This is offered up in your article as though it was a BAD thing:

"Ukrainian communications law, as they paraphrase it, says that providers are not responsible for what their customers do. Therefore, they feel no need to speak about or defend what they do."

--John Robinson, BigChampagne

What he is describing in the concept called Net Neutrality.

Internet Service Providers should NOT be held responsible for what their customers do.

Just as Landlords are not held responsible for what their tenants do.

The tenant may be the father of a family of four whose worst crime is crossing against the lights. Just as easily the tenant may be a serial killer who keeps locks of his victim's hair in a jewelry box. Or perhaps a wax museum artisan who keeps locks of necessary hair samples for repairing exhibits in a jewelry box.

The only way a landlord can know which involves serious invasion of privacy. Because it is only by spying on the tenants that the landlord can know. And even then, the landlord is not trained in recognizing or preserving evidence, much less building cases to present in court.

So no one expects the landlord to engage in this type of spying.

Largely because people prefer not to be spied on. Even an innocent father doesn't want his landlord pawing through his mail.

Chances are the serial killer has taken precautions that would make it difficult for the landlord to discover the truth anyway. Besides, we've all seen the movie... if the landlord DID get the goods on the killer, the tenant would have to arrange an accident...

If the tenant is in fact breaking the law, either through tax evasion or serial killing, it is NOT the landlord's job to investigate and prosecute. That's what law enforcement is for. Centuries of jurisprudence have built in protections for citizens, so that something resembling probable cause must exist before citizen's rights may be assailed.

Just as it is not an ISP's job to monitor and investigate citizens in the event they may be breaking a law somewhere. ISP's are in the business of providing an internet connection, in much the same way that a housing estate provides a home.

Besides, spying on customers will be a huge expense. Who will foot the bill? I've seen enough spy films to know that intelligence gathering is a time consuming and expensive business. Surely it is not expected that the customers being spied on will pay for the privilege. The ISP can't be expected to pay for the necessary personnel and equipment.

So the government will have to foot the bill. But wait: government funds come from the citizens... so in effect the customers being spied on will pay for the privilege.

The internet has stopped being a luxury toy, as individuals and businesses conduct more and more of our real lives online. Many people do online banking, and of course many commercial transactions take place online.

I correspond with family and friends around the world online. I know to be careful what information I put on facebook but none of it will matter if ISPs are given a mandate to spy on us, because nothing on our computers will be secure.

Every ISP should be "bullet proof".

Look for the russians to start setting up in tajikstan, and the swedish guys could float down to bulgaria but probably only as a stopgap measure when moscow gets interested. Russians will sell services heavily along several borders from there. No doubt to some of the more infamous entities along there. The americans will have there hands full and the russian government will use them for a bargaining chip just like the chinese government uses their shadow servers. Watch for any negotiations involving greater net freedom to suddenly steer towards server suppression as a wedge. Bottom line is that if a media company shoots for 19 percent market penetration in china it should consider itself lucky to get 5.

Oh and laurel. Its generally known that once a landlord becomes aware or is made aware of a tenants criminal action, he would be a fool to do anything other than cooperate fully with authorities or be regarded as complicit in said criminal enterprise and risk forfeiture of the property in question. Unless of course the landlord is a rogue government, in which case they clearly ARE complicit in the criminal enterprise. They simply spin it to reflect sovereign priveledge rather than acknowledge that they are passively engaging in international larceny and piracy through a commissioned ACTIVE intermediary. Sure they give chase to the criminals on paper or for show but make sure to give them advance notice and safe passage out of harms reach.

There is nothing wrong with a landlord co-operating with the authorities Larry, But that is a very different scenario because the law enforcement professionals are the ones conducting the investigation within the framework of the law.

I have no problem with law enforcement.

At the same time I have some very big concerns about the sweeping changes being done to legal systems around the world in the name of copyright. It certainly looks as though the world is heading toward 1984.

After all what is piracy? They are lumping two completely different things together under the term "piracy".

Bootlegging movies or music for commercial purposes is one thing.
Kids downloading music or movies for personal use is no different than listening to the radio or watching TV was in my day.

Copyright has been justified as a means of rewarding the creator. What difference does it make to the guy who wrote the song if the copyright runs fifty years after his death or seventy?

