Tuesday, January 29, 2008
U2 calls for end of ISP common carrier safe harbour
Billboard has the full text of yesterday's speech given by U2 manager Paul McGuinness at the MIDEM conference in Cannes.His remarks call for ISPs to get involved in the policing of the content being carried across their network.
Despite selling their broadband service on the basis of sharing photos and sending emails, McGuinness says that music sharing - illegal music sharing - is the killer app that justifies $25 broadband.
In his speech, he says that Radiohead's widely reported 'honesty box' demonstrates that given the choice to get music for free from an authorized site, the majority will still steal using other peer-to-peer applications.
It's time for a new approach -- time for ISPs to start taking responsibility for the content they've profited from for years.Technorati Tags:
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For ISPs in general, the days of prevaricating over their responsibilities for helping protect music must end. The ISP lobbyists who say they should not have to "police the internet" are living in the past -- relying on outdated excuses from an earlier technological age.
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And as it turned, the "Safe Harbour" concept was really a Thieves' Charter. The legal precedent that device-makers and pipe and network owners should not be held accountable for any criminal activity enabled by their devices and services has been enormously damaging to content owners and developing artists. If you were publishing a magazine that was advertising stolen cars, processing payments for them and arranging delivery of them you'd expect to get a visit from the police wouldn't you? What's the difference?
U2, Paul McGuinness, illegal content
Posted by Mark Goldberg @ 1/29/2008 04:35:00 PM 
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His analogy is ridiculous. Lets try another shall we....
You are the wireless telephone company. Car thieves use your services to arrange thefts, to coordinate their activities while conducting their illegal activities, and to arrange for the sale of the stolen vehicles. You should expect a visit from the police, no?
How about this; you are Purolator. A thief is placing small stolen items such as jewelry, watches, etc, into boxes and is shipping them to people. It's your job to evaluate every package for the possibility that it might contain stolen or illegal goods, correct?
And the people who receive the stolen items...they place cash in an envelope and mail it to the thief. The post office should be expected to stop this as well?
I'm not arguing that the criminals should be encouraged to continue their practices, but policing is not the job of private enterprise. In fact, the last group in the world that I want determining my rights as a citizen is the one whose share price is dependent upon it.
You are the wireless telephone company. Car thieves use your services to arrange thefts, to coordinate their activities while conducting their illegal activities, and to arrange for the sale of the stolen vehicles. You should expect a visit from the police, no?
How about this; you are Purolator. A thief is placing small stolen items such as jewelry, watches, etc, into boxes and is shipping them to people. It's your job to evaluate every package for the possibility that it might contain stolen or illegal goods, correct?
And the people who receive the stolen items...they place cash in an envelope and mail it to the thief. The post office should be expected to stop this as well?
I'm not arguing that the criminals should be encouraged to continue their practices, but policing is not the job of private enterprise. In fact, the last group in the world that I want determining my rights as a citizen is the one whose share price is dependent upon it.
Geoff -
Without aligning myself with McGuinness, I'm not sure you are being fair in your analogies.
In the first case, if the victim sees a car thief using a cell phone to arrange the theft, then yes, I think the police would visit the wireless phone company.
In the case of a courier, if they are notified in transit that a particular package from Colombia has illicit material in it, do you think the courier would / could say to the police that they are just a common carrier and not tell them where the package is being delivered?
The service providers have deployed equipment to detect content for the purpose of traffic shaping. If that same equipment can identify illegal content, can the ISP plead ignorance?
Without aligning myself with McGuinness, I'm not sure you are being fair in your analogies.
In the first case, if the victim sees a car thief using a cell phone to arrange the theft, then yes, I think the police would visit the wireless phone company.
In the case of a courier, if they are notified in transit that a particular package from Colombia has illicit material in it, do you think the courier would / could say to the police that they are just a common carrier and not tell them where the package is being delivered?
