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ISPs may start filtering information |
Tober138
Member
Posts: 129
Location: Severed, MD
Joined: 09.07.07 |
| Posted on January 10 2025 05:20:41 |
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AT&T and Other ISPs May Be Getting Ready to Filter
By Brad Stone, NY Times
For the past fifteen years, Internet service providers have acted - to use an old cliche - as wide-open information super-highways, letting data flow uninterrupted and unimpeded between users and the Internet.
But ISPs may be about to embrace a new metaphor: traffic cop.
At a small panel discussion about digital piracy here at NBC?’s booth on the Consumer Electronics Show floor, representatives from NBC, Microsoft, several digital filtering companies and telecom giant AT&T said the time was right to start filtering for copyrighted content at the network level.
Such filtering for pirated material already occurs on sites like YouTube and Microsoft?’s Soapbox, and on some university networks.
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. (( this is where it starts, innocently enough, but then once everyone's ok with that, they will roll it out elsewhere )))
?“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.
Mr. Cicconi said that AT&T has been talking to technology companies, and members of the MPAA and RIAA, for the last six months about implementing digital fingerprinting techniques on the network level.
?“We are very interested in a technology based solution and we think a network-based solution is the optimal way to approach this,?” he said. ?“We recognize we are not there yet but there are a lot of promising technologies. But we are having an open discussion with a number of content companies, including NBC Universal, to try to explore various technologies that are out there.?”
Internet civil rights organizations oppose network-level filtering, arguing that it amounts to Big Brother monitoring of free speech, and that such filtering could block the use of material that may fall under fair-use legal provisions ?— uses like parody, which enrich our culture.
Rick Cotton, the general counsel of NBC Universal, who has led the company?’s fights against companies like YouTube for the last three years, clearly doesn?’t have much tolerance for that line of thinking.
?“The volume of peer-to-peer traffic online, dominated by copyrighted materials, is overwhelming. That clearly should not be an acceptable, continuing status,?” he said. ?“The question is how we collectively collaborate to address this.?”
I asked the panelists how they would respond to objections from their customers over network level filtering ?– for example, the kind of angry outcry Comcast saw last year, when it was accused of clamping down on BitTorrent traffic on its network.
?“Whatever we do has to pass muster with consumers and with policy standards. There is going to be a spotlight on it,?” said Mr. Cicconi of AT&T.
After the session, he told me that ISPs like AT&T would have to handle such network filtering delicately, and do more than just stop an upload dead in its tracks, or send a legalistic cease and desist form letter to a customer. ?“We?’ve got to figure out a friendly way to do it, there?’s no doubt about it,?” he said.
> Knowledge is power...power corrupts...study hard...be evil <
SpiritOne wrote:
This country is full of rednecks, retards and baptists.
www.wm3.org
Edited by Tober138 on January 10 2025 05:21:23
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RE: ISPs may start filtering information |
SpiritOne
Member
Posts: 192
Location: Tyler TX
Joined: 18.07.06 |
| Posted on January 10 2025 09:37:34 |
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you knew this kind of stuff was coming eventually. People that stand to lose money because of free file sharing are still to this day deftly afraid of the internet.
by the way Tober, I love the sig!
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RE: ISPs may start filtering information |
Rich
Member
Posts: 492
Joined: 30.05.06 |
| Posted on January 10 2025 09:43:36 |
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If this happens, I give it a month before someone figures out a workaround for it.
What irritates me is that any rise in piracy that's occurred over the years is the fault of these companies for not exploiting the internet before the pirates did.
"The way to a girls bed is through her parents. Have sex with them and you're in."
-- Zapp Brannigan
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RE: ISPs may start filtering information |
Tupperfan
Administrator
Posts: 636
Location: Montréal, Québec
Joined: 10.07.06 |
| Posted on January 10 2025 10:18:25 |
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Well, the golden age will have to stop one of those days.
And man will it suck!
tupperfan.blogspot.com
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RE: ISPs may start filtering information |
Sam Cogley
Member
Posts: 852
Location: Missouri
Joined: 13.06.06 |
| Posted on January 10 2025 10:35:27 |
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OK, time to take down the man. Who is the man, and what dirt do we have on him?
Up there we were heroes, fighting robot bitches...
Priest: Great wall of prophecy, reveal to us God?’s will that we may blindly obey.
Crowd: Free us from thought and responsibility.
Priest: Your words guide us.
Crowd: We are dumb.
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RE: ISPs may start filtering information |
Rich
Member
Posts: 492
Joined: 30.05.06 |
| Posted on January 10 2025 11:52:32 |
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Tupperfan wrote:
Well, the golden age will have to stop one of those days.
And man will it suck!
No it won't dude. The kind of filters they're talking about are notoriously difficult to build and notoriously easy to bypass, hack, or what have you. At worst it'll cause a minor inconvenience.
It's just ironic to me that the entertainment industry's way of recouping losses to piracy is to spend a shitload of money on fighting piracy - even when it should be obvious to anyone by now that piracy is not going away, and it's only so widespread because the industry is failing to keep up with the times and the shifting marketplace. If I can watch BSG 3-6 months earlier than it's UK broadcast date by downloading it from an American or Canadian, I'm going to do that. If someone wants to watch "I Am Legend" but doesn't want to go to the Cinema or wait for the DVD to come out, the pirates will cater for them while the industry won't.
One also wonders if they'd make any less money if they dropped the prices.
"The way to a girls bed is through her parents. Have sex with them and you're in."
-- Zapp Brannigan
Edited by Rich on January 10 2025 12:10:04
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