Me and the Internet go way back. When I came to TCD as an undergraduate in 1994 one of the first things we Maths students had to do was sign up for a computer account that gave you an email address and access to the web and newsgroups. At the time the web was only just starting to flourish and you could easily keep up with every new Irish website. Compare that to now where the IEDR (the people who manage .ie addresses) registered over 10,000 new Irish domains in the first quarter of 2011. The web was also a fairly tame place at the time due to bandwidth constraints, the entire TCD internet connection was a 64Kbps line, so filesharing and movie downloads were not even on the agenda.
Over the last 8 years or so, Ireland has moved from a mainly dial-up environment to a broadband one where most consumer products have at least 3Mbps download speed. In recent times we have seen the music industry attempt to impose filtering, QoSing and disconnection as alternative solutions to the copyright infringement issue. I have posted last October on the result of the UPC case where the Judge said that if there were legislation in place he would have no problem in enforcing a three-strikes policy.
So it is with some interest I noticed last week that an advocate from the EU court of justice said that blanket blocking of websites would be a breach of the charter of fundamental rights. Just as well we signed up to that in Lisbon then! While the statement isn't a final judgment on the case between the Belgian entertainment industry and an ISP, it does carry substantial weight as it shows the line of appeals that could be successfully followed if the case goes against Scarlet (the ISP).
As I have said (more than once) in this blog, I am not a legal expert, but I am fairly well versed in the technical issues surrounding internet access. The biggest problem with any solution imposed by a court on an ISP is that within hours, a workaround will have been found by those that are serious about circumventing the block, leaving those that are casual users caught in the crossfire. Beyond the technical though, it is vital that the presumption of innocence is maintained at all times. If an organisation believes I am infringing their rights, then there is a perfectly good legal system in place for them to use to pursue me for damages. It should not be the role of any other entity to act as judge of my actions.
Showing posts with label Technology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Technology. Show all posts
Sunday, April 17, 2011
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
UPC versus the Music Industry
While I'm no legal eagle, I have dipped in and out of Justice Charleton's ruling in the UPC vs the music industry case. A lot of it went way over my head in terms of references to specific laws, EU directives and the like. However, from reading his description of various technical matters about which I know a fair bit, I think a lot of those went way over the Judge's head.
The story of Willie Kavangh and his visit to that "well-known site for facilitating music piracy called ‘The Pirate Bay’" is quite funny. He recalled looking for the Dark Knight. I wonder if he tried looking for any Linux ISOs or other legitimate material on the site? While TPB isn't necessarily always in the right, they provide a valuable service in hosting stable, reliable trackers for any material. The Aslan story, which has already been shown to be rubbish, is treated like gospel. In all honesty, does Christy Dignam really think that 28,000 people want to steal his badly written tunes?
The round the clock nature of the internet obviously hasn't hit the Justice Charelton's radar either when he states "another careful international survey indicated that between 49% and 83% of all internet traffic, with a night time peak of 95%, is accounted for by peer-to-peer communications." Pity that legal judgement don't have references like academic papers require so we could see exactly who carried out this "careful" study and on behalf of what vested interest. Of course the experts from DtecNet could never be considered vested interests since they have absolutely no relationship to RIAA and IFPI. However it is worth remembering that these would be the same experts who tried to confuse a court in Australia on the use of bit-torrent by targeting a single ISP, the one they happened to be in court against.
At least in point 30 of the judgement, the court did recognize the legitimacy of P2P as a means of content distribution. It also noted in point 32 that any attempt to impose a technological block on P2P will be pointless as users and developers will quickly find workarounds. However, by point 134 this point has been forgotten where a 20 minute delay in coming up with a work around was considered worthwhile. I don't get the Aran Islands analogy, but if he thinks having to phone the operator for find torrents is going to slow people down, when the operator is Google, then he may just have missed the point.
This judgment is the right decision for all the wrong reasons. We should have strong protection of network operators against the actions of purchasers of their service. If I buy a knife in Arnotts and then proceed to stab someone with it, does Alan Dukes (now kind of running Arnotts) get a 20 year jail term? We also need due process and the presumption of innocence. For one corporate entity to be judge, jury and executioner is not acceptable. If EMI or whoever suspect me of filesharing, then go to court, get a warrant and then talk to my solicitor. To be able to disconnect me from the internet on their say alone is not acceptable.
The biggest fear is that on the back of this judgement, emergency legislation will be pushed through the Dáil to close the loophole. Perhaps the easiest solution is for EMI to set themselves up as a religion and then declare P2P to be abhorent in the eyes of their god. Dermot Ahern could then sleep easy knowing that he doesn't need to come up with yet more bad legislation.
The story of Willie Kavangh and his visit to that "well-known site for facilitating music piracy called ‘The Pirate Bay’" is quite funny. He recalled looking for the Dark Knight. I wonder if he tried looking for any Linux ISOs or other legitimate material on the site? While TPB isn't necessarily always in the right, they provide a valuable service in hosting stable, reliable trackers for any material. The Aslan story, which has already been shown to be rubbish, is treated like gospel. In all honesty, does Christy Dignam really think that 28,000 people want to steal his badly written tunes?
The round the clock nature of the internet obviously hasn't hit the Justice Charelton's radar either when he states "another careful international survey indicated that between 49% and 83% of all internet traffic, with a night time peak of 95%, is accounted for by peer-to-peer communications." Pity that legal judgement don't have references like academic papers require so we could see exactly who carried out this "careful" study and on behalf of what vested interest. Of course the experts from DtecNet could never be considered vested interests since they have absolutely no relationship to RIAA and IFPI. However it is worth remembering that these would be the same experts who tried to confuse a court in Australia on the use of bit-torrent by targeting a single ISP, the one they happened to be in court against.
At least in point 30 of the judgement, the court did recognize the legitimacy of P2P as a means of content distribution. It also noted in point 32 that any attempt to impose a technological block on P2P will be pointless as users and developers will quickly find workarounds. However, by point 134 this point has been forgotten where a 20 minute delay in coming up with a work around was considered worthwhile. I don't get the Aran Islands analogy, but if he thinks having to phone the operator for find torrents is going to slow people down, when the operator is Google, then he may just have missed the point.
This judgment is the right decision for all the wrong reasons. We should have strong protection of network operators against the actions of purchasers of their service. If I buy a knife in Arnotts and then proceed to stab someone with it, does Alan Dukes (now kind of running Arnotts) get a 20 year jail term? We also need due process and the presumption of innocence. For one corporate entity to be judge, jury and executioner is not acceptable. If EMI or whoever suspect me of filesharing, then go to court, get a warrant and then talk to my solicitor. To be able to disconnect me from the internet on their say alone is not acceptable.
The biggest fear is that on the back of this judgement, emergency legislation will be pushed through the Dáil to close the loophole. Perhaps the easiest solution is for EMI to set themselves up as a religion and then declare P2P to be abhorent in the eyes of their god. Dermot Ahern could then sleep easy knowing that he doesn't need to come up with yet more bad legislation.
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