11 ms·

The Copyright Alert System: Moving to Implementation

41 points by kghose 14y ago

javajosh 14y ago
Actually, they need a law that requires immutable MAC addresses, routers that expose their NAT tables and MAC tables to "trusted third parties", and ISPs to expose their physical-address-to-IP tables. Altering a MAC address, possessing contraband "open" hardware, would be a criminal offense. Like a car at the DMV, computers would need to be registered and private party transfers would have to be registered. Possession of a device with either an unregistered MAC address or an address associated with someone else would be a serious crime. Let us hope that one day we get this, so that the MPAA and RIAA can be empowered to do the right thing and protect their copyright holders' rights.
- jiggy2011 14y ago
  Can you elaborate? I'm not sure what the point of such a law would be.
  - pmorici 14y ago
    The point would be so you could identify an individual computer and upon investigation tie it definitively to an owner. As it stands you can easily change a MAC address and the translation of private -> public IP address done by a NAT capable network device combines the traffic of multiple computers to look like it is a single one. This means you can only attribute file sharing activity to a public ip which in practice might have numerous clients behind it. Hence if there were a law like that and everyone obeyed it then you could generally identify the exact machine that did the file sharing.
    - jiggy2011 14y ago
      You will only usually only know the MAC address of the last hop since a new layer 2 frame is generated every time a packet hits a switch or router. For example if I watch the source MAC address of incoming HTTP requests to my server it always reports the MAC address as being the one for the router/firewall in front of the server even though the source IP addresses will vary. The only way I can think this would be possible to achieve would be to require a signed certificate and HMAC (message authentication code) from the the originating client to be sent with every IP packet and make sharing private keys a serious criminal offence. Even then it would probably be basically unenforceable on any kind of scale.
melvinng 14y ago
educate or brainwash? I'm pretty sure the general public already knows about it with SOPA and every ad before the start of the movie.
spindritf 14y ago
Also discussed here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4679150 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4679150
w1ntermute 14y ago
If they really start doing this, it's time to rent a seedbox. https://www.feralhosting.com/pricing https://www.feralhosting.com/pricing
- tux1968 14y ago
  Sure, but a slim fraction of people who currently download content with bittorrent will resort to this. This will dramatically decrease the number of seeders and thus reduce the effectiveness of torrents even for those willing to pay for a seedbox. In any case, it will increase the cost of downloading pirated content and make legal options more attractive. Once the vast majority of casual piracy is curtailed, more more focused enforcement against people on private trackers / seedbox providers etc can begin. Sure there will be loopholes and ways for determined pirates to slip through the cracks, but the days where everyone and their brother can grab pirated content without worry are numbered.
  - tomjen3 14y ago
    What legal options? Actually watching things on a physical tv?
    - tux1968 14y ago
      Sure, or Hulu or whatever. Remember this enforcement isn't world-wide, it's only in the USA for now. Yeah, this enforcement will likely expand beyond the US as they are pressing very hard in every trade negotiation. But legal options will expand over time as well.
      - doesnt_know 14y ago
        It's only a matter of time until the US media organizations starts putting political pressure on others to implement the same thing. The only difference is we have no legal way at all to obtain the content.
  - w1ntermute 14y ago
SoftwareMaven 14y ago
This really makes me want to upload all my (legally obtained) files to EC2 then download them. How could they ever tell whether the bits are licensed or not?
- icebraining 14y ago
  What makes you think they care?
- jiggy2011 14y ago
  "Over the course of the next two months, each participating ISP expects to begin rolling out its version of the CAS – a system through which ISPs will pass on to their subscribers notices sent by content owners alleging copyright infringement over peer-to-peer networks." They aren't looking at your traffic, they are waiting for complaints from third parties. Third parties do this by connecting to P2P networks themselves and watching the traffic of certain files.
hnolable 14y ago
http://lifehacker.com/5940565/why-you-should-start-using-a-vpn-and-how-to-choose-the-best-one-for-your-needs http://lifehacker.com/5940565/why-you-should-start-using-a-v... (why you should start using a vpn)
- vegardx 14y ago
  A VPN is not a solution, it bypasses the problem temporarily. A VPN provider is no different than any other ISP, they are subject to the same laws and regulations. And you really don't want to be surfing the web with an added 50-100ms latency just so you can pirate.
  - hnolable 14y ago
    This "educational" campaign isn't due to laws or regulations but to some corporate agreements. So VPN is a solution. Also some VPN providers provide SOCKS proxies as well so you can selectively proxy your traffic. Also 50-100ms is pretty ridiculous, most VPN providers will have a server within a few 10s of ms from you.
  - Quarrelsome 14y ago
    > they are subject to the same laws and regulations True, but the VPN provider doesn't need to be in a country that follows these laws. Russia and China spring to mind as long term solutions.
    - camus 14y ago
      Are you ready to give your credit card number to a service run by chinese or russians ? rememeber they dont follow US laws , wait til they screw you ...
      - gergles 14y ago
        Who cares? Your credit card company is American and as such you have all the American consumer protections on credit card purchases (which are actually very good.) If I gave my credit card number to someone and they decided to sell it for $20 to someone who runs up $10,000 worth of monkey porn on it, whatever, it's not my money they're spending. I'd call Amex and have a credit the same day.
jinx_xnij 14y ago
Seedbox in Europe, rented through a company in Canada, SFTP to me = awesome
- montecarl 14y ago
  Rsync would be better than SFTP, because you can start copying the file before it is done. I have large files copied to my laptop from my seedbox almost as soon as the download completes on the seedbox.
