p2pnet - rss feed: Policing ISPs and school networks
p2pnet.net News:- The entertainment industry is getting ready to launch an application that’ll enable copyright holders to “better police ISPs or high-volume networks like those on university campuses”.
Interesting phrase.
Does it mean copyright holders are policing ISPs and university campuses now, but the results could be better?
The quote comes in a NewsFactor story here and refers to the Automated Copyright Notice System (ACNS) that, “makes it easy for system administrators to restrict the Internet access of an individual who has received notice from a copyright holder, most typically a record or film company. College or corporate network administrators could cut off user access until the offender removes the video or audio file in question.”
Developed by Universal Music Group and Vivendi Universal Entertainment, it’s expected to be “implemented at University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), which has one of the largest student bodies in the country,” says the report.
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DCMA) allows a copyright holder to tell an ISP or university administrator to remove copyright-protected files, says NewsFactor, going on:
“Complying with these requests can be time consuming and expensive, but failure to act may subject the network’s owner to legal action.
“ACNS improves the efficiency of the reporting and restriction process by including software tags in the cease and desist notice (CDN) that copyright holders send to ISPs. These digital tags, using XML, include the copyright holder’s name, the song or movie title pirated, the IP address of the alleged infringer, and a date and time stamp. Once an ISP receives a CDN that includes ACNS tags, the notification process begins automatically. The university or network administrator could restrict a user’s access to a P2P (peer to peer) network for a given time period, from a few hours to a few weeks - or longer.
“Further easing the workload of network administrators, ACNS automatically updates a log that monitors whether an individual was notified and the result of that notification.”
In the meanwhile, how’s an automated software cop going to tell the difference between fair dues and fair use - ie, how will an ACNS know if some dastardly pirate is depriving Big Music of its fair dues (as perceived by Big Music, of course, which isn’t necessarily how the rest of the world sees it), or if someone’s merely exercising a little fair use?
NewsFactor also has Chris Hoofnagle, deputy counsel for the Electronic Privacy Information Center, making some rather interesting comments, given his position.
It continues: “While ACNS raises privacy issues, this type of technology can be ‘more privacy friendly,’ Hoofnagle said, ‘because [it] keeps enforcement inside a university.’ As an additional plus, he noted that an automated system can be used to create a limited suspension of access that is tied directly to a user’s action, instead of a blanket denial of access.
“However, the technology’s method of ‘automating punishment’ remains questionable, especially since ‘innocent people can be improperly sanctioned for their use,’ Hoofnagle said. ‘When there is a problem, there needs to be due process,’ he said.
“As an additional plus, he noted that an automated system can be used to create a limited suspension of access that is tied directly to a user’s action, instead of a blanket denial of access.”
What’s going to make it even more interesting is that ACNS is open source and royalty free, so no doubt we’ll soon be seeing one or two examples of creative re-engineering.
And there’s this: as Hoofnagle told NewsFactor, a Doonesbury cartoon has a kid going into another kid’s room …
,,, to download something because he’s been kicked off the network.
