6 ms·

How ISPs will do “six strikes”: throttled speeds, blocked sites

38 points by iProject 14y ago

sukuriant 14y ago
Did I read this article correctly? "First comes the "notice" phase, which simply involves letting users know they've been tracked on copyright-infringing sites." So, if I wander over to the Pirate Bay or any other site like it, even just for research, I'm in trouble without downloading anything? ... why? they might have the best torrent for a [completely legally acquired game] mod.
tomjen3 14y ago
Love the term 'casual pirates'. I very much doubt that once anybody has gotten used to being able to download whatever they want that they are going to do it only once in a blue moon. In reality there may not be enough time for the ISPs to respond to each act of piracy before a new one is commited. And in the end, all they will do is force the pirates down into the darker corners of the internet. A good thing for freenet (better that people trade the latest Game Of Thrones episode than the latest 40 year old rapes children and films it for your enjoyment), but a bad thing for the internet, and society at large.
- gtCameron 14y ago
  I am a casual pirate. The last time I pirated stuff was torrenting some HBO shows, which promptly got me an email from my ISP. At that point I could have done one of two things 1) Start spending $10 a month or so on an SSL Usenet provider, a VPN, or any of the other various tools that would allow me to keep pirating without getting caught 2) Start spending $10 a month or so on HBO, and watch it from the comfort of my couch on my flat screen without messing around with any of that stuff. There are always going to be ways around whatever system they put in place, but the more obstacles they put in the way the more people will decide its no longer worth the effort.
  - dkl 14y ago
    You can spend $10 to get HBO because you have cable. For those of us that don't, HBO Go is not an option.
    - georgemcbay 14y ago
      This is correct. HBO doesn't cost $10, it costs more like $80. Sure, you get a lot more than HBO for the $80 but there is no way to get HBO alone unbundled.
    - gtCameron 14y ago
      That's why I'm a casual pirate. I'm not arguing that it works for everyone, I'm saying that they do exist. I have cable because I watch a lot of sports, as soon ESPN lets me pay for streaming without a cable subscription I will drop it, but unfortunately live sports is the one thing than can not be pirated easily, consistently, and in high quality.
  - mullingitover 14y ago
    >Start spending $10 a month or so on HBO You can't spend that $10 marginal price for HBO without spending a bunch more money on stuff you will never watch. For example, even if you never watch sports you're pretty much forced to get a cable package with ESPN included, which is a sizable chunk of your subscription cost. I'd like to see cable companies offer ala carte channel choices, or even better, offer usage-based billing like they do for their data packages. Until that day, many people are going to take the free option instead.
  - chimeracoder 14y ago
    > There are always going to be ways around whatever system they put in place, but the more obstacles they put in the way the more people will decide its no longer worth the effort. The problem is that there are more obstacles in the way of legal consumption. You can fix that by putting up artificial obstacles to illegal consumption, or by simply removing the obstacles to the legal consumption which most "pirates" would prefer to use. Guess which path they've chosen.
- incision 14y ago
  >I very much doubt that once anybody has gotten used to being able to download whatever they want that they are going to do it only once in a blue moon. I have to think hard to recall the last time I pirated anything, three or four years at least and it was probably eight-plus years ago that I did it with any regularity. Netflix, Steam, Amazon, O'Reilly Safari and a world of excellent OSS provide me with more fairly priced / free content, education and tools than I have time.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
shepbook 14y ago
This is going to be a significant boon for VPN providers. Good job...
jessedhillon 14y ago
For the Bay Area, here's an ISP that knows what its job is (and what it isn't): http://www.sonic.net/ http://www.sonic.net/
- jedberg 14y ago
  I would give them lots of money if they would offer service in my area. :( I loved them when I used them in SF.
  - wpietri 14y ago
    Not your fault, of course, but it kills me that consumers in most areas in the US let the ISP market die. The monopoly players gave great intro prices and they all jumped ship. For years, I've paid Speakeasy and Sonic more than I could have paid to a phone or cable incumbent. And I've been happy to do it, because when something goes wrong I get to talk to actual smart people who want to fix things. I'm also sad that our competition regulators allowed this to happen. A pseudo-choice between two basically equivalent options isn't enough for the magic of the free market to work.
    - chimeracoder 14y ago
      > Not your fault, of course, but it kills me that consumers in most areas in the US let the ISP market die. The monopoly players gave great intro prices and they all jumped ship. It's not just that - we subsidized the construction of the Internet channels with our tax dollars, and then the government essentially handed over the control of those to the private companies, who now claim that they can charge whatever they want for access to "their" lines. Consumers may have played a role, but at the end of the day, it's the government (the constituents)[1] who have sanctioned the existing monopolies. > I'm also sad that our competition regulators allowed this to happen. A pseudo-choice between two basically equivalent options isn't enough for the magic of the free market to work. Choice? 80% of consumers have zero choice in their ISP. For me, the only alternative is 'no Internet'. [1] Obviously consumers == constituents for the most part, but I make the distinction to draw attention to the fact that they would need to act in their role as voters/citizens, not as consumers, if they want to change anything.
mandlar 14y ago
