[privacy] AT&T and Other ISPs May Be Getting Ready to Filter Your Traffic

[Paul Ferguson]

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Via The New York Times "Bits" Blog.

[snip]

For the past fifteen years, Internet service providers have acted - to use
an old cliche - as wide-open information super-highways, letting data flow
uninterrupted and unimpeded between users and the Internet.

But ISPs may be about to embrace a new metaphor: traffic cop.

At a small panel discussion about digital piracy here at NBC’s booth on
the Consumer Electronics Show floor, representatives from NBC, Microsoft,
several digital filtering companies and telecom giant AT&T said the time
was right to start filtering for copyrighted content at the network level.

Such filtering for pirated material already occurs on sites like YouTube
and Microsoft’s Soapbox, and on some university networks.

Network-level filtering means your Internet service provider – Comcast,
AT&T, EarthLink, or whoever you send that monthly check to – could soon
start sniffing your digital packets, looking for material that infringes on
someone’s copyright.

[snip]

More:
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/08/att-and-other-isps-may-be-getting-
ready-to-filter/

- - ferg

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--
"Fergie", a.k.a. Paul Ferguson
 Engineering Architecture for the Internet
 fergdawg(at)netzero.net
 ferg's tech blog: http://fergdawg.blogspot.com/