Mar
17
Japan, bellwether of net bias?
Posted by Dirk Avery at 8:55 am under Copyright, Internet.
A thousand of Japan’s ISPs have come to an agreement to ban P2P users. Users would get one strike before they were out. Once a user is out, they’ll be tough pressed to find a provider.
The popular P2P application in Japan, Winny, encrypts its traffic. The ISPs, though, are not going to do deep packet inspection. Instead they’ll be relying on low-tech stings: Copyright holders, posing as P2P users, download files and verify they are infringing. In the process the holders discover the IP addresses of infringers. ZDNet’s George Ou has more.
I see several potential problems. A lot of P2P software makes its users both uploaders and downloaders. Large copyright owning entities, such as the RIAA, are the most likely to engage in sting operations. Any large entity is going to have right-hand-talking-to-the-left issues. Their employees are going to be downloading to detect infringement but might at the same time be uploading to fellow employees also searching for infringement. These copyright stingers could end up in loops of cross reporting: Alleged infringer and infringement reporter are both employees of the same entity. If they attempt some way of detecting such loops, infringers could figure out how to spoof detectors into thinking they are also employees.
To make matters worse, if copyright holders are going to be using the P2P software, ISPs must provide some sort of immunity. That immunity could unravel the whole system. What if copyright owners also want to illegally download? Will large entities be the only ones to be allowed to participate? If not, any small holder of copyright could get a license to download. If so, doesn’t the additional protection amount to an unfair prejudice against holders of few copyrights?