Most of the actual creators earn a pittance because the price they had to pay to get distribution was part or all of the copyright. It is those vopyright collectives and the corporate pirates who acquired the copyrights by duress who are pushing to extend copyright terms to forever. These corpoorations own masses of copyrights which add up to big numbers.

All of the supposed anti-counterfeiting laws actually aim to turn back the hands of time to prevent the internet distribution. Because musicians and artists and writers and filmmakers from distributing their music and art and books and films online without having to sell their souls to the big media companies.

The figures I've heard for Canada are that 30% of our music industry has gone independent. We are seeing a golden age of culture. I think that's a good thing.

But the big media companies don't get a cut.

THAT is what they are really trying to stop.

but, will u protest against the Chinese government if it blocks the illeaglly run websites that support illegal file-sharing? i have seen a lot of comments condemning the Chinese government for closing such websites these days. im just a bit curious about what kind of approach will suit ur interests?

turquoise1971

As far as I can tell the Chinese government does block some of these websites - but just the better known ones.

Personally I prefer for no websites to be blocked at all, but I think it's difficult to condemn the Chinese gov for blocking illegal P2P websites, and I don't feel nearly as strongly about torrent sites being blocked as I do about as social networking/media/user-generated content sites/blogs being blocked.

At the same time it is silly that major P2P websites are blocked while people sell pirate dvds openly on the street almost everywhere.... It suggests blocking them is some sort of 'token' action against piracy.

What makes a P2P site illegal?

I would be inclined to think (although I do not know) that laws in China are more likely to block social networking and user generated web content while allowing unfettered P2P.

Laws are not uniform around the world. In the past each country created the laws they felt best.

Canadian copyright goes for 50 years after the death of the author, while American copyright law runs for 70 years after the death of the author. (And some people (like me) are advocating a reduction of Canadian copyright terms.)

I don't think that there should be any internet blocking at all. For the same reason I believe there should be no censorship: who gets to decide?

Regardless of what we define piracy to be (after all, that's how laws are established) the point people miss is the great deal of legal filesharing on P2P websites. Legal by anyone's standards.

I worry that all this "anti-piracy" furore will end in P2P filesharing being outlawed. I think that would be a real crime.

Open source software and Project Gutenberg are just two very important reasons for P2P. I wrote a public service blog post a while back explaining how BitTorrent filesharing works-- this is one of the most efficient ways to transfer material online. The second part of the blog looks at many legitimate uses of file sharing.

http://stopusagebasedbilling.wordpress.com/2009/11/24/d-bittorrent/

The internet works best unfettered,

Some counter surveillance posts actually worry me.

Is or is not the internet a public space?

Should or should not it be monitored as per country's laws and regulations?

Since when has the internet become a human right? Can parents ban the internet from their homes?

But the long-term impact of offshore hosting is becoming more problematic as investigators worldwide try to cut the links between criminal groups and protected internet servers.

It's like the war on drugs. By "criminalising" something, you make it a lucrative business for criminals.

Ironically copyright infringement breaks civil not criminal law.

This article is insanely biased for the following reasons.

1. The internet has much copyright law perscribing what is and is not lawful which simply does not exist.

2. The article frames it's subjects as sinister and criminal in a mysterious scare mungering rehtoric but ignores the fact that the current law allows much of what it describes to exist without being unlawful or criminal.

3. The writer fails to examine the difference between the main activities it describes. Consequently it further denies Guradian readers the whole picture but rather feeds them a culture of confused fear and suspision. It lumps spaming, file sharing and criminal activities unspeicifed in the same boat. In fact they are very different and each implies a different consideration.

Laslty to say the issue of file sharing is profundly mis-reported in the Guardian and consequently sides the paper with the anti-piracy lobby without ever actually plainly stating it . It's time the Guardian decalred it's conviction (which is an admittance of the degree of understanding it actually has about this subject) and stood by it rather than continue to employ bad journalism to manifest yet more fear, anxiety and ignorance about the internet.

Research published last year showed that most bulletproof hosts are located in China, where criminals are able to take advantage of low costs and legal loopholes to avoid prosecution.