Hello http://whatbox.ca http://whatbox.ca! People will just move to using seedboxes or VPNs because of this.
- andyana 14y ago
  While it looks interesting, I have no idea that they do, and their website does not answer that question. Can you explain?
  - mandlar 14y ago
    You rent a server in another country (such as Netherlands) that does the torrenting for you. You then SFTP to your seedbox and download your torrent files from there. All your ISP can see is that you are downloading a lot of bytes, not what the bytes actually are since it is over SFTP.
    - chimeracoder 14y ago
      They can see who you're connecting to, correct? The problem is if they can tell that you're connecting to an IP that they know belongs to a seedbox used for torrenting copyrighted content. It's guilt-by-association, but far more draconian, 1984-esque things have already occurred in this debacle, so it wouldn't surprise me.
      - mandlar 14y ago
        Sure, but it's not illegal to own a seedbox or private server... For all they know, you're seeding/downloading legal torrents.
      - wmf 14y ago
        MarkMonitor can only see if you're connecting to them (e.g. via BitTorrent). They don't see any of your other traffic.
- wpietri 14y ago
  Some will. But that's advanced enough that most people just won't bother. Most people pirate stuff because it's easy. If it's not easy, they'll just shift to paying for things. Me, I would just have made purchasing of content much easier, but I suppose if you're in Hollywood it somehow seems sensible to just make everything in the world harder instead.
Roboprog 14y ago
I'm more concerned with what the triggers will be. Are they actually tracking the content of URL's (only)? Are they looking for any traffic on the same port as BitTorrent? Are they simply looking for a significant amount of traffic outbound from your home connection??? (good-bye, working from home???) For a $35 dollar appeal fee, it might indeed be time to look at other providers if this happened very often.
- pavel_lishin 14y ago
  > good-bye, working from home Good-bye making back-ups from home. > For a $35 dollar appeal fee, it might indeed be time to look at other providers if this happened very often. That would be great, if there were any in my area.
- wmf 14y ago
  http://www.copyrightinformation.org/sites/default/files/Independent%20Expert%20Assessment.Content.CCI_.Redacted.pdf http://www.copyrightinformation.org/sites/default/files/Inde... Basically DtecNet/MarkMonitor is participating in a lot of BitTorrent swarms and recording IP addresses of peers.
  - dkl 14y ago
    The $64,000 question: how many private trackers have been infiltrated by these watchers? I turned off the cable 2+ yrs ago and have been torrenting tv shows since then (no movies or music). When I get my first notice, I'll be getting a seed box ($15/mo for a decent one). EDIT: I would happily stop torrenting and pay $20-30 for the few shows I watch. If, say, all of them were on a Hulu-like service, I'd definitely go that route.
    - calinet6 14y ago
      There are certain services that accomplish what you want at a much much better quality level, cost $10-12 per month and offer full SSL connections, but I'm not allowed to tell you about them.
mortenjorck 14y ago
"Hoewing said his company's customers will experience this as a pop-up window." Presumably by injecting Javascript into customer web traffic? I don't torrent copyrighted material, but I was hoping we were done with ISPs screwing with HTTP after the ad replacement scandals of a few years ago.
- calinet6 14y ago
  Probably a DNS redirect, until they acknowledge it. Similar to how pay or free Wi-Fi hotspot agreements work.
  - mortenjorck 14y ago
    Ok, I actually like that a lot more. I could see it being characterized as a "pop-up" by less technical speakers. If an ISP is going to communicate with me outside the usual channels, I'd much rather they do it at a DNS level, where it's obvious something's happening, than at an HTTP level where there's a much greater temptation for mischief.
    - calinet6 14y ago
      Plus you can just ignore their DNS server, and use 8.8.8.8/8.8.4.4 (google's) or OpenDNS instead. (though that may not work if they cut off your connection until you acknowledge)
      - chimeracoder 14y ago
        > Plus you can just ignore their DNS server, and use 8.8.8.8/8.8.4.4 (google's) or OpenDNS instead. Or just hardcode the values into /etc/hosts. > though that may not work if they cut off your connection until you acknowledge Oh, so they can threaten to renege on their end of the contract (the service I have already paid for) unless I admit to their accusations of potentially incriminating activity? That's just ridiculous[1]. [1] But I still wouldn't put it past them!
  - tomjen3 14y ago
acuozzo 14y ago
Well, it looks like premium Usenet + SSL is still the way to go.
_pferreir_ 14y ago
I like how they immediately assume that since everyone infringes copyright, everyone needs to be re-educated. Such an easy solution! It also tells us a lot about the people behind this whole thing.
- tomjen3 14y ago
  Yep, they really think we are stupid and we think they are really stupid. So the question is, who is right?
revelation 14y ago
There seems to be a regulatory black hole here. Government quickly needs to lay some ground rules.
- wmf 14y ago
  I think this is a case where an industry has chosen self-regulation to avoid government regulation that they may not be able to control.
diggan 14y ago
"the vast majority of the people for whom trading in copyrighted material has become a social norm, over many years." Haven't it become the social norm because it's the easiest way?
- chimeracoder 14y ago
  > Haven't it become the social norm because it's the easiest way? No, it's because it's become the only way.
davedx 14y ago
"Time Warner" - I didn't know they were an ISP too in the States. Such a massive conflict of interest.
- 18pfsmt 14y ago
  You should note that there are actually two separate companies: Time Warner Inc (TWX), and Time Warner Cable (TWC).
- chimeracoder 14y ago
  Did you miss the whole Comcast lawsuit/controversy? Throttling access to your competitors (Netflix) artificially to make your own product seem more attractive by comparison - does that qualify as 'bundling'?

