Belgian court rules that ISPs must block file-sharing

Fri Jul 6 01:06:49 UTC 2007

Mark Andrews wrote:
> 
> 	Someone has succeeded in pulling the wool over the court's
> 	eyes if it has been convinced that there is a technical
> 	mechanism to do this.  A ISP does not have access to enough
> 	information to determine this.  The same file can be both
> 	legally and illegally copied over the same network.  What
> 	determines the legality is the standing of the parties doing
> 	the copying not the actual content.  Even content that is
> 	illegal to possess may still be legally transmitted when
> 	such content is evidence.
> 
> 	There is only one technological fix that will be 100%
> 	effective and that is to shutdown the network.  There is
> 	absolutely no way that a ISP can determine is any file
> 	transfer is illegal or not.
> 
> 	This means no HTTP, no SMTP, no anything.
> 
> 	Mark
> 

It is actually fairly easy, just restandardize the Evil bit as the 
Illegal Bit.

All network transfers of illegal content must set the Illegal bit and 
all Belgian ISP's must drop packets with the Illegal bit set.

Problem solved.