I am one of those vociferous advocates for IP.

This idea of going after ISPs is nuts. Assuming the ISP has a clause in its customer contract that customers may not use the ISP to break the law, this is just a political variation of the idea of 'deep pockets' in liability law. Instead of going after the party that committed the wrong, go after somebody who has more to lose. This threat is intended as extortion to make the ISPs to do the plaintiffs/prosecutors work for them.

It is wrong for more reasons than I can understand, much less name.

P2P users do not even need to wait or anything, just encrypt your files before sharing them and let's see how ISPs are going to find out which ones are legal or illegal. Even if you live in a jurisdiction that legally forces you to decrypt all files on demand by the authorities, you can use steganography to hide illegal content inside legal one (TrueCrypt does that, for example).
Midwesterner is right, this is just trying to extort money from the ISPs since suing grannies and teenagers is too unpopular.

How many ISPs would be willing to close down their own NNTP news servers?

I had an interesting conversation on IRC last week regarding the digits of pi. It is postulated that if you generate a random series of numbers of any length, then it is highly probable that that sequence is present in pi, somewhere along its monumental (possibly infinite) length. It is therefore probable that any sequence of numbers (which is what digital data is after all) will be present in pi and mathematical constants are exempt from copyright as far as I know (and as far as the relatively prodigal mathematicians knew as well).

So technically it is highly probable that all digital data is present as a sequence in pi and therefore exempt from copyright.

On a less frivolous note, the gov't should not be legislating this kind of thing. The ISP's and the owners of the pirated material should be working out their own deal. I for one favour the approach where ISP's pay for a license to distribute the material and pass the cost along to the customers. A few quid a month extra on my broadband bill is a cost I personally am willing to pay to have legal access to the stuff that I currently pirate (US tv shows, movies and videogames mostly). I will add the proviso that I will pay for said items if I deem them to be worth it. most of my dvd collection is made up of films that I have previously downloaded. Also there is no point paying £40 for a PC game only to find that the specs on the back are rubbish and it wont run on my computer even when it says that it will, because I cannot take it back once I have installed it (most retail shops will not even allow you to return it if you've broken the seal on the packaging unless its damaged). The argument for downloading US TV shows should be self evident, we have to wait ever so long for the decent ones to make it across the pond (Heroes and Lost in particular.) I can't watch the latest season of Lost on TV as I don't have Sky, unfortunately I became addicted when it was on Channel 4 and want to know what happens and having an online conversation about it is a nightmare when you have to keep telling people not to talk about the bits you haven't seen.

There is also a free speech angle to this, if a movie/book/album/game is banned by our self appointed keepers, then we have a duty to disseminate it as widely as possible. P2P is the new samizdat in that regard. I for one will be downloading the PC version of Manhunt 2 as soon as it becomes available, not because I want to play it, it simply doesn't appeal, but because no matter how abhorrent i feel its depiction of violence is, it is not something that I believe should be banned.

The pirates will find a way around this anyway so not only is it wrong for the gov't to legislate on this matter its ultimately useless and a waste of my money.

Frederick, that's the point. ISPs can't tell what content is legal and what isn't, regardless of encryption - there's simply too much traffic - so to stay on the right side of the law they'll end up simply blocking P2P entirely, causing massive inconvenience for those of us who use it for legitimate purposes.

The "three strikes" proposal is frightening. The industries' record on threatening people who've done nothing wrong (because they've no idea either) is well documented.

Curly, most of them already have as far as I can make out.

Oh, and by the way, what about this, further down that Times article?

Other high-profile elements include a pledge that children will be entitled to five hours of culture a week overseen by a new youth culture trust. The pledge will give children the right to learn a musical instrument, visit art galleries and museums and even make films.

Great. Because, as we all know, children today have absolutely no right to learn an instrument, visit galleries and museums or make films. It's about time this shameful discrimination against our kiddies was stopped.

It's like tackling the problem of robbery by blaming the manufacturer of the getaway van.

