So much for protesting ACTA, PIPA and SOPA; the MPAA and RIAA have colluded with the ISPs to spy anyway

can't catch a break...

American ISPs to launch massive copyright spying scheme on July 12

If you download potentially copyrighted software, videos or music, your Internet service provider (ISP) has been watching, and they’re coming for you.

Specifically, they’re coming for you on Thursday, July 12.

That’s the date when the nation’s largest ISPs will all voluntarily implement a new anti-piracy plan that will engage network operators in the largest digital spying scheme in history, and see some users’ bandwidth completely cut off until they sign an agreement saying they will not download copyrighted materials.

Word of the start date has been largely kept secret since ISPs announced their plans last June. The deal was brokered by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), and coordinated by the Obama Administration. The same groups have weighed in heavily on controversial Internet policies around the world, with similar facilitation by the Obama’s Administration’s State Department.

The July 12 date was revealed by the RIAA’s CEO and top lobbyist, Cary Sherman, during a publishers’ conference on Wednesday in New York, according to technology publication CNet.

The content industries calls this scheme a “graduated response” plan, which will see Time Warner Cable, Cablevision, Comcast, Verizon, AT&T and others spying on users’ Internet activities and watching for potential copyright infringement. Users who are “caught” infringing on a creator’s protected work can then be interrupted with a notice that piracy is forbidden by law and carries penalties of up to $150,000 per infringement, requiring the user to click through saying they understand the consequences before bandwidth is restored, and they could still be subject to copyright infringement lawsuits.

Participating ISPs have a range of options for dealing with customers who continue to pirate media, at that point: They can require that an alleged repeat offender undergo an educational course before their service is restored. They can utilize multiple warnings, restrict access to only certain major websites like Google, Facebook or a list of the top 200 sites going, reduce someone’s bandwidth to practically nothing and even share information on repeat offenders with competing ISPs, effectively creating a sort of Internet blacklist — although publicly, none of the network operators have agreed to “terminate” a customer’s service.

It is because of those reasons that the content industries believe this program achieves much more than what might have been possible in the realm of public policy, and the ISPs appear to agree. The voluntary scheme will be paid for mostly by the content industries, which will share some costs with the ISPs.

swell... just swell... what the government doesn't do in the way of spying, our isp's will take care of for them...

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The big telecoms and ISP's really do care for the common good? HA!

in an editorial dated 21 march, the wapo opined that...

"...it is curious that the FCC's newly released National Broadband Plan faults the market for failing to 'bring the power and promise of broadband to us all'..."

i responded that i didn't find it "curious" at all, given that the massive telecom and isp providers in the u.s. have been milking their customers for many years, charging higher and higher access fees with precious little increases in speed with the result that the u.s. ranks a humiliating #29 in the world in download speeds...

choosing to not cite such statistics, the wapo went on to make the false claim that...

[B]roadband networks have been built with billions of dollars from companies in the private sector with a legitimate right to extract profit from well-placed investments. These initiatives -- and yes, the profit motive -- have resulted in remarkable leaps in a few short years.

and then added this disclaimer...

It is useful to continue to mark America's standing in these matters in comparison to that of other nations. But it is hard to see in this field the signs of gross market failure.

now i notice that, since i read the editorial, the wapo has deigned to add a bit of disclosure to the piece...

(Disclosure: The Washington Post Co. has interests in broadcast and cable television and businesses that depend on the Internet, all of which could be affected by FCC action.)

woo-hoo...

i don't think the washington post has ever met a greedy corporation it didn't like... taking precious op-ed space to attempt to convince the citizenry that u.s. corporations have our best interests at heart, particularly with the slow-motion financial train wreck that's still in progress, is disingenuous at best...

fortunately, we now have this to show us just how much of a shit for the common good these large corporations really do give...

One of the nation's biggest telecommunications providers urged the Federal Communications Commission on Wednesday not to assert its authority over Internet services, a challenge that comes as the agency embarks on a 10-year effort to greatly expand broadband access across the country.

Verizon Communications said that the FCC's power over high-speed Internet services is "at best murky" and offered recommendations to Congress that could take away much of the agency's power.

ya gotta love verizon... they don't want anybody tellin' 'em what to do or interfering in any way with their ability to suck the last dime out of their customers' pockets...

i can't speak for the advantages and disadvantages of re-classifying the internet as a common carrier... i do know that, for all practical purposes, at least where i'm concerned, it already is... i rarely use any other means of communication and that's not to mention the myriad other functions my laptop serves... in my view, the internet should be treated as the primary means of communication and as an inherent right, much as telephones and television are, both technologies that have already been largely subsumed by internet technology...

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Follow-up to the FCC's "Broadband Plan"

i posted the other day on the fcc's proposed plan to increase broadband internet access in the u.s... bruce kushnick, writing in nieman watchdog, has a few strong opinions...

The new national broadband policy is tailored to reward telcom behemoths AT&T and Verizon, the very same corporate interests that got us into this mess in the first place. Meanwhile, the hard questions that need to be asked are being ignored.

How badly off are we right now? Well, while you sit on the web reading this, the current average US broadband speed, according to speedmatters.org, is 5mbps down and 1mbps upload. That’s 1/20th the download speed you can get in, say, Hong Kong, or Japan or France, and 1/100th the upload speed. Today in Hong Kong 100mbps in both directions costs about $20 -- cheaper than US broadband by leaps and bounds.

