[dean mclean]

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/03/1...me-on-july-12/

If you download potentially copyrighted software, videos or music, your Internet service provider (ISP) has been watching, and they’re coming for you.

Specifically, they’re coming for you on Thursday, July 12.

That’s the date when the nation’s largest ISPs will all voluntarily implement a new anti-piracy plan that will engage network operators in the largest digital spying scheme in history, and see some users’ bandwidth completely cut off until they sign an agreement saying they will not download copyrighted materials.

Word of the start date has been largely kept secret since ISPs announced their plans last June. The deal was brokered by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), and coordinated by the Obama Administration. The same groups have weighed in heavily on controversial Internet policies around the world, with similar facilitation by the Obama’s Administration’s State Department.

The July 12 date was revealed by the RIAA’s CEO and top lobbyist, Cary Sherman, during a publishers’ conference on Wednesday in New York, according to technology publication CNet.

The content industries calls this scheme a “graduated response” plan, which will see Time Warner Cable, Cablevision, Comcast, Verizon, AT&T and others spying on users’ Internet activities and watching for potential copyright infringement. Users who are “caught” infringing on a creator’s protected work can then be interrupted with a notice that piracy is forbidden by law and carries penalties of up to $150,000 per infringement, requiring the user to click through saying they understand the consequences before bandwidth is restored, and they could still be subject to copyright infringement lawsuits.

Participating ISPs have a range of options for dealing with customers who continue to pirate media, at that point: They can require that an alleged repeat offender undergo an educational course before their service is restored. They can utilize multiple warnings, restrict access to only certain major websites like Google, Facebook or a list of the top 200 sites going, reduce someone’s bandwidth to practically nothing and even share information on repeat offenders with competing ISPs, effectively creating a sort of Internet blacklist — although publicly, none of the network operators have agreed to “terminate” a customer’s service.

It is because of those reasons that the content industries believe this program achieves much more than what might have been possible in the realm of public policy, and the ISPs appear to agree. The voluntary scheme will be paid for mostly by the content industries, which will share some costs with the ISPs.

Not everyone sees it as a positive: The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights advocacy group, argued that the “graduated response” scheme lacks transparency, and that copyright holders could wield the network operators like a blunt instrument in cases where their claims may not be entirely valid — which is the biggest problem with statutes codified by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. They also pressed for assurances that claim reviews will be conducted by a neutral party, and suggested that users should be given some form of due process before their bandwidth is turned down or cut off entirely.

The EFF also took issue with the system of protest the program puts in place, which only gives users six predetermined “defenses” against a copyright claim. “And even the six enumerated defenses are incomplete,” they complained. “For example, the ‘public domain’ defense applies only if the work was created before 1923 — even though works created after 1923 can enter the public domain in a variety of ways.”

A legislative effort that would have achieved some, but not all, of these ends was utterly destroyed by the Internet’s first ever mass work stoppage late last year, which saw thousands of popular websites go dark in protest. (Disclosure: The Raw Story participated in that protest.)

It’s not yet clear how the tech world will react to the ISPs siding with the content industries to do what the government simply could not.

Fuck these people. This obviously isn't just about movies and music. Its just another excuse to increase data mining and electronic surveillance on all internet users, which the government can easily get access to if it desires. Just another step towards all your online activity being logged and profiled.

[dean mclean]

some more good information

http://www.privateinternetaccess.com...-july-12-2012/

One year ago, the RIAA and the MPAA organized a project with the largest internet service providers in the US to begin monitoring their customer’s internet activity. This monitoring was introduced as a joint coalition to combat piracy. A list of providers that are on board includes, but is not limited to, Time Warner, Comcast, Cablevision, Verizon and AT&T.

According to CNet’s Greg Sandoval, Cary Sherman of the RIAA has announced this week that deployments of the spying tools are nearly prepared and a tentative launch of July 12, 2012 has been set.

Reports indicate that there will be consequences for users who are caught pirating digital media. First offenses may include forced educational rehabilitation as well as throttled connection speeds. There have also been discussions stating that the top 200 websites will become inaccessible for users who are caught pirating.

However, the fact that ISPs are able to detect this activity indicates that they will be spying on their users.

