Will AT&T Start Filtering Your Connection? 213
I think this is a crucial distinction, because efforts to filter end users' connections (as opposed to making them pay consequences for their actions after the fact) have always been controversial, even when the content is illegal. The Center for Democracy and Technology successfully overturned a Pennsylvania law that required ISPs to block overseas child pornography sites, partly on the grounds that the filtering included many third-party Web sites as collateral damage. I've argued that a similar private-sector initiative called Canada Cleanfeed, where Canadian ISPs attempt to block child pornography Web sites, would do more harm than good. On the other hand, nobody's fighting very hard for the cause of child pornography downloaders who were caught and arrested. Web sites get sued and shut down all the time, but it was bigger news when Canadian ISP Telus blocked the Web site of a Telus labor union for three days. So it's a big deal whether we're talking about "pre-emptive" filtering, or fighting piracy "reactively" by going after violators.
AT&T Senior VP James Cicconi said in e-mail that "discussion about what the technology will or won't do is premature until we can invent it", but most of the hints so far have been that the anti-piracy technology will be "pre-emptive", i.e. filtering users' connections. Cicconi said on a conference panel that AT&T has to spend billions on network maintenance to carry illegal pirated traffic -- which they probably couldn't recoup by suing people, so the only way to prevent that would be to block it. And Cicconi has referred to the technology several times as a "network-based solution" -- but what else could that mean, except filtering?
So let's assume that's what's on the horizon. Interestingly, Cicconi said that AT&T did not plan to block actual Web sites. However, he said in e-mail, "If one could, with a high degree of certainty, spot and isolate illegal traffic from an offshore site, would you not think the copyright holders would have a reasonable argument for a court order to block that traffic (as opposed to the site itself)?" Presumably this could refer to a Web page with an index of links to BitTorrent files -- so they'd be willing to block the BitTorrent links, but not the Web page? But from that point of view, why not just block Web sites too? If an overseas webpage has a list of links to pirated content, and that content is served over http from the same Web server, wouldn't they want to block it?
But I doubt this would stem much piracy in the long run, because connection filtering to fight piracy became more commonplace, then the next generation of p2p file-trading programs would all just have circumvention capabilities built into them, that let you route your connection through a friend at an unfiltered ISP. You're on AT&T, you upload a file to your friend on Verizon which earns you some "credits" with his node in the p2p network, and instead of redeeming those credits to download a file from him, you use his node as a proxy to download a file indirectly from a site in Russia that AT&T is blocking you from accessing. Advanced users can do this already with tools like Virtual Private Networks and Tor, and some tweaks in a p2p program would just bring it within the range of the casual user.
On the other hand, if AT&T starts filtering traffic, it could set a bad precedent that any time a party in a legal proceeding wants a site declared "illegal", they can demand that AT&T (or other ISPs) block the site. It could be a site libeling a person, or a site hosting a decryption tool that breaks some company's poorly-designed code, or pretty much anything that some powerful person wanted to go away. Meanwhile, if an AT&T customer did get accused of downloading pirated content, now they could invoke the "AT&T didn't stop me" defense -- they thought that AT&T was filtering illegal content, and if they could get to it, then that meant it was legal! In both cases the problem comes from someone using the argument that once AT&T started doing any filtering at all, they should have gone further.
So I would watch the situation closely, even if you're not an AT&T user, and don't assume the situation will take care of itself. Cicconi said, "If a company like ours does dumb things and upsets our customers, we will lose them to someone else," which is something I'm skeptical of whenever I hear it used to defend various draconian anti-spam measures, but in this case I think it's even less applicable. When you're talking about spam filters, at least they always bring some benefit to the user (less spam), and the question is whether the free market weighs those benefits properly against the costs (more lost mail). On the other hand, if an ISP filters the user's connection, that brings no benefit to the user, and in a truly efficient market, all customers of such an ISP would just switch to an unfiltered one -- if that doesn't happen, it simply means the market in that case is not efficient. Is your ISP filtering your connection right now? Probably not, but how could you tell if they were? Right now we assume that ISPs don't filter connections because generally it's "just not done" (except when it is). In a few years we might not be so sure.
