RIAA and ISPs. Best buddies forevers starting July 2012

**Meresgi** · 2012-03-19 11:23

I was surprised to not see any post about this.

And if there was a post I totally overlooked it so feel free to delete this shit.

http://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2012/...s-summer-.html

http://www.uproxx.com/technology/201...police-piracy/

Spoiler: show

Say you are an Internet Provider and have a customer base that has selected you for one reason or the other. What would convince you to start policing your users on behalf of another company or organization? According to CNET, U.S. American ISPs like Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Verizon or Cablevision have agreed to “policies designed to discourage customers from illegally downloading music, movies and software”.

I cannot think of many reasons. Some ISPs might be part of a larger media company, or have stakes in media companies. Others may see this as a great way to drop the average bandwidth usage of their customer base to save costs. But beyond that?

ISPs have to create their own infrastructure to automate the system, which will not only be used to monitor the majority of U.S. Internet users, but also to keep track of infringements and the penalizing of users.

If you now thought, wow automated, that spills trouble, you may be right. Even worse than the automatic flagging and notification of users, is the fact that ISPs have a wide array of what the RIAA calls mitigation measures at their disposal. No, public flogging is not part of that catalog, but reducing the bandwidth of the customer or even terminating services permanently is (which according to Cnet none have agreed on).

I always thought that separation of power existed for a reason. With this new system, ISPs gain executive and judicative powers over their customers. And while those are restricted to the Internet connection, it still is a recipe for disaster.

I see several issues here. First automatic monitoring and detection will surely lead to false positives, which in turn could be very problematic for affected customers. While we do not know how the implemented measurements work, we could see solutions that are less from perfect. Hashes might work, but using a different compression engine or changing the files included in the distribution would be enough to circumvent those filters.

Name based filters have their same set of issues. Would the system detect that THG.rar is a copy of the movie The Hunger Game? What if someone names the copy TheHG.rar instead? The icing on the cake is that encryption will render the monitoring useless.

Another unanswered question is if customers have a say in the process, if they can lawyer up or even sue ISPs for monitoring their traffic or alleging them of copyright infringement when they have not done such a thing. I hope many do sue their ISPs if it should ever come to this.

RIAA and ISPs making a deal so the ISPs will monitor your downloads, which they do anyways, but now watch for anything that looks copyrighted or questionable and mark you down for it. Get enough bad marks and they can throttle your connection speed, cut your connection completely or redirect all your website requests to a site on "Copyright law" and make you take a test on it.

Granted I think if you're behind a VPN or not just downloading torrents straight you're fine and dandy. But this still seems pretty hairy.

**Seanr** · 2012-03-19 11:35

How will people contest false positives, this won't stop the "real" swashbucklers...

**Meresgi** · 2012-03-19 11:42

Originally Posted by Seanr

How will people contest false positives, this won't stop the "real" swashbucklers...

From what I read you can contest the fact that someone got into your network once, and that is it, if you believe someone jacked your connection to download shit. As far as false positives go....you're guilty until proven even guiltier.

**Kaisha** · 2012-03-19 11:42

The real swashbucklers probably don't live in America anyway, so they're unaffected to begin with.

Shit is stupid though. Is just asking for someone to break in and start sniffing at records.

**BerenTebogo** · 2012-03-19 16:24

Time to VPN

**Cream Soda** · 2012-03-19 16:43

Feel sorry for my neighbors

**Meresgi** · 2012-03-19 17:35

Originally Posted by Cream Soda

Feel sorry for my neighbors

This was my first though, none of the fuckers around me secure their wireless and they broadcast it all over the place with a decent signal.

**Apelila** · 2012-03-20 00:26

I was reading about this earlier.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/n...rikes-plan.ars

It makes sense for the media/content provider owned ISP's (Time Warner, Verizon) but the other ones? Someone must have either put some serious pressure, or we're looking at racketeering.

This could also be explained by the rise of online video sites eating into cable and even satellite companies video revenue. Those streams are typically much more expensive per month (Look at what your TV bill costs VS your internet), cost much more to upgrade and maintain, and have been suffering from decreases in subscriptions for a couple years now. In that context, it makes sense for an cable owned ISP to try and shunt their users who are forsaking the TV for TV on their computer.

Everything is derivative now a days. The sheer lack of how this will work boggles my mind, I can just hear me getting bitched out because someone uploaded a youtube video with a song in the background and now their internet is out.

**Milkster** · 2012-03-20 11:16

Originally Posted by Meresgi

I was surprised to not see any post about this.

And if there was a post I totally overlooked it so feel free to delete this shit.

http://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2012/...s-summer-.html

http://www.uproxx.com/technology/201...police-piracy/

Spoiler: show

RIAA and ISPs making a deal so the ISPs will monitor your downloads, which they do anyways, but now watch for anything that looks copyrighted or questionable and mark you down for it. Get enough bad marks and they can throttle your connection speed, cut your connection completely or redirect all your website requests to a site on "Copyright law" and make you take a test on it.

Granted I think if you're behind a VPN or not just downloading torrents straight you're fine and dandy. But this still seems pretty hairy.

http://www.bluegartr.com/threads/108...N-ACTA-etc.%29

**BadKarma** · 2012-03-20 12:10

What be a VPN

**Outlaw** · 2012-03-20 13:59

This is worrisome. My ISP is not on the list though. Glad I don't have Comcast anymore.

**hey** · 2012-03-20 14:29

Hopefully this just means i can get 20% more bandwidth than i pay for during the day instead of just at night, so i can torrent more copyrighted stuff.

**Amastacia** · 2012-03-20 14:50

Looks like a great time to be a SSL-Encrypted Usenet leech!

MaachaQ · 2012-03-21 07:45

Originally Posted by BadKarma

What be a VPN

Witopia is a VPN I have used to be able to play FFXI from a country that SE blocks from access to the game. It also works to let me view stuff like Hulu from outside the US. They have a good guide about what is a VPN and why you want one here. There are some free VPNs, but they are severely bandwidth limited so expect to pay $50 a year or so for a decent service.

**Byrthnoth** · 2012-03-21 07:54

What is the downside to just using Tor?

**hey** · 2012-03-21 08:11

Originally Posted by Byrthnoth

What is the downside to just using Tor?

Well, to start, it's not safe.

**Byrthnoth** · 2012-03-21 10:28

Because exit nodes might spy on stuff that you're too dumb to encrypt?

**Kaisha** · 2012-03-21 10:42

Isn't TOR stupid slow to begin with for downloading purposes?

**hey** · 2012-03-21 10:44

Originally Posted by Kaisha

Isn't TOR stupid slow to begin with for downloading purposes?

Usually.

**Sho** · 2012-03-25 02:27

Tor sucks. If you gonna VPN, just do WiTopa as mentioned, best one out there atm by far.

Hope these niggas know they gonna lose some money if this goes down, lol.

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