RSSAT&T may follow Comcast in monitoring Internet traffic
By Scott M. Fulton, III | Published January 24, 2008, 10:35 AM
Addressing the issue of global piracy on the Internet, the head of one of the world's largest telcos told no less than Earth's biggest economic summit that some kind of technological solution may be necessary.
At the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum yesterday, during a roundtable of world business leaders, AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson was apparently speaking to the issue of Internet service providers' responsibility with regard to the theft of intellectual property. There, according to the Associated Press, Stephenson said he would not be opposed to his company filtering the types of traffic where intellectual property theft more commonly takes place, implying P2P.
"It's like being in a store and watching someone steal a DVD. Do you act?" the AP quotes Stephenson as saying.
The CEO's statement comes two weeks after the company's senior-most legal official, James Cicconi, told a roundtable of technology leaders at CES 2008, as reported by The New York Times, that his company was open to discussions with content and technology industry leaders to discover a solution to the problem of IP infringement trafficking over its network.
"What we are already doing to address piracy hasn't been working," the Times quotes Cicconi as saying two weeks ago. "There's no secret there." He specifically named NBC Universal, whose representative was also on that CES panel, as one company with which he'd consider opening a dialog.
That statement suggests that, while AT&T is actively pursuing a way to stop being neutral on the issue of copyright infringement traffic, it isn't exactly ready to embrace Comcast's apparent solution to the matter. It was the AP itself that first discovered last October, through its own testing (which was unprecedented for a press agency), that Comcast actively samples its traffic for headers that point to P2P, and throttles the speed of P2P traffic it finds.
The US Federal Communications Commission is currently investigating whether such throttling is legal under current telecommunications guidelines, in response to public complaints.
The fact that AT&T has said it would prefer a technological solution to the matter -- especially from the telco's chief lawyer -- indicates that it is leaning against litigation as a counter-offensive tactic. That strategy has not gone well for the music industry, whose international representative reported just this morning an even steeper decline for overall music sales in 2007.
First off, Mr. Stephenson’s analogy is way off. I’ll leave to him to figure out why.
Next, people are just going to steel; you can never completely eliminate that. The way to minimize theft, as I’ve been saying for years, is to make the price of DVDs so low, that sales would dramatically increase. DVD movies should be 5 bucks, no more. Put them everywhere, supermarkets, gas stations, coffee shops, convenience stores, etc. Most people wouldn’t think twice about wasting 5 bucks on a movie they wouldn’t otherwise watch. I know I have. There’s a 7/11 by me that sells used DVDs cheap. A cup of coffee, a sandwich, and a movie for later for less than 20 bucks is a no brainer.
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|It would be nice if the FCC would eliminate monopolies in broadband markets. I seriously doubt that broadband providers like Comcast and AT&T would be so bold if they knew subscribers would jump ship. As it is, there is just one choice in many markets so subscribers are paying these providers to dictate to them and even define what a subscriber surely intends to do. Allowing companies to adopt a posture that file sharing equals crime makes as much sense as declaring that anyone with a hunting license is prone to be a criminal. This is just over the top.
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|i work for the us postal service and i agree that isp monitor for copyright material. therefore, from now on i must open every package before delivery just to make sure nobody violets the copyright. and i will report all violators to the police as soon as possible.
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|USPS? Gee, no wonder this message was a couple of days late...
Just kidding, I love the post office. I mean, I’ve yet to not receive a bill in the mail.
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|i hate people who illegally download (steal) movies. Are people that freaking cheap that you can't spend $10 and buy the dvd? Not to mention this causes huge problems with bandwidth
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|Time to cancel the broadband internet connection.
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|Well whether we like it or not, a ISP has a right to monitor all travel that goes through their networks. Your buying services from a ISP to use it to do whatever it is most of us do. They do not have to allow you to use their service to steal, hack, cheat or anything else like it on their service. If you do not like their service or TOS then seek out another service of which will probably in time do the same thing, monitor the traffic on thier service. Your only buying the right to use their services, your not buying the right to do illegal activity. Simple as that... I do not like it either, but they have a right to monitor if they wish so.
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|^^^
Exactly.
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|Yes they do have a right to monitor it, but they have no right to pick and chose what they like and what they don't. If they monitor it, they also get the responsibility to no longer be considered a common carrier and be exempt from being sued for things like allowing minors to view porn, pedos viewing child pr0n or other such activities. They should lose their immunity to liability if they prove they have the ability to monitor but instead don't.
So they either take full responsibility for their monitoring and start doing it for all their data and comply with the law fully or they don't monitor it at all.
Also folks, the telcom illegal wiretap immunity bill is going on, so please do what you can: https://secure.eff.org/s...Id=339&pg=makeACall
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|this could be a stepping stone a bigger issue, like eventual big brother senario. If every company does the same thing then there is no such thing as choice.