38 points by iProject 14y ago

Did I read this article correctly? "First comes the "notice" phase, which simply involves letting users know they've been tracked on copyright-infringing sites." So, if I wander over to the Pirate Bay or any other site like it, even just for research, I'm in trouble without downloading anything? ... why? they might have the best torrent for a [completely legally acquired game] mod.

tomjen3 14y ago

Love the term 'casual pirates'. I very much doubt that once anybody has gotten used to being able to download whatever they want that they are going to do it only once in a blue moon. In reality there may not be enough time for the ISPs to respond to each act of piracy before a new one is commited. And in the end, all they will do is force the pirates down into the darker corners of the internet. A good thing for freenet (better that people trade the latest Game Of Thrones episode than the latest 40 year old rapes children and films it for your enjoyment), but a bad thing for the internet, and society at large.

gtCameron 14y ago
I am a casual pirate. The last time I pirated stuff was torrenting some HBO shows, which promptly got me an email from my ISP. At that point I could have done one of two things 1) Start spending $10 a month or so on an SSL Usenet provider, a VPN, or any of the other various tools that would allow me to keep pirating without getting caught 2) Start spending $10 a month or so on HBO, and watch it from the comfort of my couch on my flat screen without messing around with any of that stuff. There are always going to be ways around whatever system they put in place, but the more obstacles they put in the way the more people will decide its no longer worth the effort.
- dkl 14y ago
  You can spend $10 to get HBO because you have cable. For those of us that don't, HBO Go is not an option.
  - georgemcbay 14y ago
    This is correct. HBO doesn't cost $10, it costs more like $80. Sure, you get a lot more than HBO for the $80 but there is no way to get HBO alone unbundled.
  - gtCameron 14y ago
    That's why I'm a casual pirate. I'm not arguing that it works for everyone, I'm saying that they do exist. I have cable because I watch a lot of sports, as soon ESPN lets me pay for streaming without a cable subscription I will drop it, but unfortunately live sports is the one thing than can not be pirated easily, consistently, and in high quality.
- mullingitover 14y ago
  >Start spending $10 a month or so on HBO You can't spend that $10 marginal price for HBO without spending a bunch more money on stuff you will never watch. For example, even if you never watch sports you're pretty much forced to get a cable package with ESPN included, which is a sizable chunk of your subscription cost. I'd like to see cable companies offer ala carte channel choices, or even better, offer usage-based billing like they do for their data packages. Until that day, many people are going to take the free option instead.
- chimeracoder 14y ago
  > There are always going to be ways around whatever system they put in place, but the more obstacles they put in the way the more people will decide its no longer worth the effort. The problem is that there are more obstacles in the way of legal consumption. You can fix that by putting up artificial obstacles to illegal consumption, or by simply removing the obstacles to the legal consumption which most "pirates" would prefer to use. Guess which path they've chosen.
incision 14y ago
>I very much doubt that once anybody has gotten used to being able to download whatever they want that they are going to do it only once in a blue moon. I have to think hard to recall the last time I pirated anything, three or four years at least and it was probably eight-plus years ago that I did it with any regularity. Netflix, Steam, Amazon, O'Reilly Safari and a world of excellent OSS provide me with more fairly priced / free content, education and tools than I have time.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

