ISP Filtering Traffic

[xor]

I've been reading a lot lately about ATT's plans to filter internet traffic especially P2P. Their excuse to improve network performance. The real reason because they want to become another cable TV company.

1. Mass sniffing of traffic has got to have some negative effects on traffic flow.
2. All this will do is force P2P clients to go encrypted.

So then what they start encrypting decrypting in real time.

What do people think about this and where it could lead to.

xor

[TheCotMan]

Re: ISP Filtering Traffic

I've been reading a lot lately about ATT's plans to filter internet traffic especially P2P. Their excuse to improve network performance. The real reason because they want to become another cable TV company.

1. Mass sniffing of traffic has got to have some negative effects on traffic flow.
2. All this will do is force P2P clients to go encrypted.

So then what they start encrypting decrypting in real time.

What do people think about this and where it could lead to.

xor

It could lead to a change in the status of ISP that choose to filter content. A really powerful tool that could be used to combat the filtering of services by ISP is elimination of common carrier status by ISP that inspect content and change their course of action based on content. This could make them a responsible party in the realm of IP and Copyright infringement. Talk about deep pockets, the RIAA could then go after the Telcos and ISP for not filtering traffic that includes transport of content illegally.

Some of this is described in this /. (slashdot) item:

"Tim Wu has an interesting (and funny) article on Slate that says that AT&T's recent proposal to examine all the traffic it carries for potential violations of US intellectual property laws is not just bad but corporate seppuku bad. At present AT&T is shielded by a federal law they wrote themselves that provides they have no liability for 'Transitory Digital Network Communications' — content AT&T carries over the Internet. To maintain that immunity, AT&T must transmit data 'without selection of the material by the service provider' and 'without modification of its content' but if AT&T gets into the business of choosing what content travels over its network, it runs the serious risk of losing its all-important immunity. 'As the world's largest gatekeeper,' Wu writes, 'AT&T would immediately become the world's largest target for copyright infringement lawsuits.' ATT's new strategy 'exposes it to so much potential liability that adopting it would arguably violate AT&T's fiduciary duty to its shareholders,' concludes Wu."

Of course, this would more likely lead the telcos and ISP to pay their PAC (political action committee) money to have new laws created that would provide the same protection as a common carrier, but allow the Telco/ISP the opportunity to filter content. (Yes. I realize this doesn't make sense, but it would help ISP save more dollars than they might risk if they didn't pay their PAC.)

If Disney can get Copyright law altered to cover over 100 years of content, then I'm sure a few Telcos can get a brand new, Common Carrier based protection law, and still filter content. (Eat their cake and have it too.)

[Int3rc3pt]

Re: ISP Filtering Traffic

The thing I worry most about with notions and ideas such as this is the presidence it sets going forward. Once a mechanism like this is set into motion there will always be others that want to expand upon the information being gathered and identified with it. Give someone and inch and soon enough he'll want a foot. Next thing you know we're no longer just looking for copyrighted materials but whatever is deemed to be of importance.

I tend to agree with you that this will only force p2p users to start encrypting traffic and possibley regress from the larger p2p networks to self-sustained Darknets using encypted clients much like WASTE did with DC++ and the transmitting of Encrypted files with shared RSA keys. which would definitely be counter-productive to their stated mission of "improve network performance".

People will always find a way......