The problem with walled gardens such as Facebook, is that you can be searched whenever you pass through their blue gates. In the course of being searched, undesired data can be refused – data like links to ‘abusive’ sites that facilitate copyright infringement. As of today, Facebook has declared war on the Pirates Bay, maintaining that because links to the site often infringe on someone’s copyright then linking to it violates the terms of service that Facebook users agree to. Given that the Pirates Bay is just a particularly specialized search engine, it would seem that Facebook is now going to start applying (American?) ethical and moral judgements on what people use to search for data. Sharing data is great, but only so long as it’s the ‘right kind’ of data.
What constitutes ‘infringing’ use when talking about a search engine? Google, as an example, lets individuals quickly and easily find torrent files that can subsequently be used to download/upload infringing material. The specific case being made against the Pirate Bay is that:
“Facebook respects copyrights and our Terms of Service prohibits placement of ‘Share on Facebook’ links on sites that contain “any content that is infringing. Given the controversy surrounding The Pirate Bay and the pending lawsuit against them, we’ve reached out to The Pirate Bay and asked them to remove the ‘Share on Facebook’ links from their site. The Pirate Bay has not responded and so we have blocked their torrents from being shared on Facebook.” (Source) Read more…
In 2008, ipoquereleased a report titled “Bandwidth Management Solutions for Network Operators“. Using Deep Packet Inspection appliances, it is possible to establish a priority management system that privileges certain applications’ traffic over others; VoIP traffic can be dropped last, whereas P2P packets are given the lowest priority on the network. Two modes of management are proposed by ipoque:
Advanced Priority Management: where multi-tiered priorities maintain Quality of Experience (rather than Service) by identifying some packet-types as more important than others (e.g. VoIP is more important than BitTorrent packets). Under this system, less important packets are only dropped as needed, rather than being dropped once a bandwidth cap is met.
Tiered Service Model: This uses a volume-service system, where users can purchase so much bandwidth for particular services. This is the ‘cell-phone’ model, where you sign up for packages that give you certain things and if you exceed your package limitations extra charges may apply*. Under this model you might pay for a file-sharing option, as well as a VoIP and/or streaming HTTP bundle.
The danger with filtering by application (from ipoque’s position) is that while local laws can be enforced, it opens the ISP to dissatisfaction if legitimate websites are blocked. Thus, while an ISP might block Mininova, they can’t block Fedora repositories as well – the first might conform to local laws, whereas blocking the second would infringe on consumers’ freedoms. In light of this challenge, ipoque suggests that could ISPs adopt Saudi Arabia-like white-lists, where consumers can send a message to their ISP when they find sites being illegitimately blocked. Once the ISP checks out the site, they can either remove the site from the black-list, or inform the customer of why the site must remain listed. Read more…
Given that my earlier post about this relationship between DPI and freedom of expression may have seemed overly paranoid, I thought that I should substantiate it a bit by turning to a DPI vendor’s white paper on copyright. In one of their most recent white papers, ipoque talks about “Copyright Protection in the Internet“. One of the great things about this white paper is how the author(s) have divided their analysis; they identify different methods of limiting or stopping infringement theoretically (i.e. can a technology do this?) and then provide a ‘reality check’ (i.e. can this practically be implemented without gross rights violations or technical nightmares), and end each analysis with a conclusion that sums up ipoque’s official position on the method in question. I want to focus on detecting infringing files, rather than on preventing such transfers of those file, on the basis that it is the former that really depends on DPI to be effective. Read more…
Most of the music that I listen to clearly borrows from the past, takes technologies of the present, and creates the music of the future again. To be clear, I’m not suggesting that the electronic beats that I listen to are going to be what everyone listens to, or that Bossa Nova and Samba are going to be predominant music genre in your home (though they should *grin*). No, what I’m saying is that digital technologies facilitate the appropriation of past cultural artifacts that were produced for consumption, and then subsequently modify and make them the artist’s own. Take a look at the below YouTube video for a demonstration of taking up a past cultural artifact (part of an episode from the West Wing) and modifying it to make a contemporary political statement:
Taking the past and making it one’s own isn’t anything new; artists have been reinterpreting prior songs/artwork/performances and making a buck off their reinterpretation for a long, long time. What is new is: Read more…
The problem with walled gardens such as Facebook, is that you can be searched whenever you pass through their blue gates. In the course of being searched, undesired data can be refused – data like links to ‘abusive’ sites that facilitate copyright infringement. As of today, Facebook has declared war on the Pirates Bay, maintaining that because links to the site often infringe on someone’s copyright then linking to it violates the terms of service that Facebook users agree to. Given that the Pirates Bay is just a particularly specialized search engine, it would seem that Facebook is now going to start applying (American?) ethical and moral judgements on what people use to search for data. Sharing data is great, but only so long as it’s the ‘right kind’ of data.