shepbook 14y ago

This is going to be a significant boon for VPN providers. Good job...

jessedhillon 14y ago

For the Bay Area, here's an ISP that knows what its job is (and what it isn't): http://www.sonic.net/ http://www.sonic.net/

jedberg 14y ago
I would give them lots of money if they would offer service in my area. :( I loved them when I used them in SF.
- wpietri 14y ago
  Not your fault, of course, but it kills me that consumers in most areas in the US let the ISP market die. The monopoly players gave great intro prices and they all jumped ship. For years, I've paid Speakeasy and Sonic more than I could have paid to a phone or cable incumbent. And I've been happy to do it, because when something goes wrong I get to talk to actual smart people who want to fix things. I'm also sad that our competition regulators allowed this to happen. A pseudo-choice between two basically equivalent options isn't enough for the magic of the free market to work.
  - chimeracoder 14y ago
    > Not your fault, of course, but it kills me that consumers in most areas in the US let the ISP market die. The monopoly players gave great intro prices and they all jumped ship. It's not just that - we subsidized the construction of the Internet channels with our tax dollars, and then the government essentially handed over the control of those to the private companies, who now claim that they can charge whatever they want for access to "their" lines. Consumers may have played a role, but at the end of the day, it's the government (the constituents)[1] who have sanctioned the existing monopolies. > I'm also sad that our competition regulators allowed this to happen. A pseudo-choice between two basically equivalent options isn't enough for the magic of the free market to work. Choice? 80% of consumers have zero choice in their ISP. For me, the only alternative is 'no Internet'. [1] Obviously consumers == constituents for the most part, but I make the distinction to draw attention to the fact that they would need to act in their role as voters/citizens, not as consumers, if they want to change anything.

mandlar 14y ago

Hello http://whatbox.ca http://whatbox.ca! People will just move to using seedboxes or VPNs because of this.

andyana 14y ago
While it looks interesting, I have no idea that they do, and their website does not answer that question. Can you explain?
- mandlar 14y ago
  You rent a server in another country (such as Netherlands) that does the torrenting for you. You then SFTP to your seedbox and download your torrent files from there. All your ISP can see is that you are downloading a lot of bytes, not what the bytes actually are since it is over SFTP.
  - chimeracoder 14y ago
    They can see who you're connecting to, correct? The problem is if they can tell that you're connecting to an IP that they know belongs to a seedbox used for torrenting copyrighted content. It's guilt-by-association, but far more draconian, 1984-esque things have already occurred in this debacle, so it wouldn't surprise me.
    - mandlar 14y ago
      Sure, but it's not illegal to own a seedbox or private server... For all they know, you're seeding/downloading legal torrents.
    - wmf 14y ago
      MarkMonitor can only see if you're connecting to them (e.g. via BitTorrent). They don't see any of your other traffic.
wpietri 14y ago
Some will. But that's advanced enough that most people just won't bother. Most people pirate stuff because it's easy. If it's not easy, they'll just shift to paying for things. Me, I would just have made purchasing of content much easier, but I suppose if you're in Hollywood it somehow seems sensible to just make everything in the world harder instead.

