[p2p-research] French Government Looks to Mass Spyware to Control P2P Software

[Tom Rawlings]

  A while ago I wrote about the technical difficulties of implementing 
any reasonable solution to stopping people from using p2p to download 
copyrighted material – I notice that the French government is adopting 
methods very similar to that of China in an attempt to control p2p use;

"French Internet users could soon be asked to install spyware on their 
PCs that tracks their surfing habits and analyzes the applications 
installed on their machines in order to prevent file sharing piracy. 
Plans for this type of surveillance surfaced this week when a paper 
authored by the French Hadopi agency, which was put in place to police 
the French Internet and prevent copyright infringement as part of the 
country’s three strikes legislation, leaked online."

You may remember early 2009 a policy emerged in China that would require 
all new PC to come pre-installed with government spyware with the 
appropriate name of ‘Green Dam‘ – under the guise of protecting the 
youth from dubious morality. However, Professor Jonathan Zittrain, of 
Harvard’s Berkman Center said:

"Once you’ve got government-mandated software installed on each machine, 
the software has the keys to the kingdom… While the justification may be 
pitched as protecting children and mostly concerning pornography, once 
the architecture is set up it can be used for broader purposes, such as 
the filtering of political ideas."

Indeed. What is interesting is that it appears that there is no easy 
technical solution to the laws that politicians have passed – and I 
can’t see how their will be, unless you can impose some very draconian 
system, but even then there will be ways round it. I suggest this is 
doomed to expensive failure – consider the $84 million the Australian 
government spent developing a filter system, also to protect youth from 
dodgy material – only to have a 16 year old hack it in 30 minutes.

(I've sheduled a version of this post with links on the p2p website, 
thanks!)

-- 
Tomas

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Tomas Rawlings
Development Director, FluffyLogic Development Ltd.
web: www.fluffylogic.net
tel: 0117 9442233
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