Comments on: Should AT&T police the Internet?

AT&T has said it is testing filtering technology that will look for copyrighted material. But should the company be acting as Internet cop?

[annekauf83]

What's The Difference Between AT&T and NSA....Absolutely Nothing!

Don?t buy into the propaganda that ATT policing is a good thing. DO YOUR HOMEWORK AND STOP WATCHING MAJOR MEDIA NEWS if you are interested in fairness and accuracy in reporting.

WHO OWNS THE MEDIA?
http://www.stopbigmedia.com/chart.php


Whistle-Blower Outs NSA Spy Room at AT&T
http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Countdown_Telcom_whistleblower_describes_secret_room_1107.html

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/politics/2004001159_spying08.html

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/homefront/preemption/telecoms.html


USA Today reported May 11,2006 that AT&T, BellSouth Corp. and Verizon Communications Inc. secretly provided phone records of millions of Americans to the NSA, which has compiled a massive database.

To those of you living in the United States of Denial and those who know the truth but believe you are powerless, YOU CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE.
Hit these companies where it hurts them?.their bottom line.

DO NOT USE THEIR PRODUCTS AND SERVICES
And
TELL EVERYONE YOU KNOW, FOR THE SAKE OF OUR CONSITUTIONALLY GUARANTEED RIGHTS AND OUR WAY OF LIFE.

[magicman73]

blabbity-blabbity-blah-blah-blah

Excuse me, Mr wildly ranting and salivating fool, but where is there a freedom to illegally share copyrighted materials on a broadband internet connection? And there is nothing really wrong with the service providers releasing those records as you already agree to that when you sign up for their service. You should try reading things first before you go off ranting though I have found more often than not that the more rabid and vocal a person is the more clueless they are.

[M.Hat]

Save America's Great Industry

Anything that will save one of America's greatest industries is fine with me. Down with thieves and their supporters.

[JRude667]

Traffic Cop or...Content pusher?

AT&T and all other ISP's to follow...Why upgrade the network pipeline when you can gain by filtering the "bad guys'" protocols and content? No one will care if "Pirates'" traffic is blocked for the "good" of the network. Much less the prospect of higher profits and deals for proprietary video. Who cares? YOU should! The USA network is an international joke. Look at the standings of USA network compared to other industrial countries. The ISP's and Entertainment Industry WILL take over the internet as we know it. YOUR legitimate content is next! Your business content...your VOIP...your Aunt Molly's 50th Anniversary video. The general population will acquiesce to insure they get their ringtones and B. Spears video. R.I.P. USA internet.

[hadaso]

Conflict of interests

This article clearly shows there's a conflict of interests between the ISP's role as a provider of communication services and it's additional business in providing content.

The ISP is supposed to provide IP protocol communications. But since it also wants to sell content it "has to" intervene in its customers' communications and stop them from getting competing content.

In one place the article describe ISP customers as "consuming content". That's a big problem. An ISP should view its customers as consuming communications services and not as consuming content. Its franchise is to supply communication services and not content! And it seems that the ISPs ventures into providing content are in direct conflict with their basic franchise. This should be avoided. And ISP should not be allowed to degrade the communication services in any way because of their content business.

[NC_63]

Police State in Action

No..AT&T should NOT be allowed to take away any of our freedoms. I don't want my chats..my emails..my browser history read at all by anyone.
We are turning in to a police state. We have no rights anymore.I am working hard to reverse that. Because I am one of the supporters for the Constitution...Have you Googled RonPaul2008 yet?

[hadaso]

Analogy

The analogy of police coming to search everybody's services is not good enough.

A better analogy to an ISP's snooping into its customers packets is a toll road operator searching everybody's trunks (cars, not elephants ;-)

[hadaso]

Encryption to achieve reliable communications

Any filtering technology has "false positives". Filtering packets would have an effect of degrading communications. Some communications would be lost/blocked because of being mistakenly identified as "infringing". This can be overcome by using encryption, so content is invisible to filtering technology. So the good thing is that people would be driven to encrypt their communications, not to achieve privacy but to achieve reliability by avoiding filtering. Of course illegal content would be encrypted in a world that filters networks. This could be be construed as a measure taken by criminals to avoid being caught, but this reasoning would fail in a world where many users use encryption just to have reliable communications.

One final word: perhaps AT&T doesn't really want to stop piracy. If filtering networks would drive everyone to encrypt their communications than they can truly claim there is no feasible way for them to monitor their network for copyright infringing activity!

[dvdcrack]

AT&T police the net.