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|I just knew that I would be rewarded with the big brother term if I read comments long enough.
The sad thing is that in this case it is not far off. You have an executive of an ISP making statemeents that would lead us to think that he intends for his company to begin performing as our conscience. In that case, where does it stop? What is the right line to draw of how involved a carrier should be in regulating the content of traffic passed on their network? It is their network after all. Should they block that mean email to your wife to spare her feelings? How about those trade secrets you are sending from your email account? Perhaps you are sending porn that was produced without the proper model consent forms and is therefore illegal. Maybe you are sending hate speech or words that are subversive to the government. Gasp...maybe you even have bad words to say about....your ISP. How could they be expected to pass this traffic?
I think these remarks were dangerous and foolish. They reveal that he does not understand the harm inherent in becoming the net-nanny, and what the government would do with that power if offered.
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|Good point.
The ISP's save a lot of money by being immune. If they were not, they would have to spend much more in monitoring just to reduce their risk to levels that would satisfy their insurance provider.
Worse than demonstrating that they possess the ability to monitor/block (most people know they can) is setting the precedent that they should. Yes this would undermine their immunity to liability for the content of the traffic passed. To them it is just bits and bytes, it should stay that way.
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|....or perhaps he was just thinking about filtering illegal P2P traffic...ya know...like he said.
*shrug*
I think the tinfoil hat's getting a bit too tight again, old spleen.
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|Just as they lose their ability to not be sued, they do have an easy and conveniently visible piece of evidence to point at saying, 'We did everything that we could reasonably be expected to to do to filter this."
Of course, not hitting this wall might also be the reason they are filtering specific protocols and ports, not specific data. :)
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|"How do you know she is a witch?"
"She looks like one!"
Same thing here. How do you know that the person downloading and the person uploading do not both own a license for the content? I have a CD I like and it got scratched. I keep the CD but want a digital copy of it so I can still listen. If I bought a copy of a song on Amazon in mp3 format and it got damaged, I need another... My license covers the download in digital format does it not? Since the possession of a license from the content holder is what determines the legality of the transfer, there is no way to know. Are almost all transfers illegal...yes, but there are plenty of lawyers out there who need work...they should stay out of this one.
If they stick with the network performance aspect of it they will be fine. They don't damage their immunity and they don't meddle in determining legality of individual pieces of content when there is no way they could know.
I took off the tinfoil hat. It did not work. I am clearly under the influence of the government mind control rays and not responsible for my comments.
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|Wow.
I honestly don't know what the license is through amazon and whether or not it covers "redownloading" a song that becomes "damaged". I would suspect they would have measures in place to allow such a thing were it within the license to do so.
Keep in mind...the witch? Wasn't actually a witch.
How do you know that the person downloading and the person uploading do not both own a license for the content?
Then find an alternative aside from P2P? I seem to have missed the part of my contract where they guarantee me the ability to use P2P file-sharing...
I am clearly under the influence of the government mind control rays and not responsible for my comments.
Well, at least you have a good excuse, Sancho.
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|P2P will just change the headers..
ATT has a history of censorship. Can the ISP's just define what they are selling. TW has ads on tv promoting downloading music and movies because thier network is so fast. (They do not say legal or illegal) Just because you "can" break the law using a P2P doesn't mean you are.. Sites like http://etree.org/ offer legal P2P downloads. Lot's software is offered via P2P also..
Let the FED's handle the enforcement??
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|Ahhh, Time Warner.
There is some irony. When I had Time Warner I had 4Mbs access to their usenet servers which were chocked full of unlicensed content (some of which was owned by Time Warner). So if I downloaded a Time Warner movie on a connection provided by Time Warner, from a Usenet server hosted by Time Warner, did I buy it by paying for my service? Yes I know there are those pesky licensing things, you don't actually buy a movie, but it was ironic. Perhaps they were in effect stealing it from themselves and I was just the unwitting instrument. Well, one has to assuage one's conscience in some way...self deception has a long and distinguished history.
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|Ahhhh, to be back in "repressive" China where, unless you mention Taiwan or Tibet, there is no filtering nor limiting of your US$3 DSL connection.
I see the other story here about FIoS from AT&T. If it is only going to run full speed and not limit the amount of data when you get AT&T's content, why bother?
CompuServe anyone?
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|They're talking about filtering, people. Not sending you to jail, making you pay fines, or anything of that nature.
You guys are acting like they have no rights to what information does and does not flow through their networks. That is just plain naive.
Every ISP on the planet includes traffic management in their ToS.
Funny thing is, if they block BT? Something else will pop up that's even better. Beautiful thing, ain't it?