I liked the smooth segue from the first half of the article (about torrent hosts) to the second half (about organised crime), strongly implying that the two are the same thing but carefully avoiding actually saying so. For the umpteenth time - there is nothing illegal about P2P filesharing. How could there be? Once upon a time people used newspaper small ads to send secret messages (perhaps they still do!!) Did that mean that all small ads should have been banned? I suspect that you will find that every major crime of the last couple of decades has been coordinated by mobile phone. Arrest everyone with a mobile, to be on the safe side, that's what I say.

This slow shift to the principle of guilty until proven innocent is deeply worrying. I really do have no problems with the idea that the "authorities" should be able to open my post or tap my phone. But they are only allowed to do it if they have followed due process - even in these days of over-exaggerated terrorist panic (well, if they want to use it as evidence, at least.) Why should they be able to listen in on my 'net activity without following the same processes? It's not as though the existing structures and laws can't be used in the same way.

This article is completely deprived of critical analysis and makes some very dangerous connections.

Looks as if the authour tried to explain every hint of illegal internet activity within the confined space of a A4 paper.
The subject is a bit more complex than the simple analogy that is drawn here.

When you read you are driven to think the following juxstaposition of arguments:

File sharing sites geographically move in order to flee prosecution and this is linked thanks to a subtle paragraph to other online criminal activity

Not all bulletproof services are linked to illegal activities, but they are popular among criminal groups, spammers and file-sharing services.

WTF???
Basically we are juxstaposing spammers and file sharing two complete different things. One (filesharing) may not have lucrative intentions whereas spammers do...They are different things and should be defined, each deserving at least an explanation in the article.

Then this quote

When you think about it, bulletproof hosting is just a data version of money laundering.

Triple WTF???
We're talking about money laundering which is predomuinantly used by the mob and terrorists all over to "recycle" illegal money into legal money.
So basically File sharing = /> Spammers => Criminals => money launderers

Now, the author could bring in his critical opinion of the quote he just used. But no! He goes into The Pirate Bay case and speaks about Demonoid, File sharing sites (torrent sites to be precise).

And then my favourite bit, which shows how this author should not tackle this subject so lightly:

Despite officials in Beijing talking in tough terms about computer crime ? hacking potentially carries a death sentence in China

The circle is closed we have:
File sharing = /> Spammers => Criminals => money launderers => Pirate Bay & Demonoid => Hackers operating in China

Hackers????? Now the author has a golden opportunity to deconstruct all of the above and wrap up a conclusion to knock down old myth...What does he do?
Speaks about more Hacking:

One notorious gang of hackers, known as the Russian Business Network [...]

That's it, some poeple shouldn't tackle some subjects. I'm not a journalist but I think I could have done a better job than this pseudo-article.

For the umpteenth time - there is nothing illegal about P2P filesharing.

That depends on what material is being shared.

If you own the work or a an unfettered licence to distribute it then okay. But "sharing" material when you don't have rights to do so then there's a high chance such activity would be illegal.

Tech reporting in the mainstream press really is dire.

While there may be huge holes in the writers arguments I really have to laugh at some of the comments below it.

Why do we need all these theoretical arguments about civil liberties and the legal uses of file sharing. If any of the posters above are using a peer to peer site that has mostly legal content and yet has been so persecuted that it has been forced to move to China then please tell me about it.

By all means challenge the stupidity of the media companies trying to put their finger in the dyke as water spills over the top, but don't treat us as fools by pretending that most torrents and p2p sites are not sharing recently produced copyright material.

Myself, I'm relaxed about some dodgy downloading. If your media usage is along the lines of watch some live, buy some, download some, stream some but if we all head off on a 'pay for nothing' path then we'll have a problem.

Think about your arguments please. Are you really more worried about civil liberties than about not being able to download the new series of Lost?

@LaurelRusswurm "Regardless of what we define piracy to be (after all, that's how laws are established) the point people miss is the great deal of legal filesharing on P2P websites. Legal by anyone's standards."

You're going to show us some solid data now to back up that assertion, aren't you? Because you wouldn't want to make sweeping unfounded claims, right?

@nicholson "[the article] lumps spaming, file sharing and criminal activities unspeicifed in the same boat. In fact they are very different and each implies a different consideration."

