"THIS is the kind of snooping you'd expect in China, not a modern western democracy. It raises huge questions over privacy invasion and freedom of expression." So says Andrew Heaney - who is not, as you might imagine, a civil liberties campaigner, but a senior executive at TalkTalk, one of the UK's largest internet service providers. Along with other ISPs, his company faces the prospect of being forced to spy on its customers' downloads for signs of potential copyright infringement.
Heaney's disquiet is shared by web campaigners worldwide, as the measures contained in a controversial international copyright treaty (New Scientist, 5 July 2008, p 24) are slowly being translated into national laws variously tipped to bridge, distract from or widen the gulf between the entertainment industry's desires and those of the millions who share copyrighted material over the internet.
The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), suggested by the US administration in 2007, aims to redefine global trade rules. The intention is to stem losses from counterfeiting and internet-mediated piracy of content like music and movies.
It will do that by penalising internet service providers and websites that carry, or help people to find, pirated content. ACTA has quickly proved a hit with G8 nations, the European Union, South Korea and Australia, who are all using it as a basis for future national laws.........
........ACTA is still being worked up in secret by trade delegations from the many nations involved. But a series of leaks to the Wikileaks website reveal that it will require ISPs to become technological sleuths who monitor their customers' internet use to "deter unauthorised storage and transmission of infringing content". Infringers will face a "graduated response", with disconnection as the ultimate sanction. "Monitoring every single packet going across our network for the fingerprints of hundreds of copyrighted files will require tens of millions of pounds' worth of computer systems," Heaney warns. Without that extra computing power, internet access will slow to a crawl.
ISPs would have to scan the contents of every chunk of data, using what is known as "deep packet inspection" technology, which is used by China and Iran to monitor and censor internet communications. But even if ISPs install such technology, identifying infringers will be far from straightforward. The EU has ruled that before anyone can be sent a warning letter, rights holders must take an ISP to court to get the name and address of an alleged culprit.more...
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