UK ISPs policing the internet

[Krydahl]

You may have seen this (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7522334.stm) or other related news stories.

This move by the ISPs seems largely driven by the UK Government's threats to impose legal sanctions on the ISPs if they don't cooperate.

Whatever you feel about filesharing, making the ISPs responsible for enforcing it is a mistake that could threaten everyone's access to the internet. It you're a UK resident, you might like to sign up to the petition against the idea here. (http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/LawyerISP/)

[bruce89]

I wonder if they'll distinguish between "illegal" filesharing and legal filesharing (i.e. Ubuntu torrents). I suppose they will.

[Krydahl]

This is part of the problem - we can hope. However, if current traffic management systems are anything to go by, anyone using torrents is likely to be suspect. Just one of the reasons to oppose these sorts of changes.

[gn2]

I wonder if they'll distinguish between "illegal" filesharing and legal filesharing (i.e. Ubuntu torrents). I suppose they will.

How can they without inspecting all the packets on their network?
According to some ISP's the whole scheme is totally unworkable and many ISP's will have nothing to do with this nonsense.

As far as I know, only Virgin are taking action on file sharing so far, and that's probably to attempt to protect their revenue from other parts of their empire.

[Krydahl]

Sadly no longer so - see the news article linked to:


BT, Virgin, Orange, Tiscali, BSkyB and Carphone Warehouse have all signed up.

[solitaire]

It's only the big 6 ISP's or so that will even bother with this.

The last thing they want to do is kick off users (hell they are doing everything possible to tie people in to contracts).

They will probably just send out the letters (like Virgin Cable did) and that will be the majority of their actions! they will probably only target the bigges t0.1% of users that are D/L stuff 24/7, 7 day's a week, 52 weeks a year! the rest they will just ignore, since it's no loss to them.

I've had a few emails over the years from ISP's saying "this film company has found you are sharing this file. Stop it" All i reply is "I'm running a network of machines I'll track down the responsible person and deal with it".

I did'nt tell them i was the sole user on this network (i had 8 static addresses and 3 network cards which picked a static IP at random during boot) :D:D so it looked like a network...

All you need to do is reply to the ISP saying:

"Please forward all ISP logging information involving this file and i will track down the resonsable person. I have a Wireless Router and guests at my house can access it. there is a number of people who could be resonsable."

[Krydahl]

Don't you think it's still a good idea to discourage government from introducing laws requiring ISP to enforce filesharing bans?

[bruce89]

How can they without inspecting all the packets on their network?
According to some ISP's the whole scheme is totally unworkable and many ISP's will have nothing to do with this nonsense.

If the government got their way, they would have to do that.

[solitaire]

packet inspection is already useless. since most p2p traffic is encrypted.

Deep Packet Inspection is the next big thing tech companies are trying to sell ISP's but in the UK

IANAL!!
There is a gray area around the "Computer Misuse Act". Some people think it may stop Deep Packet Inspections since it's illegal to spy on traffic other than basic inspection at ISP level. They would need a permission from the court to do Deep packet inspection.

Don't know if this is correct but iyt would seem a change of Law would be required for Deep packet inspection.

[bonzodog]

I have to say this but we need to lift Beamerboys (Paladine on IRC) ban in this forum, and soon. He is the one person who has political weight behind stopping DPI, and is already going a long way to getting prosecutions brought against BT and others for doing it.

https://nodpi.org

Beamerboy aka Paladine on IRC, is actually Alexander Hanff, who now carries a good bit of political influence on this whole issue.