  - JonnieCache 14y ago
    How does that work with bittorrent's out of order downloading?
    - deleted 14y ago
      [deleted]
    - JeremyBanks 14y ago
      I haven't used a seedbox, but it seems like the best arrangement would be to download the files from your seedbox using BitTorrent over a VPN. Your local client would only accept local peers (which the seedbox would be, virtually), so you aren't compromising your security, but you get your files almost as fast as your seedbox. I'm pretty sure clients can be configured to make this work, but I haven't looked into the details.
    - wmf 14y ago
      Rsync sends only the changes, wherever they are in the file. So if you set up a "while 1 rsync remotefile localfile" kind of script it will converge on the correct version of the file with minimal overhead.
mgkimsal 14y ago
Are they only looking at P2P traffic? Can we start torrenting on port 80?
bo1024 14y ago
I still don't understand how this is legal. If you signed an agreement with your ISP for a certain speed of internet for a certain length of time, why can they just choose to violate the contract based on what some third party says? And if they write anything about illegal copyright violations into the contract, I would hope some people who use P2P legally would challenge that (see if they get throttled, file a lawsuit).
- noahc 14y ago
  This is legal because like most contracts you sign with service providers they read, "And subject to change at any time for any reason" or "We reserve the right to modify this contract at will". Increasingly, this will be built into new contracts. There are a lot of third party contracts signed in business where one party will take a particular action based on the needs/wants of a third party. Again, only if the ISP is notified does this come into effect. Download all the Ubuntu iso files you want via P2P you want and you'll be uneffected.
- benologist 14y ago
  ISPs have always had explicit policies about not using their service or facilities to break laws. Your agreement to pay $xx/month for some number of megabits does not and can not and has never superseded the law. ... (d) you (or a subaccount associated with your Member ID) engage in conduct that is a violation of any law, regulation or tariff (including, without limitation, copyright and intellectual property laws); ... http://www.att.com/shop/internet/att-internet-terms-of-service.html http://www.att.com/shop/internet/att-internet-terms-of-servi...
  - bo1024 14y ago
    Sure, but that doesn't (or shouldn't) mean that if I phone your ISP and tell them you broke the law, they can assume that's true and take action against you
    - benologist 14y ago
      1) bo1024 explicitly agrees neither he nor anybody else will use his internet account for illegal activities 2) an ip address is seen uploading or maybe even downloading the latest Bieber album 3) the ISP's logs show that ip address was assigned to bo1024's account Pretty much the only thing that can go wrong is that the company complaining does not have the authority to complain about that file and that's happened with automated DMCA notifications because they use some sort of dumb keyword monitors. They don't need to automate choosing which torrents to spy on, a single person lurking on TPB's top 100 movies and musics would cover the majority of people by far. Which route they go can make this all very accurate.
benologist 14y ago
Didn't we just have this discussion? Edit: apparently not, hours ago we discussed "Internet providers to begin warning customers who pirate content" which is of course, different. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4679150 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4679150
mistercow 14y ago
I can't help but notice that I am confused[1] by this six strikes deal. So they're going to invest millions of dollars in a system to monitor and notify ISPs for the purpose of... educating people about copyright? With no significant repercussions? And you can avoid those education steps by just not being with one of the top 6 ISPs? Doesn't add up. But if you read these articles, you'll notice that they sort of gloss over the fact that this appears to be a system for getting IP addresses of infringers to the copyright holders. Once they have that, we already know what they can do with it. The boilerplate suits stopped because they weren't economical, but who's to say that the big content owners haven't found a way to change that equation. MarkMonitor itself could even be that extra term. I think the six strikes education system is a smokescreen. We're being misdirected from a pretty scary fact: the MPAA, RIAA and major ISPs have apparently pooled their resources to create a monolithic peer-to-peer monitoring system. Then they've sent everyone who should be freaking out about that on a wild goose chase of speculating about how the "six strikes" are going to evolve into full-on censorship. But that's not where we need to be focusing our attention. We need to ask what else they can do with the data they collect from MarkMonitor. [1] http://lesswrong.com/lw/if/your_strength_as_a_rationalist/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/if/your_strength_as_a_rationalist/
- otakucode 14y ago
  I would not be too surprised if action were taken to create a new law which makes it illegal for content creators to sell content directly to consumers. Such laws already exist that prevent car manufacturers from selling directly to the public, and they exist for no reason other than to create an artificial market in which car dealerships can pretend to offer a valuable service. Content distributors are now in the same position. They need to have an artificial market constructed to make it look like they are doing something of value. Consider the viewpoint of a typical person in power today. They see these gigantic social institutions that provide a measurable portion of the nations GDP which might soon be torn apart and replaced by a decentralized, unorganized system with unknown economic value. Much of the history that they believe is worth knowing consists of the creation of massive centralized systems to aggregate supply and demand to solve the problem of distribution (both physical distribution of product and logistical distribution of work). To them, a move to a system where content creators distribute and sell directly to consumers is, at best, a horrifying step backwards. The first step to making sure content creators can't sell directly to consumers, of course, is to insert themselves in the new means of distribution in order to wedge the old distributors into some new place created for them.
tubbo 14y ago
Most of them already do, I think this is just a standardization of the method(s) used.