Spamming (especially on the scale requiring bulletproof hosting) is frequently done by people whose ends are non-legal. Such as: fake pharmaceuticals, phishing, counterfeiting, or engaging people in illegal stuff (that's the "work from home sending commissions" emails). Go and read the spamhaus.org info about ROKSO spammers, for instance. So that's linked spammers and criminal activities. As for file-sharing and criminals: the people making those cheap DVDs by the hundred in windowless flats so that they can be sold to you for £2 aren't getting them from the corner shop. The article isn't saying that all file sharing is criminal. But some users of file sharing are criminals who you'd really not like to meet.

The problem with bulletproof hosting is that it allows people who want to get your money off you illegallly to operate with impunity. If you can't see that that is not a good thing, then just take up all the offers in all your spam emails for a while and click all the links and give them your credit card details and password details and date of birth and PIN and the rest. The bulletproof hosts and their clients will thank you.

The reason we need an argument about civil liberties is because it is not right to constrain the civil liberties of the majority because of the actions of a criminal minority.

The phone analogy is a good one. If some criminals use phones to organise illegal activites, should we wiretap everyone's phones?

scoober: if the civil liberties arguments are as foolish as the ones above then it leaves the door open to a draconian response.

The phone analogy is simplistic in this case. If we are talking about all our emails being read then it makes sense but we are taling about P2P, spam and torrent sites that are moving to China etc because they know they are being used for illegal means.

Not all bulletproof services are linked to illegal activities, but they are popular among criminal groups, spammers and file-sharing services.

Cheese, CSI Miami and breathing oxygen are also popular among criminal groups I hear.

The hoarding of money should be the first thing to made a crime,
prohibition just does not work, people should work together,
everything should not be free, but neither should the internet become
one big shop for corporations either.

A great deal of those who are in privileged positions of wealth would love it if they got the whole internet locked down,to do with as they pleased.

Make everything which gets in the way of business illegal,because everything else is against their love of making money, they are just as much slaves to money as we are to the hierarchy in society.

People will do what they can get away with but when force is applied, an opposing force shall come into being, because when you fight something you are giving as much energy as you are using to fight it.

I would say its better that big media keeps its boring films,music and over consumptive life style, it will consume itself without help from us.

They are in the most part just adverts about how to live in a bad way,and become more unhappy.

I don't care myself about what data people hold on the other side of the world,or what other people are copying without paying for that is their own time wasted.
And spam and scams, you have to be very foolish to order anything from sites you don't know much about.

Enlarge your penis... haha

my advice is its better to be more interested in the things you are doing wrong in this life, Do you share what you have with others who have less?,Do you waste lots of enegy in the way you are living?

I have to echo what several other commentators have said.......this article is pathetic...it lacks rigour and includes more examples of bias/false reasoning than I would have thought possible to have got past an editor. For any IB teacher's out there it's a great article for a Theory of Knowledge lesson.......I won't repeat all it's mistakes but at the end I wouldn't have been surprised to hear the conclusion that file sharing causes AIDS!!

If all articles in the Guardian were to follow the same sloppy standards then I will expect to be reading 'Cheese triangles are the cause of paedophilia' and 'Owning Apple equipment makes you cleverererer' in tomorrows paper.

Like others I've also noticed a creeping Guardian party line over the last year or so suggesting that filesharers are destroying the world........I find it hard to believe that Guardian journalists didn't make mix-tapes when they were younger, or record their friend's vinyl to listen to later.........plus ca change, plus c'est pareil.

After reading this I think I want to see all file sharers shot or at the very least locked away for life. And worst of all I spent 20 minutes of my life responding to this piece of sloppy journalism....Come on Guardian, I'll stop being proud of you if you carry on like this!

I believe many criminal activities of the past, and even the present in some regions, have been planned on paper.

Maybe we should ban this potentially dangerous material?

@CharlesArthur

"LaurelRusswurm "Regardless of what we define piracy to be (after all, that's how laws are established) the point people miss is the great deal of legal filesharing on P2P websites. Legal by anyone's standards."

You're going to show us some solid data now to back up that assertion, aren't you? Because you wouldn't want to make sweeping unfounded claims, right?