Tips to protect your privacy

Using the internet, as well as using the internet to fileshare, is completely legal. Here are ways to protect your privacy when engaging in legal activities:

1. Use an ssh based SOCKS5 proxy. You can run a local SOCKS5 proxy with the distributed ssh client in *nix and Mac OS X as well as PuTTY for Windows. In Windows, simply set the options for PuTTy. In Mac OS X and *nix, simply connect via SSH like:

ssh -D <port> (<user>@)<server>

Afterwards, simply open your application and manually configure it to connect to the SOCKS5 proxy running on the above specified port on the localhost (or 127.0.0.1). UPDATE: In FF, you will need to route DNS traffic through the ssh tunnel as well – enter “about:config” in the address bar and search for network.proxy.socks_remote_dns. Set the value to true.


Difficulty: Medium
Cost: Paid (free if you already have a *nix shell)
Pros: Can be free if you already have a shell (like developers)
Cons: Manual configuration. Does not protect all applications.
Recommended: ✮✮✮

2. Use an anonymous VPN service. For us, not only is it obligatory to recommend a VPN, but in general, this is also the most widely accepted solution to privatize internet traffic. VPN services provide tunnels which are completely encrypted. Your ISP will not be able to monitor your connection. Additionally, every application will communicate through the VPN without any manual configuration. Bonus points for paying with anonymous crypto-currencies like Bitcoin. UPDATE: Be sure to disable Google Web History and use Chrome in Incognito mode to gain even more privacy!

Difficult: Easy
Cost: Paid
Pros: All applications are encrypted. Your ISP will not be able to spy on you.
Cons: Paid service.
Recommended: ✮✮✮✮✮

UPDATE:

3. Tor is an amazing tool for obtaining privacy and anonymity. For all your regular browsing needs, Tor is ideal, and best of all, it’s absolutely free. However, Tor is not recommended when using heavy peer to peer file sharing protocols.

Difficult: Easy
Cost: Free
Pros: Very anonymous and completely free.
Cons: Slow and unable to do heavy p2p.
Recommended: ✮✮✮
UPDATE #2:
One reader has suggested a few options:
4. I2P
5. Freenet
Protect your privacy.

[sarahowen662]

What about pay as you go dongles/USB? These can be used without a need for registering users details. How can they catch the people that download copyright material using these? (I know they probably wouldn't use these as downloads of movies etc would take forever)

I don't think these people will ever rest until we have a Dr. Cocteau (demolition man) unified utopian type society........

Big brother is watching!!

[Sharon]

Money-making cunts

How would they home in on what I do which is downloading then converting videos into mp3 format from YouTube for my ipod and phone using Real Player? Will that be targeted too?

Yet they make recordable DVD players and you can easily record off the radio. Pah

[Spitfire Dynamo]

Tor and peer block (keep those lists updated)

[Steve]

I don't download anything apart from security or windows updates which are free so I am not bothered at all by this news.

[WindBag]

I have been reading about tor and peer block a little. should you use both or just one of them. seems like tor cant keep the internet provider from checking what your isp is doing? or am I reading tor's info on there site wrong?

[dean mclean]

Tor anonymizes your activities. Your isp can see you are using Tor, but they can't see what sites you're visiting or what you are doing while using it. I think using SSH tunnels can hide the fact you are using Tor as well.

Peerblock just blocks "bad" ip addresses from accessing your machine and vica-versa.
http://www.peerblock.com/docs/faq#peerblock_vs_pg2

Originally Posted by Stevee ↗

I don't download anything apart from security or windows updates which are free so I am not bothered at all by this news.

I don't download illegal things either. However, that's not the issue here. The issue is that ISPs are basically using vigilante justice on behalf of the government/RIAA/MPAA. There is a huge potential for abuse when ISPs voluntarily monitor the activities of their users. They're basically just acting as proxy surveillance for the government without any of the legal checks like the government has, and dealing out "punishment" themselves as they see fit. There's nothing to stop them from throttling your connection or putting you on a watchlist just because you visit sites they find suspicious (like this one), or to stop them from turning your browsing activites over to the government.

[Blewvane]

This will probably only affect Americans.

[AnneLea]

Originally Posted by Blewvane ↗

This will probably only affect Americans.

So a country finds another way to turn on its people and it doesn't matter just because it's Americans being affected? Nobody to care about there, right?

Hello? Any country spying on its people in their own homes is terrible... especially if the people themselves aren't given what they need to stop it.