SecurityRatty: How the MPAA Might Enforce Copyright on the Internet

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How the MPAA Might Enforce Copyright on the Internet

2008-02-11 13:24:03 by schneier in Schneier on Security

Interesting speculation from Nicholas Weaver:

All that is necessary is that the MPAA or their contractor automatically spiders for torrents. When it finds torrents, it connects to each torrent with manipulated clients. The client would first transfer enough content to verify copyright, and then attempt to map the participants in the Torrent.
Now the MPAA has a "map" of the participants, a graph of all clients of a particular stream. Simply send this as an automated message to the ISP saying "This current graph is bad, block it". All the ISP has to do is put in a set of short lived (10 minute) router ACLs which block all pairs that cross its network, killing all traffic for that torrent on the ISP's network. By continuing to spider the Torrent, the MPAA can find new users as they are added and dropped, updating the map to the ISP in near-real-time.

Note that this requires no wiretapping, and nicely minimizes false positives.

Debate on idea here.