Roboprog 14y ago

I'm more concerned with what the triggers will be. Are they actually tracking the content of URL's (only)? Are they looking for any traffic on the same port as BitTorrent? Are they simply looking for a significant amount of traffic outbound from your home connection??? (good-bye, working from home???) For a $35 dollar appeal fee, it might indeed be time to look at other providers if this happened very often.

pavel_lishin 14y ago
> good-bye, working from home Good-bye making back-ups from home. > For a $35 dollar appeal fee, it might indeed be time to look at other providers if this happened very often. That would be great, if there were any in my area.
wmf 14y ago
http://www.copyrightinformation.org/sites/default/files/Independent%20Expert%20Assessment.Content.CCI_.Redacted.pdf http://www.copyrightinformation.org/sites/default/files/Inde... Basically DtecNet/MarkMonitor is participating in a lot of BitTorrent swarms and recording IP addresses of peers.
- dkl 14y ago
  The $64,000 question: how many private trackers have been infiltrated by these watchers? I turned off the cable 2+ yrs ago and have been torrenting tv shows since then (no movies or music). When I get my first notice, I'll be getting a seed box ($15/mo for a decent one). EDIT: I would happily stop torrenting and pay $20-30 for the few shows I watch. If, say, all of them were on a Hulu-like service, I'd definitely go that route.
  - calinet6 14y ago
    There are certain services that accomplish what you want at a much much better quality level, cost $10-12 per month and offer full SSL connections, but I'm not allowed to tell you about them.

mortenjorck 14y ago

"Hoewing said his company's customers will experience this as a pop-up window." Presumably by injecting Javascript into customer web traffic? I don't torrent copyrighted material, but I was hoping we were done with ISPs screwing with HTTP after the ad replacement scandals of a few years ago.

calinet6 14y ago
Probably a DNS redirect, until they acknowledge it. Similar to how pay or free Wi-Fi hotspot agreements work.
- mortenjorck 14y ago
  Ok, I actually like that a lot more. I could see it being characterized as a "pop-up" by less technical speakers. If an ISP is going to communicate with me outside the usual channels, I'd much rather they do it at a DNS level, where it's obvious something's happening, than at an HTTP level where there's a much greater temptation for mischief.
  - calinet6 14y ago
    Plus you can just ignore their DNS server, and use 8.8.8.8/8.8.4.4 (google's) or OpenDNS instead. (though that may not work if they cut off your connection until you acknowledge)
    - chimeracoder 14y ago
      > Plus you can just ignore their DNS server, and use 8.8.8.8/8.8.4.4 (google's) or OpenDNS instead. Or just hardcode the values into /etc/hosts. > though that may not work if they cut off your connection until you acknowledge Oh, so they can threaten to renege on their end of the contract (the service I have already paid for) unless I admit to their accusations of potentially incriminating activity? That's just ridiculous[1]. [1] But I still wouldn't put it past them!
- tomjen3 14y ago

acuozzo 14y ago

Well, it looks like premium Usenet + SSL is still the way to go.

_pferreir_ 14y ago

I like how they immediately assume that since everyone infringes copyright, everyone needs to be re-educated. Such an easy solution! It also tells us a lot about the people behind this whole thing.

tomjen3 14y ago
Yep, they really think we are stupid and we think they are really stupid. So the question is, who is right?

revelation 14y ago

There seems to be a regulatory black hole here. Government quickly needs to lay some ground rules.

wmf 14y ago
I think this is a case where an industry has chosen self-regulation to avoid government regulation that they may not be able to control.

diggan 14y ago

"the vast majority of the people for whom trading in copyrighted material has become a social norm, over many years." Haven't it become the social norm because it's the easiest way?

chimeracoder 14y ago
> Haven't it become the social norm because it's the easiest way? No, it's because it's become the only way.

davedx 14y ago

"Time Warner" - I didn't know they were an ISP too in the States. Such a massive conflict of interest.

18pfsmt 14y ago
You should note that there are actually two separate companies: Time Warner Inc (TWX), and Time Warner Cable (TWC).
chimeracoder 14y ago
Did you miss the whole Comcast lawsuit/controversy? Throttling access to your competitors (Netflix) artificially to make your own product seem more attractive by comparison - does that qualify as 'bundling'?