Well, actually, no, I'm not.

I don't have solid data because I don't actually go to p2p sites for movies. If I want to see a Hollywood movie I buy DVDs if, usually from Harold at my local video store. He'll sell me a previously viewed first run film for C$10 (about £5)

Until August 2009 I was blissfully ignorant of what was happening under the guise of "protecting copyright", That was when I discovered that our main Canadian internet carrier was employing Deep Packet Inspection to identify internet traffic. This is so they can identify the traffic they want to impede.

Our telecommunications regulatory body the CRTC said it was OK to discriminate, on the assumption is that all P2P traffic is copyright infringement. Of course they also impede encrypted web traffic under the assumption that all encrypted traffic must be illegal filesharing.

That was when I started my self inflicted crash course on the internet. DPI also gives the ISP the power to read any unencrypted internet traffic. Oh, they aren't supposed to, but there is NO OVERSIGHT. Because the legal system has evolved over hundreds of years it has built in checks and balances. That is why the police can't just open our mail because they want to. Email should be just as private as snail mail.

Why should civil rights be cast aside to serve copyright?

What I have learned is that an awful lot of very good things are distributed on P2P sites. Here are some of the ones I know about:

Project Gutenberg is a volunteer organization which is digitizing works in the public domain -- and keeping them in the public domain, unlike Google books-- for free and making them freely available online. My intent to become a Gutenberg proofreader is on hold while I do my bit to attempt to ensure Gutenberg will be able to continue to freely distribute the sum of the world's collected knowledge (up to the Mickey Mouse era).

Open source software is also distributed freely online. I stopped using WordPerfect because the corporation stopped supporting a perfectly good software package. It still worked but there were no drivers for the printers of the day so I had to throw it out. Rather than lock myself into another type of proprietary software I decided to try out Open Office and I haven't looked back since.

Another of my favorites is GNU Linux... I run Ubuntu on my IBM Thinkpad laptop, because supported versions of Windows don't fit. Without Ubuntu my laptop would be a paperweight. With it I am finally getting my novel written.

And the amazing Firefox browser ... it is so much nicer than IE.

Then there are websites that allow independent musicians to make their music available online... authorized filesharing, like the Pirate Party of Canada's Pirate Tracker Filesharing site or one I just learned about called Libre.fm which also distributes free music on the behalf of the creators (I think it's p2p but I don't know.)

And of course we're starting to see movies distributed online through filesharing, like Nina Paley's amazing animated movieSita Sings the Blues.

Personally I think all the fuss about copyright is really to stop the last two.

The movie business is making record profits, so the argument about personal downloading costing them money doesn't fly very far.

The record industry IS suffering... the big record companies only control 70% of the music recording industry. They have lost 30% to musicians doing it independently. Creators no longer have to give away their copyright to reach an audience.

THAT is what this is really all about. It isn't the supposed losses from counterfeiting that these laws are supposed to stop it is the independent competition.

The media companies think that if they say "filesharing is theft" enough times we will believe them.

Scurra:
"For the umpteenth time - there is nothing illegal about P2P filesharing."

calmeilles:
That depends on what material is being shared. "

A hatchet is legal when you cut down a tree; it is only a weapon when it is used to cut down a person. Even then, no one has outlawed axes.

But I'm pretty sure they will outlaw p2p if they can.

@bluenova

scoober: if the civil liberties arguments are as foolish as the ones above then it leaves the door open to a draconian response.

The phone analogy is simplistic in this case. If we are talking about all our emails being read then it makes sense but we are taling about P2P, spam and torrent sites that are moving to China etc because they know they are being used for illegal means.

As another commentator has pointed out. Deep packet inspection is already happening in Canada. Here in the UK, Virgin media is one ISP who has recently started doing it. This is the reading of emails you talk about.

The other big civil rights issue is the fact that you could be punished on the basis of an accusation, without anyone actually needing to prove that you did anything illegal.

"

the infamous host McColo, which was based in San Jose, California, and remained in operation until last year

the infamous host McColo, which was based in San Jose, California, and remained in operation until last year

"

Can you please write that sentence again? I love it when people proof read their drivel before the publish. It makes everything so much more credible.