AT&T and Verizon claim there’s plenty of competition, but you can’t select your own Internet provider over the broadband networks and local phone prices have gone up -- 90% in New York and New Jersey, for example -- over the last 5 years. If there was competition, prices couldn’t increase like that. The absence of competition has also raised Net Neutrality issues, as a provider’s ability to block or degrade or favor its own service over others wouldn’t be a problem if you could simply leave and go somewhere else.

But the real kicker is this: By 2010, America should already have been rewired. Taxpayers have spent about $320 billion for fiber-based networks since the 1990s but have nothing to show for it. In fact, in many states, all schools, libraries and hospitals should have been rewired with fiber optic service as part of changes to state laws that gave AT&T and Verizon billions per state to remove the old copper wiring with new fiber optic wiring. Worse, the money is still being collected today in the form of rate increases, tax breaks and other perks the companies got.

So what now? The FCC’s plan is to increase your taxes yet again, by adding broadband to the Universal Service Fund Tax -- rewarding the same companies that harmed you by giving them more of your money and a free pass.

And to make sure that America has broadband, the FCC proposes to have the deployment by 2020. As FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski put it last month: “A ‘100 Squared’ initiative -- 100 million households at 100 megabits per second -- to unleash American ingenuity and ensure that businesses, large and small, are created here, move here, and stay here.” So what is already being offered in many other countries -- very high speed broadband -- should reach America in a decade, leaving us farther behind. This means fewer jobs and more expensive broadband and it harms our economy as many of the newest applications will be developed in other countries.

i find it stunning that the u.s. is so far behind so many other countries in internet access, upload and download speeds... there's no reason for it, unless of course you consider the providers' insatiable greed, in which case it all makes perfect sense...

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Microsoft + Yahoo ≠ good news for anyone

fewer and fewer owners, bigger and bigger companies - isp's, telcos, newspapers, television networks, radio stations - more and more opportunities for information to be shaped, controlled, and disseminated to serve the agendas of the powerful, monied elites...

Microsoft in $44.6 Billion Bid for Yahoo

The surprise offer of $31 a share, which represents a 62 percent premium on Thursday’s closing price, would bring relief to Yahoo’s long-suffering shareholders.

quite honestly, i don't give a goddam about yahoo's long-suffering shareholders... nobody's been holding a gun to their heads, forcing them to hang on to their stock... by contrast, nobody will HAVE to hold a gun to my head, forcing me to choose only one software company or isp when there's only one left...

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Here we go, ISP-initiated spying, just like Mettle said would happen

mettle has been scarce around these parts recently, but i simply couldn't read this without hearkening back to one of his posts from last july talking about this very thing... (because i think it's so highly relevant, i'm going to repost it below...)

For the last 15 years, Internet service providers have acted - to use an old cliche - as wide-open information super-highways, letting data flow uninterrupted and unimpeded between users and the Internet.

But I.S.P.’s may be about to embrace a new metaphor: traffic cop.

At a small panel discussion about digital piracy at NBC’s booth on the Consumer Electronics Show floor, representatives from NBC, Microsoft, several digital filtering companies and the telecom giant AT&T said the time was right to start filtering for copyrighted content at the network level.

Such filtering for pirated material already occurs on sites like YouTube and Microsoft’s Soapbox, and on some university networks.

Network-level filtering means your Internet service provider – Comcast, AT&T, EarthLink, or whoever you send that monthly check to – could soon start sniffing your digital packets, looking for material that infringes on someone’s copyright.

“What we are already doing to address piracy hasn’t been working. There’s no secret there,” said James Cicconi, senior vice president, external & legal affairs for AT&T.

from mettle, 31 july 2007...

Some tools for total surveillance are located on-site of telcos and ISPs, in that cozy Government/Corporate marriage. Other tools include OLAPs.

Types of tools coming online at present include "Deep packet inspection", an example of which is discussed here.

Much ballyhoo has been made of making particular digital pictures into crime. Those, as well as mp3 music files or other types of data files have identifiable "signatures", by means of "CRC", (cyclic redundancy check) and/or "checksum".

Much has been written already that the Vista operating system is Orwellian in nature. Now it is being reported that some anti virus companies may abandon scanning files for viruses and use "whitelisting" instead. Whitelisting will certify known files by their CRC or checksum. It is easy to see how that will fit into a police state.

The DoJ has already demanded records from major search engine companies. Apparently, only Google put up a substantial fight.

This article shows preliminary means to join the government grid.

For a peek ahead you can jump right to a look at the Global Justice Justice XML Data Model, or right ahead to see the National Information Exchange Model.

Of course, ultimately "users might need access to the global Centrix network, the Secret IP Router Network and the Non-classified IP Router Network to get all the information they require".

This report, among other topics, contemplates Information Sharing. (.pdf)

The pretexts for government to monitor all financial transactions seem similar to their need to know what library books people read and what Web sites they visit.

Starting with problems of a cashless society: government can cancel credit cards at a mere whim. And Government has been all over the alternate-forms-of-payment industry:

Consider E-gold and some of their tribulations.

The pretexts to monitor all electronic financial transactions are of course, framed in the emotional bugaboos of the day.

From comments on Press Esc:

'The Patriot Act is only temporary. It includes sunset provisions.' We all know what happened with that."

Similar legislation has already been shot down. (.pdf) (COPA was originally the basis for compelling the search engine records sharing compliance.)

So what else will Deep Packet Inspection look for? Consider this. (h/t slashdot)

just keep cranking out the ways the government can come after us...

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