Surely the onus is on the music/video/game manufacturers to protect their copyright by beefing up their own product protection?

so not only is it wrong for the gov't to legislate on this matter its ultimately useless and a waste of my money.

Mandrill

My first, cynical, response to this was that the government was doing this for the same reason it passes most laws. To be seen to be 'doing something' to satisfy either the chattering classes or a pressure group.

On further thought, my even more cynical response was that this is a 'protection racket' law. There'll be a few token prosecutions, then when the fuss has died down and things have gone back to normal the govenment might sidle up to a provider and say, "Nice little ISP you've got there sunshine. Shame if anything were to happen to it. Now about that little favour we want you to do."

Brian M. predicted some years ago that the problem would come not when politicians and administrators were totally ignorant of I.T. (the "what is an ISP" stage) - but when they had some knowledge of it.
Then they would regulate it to bits.

"But if they had more knowledge they would know that this is a bad idea".

No, government does not work that way.

Once there is general knowledge of something one regulates it - if the consequences of the regulations are terrible that is just too bad.

Surprised the ISPs aren't more interested in cooperating - given that bittorrent etc costs them a fortune (let's sell an 8 meg line, no-one will use that much bandwidth consistently - ho ho ho.)

Also it is possible to inspect every packet, at least for simple details such as protocol that you can dig out of the packet header. Five years ago it wasn't but the new 'deep packet inspection' appliances with custom ASICs can do it at line speed and rate limit accordingly. If you turn on encryption in BitTorrent you still get the limited speed as the routers are generally told to assume 'anything encrypted that isn't on the standard VPN ports = bad'

Its happening already with sites like rapidshare.com who provide free hosting for files. Mind you they are getting sued in Germany by publishers for not vetting copyrighted materials. It is against their T&C but that doesn't stop it happening...

Google free e-books and you'll find scores of websites with almost new books and the download clicks lead back to rapidshare in most cases.

So isn't-" I'm downloading a Linux distribution" (often distributed by p2p) a valid defence, assuming you're not stupid enough to d/l something marked "Britney Spears greatest hits"?

Forget the technical and practical issues for a second, this measure should be opposed as restraint of trade and infringement on the right to a fair trial.

The proposal is that ISPs should be forced to disconnect a user following a mere allegation of copyright infringement from the copyright enforcement bodies. Neither the affected user nor the ISP losing its customer will have a right to contest the allegation or appeal.

The real problem here is not a lack of technical acumen (though the UK government is woefully clueless) but the fact that this Government has backed its self into several corners.

Much of the UK's legislation is now dictated by the European Union parliament, and much of this is "goldplated" by the UK lawmakers in a foolish attempt to be seen to be more European than anyone else. Furthermore the UK economy is faltering as a result of over-regulation and overtaxing, and the Government here cannot see an ideologically safe way out of this conundrum.

So, they can see the metaphorical iceberg in the distance, the helm is locked on a collision course with it, and there's nothing they can do about it and remain as the Labour Party.

So, they're making noise and blowing smoke to keep the population befuddled as to what's going on for just a little while longer, because they're mostly shameless power-hungry politicians who'd rather hang onto power at the expense of causing disaster than avert a problem now and lose power.

David: "So isn't-" I'm downloading a Linux distribution" (often distributed by p2p) a valid defence, assuming you're not stupid enough to d/l something marked "Britney Spears greatest hits"?"

No; because Linux violates hundreds of Microsoft's patents. (Or so says Steven Ballmer, but he's been incredibly coy about which ones). One word from Microsoft in your ISP's ear, and you'll be on their naughty list.

So isn't-" I'm downloading a Linux distribution" (often distributed by p2p) a valid defence, assuming you're not stupid enough to d/l something marked "Britney Spears greatest hits"?

You've inspired me. At some point (it's on my life list, but admittedly below losing fifteen pounds, fornicating with Shawn Colvin, and learning to tie a necktie) I'm going to release a linux distro called "Britney Spears' Greatest Hits."

Mandrill,

Possibly infinite... It is infinite. 'tis proven. Pi is both irrational and transcendental like e. It will therefore, somewhere in its decimal expansion contain any arbitary set of numbers of any length*.

