AT&T Pushes Internet Piracy Filters At CES > Can we say MORE lawsuits against ATT?

Can we say MORE lawsuits against ATT?

There is no database of all copyrighted files, nor could there be. The volume is far too large. Not only would it have to list everything; it would also have to know all the current owners and all their permissions from all the owners to all possible licensees.

So in practice, what it will amount to is a set of hashes or "fingerprints" of only the particular movies and music that the Hollywood companies want to filter for.

Yes but here's the question which brings about the legal problems. Does this filter look for keywords. Say for instance the movie Mission Impossible. Will this filter then reject all files with the title mission or impossible? See my point, there's no foolproof way to not intrude on people's legitimate activities. What happens if a church wants to send a movie about their mission to Guatemala? Will this suddenly bit flagged since it contains some keywords. The point being, no filter is foolproof and no matter what technology this works on, it will VIOLATE people's right to transmit legal content. Hence, they are opening the floodgate for mass amounts of lawsuits since they are indeed inspecting traffic, which violates the law without a court order. Then again, this is ATT we're speaking of, they are above the law at this point (or so they think).

What they've been talking about is inspecting the actual audio/video files. I don't think it is going to deal with text. At least I hope it's smarter than that.

The RIAA /MPAA used to send out threatening letters based on filenames, and there were false positives, and it made the news when innocent people got flagged for unrelated files with names similar to the pop songs or whatever. AT&T surely doesn't want the kind of bad press from doing that. They would lose customers in any market where there's competition.

Of course the "techie" file sharers will just bypass the filters by encrypting .

Swh,

Physically inspecting files is near impossible. Youd need 10s of thousands of workers whose full time job is to sit there and packet sniff every piece of data going in and out of the network. I mean, you can scan all file sharing methods you'd like, but whats to stop people from continuing to rename files. Point of the matter, even if it breaks down to actual checking versus keywords, this is just purely infeasible. Hence, I'm inclined to think it WILL be keyword versus physical file inspection. There is simply not enough manpower or computer power to sift through the amount of data being sent. Even the crap that the NSA installed which siphoned through our lives probably only used keywords or was set to target people fitting a profile. Well, that would be my guess anyway. Hence, my argument on the NSA case is we were all possible victims and now ATT is trying to break out that same can of lube and do it again. Glad I don't use this company.

reply to swhx7
yep. It's nearly an impossible task they have set themselves since looking into the audio/video files requires that the files be in their normal format. In the case of Bit torrent the files come down in little pieces so there's no way to verify what the original file was. In the case of Usenet most files come down as split RAR files so again, there's the problem of not having the file split into smaller pieces and having it in a new format (RAR) plus the files are encoded (Yenc, UUencode, Mime.) I suppose the file inspection could also stop IRC DCC file transfers.

So I'm not sure what this file inspection will do. It might stop things like FTP transfers or HTTP downloads. It could also stop people from using Divx's Stage6 site or Youtube, but it seems a wasted effort to try and stop them since it's probably easier to just send them DMCA takedown notices to remove the offending content.

So, again I wonder, what is the real purpose of this? Are these people just that unaware of how data is transferred in the consumer world or do they hope to just scare people more like the MPAA and RIAA are trying to do?

Guys, read the Voblie link above.

said by »vobileinc.com/solution1.htm :

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With VideoDNA™, video can be identified when it's uploaded to a website or server, when it's downloaded and played on user's PC, or when it's transported over a network.

---

Well such software WOULD HAVE to be installed on the end users computer, and who in their right mind will be that dumb. No software can identify what you watch, unless you consent to it. Even then, software says anonymous feedback when you do. If any idiot is willing to install something like vobile that tracks their usage, they deserve what they get. Short of that, the ISPS can do what they wish, but entering your pc illegally to monitor what you do is known as hacking. That's a crime and I'm sure the ISPS don't dare venture there. Hence, the point stands. Will they be using keywords as that's the only way one can stop things. Yet, keywords hit everything versus stopping only "pirated" files. Similarly, there's not enough manpower to sift through everyone's downloads as they happen. Alternatively, blocking ports could cause serious problems for users, too. Not to mention, block to many, and people can't do what they need. So the question lies, how do they plan to identify files that are often rared or zipped, can be renamed to bypass filters, or SSL and other such techniques, while ensuring user privacy? My guess, whatever method they choose, will set them up for many of lawsuits. Stay tuned and if you own stock in ATT, SELL SELL SELL!

reply to jc100

reply to jc100
No, AT&T is planning to use it at the ISP, not on the customers' computers. The AT&T setup will be looking at network traffic. It does not depend on anything on the endpoints.

The reference to the "video [being] identified when it's ... downloaded and played on user's PC" is referring to the Vobile technology being used in things like file players that users would install on their PCs, but that's separate and independent from AT&T's project.

But look for some of the online video sites to require users to install their player on the PC, in order to get videos from their service - just another form of DRM, and you can just not use their service if you don't want to. But if AT&T is your ISP, you can't control what they do with the traffic. You can opt out of the filtering by encryting your transfers, tho.

ziping a file with a pass word would be all it takes
hell a multi part rar would get around it since the rar file is not the same as the content and cant be opened with out all the parts
and thats with out any thing fancy like a VPN good luck then
this seems doomed to fail