ISPs start cutting deals with media companies; start cutting internet

Blame TV. TV says the guys rioting are dangerous immigrates, so we need more "security".

Also, Sarko has a really, really high Bluff stat.

Another problem is those two. The former owns a major TV network whose 8 o'clock news are probably the most watched in France. The latter owns lots of different newspapers. And they're BFFs with Sarko.

For anything that happens, they can work really hard to shift the blame on someone else than him. Immigrants, Internet pirates, Lionel Jospin's former socialist government, regions' current socialist governments, you name it.

edited 9th Jul '11 7:35:35 AM by Medinoc

Ok, crazy revolutionaries on one flank, right-wing dingbats with control of the media on the other. Place your bets folks!

I realy don't have much to say other than: BATTEN DOWN THE HATCHES! ***( IS GONNA HIT THE FAN!..... hey... this reminds me of BILL S.978!

Late 2011 is the time of the internet conspiering against free speech!

edited 9th Jul '11 9:07:50 AM by paradisedj32

"Legal torrents," you say? Then it looks like several media companies and/or ISPs need to be introduced to Pure Pwnage (the creators of which apparently distributed their episodes by torrent).

Um, okay, has anyone noticed that it's still the media companies, not the ISPs, looking for infringement, and they still can only get the ISP to yell at you for stuff they own? And that your internet only starts getting throttled on the fifth infraction minimum, i.e. after you've already gotten four notices of copyright infringement, two of which you have to acknowledge? And even on the fifth notice, you get one use of the "open wi-fi defense," and the charges will be dropped if you can prove that it wasn't you, was fair use, done with authorization, etc.

I freely admit that a lot of copyright enforcement is way to draconian these days, but to me it feels like everyone here is freaking out about something fairly reasonable.

The monitoring of people's communications is far from reasonable.

Except their monitoring is of what you do in public anyway. That's like complaining of a privacy invasion because of something you do on the front lawn.

No, they're not. Unless I'm on a public wi-fi, my packets are between me and the machine I'm talking to.

edited 9th Jul '11 10:59:22 AM by Yej

^ Except I can with the click of a mouse intercept anything you say between your machine and the destination at any point in between.

But that's more Internet security issues than privacy.

You do know how Bittorrent works, right?

You are communicating with potentially thousands of machines, including perhaps the copyright owner's own.

edited 9th Jul '11 11:01:42 AM by blueharp

Hmm... actually Savage raises a legitimate concern. If you can monitor illegal torrents, you can monitor perfectly legitimate messages.

I'd like to note it is companies doing this though, not the government. Also, what Blueharp said.

edited 9th Jul '11 11:01:54 AM by GameChainsaw

Er... how? I suppose that in the specific context of BT, you could probably infer what I've said to other people, but directly intercept it?

Exact Words. I know there are thousands of computers involved, but I'm basically whispering in the ear of the ones I'm talking to.

Nope, you're shouting "Hey, hey, hey, here's these packets, I've got them available for you!" which makes for about as much of an invasion of privacy as standing in your yard saying "I've got drugs" is entrapment.

^^ Packet sniffers for one. (I have basically the best one in existence that's actually used for security analysis.) The closer you are to one of the endpoints in a connection the easier to intercept. At no point in the communication is a packet untraceable.

All I need to do is simply be on the endpoint networks the communication is on for easiest results. Meaning if you are at a public wi-fi (which are heinously easy to take over compared to protected systems) all I need to do to capture everything you send and receive is click Capture on my tool while on the same network. Once I have enough packets I can scan for whatever I'm looking for: credit card numbers, identifying information, encryption scheme, whatever and proceed from there.

edited 9th Jul '11 11:28:46 AM by MajorTom

Oh, right, sorry, I didn't realize we're talking about the perspective of the ISP, rather than the government sitting outside it. If I've got reason to the believe an ISP would want to look over what I'm doing, I just encrypt it. (usually on TOR)

Stand back everyone, Major Tom knows regular expressions.

edited 9th Jul '11 11:38:06 AM by Yej

Government? Eh, not really, the involvement of the government is tertiary here.