Well I have to be ignorant towards AT&T when I say It wont last too long! When are people gonna learn that there is always way's around that! AT&T is gonna search packets that contain copyright information so all anybody has to do is remove the copyright information. If I was to take a DVD movie and put it on my hard drive even thou it has been decrypted I know the copyright info is still there! it was put there so it can be removed. I could take a DVD movie and play it on my dvd player and record the image on my computer in AVI format. I know by doing it in this method all the signals (Analog&digital info) that are in the video's blanking signal are now gone. Same thing when it comes to a cd. I can record the tracks of a cd onto my computer and now all the digital locks and the in-audiable noises are now gone. So with the digital tracking gone how is AT&T gonna track it now? STOKED! bye, bye!

[rbuck9]

AT$T Money

Well it seem's its comming to the point where
indivdual right's are droping of the face of the earth ,so that big brother and the big company
can raise there proffit margin. just like the
stupid laws that special intrest groups get passed. padding the goverment's pocket in this case it's AT$T looking to grab the content dollar
getting in bed with the recording industry.
I for one have become very tired of the mentality that alows this behavior to continue time to let
Goverment know we as a people have had enough,
and put an end to this crap
http://bux.to/?r=susiek

[Brentbb0]

You'll love this

As a Bush loving conservative, you'll love reading what Pat Buchanan has recently posted:

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/staticarticles/article59693.html

[remoran]

Kidding, right?

You must be kidding, right? The only company not to support WiMax, the most aggressive company regarding the abolition of Net Neutrality and an entity in bed with the NSA, Yeah, right. Sure and let have Bush for another eight years to ensure our security and fiscal well being. Not even real here.

[bea01]

First step to enabling the censoring of ideas.

I think the justification of preventing illegal content is a smoke screen. Once AT&T has approval to filter every package, what will they do with the capability? With this framework in place, it would be easy to implement censorship -- ideas counter to the government are not transmitted.

As the article mentioned AT&T has performed illegal wiretapping. The government (except for Chris Dobbs) is pushing through congress an amnesty bill that would prevent this accusation from being examined by the courts. Perhaps this is the price AT&T is paying for that amnesty. That law has the added benefit of setting a precedent where illegal network behavior is not examined by the courts.

[palewook]

only if we get to sue

at&t for violating the bill of rights.

[qmuser]

Only with a search warrant.

The U.S. presumably has a legal process.
A law enforcement agency needs probably cause to suspect someone of illegal doings, puts it in front of a judge, and gets a signed search warrant. If that happens then it is reasonable for the law enforcement agency to ask AT&T to monitor traffic to that one, individual user.

If traffic is being monitored without all of those steps being taken, then the organization doing the monitoring should have criminal charges brought up against them.

[Gerry S]

AT&T suks

Back in 1984 when they killed off the Big Brother, AT&T, someone forgot the stake through the heart and this demon has come back bigger and more dangerous than ever before. They always mask their devious, demented, self serving schemes with holier than thou good intentions....buyer beware of this wolf in sheep's clothing....God, how I hate AT&T.

[Thokizz]

Content filtering

Welcome to China!! AT&T will soon be the new Big Brother.

[Jeremy.sarkilahti]

Internet Censorship

Well looks like another threat to censor online activity. Although AT&T has the right to filter, monitor and, control the data that travels on it's networks, it is not a bright idea business wise, considering that a large amount of people that enjoy broadband end up doing something illegal with it. It would also be a blow towards the environment that is the internet, the internet has been a great free for all of sorts, with the free access of information and ideas as well as entertainment such as movies, music and games that create new ideas. As soon as someone successfully controls one aspect of all of that then more will work to control the others, what is to stop the service providers from filter and controlling everything from IM conversations that may include links to crack software to VoIP calls that talk about peer to peer downloading. What is to keep that from going a step father and the internet and internet services are limited and controlled for the financial benefit for the service providers or their partners

[BillNYC]

OK! Let's play traffic cop

What's the job paying?

[BillNYC]

LOL! AT&T is on acid...

Did they taks some acid "Orange Sunshine", a now legendary type of high-quality acid?

Billy Amato (NYC)

[outpostprime]

Umm...

Nobody is stealing anything from AT&T just so you know. What AT&T is doing is taking your fair use rights away so you?re forced to buy only from them. For example they might go as far as forcing you to only view their websites, shop from their stores, rent from their download renting service, only watch TV shows they let you watch, and Only use them for all your communication needs.
This is how AT&T has worked for over a hundred years. They find methods to enforce a monopoly with zero competition.

If anything AT&T is stealing from all of us and taking down all other legitimate business.
Under these kinds of policies companies like Sears, Bestbuy, Newegg, Ebay, Google, Cox Comm., and all ISP and Telco?s will go out of business. AT&T will eventually figure out how to make the fed government make them the only Telco, ISP, and Cable Company just to be their watchdog group. They?ll be making an insane amount of money without any rules or competition.