What kind of traffic inspection are these ISPs doing that would enable them to identify infringement as it's happening?
How do they know what rights the people involved have to say that a specific download is infringing or not?
Speaking of the general public, how does Joe Smith know that Hulu's stream of "The Office" is legal but some other site's is not?
That's been my biggest question about streaming.
On one hand I can google "watch the office online for free" and end up on Hulu, it has ads, but it's free. If I look around I can see that I don't have access to all their content, but they have a subscription model that gives full access.
On the other, I can google "watch dexter online for free" and end up on MegaVideo (well, imagine you're four months ago). It has ads, but it's free. If I want to watch a lot of videos, I see that I can't because there's a daily limit, but they have a subscription model that gives full access.
As a user, I have no way to know that the first one is legal while the second isn't.
That being said, it's my understanding that at this point, this is what makes streaming a bit of an edge-case why mostly the website is charged, rather than the users. But that might of course change…
"Ignorance of the law is no excuse for breaking it". Bullshit, isn't it?
--edit: I'm not arguing this point. I'm just pointing out that not knowing the law isn't a valid legal defense, so not knowing which site was legal would not prevent a user from prosecution.
I can access the laws that say it's illegal, but I don't have access to the contracts (or the absence of contracts…) that can confirm this or that site is legal.
That's what makes this question so interesting.
When you can download a bunch of songs and movies for free, by now you should know that something is up, the same way people get busted when returning from Mexico with a fake Chanel purse, because "common sense" should tell you that you can't buy one for $15, the same way you can't get full albums for free. (though, common sense is of course very subjective)
But the more the illegal sources look and behave like the legit ones, the more difficult it is to know what's going on. I would probably know because I would hear of the companies from TechCrunch or somewhere, but a random user wouldn't.
So I do wonder if that would be a valid legal defense. Similarly I don't know if someone that had paid a few hundred dollars in a legit-looking store in Asia for a fake but good looking Chanel purse could just explain it was in good faith…
Another example would be Spotify vs. Grooveshark.
Note that ignorance of the law is no defence, and dishonest or unreasonable ignorance of the facts is also no defence.
As I understand it, there's no actual monitoring being done by ISPs. The monitoring is done by the record and movie companies. When they see a torrent of their content being shared, they record the IP addresses of everyone seeding that torrent and then send warning requests to the ISPs whose users are uploading. Those IPs then relay that warning to the actual users associated with those IPs. Once a user gets six of these warnings, the ISP is obligated to cut off the user.
At least, that's the way it was reported last summer, and that's how Ars Technica is describing the enforcement system now.
We've got pretty rudimentary tools at my job, but we can still see source and destination address (even through a NAT and proxy on our end), IP ports/protocol, time of day and speed of connection trends, and we can do small amounts of packet inspection (we grab the first 120 bytes of every packet).
With this data, I'm able to tell if someone is using BitTorrent vs Skype (they're both peer-to-peer UDP packets to random addresses, so finding the difference is key). I can tell where their information is being sent to. If the packet is not encrypted, I can see exactly what is being sent (the header data will show filenames being transferred). DNS data will tell me what site they've just visited, and packet capture will tell me what specific page they're on and what search terms they used on that site.) With an unencrypted session, it's as easy as piecing the domain name from DNS (thepiratebay.com) to the packet capture (http: 11:23pm March 15, "the office", /search/test/0/99/0) to the user (10.250.250.10) to the network flows (every few seconds there's another couple packets going out to or coming from a few dozen address across the world). Bam, we've got an infringing user.
Now granted, people will likely be using encryption. I don't know how the tools handle this, we don't do anything with it at my job. However, I would imagine the ISPs could do deeper packet inspection. I would imagine they simply don't care if your traffic is legal or not. They may assume it's all illegal and serve notice anyway. There may be an appeals process. As for the difference between Hulu and joe-streams-hollywood.com, I would imagine they have a whitelist of addresses.
TL;DR; I don't know, but I can make an educated guess. Best bet, encrypt your traffic but don't rely on that to save your ass.
Much more feasible (and cheaper) option would be to popularize something along the lines of OneSwarm[1], which falls somewhere between a regular, direct connection and a complete Tor style overlay.
This is relatively easy for P2P and streaming sites, but I don't see how you could ever hope to police "file lockers" like MegaVideo; users would just upload encrypted files (even just password-protected zip files) and distribute the password. If it starts to be a cat-and-mouse game, I expect offshore filelockers will start providing privacy-protecting features for uploaders, coupled with a lot of fun and games with DNS records.
Graduated response is only for P2P, which is presumptively illegal. ICE/SOPA goes after pirate sites. Nobody goes after the users of pirate sites, so you don't have to worry about that.
Sorry, tptacek, but this is 100% related. If you, or anyone on HN, is concerned about ISPs being able to sniff the intent/payload of your traffic, then you're fucking stupid.
Why? Because the NSA has been doing it for YEARS. Here is a MAIN STREAM story on their institutionalizing of this activity in Utah which is NO SECRET!
It doesnt even matter "how ISPs actually identify file sharing traffic" -- it is TOO late.
File sharing is a ruse, a red herring, who the fuck cares about file sharing. This is about TIA (total information awareness) they don't care if you file share!
They use file sharing and copyright to enact laws that make binary wiretap both trivial and legal.
They want to know EVERYTHING you do - and by claiming you are a criminal via file sharing, they can install stupid ass gateways in the last mile, which just makes it seem like they follow some due process - there is NO LAST MILE. THey have every single bit, already!
They have already compromised the ISP, this is just a scare tactic to keep out the fluff. The fluff are those would would think that their stupid file sharing is alerting the feds, such that they refrain from doing so.
So, in closing, what the NSA is doing, on mass scale, is FAR more pertinent than what you would think.
They use file sharing and copyright to enact laws that make binary wiretap both trivial and legal.
I see no evidence of that (they seem to be happy with operating illegally), so you're just using this thread as a coatrack for off-topic rants.
Are you kidding me?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A
This room is in the same building that Twitter HQ is in. It is the ground zero for the back door-ing of the social stream.
You likely have not been paying attention