IFPI: ISPs Should Block BitTorrent and The Pirate Bay
Written by Ernesto on December 26, 2007The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) is trying to convince European lawmakers that ISPs should take extreme measures to fight piracy. They suggest that ISPs should block access to websites such as The Pirate Bay, and block filesharing protocols, no matter what they’re being used for.
The IFPI - the anti-piracy organization that represents the recording industry worldwide - sees ISPs as one of their biggest enemies. “ISPs often advertise music as a benefit of signing up to their service, but facilitate the illegal swapping of copyright infringing music on a grand scale,” they said previously. In an attempt to restrict the Internet, the anti-pirates have sent a list of three absurd recommendations to the EU parliament.
Earlier this year the IFPI won a case against the Belgian ISP Scarlet. In this case the judge ruled that ISPs can be forced to either block or filter copyright infringing content on P2P networks. At the time, IFPI Chairman and CEO John Kennedy said: “This is a decision that we hope will set the mould for government policy and for courts in other countries in Europe and around the world.” That’s exactly what they are trying to do now.
None of the measures below are overly burdensome or expensive, or cause problems for regular services to customers, says the IFPI. Here’s what they recommend:
Content filtering
The IFPI suggests that ISPs should identify music files on their network and check them against a reference database of “audio fingerprints” to check whether the files are infringing copyright. This might work on Kazaa, but it is not clear what methods the ISP will have to implement to distinguish between copyright infringing and legal content on P2P networks, such as BitTorrent. That will be a tough job, if not, impossible.
Protocol Blocking
According to the IFPI, an easy but effective solution is to simply block all P2P protocols and forget about all the indie publishers that use it to share legal content, for free. If customers can’t use BitTorrent or any other filesharing protocol piracy will decline, and that’s basically all they care about.
Blocking access to infringing websites
What better way to censor the Internet than to block entire websites, especially The Pirate Bay. The IFPI tried to block websites before - last year they convinced a Swedish ISP (Perspectiv) that it was a good idea to block allofmp3. However, after The Pirate Bay decided to block all Perspectiv’s customers from its site, they backed down, re-enabled access to allofmp3 - and apologized.
These recommendations might seem absurd, but Heise.de reports that the IFPI has already convinced several European politicians to support these measures. Next month, The Committee on Culture and Education from the European parliament will discuss if these recommendations should be turned into European policy.
There is little doubt that it will cause quite a stir if they are.
(via P2P Blog)
Previously: Christmas Brings Freedom and Hope for Jailed BitTorrent Admin
Next: Movie Industry: DRM Is For Customers, Not For Members
143 Responses (Add yours or TrackBack)
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There’s no denying that this will hurt all downloaders big time. At least, initially.
However, it will only speed up the process of creating a new protocol which is already in the works.
Then the IFPI will be in a hole again. It’s just a game of cat and mouse, as is everything else.
[quote comment="248739"]Christmas is a hoax
Holiday are made by these so called
lawmakers so that we spend money on useless stuff
Great for big business[/quote]
No…gift giving is made up by these guys. Religiously Christmas is the celebration of Christ’s birth…hens CHRISTmas…..
You sir, need to work on your knowledge and quit being ignorant.
If your beliefs are as such you stated them, DON’T BUY PRESENTS FOR PEOPLE. And, don’t accept them…but I’m sure that’s not how you chose to roll.
As for the IFPI…calm down people, they will get their just deserts in due time…
Lawyers & politicians got screwed up by money! Dope smoking gay shitheads get all killed! Healthy humans do not need corruption all the way!
Greedy bitches with money, hopefully soon they will run out of them and bend over like they should.
The trend is scary though.
you close bittorrent something else will open they will never learn?
Everyone download twice as much as usual and spread the word of p2p.
Fuck the goverment and the laws and fuck those companies.
Freedom, sharing is caring
their usual rant
aaah digial socialism has big business shaking at the knees…
now that oil is drying up and solar energy a viable candidate for free energy people should wake up from the dream of so called capitalism.
All this faffing about with ineffective laws regarding profits that haven’t even been certifiably lost makes me want to cry. Sigh. It just sucks that the majority of legislastors in the world today are too old to understand just how the internet and a given peer-to-peer model actually works.
