First Look At UK Piracy Alert System: Mostly Benign, Except ISPs Are Requesting Filesharing Software Be Removed By Clients

from the why? dept

Earlier in the year, the public learned ISPs in the UK were partnering with the entertainment industries to send out "educational notices" to internet users suspected of copyright infringement. Having seen this type of "education" take many forms in the past, from silly to threatening, we have since waited to see what form this iteration would take. Well, TorrentFreak got in touch with someone who was notified through the system, and it appears this version is relatively benign.

The redacted sections are those that would identify the individual to whom it was sent, but you get an idea of the actual content in the notice. The links included in the notice are to the subscriber's ISP account, as well as one that takes you to the 'Get it Right Information Portal." It's at that portal that a subscriber will get more information on the suspected act of copyright infringement. While that information is fairly detailed, including such things as file sizes and types, the times and dates of the infringement, and the application used in the alleged infringement... the whole thing still relies on the faulty evidence of an IP address. That's problematic for reasons we've discussed to death here at Techdirt, but given the lack of any threatening language in any of this, it's still all fairly benign.

Which is why the individual TorrentFreak spoke with, who admits to committing the act in question, doesn't think the public will be all that impressed with this unsolicited "education."

“I don’t think [the warnings] will work, at least not on a big scale. Maybe they will educate some people who did it by mistake or did it just once but for someone like me there is no hope. But at least the campaign is not aggressive.”

The only thing in all of this that raised some eyebrows was that this notice came from Sky, the same ISP that has suggested that receivers of these notices will be forced to remove filesharing software to keep service from being interrupted.

“Your broadband service won’t be affected as a result of receiving this email alert,” Sky assures its subscribers, but it doesn’t stop there. “However, if you continue to share content illegally using your broadband connection, Sky will request that you take immediate steps to remove or disable any file sharing software that is being used to share copyrighted content illegally,” Sky writes.

So, putting all of this together makes this a little more troubling. ISPs will monitor your connection at the behest of private industry, will notify you that they're doing so, and only promise to serve you as their customer if you agree to remove software with all kinds of legitimate uses... and all of this is still based on the concept that an IP address is useful as an identifier for an infringer. When taken in total context, it's easy to see how this foot-in-the door, benign "education" could transition to ISPs mandating control of the public's software rollouts to get service. And that's not benign at all.

Filed Under: alerts, copyright, file sharing, file sharing software, infringement, uk

Dear ZDNet: Comcast Has Been Sketchily Injecting Messages Into User's Browsers For Years

from the old-news-bad-news dept

Comcast has been dutifully modeling its behavior in such a way so as to fill up Techdirt's story pages for years now. So, when we come across a story somewhere discussing how Comcast is doing some bad new thing, it's tempting to simply assume it's true and move on. Such might be the case for some readers of ZDNet's recent post about how Comcast was injecting notices into browsers warning of potential copyright infringement.

The cable and media giant has been accused of tapping into unencrypted browser sessions and displaying warnings that accuse the user of infringing copyrighted material -- such as sharing movies or downloading from a file-sharing site. Jarred Sumner, a San Francisco, Calif.-based developer who published the alert banner's code on his GitHub page, told ZDNet in an email that this could cause major privacy problems.

Well, sure, this is horrible, and it is a privacy issue -- but it isn't new. In fact, Comcast as been doing some flavor of this sort of browser injection for the better part of a decade. The company started this practice way back in 2009, using the tactic to warn users of potential malware infections, and there was even discussion about expanding the use for other security purposes in 2011. More specifically on browser injections being used as a copyright warning system, our own Karl Bode noted in 2013 that this was all specifically laid out in Comcast's six-strike plan. Per Karl's post, Comcast isn't even alone in using this tactic.

Comcast has now put information on their implementation of six strikes online. According to the nation's largest broadband company, their version of the program will involve a persistent nagging pop up that continues to alert the user after the fourth warning. Time Warner Cable, who outlined their version of the plan to me last November , stated they're using a similar pop up warning system that blocks browsing until users acknowledge receipt of "educational" copyright materials.

None of that is to say that the privacy and security concerns aren't very real, of course, and ZDNet does a nice job of discussing those concerns. But it's not new. Perhaps the better conversation to be had is why anyone in their right minds would think that Comcast deserves anyone's trust to the level where users' browsers should be injected with copyright violation notices in a system rife with abuse from pretty much every player involved.

Filed Under: alerts, copyright, deep packet inspection, injection
Companies: comcast

Olympics Shuts Down Non-Commercial Online Service That Helped People Get Tickets

from the olympic-failures dept

Another day, another story of Olympics insanity. Apparently the website for the London Olympics has a really awful interface that highlights tickets that are available. So, some enterprising coders quickly hacked together a better system, called 2012TicketAlert that would help alert people when new tickets were available. It was just a typical internet case study: some people saw a system that wasn't very good, and they built a better interface. Welcome to the internet.

Ah, but this is the Olympics, and the Olympics just doesn't do things like that. So, they shut the site down:

It seems someone at LOCOG has taken exception to our idea (or the publicity it is getting) and instead of reaching out to us or addressing the lack of a notification system, they have simply blocked our access to their server. This means we are unable to check or post any new ticket alerts.

Welcome to the Olympics, where if you don't pay the Olympics, you better not do anything to help make the Olympics a better experience.

And it's important to note that they weren't making money off of this. They were just helping to alert people to ticket availability and then driving them to the official Olympics site. They just hacked together a notification system.

Sometimes I wonder if the Olympics just wants to piss off everyone.

Filed Under: alerts, olympics, shut down, tickets

And Of Course: Twitter Sued For Patent Infringement In Texas

from the where-else? dept

This should hardly be a surprise, but with Twitter being so popular lately, it was only a matter of time until it was targeted in patent infringement lawsuits. At the very least, the company suing them appears to (a) actually be based in Texas and (b) have a product on the market. But... that doesn't make TechRadium's lawsuit against Twitter any more reasonable or sensible. Take a look at the patents in question:

• 7,130,389: Digital notification and response system
• 7,496,183: Method for providing digital notification
• 7,519,165: Method for providing digital notification and receiving responses

Read through the claims on each of these patents and try not to gag on the obviousness of all three. If you picked any competent programmer (or, should we say, one who is "skilled in the art") and discussed messaging systems, this is pretty much what any of them would develop. There's nothing particularly unique or special in what's described in these patents. And, now, unfortunately, Twitter needs to waste time and money defending itself for doing something (ahem) obvious.

Filed Under: alerts, notification, patents, texas, twitter
Companies: techradium, twitter

People Finally Realizing That SMS Isn't Good For Emergency Alerts

from the about-time dept

Only two years or so after we questioned why anyone would seriously consider the notoriously unreliable SMS text messaging system for emergency alerts, the mobile trade group 3G Americas has released a research report stating the same thing. Basically, the system isn't reliable or efficient, and in an emergency is likely to get overloaded quickly. It's not clear why it took anyone until now to notice this, but hopefully no one was seriously considering using SMS for emergency alerts.

Filed Under: alerts, emergency, sms