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|"You guys are acting like they have no rights to what information does and does not flow through their networks."
Welcome to China!
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|lmao...
Please tell me that was sarcasm, or an impulse reply not based on any kind of actual thought process....
China's government can censor. Ours cannot.
Our businesses, however, are more than welcome to.
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|Oh great... Why the **** do ISP's think they are the moral and legal authority now?
I will always subscribe to HONEST ISPs that DO NOT act like BIG BROTHER.
Whats next? Socialism or imperialism?
WTF ISPs???? Just do your normal job like you always have and STFU!
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|This amounts to making a moral judgement on the propriety and/or a legal judgement on the legality of traffic based solely upon the protocol used. Wonderful thing to be getting into. Perhaps next all encrypted traffic will be labeled as terrorist/criminal.
While I recognize that most P2P use is in violation of someones copyright and this should be addressed, the best way is to adopt a win/win by putting an ISP fee on bandwidth used for the P2P traffic (create new protocol for this purpose), track the actual songs/movies downloaded by inserting meta data in the packets (like is done now) and have the ISPs pay the content owners based upon the amount of that P2P traffic which was transporting their content. Find a number that is equitable for all and we legitimize the sharing at lower prices for the consumer. This makes piracy less attractive, and also creates a model for getting the content owner paid through a P2P distribution method. It even gives the consumer more options. They can download lower bitrate content and pay less. Or they can pay more if they want HD quality.
This also would allow the consmer to opt-out if they don't want to download anything with the new P2P protocol, they can ask to have it blocked and skip paying the fee completely.
Next we start de-prioritizing the transmission of the legacy P2P (just assign lower diffserve values or something similar) which will improve performance for other things and make the the older P2P less attractive. This would be legal if it is done in the open and with the express purpose of the carrier improving their network performance for their customers. That way no moral judgements are needed, only a migration to a new set of standards.
Notice my solution does not require the government...no new laws or even existing laws were injured in the creation of this idea.
Take this even further and you can get software developers paid for their work. No reason you could not distribute software or even updates through this P2P protocol and the content owner (if they agree) could get paid. If they disagree they could approach the ISP trade groups and give the information about their installers and product names...makes the creation of a P2P blacklist simple.
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|Fantastic. AT&T (Which I currently have) and Comcast are the only two ISP's in my area.
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|Oh! So Comcast and AT&T are proclaiming themselves to be the prosecutor, judge, and jury? If someone is indeed breaking the law, there is no problem in turning them in, but to decide they ARE breaking the law, determining the sentence, and carrying out that sentence is quite presumptuous regarding their responsibilities and authority. Only in corporate America.
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|but to decide they ARE breaking the law, determining the sentence, and carrying out that sentence is quite presumptuous regarding their responsibilities and authority.
Their network, their rules. It's not like their reporting you to the feds, throwing you in jail, or fining you....ya know, the things judges do.
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|Yes, but the moment they open up this can of worms where they can control the content of their traffic, they open themselves upto having to report anything suspected of being illegal that happens over their lines as they have given up their status as a 'common carrier'.
That or they bribe congress to pass more laws to give them immunity.
Well, I guess my money is on the latter.
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|...or, they take a realistic instead of fantasy approach, and tell them such a thing would be impossible as it is a computer doing the filtering based on rules and no human could possibly sort through that much data.
Sure, they could give the logs over, but the gov then runs into the same problems *and* regardless, information gathered through such methods is inadmissible (privacy), and cannot be used as grounds top begin criminal proceedings (this is one of the many reasons the RIAA sues through civil and not criminal court).
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|So do you think it's realistic for UPS and FedEx to scan through the contents of all your packages and discard the ones they don't like (not necessarily ones that are illegal)?
There are plenty of legal uses of p2p - patching WoW, downloading gameplay vids/demos, downloading linux distros, etc. Filtering a medium (p2p) instead of content (illegal music) is not legal under their current status as a carrier no matter whether it's realistic or fantastical.
This is basically their way of getting their feet in the door to shaft net neutrality.
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|Of course it;s not realistic. The manpower required would be asinine.
We're not talking physical product here. It's digital, and computer driven. No manpower needed.
There are plenty of legal uses of p2p - patching WoW, downloading gameplay vids/demos, downloading linux distros, etc.
...and long after BT is dead, there will be other, better alternatives.
[i]Filtering a medium (p2p) instead of content (illegal music) is not legal under their current status as a carrier no matter whether it's realistic or fantastical./i]
According to whom? Please tell me you're not applying privacy to this issue, as no human is seeing the content.
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|"may?" they already are.
http://www.rawstory.com/...TT_has_secret_0621.html
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|There is no "may" in my post.
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