Oh, yeah, shutting down the torrent is sledgehammers to crack nuts. Alex made all the pertinent points.

*Any finite length certainly. I have only dabbled in transfinite set theory so I can't tell you about the alephs. Infinity gets somewhat tedious you see, especially towards the end. A question to mathematicians out there (I be a poor lapsed physicist) would this also apply to a countable infinity of digits?

If you turn on encryption in BitTorrent you still get the limited speed as the routers are generally told to assume 'anything encrypted that isn't on the standard VPN ports = bad'

The point here is that encrypted data doesn't carry a big sign saying "I am encrypted".

Binary data is just that, and it would take sophisticated analysis to judge whether a randomly selected packet is encrypted data, music, a compiled program or a compressed database.

To the best of my knowledge, the law as it stands doesn't regard digital data as copyrightable - it's regarded as purely data. (This is related to the fact that copyright is the right to make a physical copy.)

No, I'm not claiming to be a lawyer.

It's only when the data is viewed / played that it is deemed to have broken copyright, as this is the point at which a physical copy has been produced.

You also find the same thing with obscene images downloaded off the net - the charges usually include something along the line of having created an obscene image. This doesn't mean that the downloader literally shot the offending material him/herself, just that the computer turned digital data into images on a monitor.

At present, there's only one type of downloaded material that gets prosecuted for obscenity, a type that most libertarians would have difficulty defending. However, the government were making noises about extending this to a much wider variety of "extreme" material - does anyone know whether this has gone any further?

BTW, I'm talking about my understanding of British law.

Dr Dan H.

Quite so - as long as one remember who "U.K. lawmakers" are.

They are not normally members of Parliament - they are Civil Servants.

John Locke may have argued that the powers delegated to Parliament by the people can not be redelegated to other folk.

Chief Justice Hewitt may have warned against "The New Despotism" of officials in his 1929 book.

And the Supreme Court may have ruled 9 - 0 in 1935 against the officials of the National Recovery Administration having the power to make up rules with the force of law without the SPECIFIC consent of Congress.

However, in both Britain and the United States most law is now "statutory instruments" and the like - created by officials under vague "enabling Acts" from legislative assemblies.

"Without the ability to create regulations with the force of law without the specific consent of Parliament or Congress modern government could not function".

Which just proves that "modern government" is much to big, in both size and scope.

Of course, as Christopher Booker and others have pointed out, even the vague general Acts are no longer needed in Britain - now officials can just point to an E.U. decree as giving them the power to do X, Y, Z.

"After all Parliament gave the E.U. this power - so we do not have to go back to Parliament to get consent for....."

This is I think driven by what is laughingly called "The Music Industry". this is to say, crudely, modern "pop".

People who do stuff in this industry are, generally, lefties. Therefore the musical parts of "popular culture" are their job. (This is a broad generalisation but mostly true.)

Lefties have a self-given right to tell everyone else what they are worth, and to make the purchase of their "product" not a right or an option, but compulsory, and at the tariff they specify, and only at that tariff. (See "marxism", under "fiction".)

I believe that some "Bands" have already released "tracks" for free online. Some such "tracks" have even gone up the "charts" - which must mean people are then agreeing to pay for them? or am i totally mistaken and is the business model of the recording companies still valid in the face of new evidence that it is not?

Lascaille, the problem is not that it is difficult to identify BitTorrent traffic but that it is difficult to identify illegal BitTorrent traffic. As others have mentioned, much BitTorrent traffic is perfectly legal and very useful. It would be a shame if this law caused ISPs to ban all BT traffic just so that they could be sure of banning the illegal bits.

CountingCats, it depends on what is being encrypted. I believe Lascaille was referring to the packet headers, which are used to identify a data packet as a BitTorrent packet. Many ISPs already throttle BT traffic (at least at peak times) and they identify such traffic by looking at the packet headers. If you use encryption to hide the contents of the headers, which is an option supported by more recent versions of BT clients, then your data is no longer obviously BT data. To counter this, ISPs just throttle all encrypted packets willy-nilly, which is bloody annoying.

