[AusNOG] And it continues - ISP to block sites bill..

[Scott Weeks]

--- terry+AusNOG at skymesh.net.au wrote:
From: Terry Sweetser <terry+AusNOG at skymesh.net.au>

> Once again, the politicians simply will not care about 
technological defects.

The UK scheme is alive and well -- the DNS blocks on 
Pirate Bay last for about 3 hours per month after the 
new block list is done.
----------------------------------------


I asked on UKNOF about their blocks.  I put a couple
responses below.

scott



===============================================================
> "The law will enable copyright holders to apply for court
> orders forcing ISPs such as Telstra to block a website
> providing links to pirated content."
>
> "The move, which has been highly effective in Britain..."
> 
> Is this the case there?  Hollywood can tell the gov't there
> to tell the ISPs to block web sites it doesn't like?


In the UK? no they can't but they can go to the high court and ask the 
court to do so and they have done, are doing so and will in the future 
to I suspect. 

personally speaking I would say the effort in the Britain has been 
completely ineffective at the aims of reducing piracy but if you are a 
rights holder and you see a site giving away your work for free be 
shutdown - it registers in the "my industry body is doing what I pay 
them to do"; but once "Hollywood" realises how ineffective this really 
is they will be back demanding some other action - heaven help us in 
what that might look like. 

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Yes, this is the case (the move at least, the effectiveness is less 
certain
but likely to be true to some degree).

There are essentially four major ISPs in the UK (BT, Sky, Virgin and
TalkTalk), each with between 4 and 8 million subscribers. The next 
largest,
EE, has less than 1 million and after that it's mainly niche ISPs with 
less
than 200,000 subscribers. In general, smaller ISPs are less likely to 
carry
out any filtering (voluntarily or otherwise), with the top five being 
under
both voluntary and legal commitments to carry out filtering.

The basis for the filtering dates back some time to government efforts 
to
block the extreme end of illegal content. ISPs were strongly encouraged 
to
put in place measures to block content based on a list that would be
maintained by a government endorsed independent body, the Internet Watch
Foundation. (The encouragement taking the form of doing it voluntarily 
under
their own terms, or being subject to legislation and doing it the
governments way with the risk of prosecution for failure.) This system 
was
not intended to be used to block other content, however once the 
presence of
the systems became widely known, media companies were able to use the
pre-existence of such a system to obtain court orders to force 
individual
ISPs to add additional material to the blocking system. This was done at 
the
ISP level rather than with the involvement of the Internet Watch 
Foundation.

The general principles were discussed in court at reasonable length in
2011/2012 (IIRC). Since then a number of further court orders have been
obtained without significant issue with slight variations on the now
established requirements. It is worth mentioning that the ability to
implement the blocks with a limited cost to the ISPs was an influence on 
the
decision, as was the low likelihood of collateral damage as the blocked
sites were all operating on dedicated IP addresses. I am not aware of a 
case
targeting a smaller ISP which did not already have a platform to carry 
out
the required blocking.

It should be noted that the method of blocking to be imposed was based 
on
the ISPs own descriptions of their existing blocking capabilities. To 
the
best of my knowledge, the ISPs were not given a legal obligation to 
block
access to the sites in question but to add the sites to their existing
blocking system. That is to say, the court orders described the 
technical
steps to be carried out and not an end result to be achieved. This was a 
key
matter for the ISPs as this means that they cannot be held responsible 
for
users who are able to by-pass the blocking system.

When the blocks were put in place there was some initial backlash in the
form of denial of service attacks against the ISPs though this has not 
been
seen on subsequent blockings, possibly due to pressure from within the
filesharing community (The Pirate Bay in particular argued against this 
as a
method of retaliation). One significant DoS attack took place against an 
ISP
that may have been connected to a less than tactful announcement of the
block by the ISP. Later blocks have generally been accompanied by a 
minimum
of fuss and a curt announcement that the block has been carried out as a
legal requirement.

Another related topic has been the question of blocking all internet 
access
for individual users that have been identified as copyright infringers.
ISPs are currently under pressure to disconnect such users, but no clear
legal basis has been established as yet. There is an unresolved 
difficulty
here with the government view that good internet connectivity is a
requirement for society, especially with more and more government 
services
being moved on-line, and the desire to prevent infringers from accessing
the internet. At present the suggested process seems intended to
inconvenience and inflict cost on the users affected (which is not the
stated goal) but not to result in a permanent disconnection (which is).
This is currently subject to much debate.

I mention without comment that a number of the major UK ISPs are also 
media
companies. In particular, Sky and Virgin are respectively the dominant
satellite and cable television providers in the UK. BT and TalkTalk also
have content delivery platforms with strong ambitions in this field.

Some further reading (court cases, but reasonably readable and contain 
some
useful exploration of the issues considered):

http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Ch/2011/1981.html
http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Ch/2012/268.html
http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Ch/2013/379.html
http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Ch/2013/3479.html





















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