The service providers have deployed equipment to detect content for the purpose of traffic shaping. If that same equipment can identify illegal content, can the ISP plead ignorance?
Posted by 
Mark Goldberg : 9:30 PM, January 29, 2008
Mark Goldberg : 9:30 PM, January 29, 2008
I don't know - I think I'm in Geoff's boat. Having ISPs being content police has always made me shiver a bit.
I'd rather have them be blind, and have a different solution to pirated music. Maybe it comes back to a bandwidth usage model - whereby you could choose your monthly internet service based on data transfer. A high usage plan would be 30 Gb of data transfer a month, and a portion of that monthly fee would be a subsidy to the Music industry, akin to the subsidy payment from cassette tapes in the olden days :-)
Granted, not all folks who transfer more than 30 Gb of data a month are necessarily pirating music, just like not everyone who bought a cassette in the '80s was making bootleg mixed tapes....
I know the subsidy is not ideal, and the alternative, just shutting down the ports that peer to peer applications use is preferable... but fraught with challenges as well.
I'd rather have them be blind, and have a different solution to pirated music. Maybe it comes back to a bandwidth usage model - whereby you could choose your monthly internet service based on data transfer. A high usage plan would be 30 Gb of data transfer a month, and a portion of that monthly fee would be a subsidy to the Music industry, akin to the subsidy payment from cassette tapes in the olden days :-)
Granted, not all folks who transfer more than 30 Gb of data a month are necessarily pirating music, just like not everyone who bought a cassette in the '80s was making bootleg mixed tapes....
I know the subsidy is not ideal, and the alternative, just shutting down the ports that peer to peer applications use is preferable... but fraught with challenges as well.
Of course, ISPs are already actively blocking content identified by Cybertip as illegal - not found to be illegal by a judge.
Why? Because of potential criminal liability. A subtle word here and there distinguishes between forms of content.
This is why it is important to participate in these legislative discussions.
Why? Because of potential criminal liability. A subtle word here and there distinguishes between forms of content.
This is why it is important to participate in these legislative discussions.
Posted by Mark Goldberg : 11:16 PM, January 29, 2008
Mark Goldberg : 11:16 PM, January 29, 2008
Mark, I don't disagree with you, but my remarks should have been more clearly explained. Let's see if I can do any better:
Let's assume the telephone company has the capability to monitor the conversations of its subscribers. Should we as a society expect that the carriers will do this to eliminate the event that their "pipes" are used in the commission of a crime? Is this different than what is being asked of the ISP's?
Yes, where it is known that illegal activities are taking place, phone taps are a legal response. But this is performed with oversite from an appropriate public authority.
I still have real objections to my privacy being linked to profit margins.
The other issue that I didn't raise is enforcibility. The music (entertainment) horse is out of the barn. No amount of legislation is going to put it back in, despite our best intentions.
File traders will just move to encrypted solutions. What will Sandvine do then? Block all encrypted traffic?
Let's assume the telephone company has the capability to monitor the conversations of its subscribers. Should we as a society expect that the carriers will do this to eliminate the event that their "pipes" are used in the commission of a crime? Is this different than what is being asked of the ISP's?
Yes, where it is known that illegal activities are taking place, phone taps are a legal response. But this is performed with oversite from an appropriate public authority.
I still have real objections to my privacy being linked to profit margins.
The other issue that I didn't raise is enforcibility. The music (entertainment) horse is out of the barn. No amount of legislation is going to put it back in, despite our best intentions.
File traders will just move to encrypted solutions. What will Sandvine do then? Block all encrypted traffic?
Sorry. I know I should let it go, but this one has me all worked up. And, as I have found all too many times in my life, I'm not smart enough to accurately convey my thoughts to the world. Fortunately for me, some very bright people like Al Gore invented this thing called the Internet. There is all sorts of stuff there. Like a much better discussion of the nonsensical idea that ISP's should be involved in content filtering. Charles Arthur is a smart one.
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