Encryption of the payload, rather than the headers, is another matter entirely. Just zip up your pirated film in a password-protected zip file, put the password somewhere where any human downloader can easily find it, and away you go.

I was very angry to discover, having agreed to a 12-month contract, that my British Telecom "8Mb" broadband connection is a complete waste of money because all traffic not on a few standard ports is throttled most of the day. For a software engineer who frequently works from home, that is not acceptable. I felt that British Telecom should have to reveal that they do such things before entering into a contract but apparently it is covered by the nebulous "fair usage policy". Arse.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if all these draconian but ineffective anti-piracy measures are costing the economy more than they're saving. It's time the recording industries accepted that their business model is doomed and stopped trying to use legislation to prop up their companies.

NickM,

The property you're talking about is 'normality' and it isn't actually known whether Pi has it.

Pi's decimal expansion is infinite, non-repeating, and not representable as an integer fraction or the solution of a polynomial equation, but nobody knows if every possible subsequence occurs. It is, however, widely conjectured by mathematicians to be true.

Encryption isn't magic. Encrypting the files you store isn't helpful, as no-one anywhere will be able to read them unless you distribute the key - in which case they might as well be unencrypted, as once the key is known the rest is trivial.

Encrypting files you transmit makes more sense, because then you can use SSH and a public-key system, which essentially encrypts the file differently every single time it's transmitted. This effectively stops interception and inspection of the data - but so what?

In order for any large scale file sharing to work, the items being shared must be consistently named - or if they are not, there must be a central repository or root respository indicating the names used. And unless these names are closely related to what the thing actually is, no-one will ever find it.

Now, you could rename Britney's greatest hits to "a84b4fe8.mp3" and share it over an SSL encrypted bittorrent network. But then how is anyone going to know to look for that file if they want to hear Britney? Well, you could post a message to a mailing list - but that's not exactly wide scale distribution. Or, you could run a massive sharing server like The Pirate Bay - but then the ISPs and RIAA know as widely as anyone else. All the ISP has to do is update their filters with 'a84b4fe8.mp3' and they get a nice list of naughty people.

All the industry wants to do is apply the 80/20 rule. There will still be hardcore geeks swapping encrypted files on temporary FTP servers with passwords posted on invitation-only mailing lists and all that crap. No-one cares about that. They just want it make it a bit harder than Joe Bloggs typing "Kill Bill Vol 1" into a web page and getting the movie 24 hours later. That's not technically that hard to achieve.

David Davis wrote:

I believe that some "Bands" have already released "tracks" for free online. Some such "tracks" have even gone up the "charts" - which must mean people are then agreeing to pay for them?

They are not "bands" but bands, not "tracks" but tracks, and not "charts" but charts. They really are called those things.

J,

There are four files, at different locations A, B, C, and D, each produced by a different person. Each file considered on its own contains entirely random data. But it so happens that while A xor B results in a hi-res bitmap of the surface of the moon, and C xor D results in Pi to a billion decimal places - it is also the case that A xor C results in the digital version of Michael Radford's mid-80s masterpiece.

Who is to say, should you be found with all four files on your machine, that it wasn't the Moon and Pi you were after? And who is to be prosecuted should it become generally known that this remarkable coincidental correlation between random numbers has occurred? Can they prove you as an ignorant downloader even knew?

And if that isn't enough, cryptoheads can find other ways. The "Dining Cryptographers" protocol and stuff like that. Magic.

Simon,

"However, the government were making noises about extending this to a much wider variety of "extreme" material - does anyone know whether this has gone any further?"

Oh yes, that whistled throught the Commons ("lack of time") & is now with the Lords.

More information:-

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/clarissa_smith/2007/12/wheres_the_evidence.html

http://www.melonfarmers.co.uk/gch08a.htm

http://www.indexoncensorship.org/?p=134

Ray

Arrggh.

Thanks, Ray.