrypted).
We log which proXPN IP is assigned when a user connects. These logs are kept for 2 weeks and then deleted. We use these logs for internal server administration and IP provisioning.
Of course, I'm sure that if the government knew you were using a particular VPN service (easily identified by your billing records), they could just contact the company and say "from today on, you must monitor and retain all records for this user" and they would.
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We log which proXPN IP is assigned when a user connects. These logs are kept for 2 weeks and then deleted. We use these logs for internal server administration and IP provisioning.
Isn't the entire point that the VPN IP you are using CANNOT be traced back to you? Why is this logged? I don't mind logging THAT you are using the service and other billing-related data points, but why the exact IP (instead of e.g. out of which pool)? And why keep these logs for a full 14 days instead of the duration of the connec
So they patented... (Score:3)
So they patented tracking an easily traceable file transfer protocol. One that everyone knows leaves them open to easily provable lawsuits if they use it to pirate stuff.
So are they going to sue Comcast over this? Or does Comcast have prior art?
don't sell it if you can't provide it. (Score:5, Insightful)
"combat congestion on its network" ...which is more cost-effective than... you know... actually paying for the infrastructure to handle the utilization levels you are selling to customers.
Obvious (Score:5, Interesting)
The method is simple: Find a link to torrent, check it for copyright violation and try to download registering IPs of peers in process.
The technological countermethod is simple too: I2P or VPN. I2P is a CLOSED network, and it means that you cannot download anything from ordinary Internet but VPN can be used traditionally. There are lots of other P2P networks but I just have no info about them.
The legal countermethod is simple too: Attempt of investigators to download a counterfeit file is a provocation of crime that should not happen without it. And there is no method to ensure that the peer really contains a file except this provocation.
In Soviet Russia the pr0n downloads YOU! (Score:4, Informative)
What do you mean by "solid adversaries"? My comrade (I live in Russia) uses Ipredator.se. There is zero possibility that Ipredator will cooperate with Russian copyright agency or Russian anti-extremist agency (There is also consumer rights agency that censors against suicide etc but there are no criminal fees for such violations). And is zero possibility that YOUR solid adversaries such as NSA, CIA aso will cooperate with OUR adversaries as FSB, KGB, NKVD, GULAG aso for pressing Ipredator.
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Yeah, if ran by for instance the Pirate Bay people or Bahnhof I would assume they would go pretty far to not bend over.
I don't know who's behind IPredator (Trygghetsbolaget i Lund AB.)
But chances are it's similar people.
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Ipredator is run by The Pirate Bay. [wikipedia.org]
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Ipredator is run by The Pirate Bay.
Linked text:
"Despite being related to The Pirate Bay it is not run by anyone affiliated with The Pirate Bay. All technical matters are handled by Portlane Networks who also run Anonine and Relakks.[3]"
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I think it's sad Assange doesn't feel safe here and what we rather than Iceland isn't the place where you want to be in the Snowden case.
Though maybe we're not that far appart. But still.
More freedom please, not less.
Maybe the government need to think about some of the positive consequences which can come from that to.
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And is zero possibility that YOUR solid adversaries such as NSA, CIA aso will cooperate with OUR adversaries as FSB, KGB, NKVD, GULAG aso for pressing Ipredator.
Why? Why wouldn't our governments tell each other their citizen's secrets? It's not like they care about them.
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You don't need to keep the NSA from tracking you. You need to keep back hired investigators doing bulk-trawling or ISPs using packet inspection en mass. Not so sophisticated, or so focused: If they can't identify you with a purely automatic script, then you're not worth their effort.
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Entrapment doesn't come into this, because there is no need to take the issue to court either civil or criminal. The main interest from ISPs like AT&T is going to be in bandwidth conservation - all they need to do is find the torrent users, apply a quick whitelist for the 'big legitimate' class like WoW updaters, and throttle the rest to dialup level. It does mean a few false alarms as people downloading the more obscure linux distros and independent films are misclassified as pirates, but the loss of a
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That's actually standard procedure on season ticket sales. Likewise airlines. It wouldn't be economical otherwise.
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Except no actual data transfer needs to take place; the basis is 'Making Available'; just like it's illegal to sell oregano while claiming it's marijuana.
"But I wasn't actually going to do it!" is not sufficent defense, otherwise noone would be in prison for 'conspirancy to commit...'
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That depends on the local laws. I remember here someone who thought he bought marihuana in The Netherlands was arrested for it when he crossed the Belgian border, but they had to drop the charges when it turned out he was cheated on and had actually bought legal dried vegetables.
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2 variants. 1) THEIR bastardized client feeds a /dev/urandom to downloaders and logs their addresses in process. 2) YOU use existence of such a client to show that you haven't sent a real file and are innocent as a result.
First variant is obviously detectable and easily punishable. Wikipedia states that the hashes are SHA-1 so it is VERY VERY DIFFICULT to feed a random data with correct hash. So every data error is the cause for total ban, and if needed the corresponding distributed banhammer will be produc
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Let's keep a few things straight here...
(1) Civil and criminal copyright infringement are two different things.
(2) To be liable for civil infringement, the copyright owner has to enforce.
I am having real difficulties figuring out why a copyright owner would complain about it if AT&T performed the method. I also have difficulty figuring out why a government would care if the copyright owner did not.
If it is merely a method to catch the stupid, well, there are plenty of stupid people so it is not pointles
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Due to modern snooping tech, it's quite unwise to believe that any amount of noise will hide anything.
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You would reveal the ability to track closed system onion routing traffic in order to catch someone who downloaded a Justin Bieber album?
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Get a few friends, set up Retroshare. The encryption in it isn't great, so don't count on it to keep the NSA out (1024-bit RSA should hold them back for a few minutes), but cracking it is still well beyond the abilities of any anti-piracy organisation or contractor.
Reducing the amount of companies tracking torrents (Score:1)
good thing!
here is an idea (Score:4, Insightful)
quit overselling your network and spend more time developing your crappy network rather than being the media companies bitch
win win
Hey... thats illegal. (Score:1)
If you use encrypted connections for your torrent client. What AT&T is doing is a violation of the DMCA...
Lets get the lawyers on it.
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No. Other peer makes a crypto handshake with you, and you voluntarily agree to establish an encrypted link with him. After this, you have no "They illegally decrypted my communications" excuse. Then they use the standard Bittorrent protocol to request any part of the file, and you voluntarily agree to send it. They get it from your IP. You are caught.
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I was wondering the same thing. Doesn't this invalidate their common carrier status?
That's right folks, (Score:2)
Step right up and get yer patent because the PURPOSE to which data is put , the semantic intention of the consumers of the data is now a distinguishing factor which permits another, new, patent to be applied.
I'd write more but I am getting a patent on capturing the data stream of people looking for a information used in job searches...
Fuck, the Dewey Decimal system of categorization is loaded with potential patents one for each topic when people search on. We've barely begun to mine the gold in them yar hil
Great news! (Score:2)
If they patent it, all the others ISPs won't be using this sort of tech to annoy it's users.
The subhead is incorrect. (Score:2)
AT&T is throttling.... (Score:1)
Youtube as well... google for it...
A Patent for Wire Tapping? (Score:2)