41 points by kghose 14y ago

Actually, they need a law that requires immutable MAC addresses, routers that expose their NAT tables and MAC tables to "trusted third parties", and ISPs to expose their physical-address-to-IP tables. Altering a MAC address, possessing contraband "open" hardware, would be a criminal offense. Like a car at the DMV, computers would need to be registered and private party transfers would have to be registered. Possession of a device with either an unregistered MAC address or an address associated with someone else would be a serious crime. Let us hope that one day we get this, so that the MPAA and RIAA can be empowered to do the right thing and protect their copyright holders' rights.

jiggy2011 14y ago
Can you elaborate? I'm not sure what the point of such a law would be.
- pmorici 14y ago
  The point would be so you could identify an individual computer and upon investigation tie it definitively to an owner. As it stands you can easily change a MAC address and the translation of private -> public IP address done by a NAT capable network device combines the traffic of multiple computers to look like it is a single one. This means you can only attribute file sharing activity to a public ip which in practice might have numerous clients behind it. Hence if there were a law like that and everyone obeyed it then you could generally identify the exact machine that did the file sharing.
  - jiggy2011 14y ago
    You will only usually only know the MAC address of the last hop since a new layer 2 frame is generated every time a packet hits a switch or router. For example if I watch the source MAC address of incoming HTTP requests to my server it always reports the MAC address as being the one for the router/firewall in front of the server even though the source IP addresses will vary. The only way I can think this would be possible to achieve would be to require a signed certificate and HMAC (message authentication code) from the the originating client to be sent with every IP packet and make sharing private keys a serious criminal offence. Even then it would probably be basically unenforceable on any kind of scale.

melvinng 14y ago

educate or brainwash? I'm pretty sure the general public already knows about it with SOPA and every ad before the start of the movie.

