“We reported last week on plans to enforce copyright law by forcing internet service providers to spy on consumers to detect and report every piece of copied music, movies, e-books, games and software.
Now one UK ISP, Virgin Media, is trialling some of the technology needed to do that on about 1.6 million of its customers.
Provided by Detica, a subsidiary of defence firm BAE Systems, the system is being used to try and gauge the size of the alleged piracy problem. CView, as the system is known, will take a snapshot of the scale of peer-to-peer music transfers over a few months.
It will do so by copying every packet of data that passes by, and looking for the digital signatures of data transferred using the popular bittorrent, gnutella, and edonkey file sharing protocols.
Whenever it finds a data packet that matches, it will extract the code these protocols use to identify the contents of the packet.
CView will then compare that code with a database of “musical fingerprints” to identify any music being shared, allowing it to work out if the data packet infringes copyright.
As a result, Virgin will find out how much file-sharing traffic is infringing copyright, and what the most-pirated tracks and albums are, the Register reports.”
Read more at New Scientist
Thing is, I don’t have a scooby what’s legal and what’s not anymore! If I search for it and it is there…
Was just a matter of time till they started doing this. Although, if it’s just for listening purposes and not selling pirated CD’s, why not just get Spotify? :l
I listen to lots of music online through a legitimate service. If their software is inaccurate, it could flag me as a pirate due to the media filenames, despite being innocent.
Additionally, it is possible to encrypt torrent connections making it extremely difficult to be caught.
Trust Virgin, to be the first on the bandwagon! Thats the problem with companies with too many business interests. Most other ISP providers are trying to reject these new plans. Disappointing!
nothings a secret any longer.
I left Virgin media because their service was so mind bogglingly appaling. However if I hadn’t, I would definately switch ISP’s because of this. You can only vote with your feet! If my current ISP follows suit I will definanetly leave them.
Wow, thats pretty invasive.
But its yet another expensive measure that won’t really deter anyone from doing anything. It might make people shift away from the traditional torrenting programs towards direct download sites.
But spying on, and alienating your consumers hasn’t worked in the past, and it won’t work now.
Will now be switching ISP’s in the meantime anyone downloading anything should install software called Peerguardian don’t know how effective it is but is supposed to stop just this type of snooping, it also lists who is trying to “look”, its amazing just how many organisations are snooping, its free as well
People actually use Virgin as an ISP o.0
I don’t feel so bad about being dumb enough to switch to BT now.
Well can’t say I’m surprised that it would be Virgin to get in there first, score a few points with the politicians by testing out the new software, which, I am convinced will not work correctly or accurately, and innocent people will end up being banned from the net because of the Digital Economy Bill.
Hopefully some of the big hitters such as Talk Talk will keep on fighting the good fight.
Will they be able to examine the packets if they are being transferred over a VPN tunnel? And what about people connecting to their banks over HTTPS? I’d expect and hope that in those cases Virgin wouldn’t be able to decode the packets, if they did then anybody doing home banking, or working remotely from their offices over a VPN will need to consider their choice of ISP.
What annoys me about these plans to monitor internet traffic, to record logs of emails, twttering, web searches etc, is that anyone who wants to hide their activities can do quite easily by using anonymous proxy servers, or systems like TOR and PSIPHON, it’s just ordinary people ho will get caught up in this.
But makes you wonder how many people will realise, if it becomes common knowledge then people will just leave Virgin Media. Or it could end up showing just how many people do do it. And the record industry will learn that there are just too many doing it to do anything about it.
I also note that the newspapers are reporting that a test of using intercepted communications in court cases has shown it to be unworkable, due to the requirement to keep evey single piece of evidence collected for scrutiny by the defense, and this was described as “unworkable” and “prohibitively expensive”, so it almost looks like a case of the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing. Joined-up government anyone?
Spying per se is dreadful and by its nature a gross invasion of privacy. However, let’s not lose sight of the fact that illegal downloading of music, games and movies etc. is just that. Illegal! I don’t know what the answer is, although I suspect that spying is not it as there are many ways to get around it if you know how, or to get caught up in error. No-one likes to pay for what they imagine they can get for free . . . but the fact remains that file sharing and illegal downloads are theft.
Despicable, unworkable and a ridiculous amount of effort to go to for the sake of those making big bucks from the entertainment industry.
There is only going to come alot of trouble from these kind of measurements….it´s like justifying spying on the entire nation because you cannot handle a percentage of them downloading and sharing….again this is the world upside down solution that will encourage same measurements and creations from tech-geeks….
The end of the wild west internet is over it seems.
Was only a matter of time before the Man started policing the last free place on Earth.
What is most worrying is that it is a sub-company of BAE systems doing the work! It’s BAE systems that design the vast majority of our military systems and hardware!
nobs.
@dez good point there, but then it leads to the possibility of the goverment then using information to spy on the people too. Big Brother will be truely watching everyone then.
@mmonyte I can’t see them going to all the trouble of trying to de-scramble any encrypted data that is sent through a vpn tunnel or if they are in anyway encrypted for that matter. Would cost them to much time & money and also be an infringement of the data protection act.
While it’s suitably disappointing that corporate power thinks nothing of spying on its own customers – and snitching on them, presumably, in due course – it’s also entirely futile. Righteous indignation has its place, surely, but it must take second-fiddle to steps that establish complete victory in the clash – if such steps are easily available.
Each and every one of our customers (full disclosure: I’m CTO of http://www.torrentfreedom.net) in the UK is entirely immune from this sort of nonsense. Time and money wasted trying to eavesdrop on their packets gains exactly zero value for the corporate snoops so eager to deploy each new version of snoopware on the market. Change the economics of snooping, by making it largely ineffective and worthless, and corporations won’t waste money on it in the future. Winning is good.
Fausty
u know that this wont stop it really, ppl find another way of doing it. its been around since the beginning of the internet (downloading illegal stuff, not torrents) and will be around for along time to come.
best thing is, they even tell ppl how they are trying to stop ppl, so you just know software geeks are already working on a a new way or a hack of some kind, so they can carry on downloading stuff free,
This is one of the reasons why people use anonymous proxies. With an encrypted secure tunnel, the ISP will not see the web traffic this cannot report it. An encrypted tunnel does what it sounds like it does. It drives a tunnel from the users PC to the proxy server this blocking the ISP’s ability to monitor the communications. Having said this, most proxy companies still need to keep logs just like ISP’s do. So it’s still possible to have law enforcement track you down.
@ jonbaxter….
switching from virgin to BT? makes you even dumber i\’m affraid. BT are much worse with users\’ data. thats why the EU are about to fine our government for letting BT wiretap 10,000 people. google \’PHORM\’ for more info. what is even more alarming it that our gov dont mind them doing it and have angered the EU as they dont like it.
to answer above:
its NOT illegal to download anything apart from child porn and nasty porn (snuff/abusive etc). downloading music is only illegal if you then SHARE it. the BBC doesnt help as it keeps banging on about downloading. its not illegal to download its just illegal to distribute it – hence dont share.
anyway – if you can afford it – buy it or rent it.