Other ISPs May Be Getting Ready to Filter

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The New York Times seems to think that other ISPs, including AT&T, might follow Comcast’s lead and begin filtering customer data in search of copyrighted material. Let’s hope they are wrong and ISPs stick to delivering data, not filtering it. Thanks to jmackey for the link.

Network-level filtering means your Internet service provider – Comcast, AT&T, EarthLink, or whoever you send that monthly check to – could soon start sniffing your digital packets, looking for material that infringes on someone’s copyright. “What we are already doing to address piracy hasn’t been working. There’s no secret there,” said James Cicconi, senior vice president, external & legal affairs for AT&T.
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I think eventually this is going to happen with all US ISP's, they are simply money driven and care more about profits than giving back to the consumer.

If they could cut a gig per user out per month, they would.
 
Every bit torrent client that I know of has supported encryption for a while now. I suppose the board of directors at each ISP will allow us to come into their home and read all of their mail and go through their records at our leisure to ensure that there is nothing illegal going on.
 
I love how the ISPs openly collude to reduce service in such a way that it can't hurt business due to their combined monopoly position.


(Yes, I know that goes against the definition of collude, but, on the other hand, shutup.)
 
Nemesis999 said:
I love how the ISPs openly collude to reduce service in such a way that it can't hurt business due to their combined monopoly position.


(Yes, I know that goes against the definition of collude, but, on the other hand, shutup.)
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You're right they are pretty ballsy about it. It's not like we as users have much of a choice. Maybe we could transfer data on flash drives to each other by carrier pigeon?:rolleyes:
 
Well, if you didn't mind the latency of molasses, we could all run WiFi connections and set it up as an Ad-Hoc network, bypassing the Internet in the first place...
 
Brian Boyko said:
Well, if you didn't mind the latency of molasses, we could all run WiFi connections and set it up as an Ad-Hoc network, bypassing the Internet in the first place...
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We currently daisy-chain our universities wireless internet out into the student housing area across the street. It's nice to get 40-50MBits bidirectional on one PC while using my DSL connection to game without lag on the other. :D
 
First the wanna tax us for downloading music, now they want to filter out stuff also? I can't wait till I get my billion dollars. I'm buying a nuke and sending it towards an island I set up to be a RIAA/MPAA party. Who's with me?
 
XamediX said:
First the wanna tax us for downloading music, now they want to filter out stuff also? I can't wait till I get my billion dollars. I'm buying a nuke and sending it towards an island I set up to be a RIAA/MPAA party. Who's with me?
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No that would be too quick and painless compared to how long they have been twisting the knife in us.
 
Really this is just going to drive everything to totally encrypted protocols if ISP's start doing this. That would be a good thing though. Since processors are getting pretty quick with multiple cores and such the overhead for encryption is reduced.

It will be tougher on the server side but really the entire Internet should have been encrypted in the first place. The IP protocol itself should have supported encryption out of the box at the lowest level.

My biggest question is: If the ISP's start filtering doesn't this make them legally liable for all traffic? So far they have stayed clear of this issue by being neutral data providers.
 
seems like i'm done since bellsouth became AT&T i enjoyed that solid dsl connection for years(not counting that huge dns outage a few weeks ago) never had any other problems.
 
so people will go to encrypted protocols, dc++, irc, usenet, etc... I haven't used a peer to peer in over 18 months.

Pandora's box has been opened, sooner or later these companies need to realize that they must start making solutions that will bring people back willingly, as they are never going to be able to stop file sharing...
 
Say what you want but it is annoying when your bandwidth is cut in half because your neighbor decided to set up a P2P server to help them break the law.

Having said that, I still think packet sniffing is going too far and hope the article is wrong.

Pandora's box has been opened, sooner or later these companies need to realize that they must start making solutions that will bring people back willingly, as they are never going to be able to stop file sharing...
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Thankfully, that's slowly happening. Music studios are removing DRM, television studios are posting videos on YouTube...etc. I think five years from now piracy won't even be a problem.
 
If the really try to this they are going to get themselves dragged before congress as well as getting their asses sued by EVERY opportunistic copyright holder in the world.

Remember a few years ago congress was demanding that all of the ISP's clamp down and monitor ALL traffic for "bad stuff" at that point they said they were not a content provider so had no reason do do so.

Hell they went to COURT multiple times arguing that in cases around the country and they won that (rightfully so)

NOW they decide they want to do the opposite?

I just hope their internal lawyers remind them of this, the Comcast/Bittorent works since it is ONE site, and bittorent is in court since no one can figure a good way to sheild p2p places even though judges HAVE said the tech should never be banned
 
Mr.Pickles said:
there is also something called net nutarlity so...
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Your ambiguous posts are pretty annoying, especially since you're not really making any form of argument or adding anything constructive to the thread in general. Theres the concept of net neutrality, and it seems as though ISPs are threatening to disregard this concept entirely. I just hope they realize what a slippery slope they are on. Blocking a certain technology because it can be used as a means to perform illegal actions is not an acceptable solution.
 
rgratto2 said:
Your ambiguous posts are pretty annoying, especially since you're not really making any form of argument or adding anything constructive to the thread in general. Theres the concept of net neutrality, and it seems as though ISPs are threatening to disregard this concept entirely. I just hope they realize what a slippery slope they are on. Blocking a certain technology because it can be used as a means to perform illegal actions is not an acceptable solution.
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I think he means Net Neutrality as a requirement of law, if such a bill passes.
 
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