spindritf 14y ago

Also discussed here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4679150 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4679150

w1ntermute 14y ago

If they really start doing this, it's time to rent a seedbox. https://www.feralhosting.com/pricing https://www.feralhosting.com/pricing

tux1968 14y ago
Sure, but a slim fraction of people who currently download content with bittorrent will resort to this. This will dramatically decrease the number of seeders and thus reduce the effectiveness of torrents even for those willing to pay for a seedbox. In any case, it will increase the cost of downloading pirated content and make legal options more attractive. Once the vast majority of casual piracy is curtailed, more more focused enforcement against people on private trackers / seedbox providers etc can begin. Sure there will be loopholes and ways for determined pirates to slip through the cracks, but the days where everyone and their brother can grab pirated content without worry are numbered.
- tomjen3 14y ago
  What legal options? Actually watching things on a physical tv?
  - tux1968 14y ago
    Sure, or Hulu or whatever. Remember this enforcement isn't world-wide, it's only in the USA for now. Yeah, this enforcement will likely expand beyond the US as they are pressing very hard in every trade negotiation. But legal options will expand over time as well.
    - doesnt_know 14y ago
      It's only a matter of time until the US media organizations starts putting political pressure on others to implement the same thing. The only difference is we have no legal way at all to obtain the content.
- w1ntermute 14y ago

SoftwareMaven 14y ago

This really makes me want to upload all my (legally obtained) files to EC2 then download them. How could they ever tell whether the bits are licensed or not?

icebraining 14y ago
What makes you think they care?
jiggy2011 14y ago
"Over the course of the next two months, each participating ISP expects to begin rolling out its version of the CAS – a system through which ISPs will pass on to their subscribers notices sent by content owners alleging copyright infringement over peer-to-peer networks." They aren't looking at your traffic, they are waiting for complaints from third parties. Third parties do this by connecting to P2P networks themselves and watching the traffic of certain files.

hnolable 14y ago

http://lifehacker.com/5940565/why-you-should-start-using-a-vpn-and-how-to-choose-the-best-one-for-your-needs http://lifehacker.com/5940565/why-you-should-start-using-a-v... (why you should start using a vpn)

vegardx 14y ago
A VPN is not a solution, it bypasses the problem temporarily. A VPN provider is no different than any other ISP, they are subject to the same laws and regulations. And you really don't want to be surfing the web with an added 50-100ms latency just so you can pirate.
- hnolable 14y ago
  This "educational" campaign isn't due to laws or regulations but to some corporate agreements. So VPN is a solution. Also some VPN providers provide SOCKS proxies as well so you can selectively proxy your traffic. Also 50-100ms is pretty ridiculous, most VPN providers will have a server within a few 10s of ms from you.
- Quarrelsome 14y ago
  > they are subject to the same laws and regulations True, but the VPN provider doesn't need to be in a country that follows these laws. Russia and China spring to mind as long term solutions.
  - camus 14y ago
    Are you ready to give your credit card number to a service run by chinese or russians ? rememeber they dont follow US laws , wait til they screw you ...
    - gergles 14y ago
      Who cares? Your credit card company is American and as such you have all the American consumer protections on credit card purchases (which are actually very good.) If I gave my credit card number to someone and they decided to sell it for $20 to someone who runs up $10,000 worth of monkey porn on it, whatever, it's not my money they're spending. I'd call Amex and have a credit the same day.

jinx_xnij 14y ago

Seedbox in Europe, rented through a company in Canada, SFTP to me = awesome

montecarl 14y ago
Rsync would be better than SFTP, because you can start copying the file before it is done. I have large files copied to my laptop from my seedbox almost as soon as the download completes on the seedbox.
- JonnieCache 14y ago
  How does that work with bittorrent's out of order downloading?
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
  - JeremyBanks 14y ago
    I haven't used a seedbox, but it seems like the best arrangement would be to download the files from your seedbox using BitTorrent over a VPN. Your local client would only accept local peers (which the seedbox would be, virtually), so you aren't compromising your security, but you get your files almost as fast as your seedbox. I'm pretty sure clients can be configured to make this work, but I haven't looked into the details.
  - wmf 14y ago
    Rsync sends only the changes, wherever they are in the file. So if you set up a "while 1 rsync remotefile localfile" kind of script it will converge on the correct version of the file with minimal overhead.

mgkimsal 14y ago

Are they only looking at P2P traffic? Can we start torrenting on port 80?

