VM to monitor File Sharing

[Ignitionnet]

The big picture here, imho, is that if VM know when customers are downloading stuff they shouldn't be they can probably be legally coerced into stopping them from doing so.

To be fair it's sadly inevitable. We've been giving 'The man' the finger since Napster, eventually he had to tire of it and stick the finger where the sun doesn't shine.

---------- Post added at 13:13 ---------- Previous post was at 13:12 ----------

Originally Posted by popper

no IF its holding data created by the paying user or the web site they have asked for a personal copy for personal use and is tracable to an IP address and or account holder, to then be supplyed to a 3rd party for commercial gain by making an unauthorised copy of the original or a derivative work, and then calling it anonymised then it is legally dubious.

That applies purely to Phorm though and is nothing to do with what VM are suggesting here?

[popper]

Originally Posted by Broadbandings

...
Using CView to identify and run comparisons on signatures in packets is not 'interception' it is 'inspection' and no more legally dubious than those ISPs which use DPI equipment for shaping.

....snip

All DPI kit can be used for 'lawful intercept', doesn't mean all the ISPs using it are doing so.

Heck one could do reconstruct data flows using port mirroring on a switch and a Wireshark filter, we aren't going to suggest use of switches and Wireshark is illegal.

ill give you these perfectly valid points, well made.

OC "comparisons on signatures " can and do bring up many false positives on many given data sets OC, but you know this already being a wireshark dude

and i still stick to my perfectly valid and logical 'you Need to intercept the dataflow Before you can Inspect It' POV

[Ignitionnet]

Originally Posted by popper

ill give you these perfectly valid points, well made.

OC "comparisons on signatures " can and do bring up many false positives on many given data sets OC, but you know this already being a wireshark dude

Those false positives are probably about the only thing keeping us from the copyright police for now!

Thanks - good to have a reasoned discussion about a potentially very emotive subject.

EDIT: One good thing about it of course is that Beyonce and all the rest of the 'R'n'B' crew will make it a nightmare for the equipment to identify infringing tracks given how similar they all sound and the amount of recycling of samples, etc, they do

and i still stick to my perfectly valid and logical 'you Need to intercept the dataflow Before you can Inspect It' POV

For sure by definition it's interception however I'm kinda stretching dictionary definitions a bit. From the wider definition of 'interception' every network node 'intercepts' traffic in order to make a routing decision based on it, or an ISP recording how much traffic customers are passing must be using some interception even if it's counters on a router, the router is intercepting the data stream in order to have visibility of how many packets it's routing to an IP address. I prefer to consider a data flow as 'inspected' as opposed to 'intercepted' when the contents or headers are used to make an automated decision on an action. I would prefer to reduce 'interception' to manual analysis, data stream reconstruction and source / destination analysis with a view to identifying persons on either side.

Remember we have such things as Arbor's Netflow and Peakflow analysis equipment, would this be considered interception, as the equipment is fed a sample of a data stream and analyses it?

It's a blurry line. Dealing with dictionary definitions every single bit of data going through every ISP is intercepted else it just wouldn't go anywhere.

[NoKnowledge]

I've emailed BBC news, see what happens.

They get alot of emails so I'm not holding out.

[Welshchris]

Will this cover all downloads such as rapidshare and torrents or just peer to peer in general?

[Mr Angry]

Originally Posted by Welshchris

Will this cover all downloads such as rapidshare and torrents or just peer to peer in general?

Eventually, yes.

[mrmistoffelees]

Breaches RIPA if I have read correctly....
Virgin media in court possibly ?

[Stuart]

Originally Posted by mrmistoffelees

Breaches RIPA if I have read correctly....
Virgin media in court possibly ?

The government have stated that RIPA only covers public authorities. It does not cover actions by private companies. The directive upon which it is based, however, is a different matter, and I believe the EU are taking legal action against our government..

[popper]

Originally Posted by Welshchris

Will this cover all downloads such as rapidshare and torrents or just peer to peer in general?

Yes, how could it not be the case...

you need to realise to put this into functional operation they will NEED to funnel any and all of Your data flows through these Deep Packet Interception kit they put in place to actively monitor any and all of your potential or alleged criminal and civil acts of copyright abuse for their reports to the 3rd partys to make profits from the cash demands for enumeration of lost sales etc...

