I read an interesting article at Windows Secrets today about Internet Service Providers doing more and more to inspect and filter the web traffic of their users. The idea is that the ISP is helping to protect copyright by not allowing users to access copyright material to download. So that song or movie you want to get on Bit Torrent or Limewire will be blocked and or your internet access will be banned.
OK – so breach of copyright is illegal. Fair enough.
The problem is that in some cases for the ISP to know what you are doing they need to look at all your data. We may all be doing perfectly legal and acceptable things on the internet that we don’t want people looking at. No I don’t mean porn! What about confidential business emails or personal voice chats? You wouldn’t want someone to tap your phone and listen to every call you make and this is the same sort of invasion of privacy.
And I don’t blame the ISP’s really. They are smaller businesses who are being confronted by the Big Brothers in the Movie & Music industries.
As per usual though these sort of rules only catch the innocent or naive. There are ways around it and we will discuss some this week at the Mullies meeting this week.
ISPs assist in cutting off file-sharing users – Windows Secrets