As opposed to the OTHER usual rant: Waah the IP that we ganked by way of a contract that we gained by collusion and monopoly is getting violated! Think of the artists and their pennies per purchase! Just look the other way while we pocket $10 or more per disc! Something MUST be done!
I think our rant’s a bit more justifiable.
Ways to fix this:
1 - Elect people that don’t compromise our individual rights for corporate interests.
2 - If you’re starting a band, go indie. You’re not going to get a lot of publicity for the money you’ll lose on your CDs.
3 - Rip your CDs and send the plastic back to IFPI/RIAA/local equivelency. Maybe there’s a day we could all flood them with useless plastic to remind them of who pays for those big fancy buildings.
they are more sick then my grandmother with cancer in her head!
Sick fuckers they are….
but we soon need to stop them.
I think that IFPI should consider killing people who use internet. It’s logical from their perspective.
What bullshit. Ban this, ban that. Fuck them ..
Try it, just try it, and feel the wrath of the public.
So when everyone goes back to FTP to FTP (with random ports) transfers will they block those?
Just ban the Internet then. If they’re gonna carry on like a bunch of school kids, just take the whole internet appart.
@20
Yes, we are indeed getting monitored, BUT it is an anti-terror act, which means the local Anti Pirate Group can’t use this, for now.
They will also need a court order just to get the billing information from the ISP.
But the whole “logging act”, is primarily anti-terror, but who knows what they’ll come up with…
But as it is now, the Anti Pirates haven’t got much to say :)
The last thing we heard from them, was a statement that they had sent out, around 200 compensations demands, but it was only to people using DC++, Gnutella and a few unsing BitTorrent :)
We out number these people 10 billion to 1, so now why are they still alive?
21st century revolt is not going to be on the govement, there will be no pitchforks and torches at the gates of castles, no, its going to be against these people
I don’t see this as a bad thing. I see this as an opportunity.
Necessity is the mother of invention.
BitTorrent is old, and has many flaws. And if ISP’s block it, people from all around the world will work together to build a new protocol. One that won’t be easily detected, one that is greatly encrypted, one that is secure and undetectable in so many ways. Everyone’s already thinking it, wishing it, and some are developing it. This action by ISP’s will only put the screws to the developers, speeding it’s development. And with BitTorrent completely useless, widespread adoption will be much quicker than it would have been it was released while BitTorrent was still working.
I sincerely hope they do block BitTorrent.
if they block BitTorrent globally, this can open a way to they block everything more…
Sweden rocks, pirate bay rocks. fuck IFPI (what ever) and let us all download as much as we can. in sweden we get über connections for a low cost, and the big ISPs earns alot of money. in the city every1 has 100 megabits both up and down, and that is like “In your face”-speed, for just 150-250 crones, which is like around 19 dollars. people is looking for the fastest way to download stuff, and by knowing that ISP is blocking some sites, u will not choose that ISP. so they all lose money if a certain law swallow EUROPE. lame i say, do something else about the music industry and not to block or ban, make new laws all the fucking time.
Give it up already, you IFPI morons!!!
Stopping piracy is a war you are
going to lose.
Go ahead, tell the ISPs to block p2p
protocols and sites like the Pirate
Bay. Your victory will be short lived
indeed.
Actually, I don’t understand how a Corporate interest group can enact or force in laws in a Democracy?
Can someone explain how this happens, appart from Government officials being paid to allow these laws.
If democracies allow this than they are no better than a dictatorship.
By blocking bittorrent, they’ll have Blizzard’s fans to answer to. As one of the few companies that rely on the bittorrent protocol for distributing patches and updates to the millions of people all over the world.
There are legal legit reasons to use bittorrent, by banning the protocol outright will destroy millions of dollars worth of income that is gained by companies that use this protocol for legal reasons.
In the end, the blindness of political and political backed organizations such as MPAA, RIAA, etc is going to backfire on themselves by pissing off a company that has more money then they do.
Kyle speaks the truth here, I also hope these so called “rights” organisations do get their protocol blockades into effect, and that they do hold, it’ll make us slackers out there band together and create the next level of obfuscation, and a method that’ll make it virtually impossible to distinguish it from normal traffic, in the end they’ll loose the war, it’s only a matter of time.
There’s plenty of people in the music industry who think John Kennedy is a total fool.
This cosy little organisation of the majors does the smaller guys no favours at all.
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