Quote:
Originally Posted by SimonHickling
So now they appear to want to act as investigator, judge and jury over file sharing. Oh and I suppose they'll HAVE to intercept the communications to do that. And not just on port 80. As anyone who legally [down/up]loads Linux distributions over P2P will know, you can use any port you like.
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Actually they don't need to intercept anything for this. The RIAA have been finding illegal music sharers in the US for years without installing kit in ISPs. This is how it works for bittorrent - similar methods work for most P2P apps.
1. Search for torrent which looks like one of there copyrighted works
2. Connect to bit torrent swarm
3. Download the files whilst logging IP address/time stamp of any peers.
4. Verify that downloaded file is a copyrighted work by an artist they represent.
5. Get ISP to reveal name & address for each IP address.
6. Send the offender a nastygram
7. If they don't pay up, sue them.
There are certainly problems with this approach but intercepting communications isn't one of them. Using encrypted bittorrent won't stop this for the same reason. Using an anonymous P2P system should stop this method (but don't come crying to me if it doesn't).
(There are variations on this such as not downloading the whole file and hence not doing step 4 at all)
One of the biggest problems with this is how easy it is to frame someone for copyright infringement.