Boldly going where no ISP has gone before.Some Internet Service Providers (ISPs) like some of the ones located in Britain have ended up being bullied into or willfully accepting content filtering of the internet. Other ISPs like ones located in Australia will openly disagree with content filtering. One ISP in France, called "Free", appears to be saying that it would openly defy French law when it comes to content filtering. All this according to a Google translated report from 01Net. France has developed a reputation internationally to be the country with politicians that are hoping to get ISPs all across Europe to implement filtering technology by law. While an attempt to dramatically change the laws across Europe, it seems that the drama can be matched by opposition as well. Looking up the ISP on Wikipedia certainly reveals that this isn't just a small company either. From the report (translated by Charles Eddy): Questioned about the Innovation and Internet bill, which has already been brought up in the Capital, Xavier Niel, founder and majority shareholder in Free [a French ISP], again launched his criticism following the release of the company's first quarter results. It's probably no surprise to see ISPs within the same country that pushed for mandatory content filtering for all ISPs across Europe to be under a lot of political pressure to filter the internet. As mentioned in the report, the French ISP founder and largest shareholder is demanding that laws be put in place to merely have a blank license for internet use instead. As mentioned numerous times before, there have been at least two studies done on ISP-level filtering for file-sharing. The more recent one out of Australia said that content filtering that tells the difference between unauthorized content and authorized content on P2P protocols do not work. It backs up an earlier study by Internet Evolution which also suggested that Deep Packet Inspection had a very difficult time to even be partially accurate without encryption (results with encryption were far worse). It just seems to be the same story though - the copyright industry wants mandatory filtering and many ISPs know that the system is not only flawed, but would increase bandwidth overhead as well. Still, this particular case may be the first. While some ISPs around the world are willing to publicly disagree with what needs to be done with the copyright industry, there hasn't been a known case where an ISP is willing to openly defy any laws, to be implemented or implemented, just to protect their customers. Clearly, this is a case worth following for now. |
 
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