[mrmistoffelees]

Originally Posted by Stuart C

The government have stated that RIPA only covers public authorities. It does not cover actions by private companies. The directive upon which it is based, however, is a different matter, and I believe the EU are taking legal action against our government..

Doh! cheers for the correction.

The whole thing is basically phorm in another frock......

[Griffin]

Technically you are only file sharing if you are using p2p software ie uploading & downloading as the word sharing implies.
sites like rapidshare & newsgroups are sites for downloading as such its the uploader of the files that enables the file to be downloaded in the first place,
at present it is the onus of the site to remove the offending files.
Read site rules about only legal files to be uploaded therefore as far as the downloader is concerned the files should be legal with the emphasis on should.

[Ignitionnet]

Originally Posted by mrmistoffelees

Breaches RIPA if I have read correctly....
Virgin media in court possibly ?

No it doesn't I'm afraid and no they won't be.

---------- Post added at 14:28 ---------- Previous post was at 14:28 ----------

Originally Posted by mrmistoffelees

Doh! cheers for the correction.

The whole thing is basically phorm in another frock......

No I'm afraid it isn't Phorm in another frock, it's nothing to do with Phorm, it's more like the traffic shaping ISPs like Plusnet, BT, TalkTalk, Sky, O2, etc do. Phorm intercepts your traffic, changes bits of it, and keeps records of what you are doing to feed you with appropriate ads. This stuff as described does nothing to your traffic, doesn't identify you, and merely reports on it. In that respect it's no more illegal or dubious than the Arbor Networks analysis I mentioned above.

---------- Post added at 14:33 ---------- Previous post was at 14:28 ----------

Originally Posted by popper

Yes, how could it not be the case...

you need to realise to put this into functional operation they will NEED to funnel any and all of Your data flows through these Deep Packet Interception kit they put in place to actively monitor any and all of your potential or alleged criminal and civil acts of copyright abuse for their reports to the 3rd partys to make profits from the cash demands for enumeration of lost sales etc...

Careful, there's no evidence right now that Virgin will simply hand customer details over to 3rd parties and indeed this would be illegal under existing data protection statutes. That's perhaps a bit on the paranoid side popper?

It will of course apply to Bittorrent, given that it's the most used P2P protocol.

I am probably an exception here but I would much rather VM do this and get some granularity than they start shaping P2P game updates into unconsciousness. It was an inevitable action and I will keep an open mind for now rather than assuming that everything we do is going into the hands of the recording industry, that would result in a rather large law suit to Virgin Media.

Scary that I'm defending this. I'm not happy about it but I'm not going to decide the world is over just yet because of it

EDIT: I actually more expect it to be used by Virgin to try and push the record companies that don't want to sign up to their music download service into doing so. Showing them the revenue they are losing out on would perhaps make a good argument, it would also legitimise Virgin blocking downloading of tunes via P2P services as they can claim they have their own service.

Bigger picture. It's not illegal, well not right now anyway, it's not going to result in law suits that will work, it's not going to result in our personal data being provided to record companies.

[mrmistoffelees]

Originally Posted by Broadbandings

No it doesn't I'm afraid and no they won't be.

---------- Post added at 14:28 ---------- Previous post was at 14:28 ----------



No I'm afraid it isn't Phorm in another frock, it's nothing to do with Phorm, it's more like the traffic shaping ISPs like Plusnet, BT, TalkTalk, Sky, O2, etc do.

Replace inspecting traffic, randomizing user data for the purpose of targeted ads, with deep packet inspection, randomizing data for the purpose of targeting filesharing traffic and yes, it's exactly like phorm

The sensible people should of already moved away from such things as torrents to newsgroups using SSL but i'll bet huge sums of cash that any host using SSL will get throttled within an inch of it's life on the port in question.

Bad luck for legitimate VPN users

[kalleh]

I don't think privacy exit's anymore when it comes to UK ISP's

[Mr Angry]

Originally Posted by kalleh

I don't think privacy exit's anymore when it comes to UK ISP's

You'd be right.