bo1024 14y ago

I still don't understand how this is legal. If you signed an agreement with your ISP for a certain speed of internet for a certain length of time, why can they just choose to violate the contract based on what some third party says? And if they write anything about illegal copyright violations into the contract, I would hope some people who use P2P legally would challenge that (see if they get throttled, file a lawsuit).

noahc 14y ago
This is legal because like most contracts you sign with service providers they read, "And subject to change at any time for any reason" or "We reserve the right to modify this contract at will". Increasingly, this will be built into new contracts. There are a lot of third party contracts signed in business where one party will take a particular action based on the needs/wants of a third party. Again, only if the ISP is notified does this come into effect. Download all the Ubuntu iso files you want via P2P you want and you'll be uneffected.
benologist 14y ago
ISPs have always had explicit policies about not using their service or facilities to break laws. Your agreement to pay $xx/month for some number of megabits does not and can not and has never superseded the law. ... (d) you (or a subaccount associated with your Member ID) engage in conduct that is a violation of any law, regulation or tariff (including, without limitation, copyright and intellectual property laws); ... http://www.att.com/shop/internet/att-internet-terms-of-service.html http://www.att.com/shop/internet/att-internet-terms-of-servi...
- bo1024 14y ago
  Sure, but that doesn't (or shouldn't) mean that if I phone your ISP and tell them you broke the law, they can assume that's true and take action against you
  - benologist 14y ago
    1) bo1024 explicitly agrees neither he nor anybody else will use his internet account for illegal activities 2) an ip address is seen uploading or maybe even downloading the latest Bieber album 3) the ISP's logs show that ip address was assigned to bo1024's account Pretty much the only thing that can go wrong is that the company complaining does not have the authority to complain about that file and that's happened with automated DMCA notifications because they use some sort of dumb keyword monitors. They don't need to automate choosing which torrents to spy on, a single person lurking on TPB's top 100 movies and musics would cover the majority of people by far. Which route they go can make this all very accurate.

benologist 14y ago

Didn't we just have this discussion? Edit: apparently not, hours ago we discussed "Internet providers to begin warning customers who pirate content" which is of course, different. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4679150 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4679150

mistercow 14y ago

I can't help but notice that I am confused[1] by this six strikes deal. So they're going to invest millions of dollars in a system to monitor and notify ISPs for the purpose of... educating people about copyright? With no significant repercussions? And you can avoid those education steps by just not being with one of the top 6 ISPs? Doesn't add up. But if you read these articles, you'll notice that they sort of gloss over the fact that this appears to be a system for getting IP addresses of infringers to the copyright holders. Once they have that, we already know what they can do with it. The boilerplate suits stopped because they weren't economical, but who's to say that the big content owners haven't found a way to change that equation. MarkMonitor itself could even be that extra term. I think the six strikes education system is a smokescreen. We're being misdirected from a pretty scary fact: the MPAA, RIAA and major ISPs have apparently pooled their resources to create a monolithic peer-to-peer monitoring system. Then they've sent everyone who should be freaking out about that on a wild goose chase of speculating about how the "six strikes" are going to evolve into full-on censorship. But that's not where we need to be focusing our attention. We need to ask what else they can do with the data they collect from MarkMonitor. [1] http://lesswrong.com/lw/if/your_strength_as_a_rationalist/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/if/your_strength_as_a_rationalist/

otakucode 14y ago
I would not be too surprised if action were taken to create a new law which makes it illegal for content creators to sell content directly to consumers. Such laws already exist that prevent car manufacturers from selling directly to the public, and they exist for no reason other than to create an artificial market in which car dealerships can pretend to offer a valuable service. Content distributors are now in the same position. They need to have an artificial market constructed to make it look like they are doing something of value. Consider the viewpoint of a typical person in power today. They see these gigantic social institutions that provide a measurable portion of the nations GDP which might soon be torn apart and replaced by a decentralized, unorganized system with unknown economic value. Much of the history that they believe is worth knowing consists of the creation of massive centralized systems to aggregate supply and demand to solve the problem of distribution (both physical distribution of product and logistical distribution of work). To them, a move to a system where content creators distribute and sell directly to consumers is, at best, a horrifying step backwards. The first step to making sure content creators can't sell directly to consumers, of course, is to insert themselves in the new means of distribution in order to wedge the old distributors into some new place created for them.

tubbo 14y ago

Most of them already do, I think this is just a standardization of the method(s) used.