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purplecthulhu at 03:00pm on 24/07/2008
purplecthulhu at 03:00pm on 24/07/2008he news today is full of the 'deal' between the UK music industry and the largest 6 ISPs to try to reduce the amount of copyright infringing filesharing going on. Pangloss has interesting coverage of some of the legal aspects behind this - well worth reading.
However, all the legalese assumes that ISPs et al. can identify what is a copyright file and can identify who is downloading it. I'm not convinced that this will remain the case, and I'm not even convinced that it is the case at the moment. Encrypted P2P is coming, or might already be here, so nobody will be able to tell what you're downloading, and TOR has been around for a while so nobody will actually be able to tell who's downloading what.
Can the ISPs and BPAA keep up with this? And what about the government when they see all these technological scofflaws making enforcement impossible?
Rules and regulations are fine, but if they're rendered technologically impossible to enforce, what happens? Will whole technologies, such as encryption, be rendered illegal? As Pangloss says, we're into sledgehammer and nut territory here and i see no evidence that those posing the new regulations understand that there'll be a technological response to the new agreement.
However, all the legalese assumes that ISPs et al. can identify what is a copyright file and can identify who is downloading it. I'm not convinced that this will remain the case, and I'm not even convinced that it is the case at the moment. Encrypted P2P is coming, or might already be here, so nobody will be able to tell what you're downloading, and TOR has been around for a while so nobody will actually be able to tell who's downloading what.
Can the ISPs and BPAA keep up with this? And what about the government when they see all these technological scofflaws making enforcement impossible?
Rules and regulations are fine, but if they're rendered technologically impossible to enforce, what happens? Will whole technologies, such as encryption, be rendered illegal? As Pangloss says, we're into sledgehammer and nut territory here and i see no evidence that those posing the new regulations understand that there'll be a technological response to the new agreement.
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(no subject)
I wouldn't be surprised if the industry pushes for both unsecured wi fi and non business use encryption to be illegal at this rate.
The point is they don't care if 5% of geeks use encryption. They want to inhibit or punish the 90% of stupid people. (I'm assuming a least 5 % who nevre download :) Just like in the old days a certain amount of home taping was tolerated - in the new world a certain amount of geekery will be allowed to get past em.
This is all so stupid when so many other ways of making money exist that don't infringe humsn rights and piss off yr customers. i realised today it's the sheer stupidity of it all that makes me keep writing about it - I don't even care that much about downloading y'know :-)
(no subject)
As for banning 'open wifi', the security on wifi has traditionally been so easy to crack that 'open' and 'closed' aren't too far apart.
So yes, you're right - it is the stupidity and ignorance that is most annoying here. I just want to whack the whole lot of them over the head with a clue bat!
(no subject)
Encrypted bittorrents which is easy to do with most clients now only stops
people like your ISP see want you are downloading, but this won't stop them catching you now
Why because the way they get you is they connect to a bittorrent tracker for a particular torrent that is illegal then there client records everyone connect to that tracker to say I have part of the torrent give me more or I have the torrent take it from me. Then they trace these ip addresses of your client to the ISP who can then identify you, so the MPIA know what you downloaded and the ISP knows it was you.
I haven't seen a good solution round this problem yet as it is built into the whole method of bittorrent.
TOR could provide a solution to this but the tor network is very low bandwidth and could not survive large numbers using it for bittorrent.
Please don't use TOR for bittorrent.
(no subject)
More importantly is the blithe ignorance of the mechanics of the internet that our legislators seem to display - and if you think your lot are bad try ours; they really haven't a foggy clue and just seem to copy the most recent piece of bullshit other countries have thought of and happily vote for every and any piece of shit legislation in Europe without having any idea whether it will work or not. Mr wol is getting sore fingers typing letters to our MEPs about upcoming bills that he obviously knows much more about than they do. Sigh!