[LINK] Excitable Nanny & Scumware

[Craig Sanders]

On Tue, Sep 04, 2001 at 11:49:07AM +1000, Galen Townson wrote:
> Am I missing something? These articles seem to be blowing it out of
> proportion through conjecture.

that's what journalism is for, isn't it? :)

> As a similar ISP/AUP-related example, if someone complains or reports
> abusive activity, eg. DoS'ing, mail bombs, etc. but can't for some
> reason provide evidence to substantiate that claim, eg. their PC or
> mail client crashed or they deleted the email without saving a copy of
> the full headers... then is it a problem for the ISP to investigate
> further under suspicious behaviour directly affecting its services
> and clients, or is that considered 'policing its own acceptable use
> policy'?
>
> Is Optus neglecting its duty by not investigating claims if illegal
> activity of piracy, ie. complacency after knowledge?

well, Optus (actually, any ISP) don't have to do anything without a
court order or search warrant...and in the absence of any evidence being
presented to them, their only response to a complaint should be "prove
it".

in some cases, their privacy obligations REQUIRE that they do nothing.
they certainly shouldn't be giving out names or addresses to anyone
without a court order.

of course, in the real world the risk of being sued by MPAA or RIAA is
far greater than the risk of being sued by an end user.


> I'm curious how they'll sustainably identify the contents of multiple
> 10-hr Gnutella or IRC DCC transfers through random monitoring.

they can't...at least not in the long run.

if current versions of these protocols allow plain-text traffic
sniffing, then the next versions will be end-to-end encrypted.

there's no way of knowing if 5GB of encrypted traffic is proprietary
copyrighted material or not.

craig

-- 
craig sanders <cas@taz.net.au>

Fabricati Diem, PVNC.
 -- motto of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch