Will make proposed ISP content filtering meaningless.
In an interview with the BBC a few weeks ago, Lord Triesman, the parliamentary Under Secretary for Innovation, Universities and Skills, said intellectual property theft would no longer be tolerated in the UK. He then called on ISPs to take a "more activist role" in the problem of illegal file-sharing and said that ""If we can’t get voluntary arrangements we will legislate."
Now it seems that new data obtained by The Register form a large UK ISP may actually mean that the proposed initiative will largely be ineffective for the number of BitTorrent users encrypting their traffic has increased dramatically.
In the last 12 months alone encrypted BitTorrent traffic has increased from 4 to 40%. Instead of encrypted torrents accounting for a mere 20Mbit/s of total network bandwidth they now comprise an astounding 200Mbit/s. Inversely, unencrypted torrents that once used 500Mbit/s of bandwidth now use only 350Mbit/s.
The development rightly has the British Phonographic Institute(BPI) already pulling their hair out and will certainly lead to claims that it can mask terrorist or child pornography related activities – their standard "in case of emergency" arguments.
Either way the news means that efforts to get ISPs to take a "more activist role" with illegal file-sharing will pretty much be pointless. Although deep packet inspection will allows you to identify encrypted file-sharing packets, you will be unable to actually look inside those packets for evidence of copyrighted material.
Neil Armstrong, products director at BT-owned ISP PlusNet, said: "It isn’t possible for us to tell if a customer is downloading a copyright file or not unless we specifically ’snoop’ every packet on the customer’s line.
"We would obviously only do this where we have a proper request from the relevant legal authority to do so, and even then it is unlikely we would be able to see inside encrypted payloads," he said.
This development regarding increasing levels of encrypted BitTorrent traffic really drives home the point of how the music industry’s fight against illegal P2P and file-sharing services is a losing battle and a total failure. They’ve spent hundreds of millions, if not several billions, of dollars defeating Napster, KaZaA, Grokster, Limewire, and Morpheus in successive order, but what did it really accomplish? All people did, the smart ones anyways, is migrate to more secure file-sharing programs like Usenet and BitTorrent. Even if they somehow succeed in cracking down on these two it will only mean that somebody will just invent an even more secure P2P protocol to succeed it.
In the meantime, 10 years later the music industry is still trying to figure out how to eliminate illegal file-sharing, even going so far as to propose banning prolific pirates from the internet itself. You think it would’ve figured it out by now that no matter how hard they try file-sharing is here to stay. It’s a technology arms race that they’ll never win.
Looking for more stuff to watch or download?
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News Tip? Comment? Suggestion? jared@zeropaid.com
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“The development rightly has the British Phonographic Institute(BPI) already pulling their hair out and will certainly lead to claims that it can mask terrorist or child pornography related activities – their standard “in case of emergency” arguments. ”
Exactly how encrypting the protocol being used does this? xD
“The development rightly has the British Phonographic Institute(BPI) already pulling their hair out and will certainly lead to claims that it can mask terrorist or child pornography related activities – their standard “in case of emergency” arguments. ”
First… LOL!
Okay if anyone was a serious terrorist threat they wouldn’t be using Bit torrent to distribute anything. They’d simply either a) hand deliver the info to be sure no 3rd party could see… or b) send it a long a EXTREMELY high encoded direct connect program.
Child pornography? Seriously? Doesn’t that just mean you should block convicted sex abusers from the internet? Besides not all countries care so much about child porn as the big ones do. Not to say it is right by any means but child porn isn’t of any concern at all. Besides who would want to watch kitty porn when you can see a woman who has an extra $30000 in addons getting plowed by some guy with the world’s largest hog? … or Much of the other completely nasty stuff distributed?
The fact is there are always bad people out there. But we can’t continue giving away our freedoms because we are scared of them. I am personally sick of all the sissies that live in today’s society. Kind of how 9/11 happened… which apparently Osama Bin Laden did (bullshit)… somehow that has something to do with Sudam and his oil… which also we now need phone taps on every phone in the us… and the right to bust into your house without a warrant or probable cause… which leads to billions and billions of tax dollars spent on someone else’s agenda all the while they are spoon feeding bullshit to everyone and they are eating it up. Typical.
I think that Bit Torrent could work woof for banned or secret files using an public tracker and seeding while on the road. You would just keep DHT off and not put the torrent out in public. It would be using a common protocol and no unusual ports or anything to show that it’s highly secret stuff.
I don’t know what I’m barking about really but I’m sure that the underground has this all worked out already secret ways that no one talks about..
Pornography it seems like it’s mostly the older folks who are concerned by that. As I’ve grown on the net I’ve seen all of the stuff along the way and it’s just not a big deal it’s just there. Maybe if people got to see what they want and have their fantasies to themselves without being threatened or banned they wouldn’t feel so desperate and need to act them out and hurt someone. Certainly no one should be busted for looking at pictures on the internet.
When will they ever learn? Piracy cannot be stopped!
Its good news for filesharers but I can not swallow such biased news. When something is reported I like the reporting to be done with an unbiased perspective and then we as the readers should dissect analyze and interpret thus drawing our own conclusions. This article a dichotomy of my previous point states “ake a “more activist role” with illegal file-sharing will pretty much be pointless.” This is only one example of clearly hackneyed biased reporting.
“I like the reporting to be done with an unbiased perspective and then we as the readers should dissect analyze and interpret thus drawing our own conclusions. This article a dichotomy of my previous point states “ake a “more activist role” with illegal file-sharing will pretty much be pointless.” This is only one example of clearly hackneyed biased reporting.”
Well if you are so great at it or know how it should be done then do it yourself.
Nobody is forcing you to read this you know.