Belgian court rules that ISPs must block file-sharing
Mark Andrews
Mark_Andrews at isc.org
Fri Jul 6 00:45:20 UTC 2007
In article <20070705222812.E6693766064 at berkshire.machshav.com> you write:
>
>http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,134159-c,internetlegalissues/article.html
>
>Note that this is based on their interpretation of EU law.
>
>
> --Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb
"The court has confirmed that the ISPs have both a legal responsibility and
the technical means to tackle piracy. This is a decision that we hope will
set the mold for government policy and for courts in other countries in
Europe and around the world," IFPI Chairman and CEO John Kennedy said in a
statement.
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
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