EU ISP cant monitor illegal downloads

[John Eppstein]

Originally Posted by tvsky

Court says ISPs can't be forced to monitor illegal downloads

interesting

personally I don't think ISPs should be the police here , they are just a carrier like the phone or mail company. At the end of the day its the individuals choice what to do with their internet feed , if they choose to do illegal activities that's the LEOs domain.

dont know about this bit though:

"European consumer organisation BEUC said the ruling should get authorities and companies thinking about a fairer way to provide easily accessible legal digital content for consumers."

"The online marketplace has proven fertile ground, consumers spend billions of euro each year," said Monique Goyens, BEUC's director-general. "Trying to criminalise individual consumers for file-sharing is just singing into the wind."

While they are correct about the difficulty in enforcement , more consumer options will still have little effect on file sharing. more consumer options would be great though. flat rate subscription service perhaps?

That's the first I've heard of any attempt to force ISPs to actually block illegal downloads.

In fact, AFAIK such an attempt is not only silly but impossible. How do you determine what is an illegal download?

You can't do it by protocol, as every protocol used by pirates is also in use for legal purposes and piracy is not restricted to any one protocol. You can't do it by content analysis because even in cases where analysis is possible it takes too long to do on a large scale - and in many cases analysis isn't possible such as multi-sourced downloads or downloads of files with multiple levels of archiving and encryption.

My guess is that this refers to a wrong-headed attempt to block or throttle Bittorrent traffic or some similar idiocy.

Note that this issue is totally separate from the issue of blocking infringing websites and from the issue of ISPs cutting service to violators who have been caught engaging in illegal activity, both of which are after the fact enforcement. This appears to be an ill advised attempt at proactive, before the fact regulation.

[tvsky]

""requires an internet service provider to install a filtering system with a view to preventing the illegal downloading of files," the ECJ said.
"The filtering system would also be liable to infringe the fundamental rights of its [Scarlet's] customers""

This makes me think its a site based filtering system although there are firewalls capable of inspecting P2P data and pulling out file information to block based on that . It would be pretty complex and still hit and miss.

[John Eppstein]

Originally Posted by tvsky

""requires an internet service provider to install a filtering system with a view to preventing the illegal downloading of files," the ECJ said.
"The filtering system would also be liable to infringe the fundamental rights of its [Scarlet's] customers""

This makes me think its a site based filtering system although there are firewalls capable of inspecting P2P data and pulling out file information to block based on that . It would be pretty complex and still hit and miss.

What I said. Such systems can't work as intended - not without filtering non-offending material. And they'll still only work on whatever specific protocol they're designed to filter and miss everything else.

Try designing such a filter that would be effective on FTP transfers - if it worked it would break commercial use of the internet!

Tech based "solutions" like that are generally promoted by people who don't have the foggiest idea of the actual issues and complexities involved.

[Don Hills]

Of the 3 versions of this story that I've seen today, I think this one's the best:
Sweeping net filters trample ISPs' rights, says Euro beak • The Register

[John Eppstein]

Originally Posted by Don Hills

Of the 3 versions of this story that I've seen today, I think this one's the best:
Sweeping net filters trample ISPs' rights, says Euro beak • The Register

Yeah, it pretty much covers everything except the fact that SABEM's request was idiotic because it technically is not practical and even if it was pirates would simply switch to other protocols. It's not like P2P blocking would do anything about cyberlockers, FTP sites, or Usenet aggregators like Newsbin.....

And there's no way to differentiate pirate P2P traffic from legal software updates to games that use BT distribution.

Some people watch too much sci-fi on TV.

[AwwDeOhh]

They seem to do a pretty good job (AFAIK) of stomping out widespread child porn.
Though.. there's probably actual human people working on that issue.

Going after the downloaders (music/film/ect) isn't the answer anyhow, the big hosting site(s) need to be cut off at source.