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IFPI says ISPs should police users
Author: Gareth HalfacreePublished: 27th December 2007
The IFPI seem to want to have as many people hating them as their American brethren.
The IFPI say that, contrary to a recent statement from ISP PlusNet disavowing responsibility for monitoring what individual customers do with their ‘net connection, ISPs must take action against file sharers whether or not they have received complaints and court orders.
According to the IFPI, their requests are simple: ISPs should block peer-to-peer protocols at the core routers, prevent users from accessing ‘illegal’ sites that dare to share links to content which may infringe precious copyright, and constantly monitor traffic for infringing content. Yes, that was ‘constantly monitor’. As in: monitor all traffic from all users all the time, just in case someone might be sharing a song by the Purple Moron.
The organisation has gone straight to the top to try and get their way, submitting an official set of recommendations to the European Parliament. The Parliament has the power to turn said recommendations into a Europe-wide law forcing ISPs to do whatever the IFPI wants.
For filtering ‘infringing’ content, the IFPI would like ISPs to apply acoustic fingerprinting technology to all music data transferred through their service. Quite who funds the not-inconsiderable amount of processing power this would take is, unsurprisingly, not mentioned in the documentation it provided. It has made clear, however, that such filtering should apply to data transferred through any protocol: P2P, FTP, HTTP, SMTP, you name it.
The IFPI also wants a blanket ban on what it describes as P2P services “that are known to be predominantly infringing and that have refused to implement steps to prevent infringement.” In other words: you can kiss goodbye to BitTorrent, despite it being one of the most interesting new open-source technologies in recent years.
The final step is a complete severing of access to websites the IFPI describe as “infringing”, being “in rogue jurisdictions”, or that simply “refuse to cooperate” with our friendly mediaführers. The Pirate Bay gets a special mention, being described in clipped tones as a “an infamous infringing service located in Sweden”.
At least they know where they are, even if they can’t get them to stop.
The worrying part is that the German news site heise.de is reporting that the IFPI already have political support in the European Parliament for their plans. The European branch of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, however, is already preparing to fight for our rights, calling the proposals a “an ill-considered and damaging quick fix.”
Do you agree with PlusNet and think that ISPs such just provide an Internet connection and then keep their noses out, or do you think that the IFPI may have a point? Let us know your thoughts via the forums.
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Comments (29)Stats: 0.159 seconds
Blocking all P2P would ruin an enormous community.
besides...
all that copying that does happen is not all so evil as they try to make it sound...
take ms office for example, it costs a lot, some people copy it because of that, does ms loose money? not a lot, why? because the same people would just openoffice if they coudnt copy ms office anymore.
they always forget to subtract the number of people that would use readily avalaible freeware if they coudnt so easily copy the paid stuff.
on top of that, there is another issue, the one that they are just abusing the filesharers as an excuse to restrict and limit everyones rights.
i mean seriously, we've seen in burma what happens if the isp's are forced to police what everyone does on the internet...
actually.. maybe it would be best to put all IFPI employes in a plane and throw them out over burma... because they seem to admire the *cough* government*cough* there.
The RIAA an american organisation aint it??? I like how they want this to happen in europe because they would not get this to happen at all in america.
why not get the telephone companies to monitor our phone calls too incase I play a mp3 over the phone and my friend recordeds it at the other end with a microphone.
Xion: "Hello BB, is it time for me to take my emotional suppression pills now?"
BB: "Xion, at 02:13am you were observed to be humming a tune that seemed to resemble a copyright protected artwork, while there was no one else around, your voice was being transmitted on teamspeak while playing Counterstrike. From this we can state that you willfully allowed the aforementiond work to be freely distributed across the internet with the intent of others listening. After careful consideration we can conclude that your activities constitute piracy. BB takes law breaking very seriously, and requires vast sums of mony to run the servers that listen for copyright protected artwork, you will therefore be found liable, or made to walk the plank"
[/dumb_mode]
The end user should be held responsible, not the facilitator .
genius :D
Another would be Hamachi p2p vpn software, with a huge comunity of gamers, yet another legit use of p2p!!
LOL @ xion... classic ;)
The lack of grip on reality that the IFPI (RIAA etc) show is truly astounding. But then again, I very much doubt they care about the collateral damage they will cause if it gets them just the tiniest fraction of what they want. They'd happily kill off linux (if they could) or anything else out there that wasn't DRM'd up to the proverbial eyeballs.
but yeah, i say ISP should respect the privacy of its customer. stay away from our data! keep ur nose out or we'll gladly drill a 3rd hole in it...
now i want to see IFPI survive this if everyone does this...... really, they do this and they are dead in very few time..... these idiots could be profiting millions of dollars if they evolved....
i wish someone would email them this: http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/72
Not to mention an infringement of my human rights, as would be monitoring what I do on the internet.
banning schools would solve that problem:D
+2
IFPI, RIAA and the likes are as said using a "sledgehammer aproach". It will cost ISPs billions and billions but will not make the slightest dent in p2p activity after just a few months.
Someone really needs to take IFPI and Co. to school. It's sad when a bunch of old crippled and angry men have the power to cripple everybody else because they are lost in their ways.
Sad sad sad.
I would gladly work for IFPI and RIAA as an advisor so they would know how to NOT waste their and everybody elses time. Anything is better than the wreckless lawsuits and lobbying.
Poor old fools. Lost in the stone age of technology.
a better analogy would be to ban roads....
I shouldn't worry. I say keep it up - what're they going to do, put us all in jail? Ohh laugh it up. It's a fantastic candidate for anarchy, as we've already seen.
Where do these 'alliances' get their money from? From record/movie sales! What we have here is nothing more than the cries of an industry seeing itself sink into financial oblivion, because the greedy *******s at the top don't know why they're there in the first place. This stinks of desperation. Nothing more.
We all know that they can't see passed their own noses; we're all laughing.
Bottom line is, there is always going to be piracy. But until they realise that the future is in digital distribution, with a wide variety of choice and quality, then piracy will continue to rise, not fall.
A very simple question: When was the last time you 'stole' a game available on Steam? It's just too simple to get what you want, and where you want it, with little-to-no wait. It's not perfect, but it is the future. Competition will only see that improve! ;)
Its like getting cable, then complaining to the provider that you are getting commercials, then demanding that they remove the commercials cause your paying for it.
Stupid crap I tell....
Under UK law it is illegal to intercept and listen to transmissions not intended for you, which is why it is illegal to listen in on other peoples mobile phone signals, in fact its also illegal to listen in on Police radio transmissions, and communications between pilots and Air Traffic Control. Although no one bothers to enforce it.
The same should apply to the internet.
hahaha! ;) That's awesome.