Glad someone is sorting this stuff out (Score:5, Insightful)
And it isn't really incorrect, either. (Score:3, Insightful)
Resolution of Filter (Score:4, Insightful)
Will I be filtered because it sees a 700meg file being transfered? What about ISO's? Will it assume and iso is a pirated CD, when in reality it's a Linux distro?
Definitely a complex problem.
Re:And when the pirate havens are blocked... (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course not (Score:5, Insightful)
Trained monkeys (Score:4, Insightful)
Today "pirated" content, tomorrow dissidence (Score:5, Insightful)
Never (Score:5, Insightful)
AT&T upset about bandwidth useage. (Score:5, Insightful)
"Somebody running a server in their basement on our network and uploading illegal copies movies raises the costs for everybody else and jams the network in ways we're not compensated for,"
Uhh bullshit. We pay for the connection, we get to use the connection. If you don't like that quit selling us "Unlimited" Service and then crying when we actually use it as such.
It would be funny to have an national protest by uploading, legal things of course, all over the world just to see how badly we could cripple the internet. Say you entire photo library to your favorite photo site, or a nice modest ten gig transfer through chat programs such as Skype, or a few hundred emails with a files attached to them to everyone you know. Just for 24 hours or so and watch all this "unlimited" bandwidth grind the system to a hault.
As a follow up trick start up few hundred class-action lawsuits for fraudulent buisness practices and false advertisment.
Crucial correction (Score:5, Insightful)
You will watch what they want, when they want, how they want, and you will pay for it every single time, plebe
Re:Today "pirated" content, tomorrow dissidence (Score:2, Insightful)
Then they came for the w@r3z, but I did not speak up because I'm not 1337.
Then they came for the pirates, but I did not speak up because I don't download movies on AT&T's network.
Then they came for my free speech, but nobody could speak for me.
Re:Of course not (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Filtering by type (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not a movie pirate. That said, I suspect my activity would set off all sorts of red flags---serving an open source OS distribution (MkLinux) and people downloading ISOs from my FTP server, downloading torrents of Ubuntu ISOs from other people (two different versions in a single weekend), etc. Even if it didn't set off red flags, though, I'd still probably feel the effects.
For example, I assume that this content filtering would be implemented through something like a mandatory web proxy. That translates into A. content not reliably being up-to-date (because you know they won't be able to resist caching it), B. performance problems (because proxies invariably cause a performance hit), and C. false positives for other content. Like I said, Ubuntu ISOs look an awful lot like an Office ISO or something else illegal. There's no way for their servers to tell that the content creator legally made that content available.
All in all, I can almost guarantee that AT&T's consumer service would flag me as a gross abuser (despite my fairly modest bandwidth consumption) simply because enough of the consumption is stuff that would get misflagged as illegal. That's why I'm glad I use a real ISP that respects me as a customer and doesn't play these little games. I'm paying more for my connection, but then again, I'm also getting rock solid 3.0/768 service with a block of eight static IPs.... That said, I suspect AT&T's business services would respect their customers as well. If you pay for consumer service, you should pretty much expect to get a cheap price, but get thoroughly screwed by the ISP on a regular basis. If you pay for business service, you're paying for it, so they don't care what you do with it. :-)
This will hurt their bottom line (Score:2, Insightful)
The main reason I have such a fast connection is P2P. If they block it, why would I need a connection that fast? I could then move to a slower connection and pay half what I am paying now.
If AT&T does this, it will hurt their bottom line. THAT will get these asshole's attention!
Re:Of course not (Score:3, Insightful)
Then comes the question
The whole reason they have common carrier status is so they can't be held accountable for what people transmit over their wires. Selectively blocking stuff opens up the door to force them to block all illegal content, and (potenitlly) liability if they don't.
I can't see them being held to a standard that says "we will filter this illegal content, but not that".
Then again, you're probably right. The big carriers will get exemptions, they'll set a precedent that says the little carriers must do the same level of filtering (cause, else they'd be supporting terrorism), and the consumer will end up paying for it all anyway.
Cheers