Petteri Pyyny
20 Aug 2002 8:49
Technology sector versus content owners war is getting tougher. Yesterday, an American ISP called Information Wave Technologies (or IWT) announced that they will actively block RIAA from accessing its network. According to IWT, this is a response to a proposed bill and RIAA's plans to attack against individual P2P users who share copyrighted material over P2P networks.
Due to the nature of this matter and RIAA's previous history, we feel the RIAA will abuse software vulnerabilities in a client's browser after the browser accesses its site, potentially allowing the RIAA to access and/or tamper with your data. Starting at midnight on August 19, 2002, Information Wave customers will no longer be able to reach the RIAA's web site. Information Wave will also actively seek out attempts by the RIAA to thwart this policy and apply additional filters to protect our customers' data.
Information Wave will also deploy peer-to-peer clients on the Gnutella network from its security research and development network (honeynet) which will offer files with popular song titles derived from the Billboard Top 100 maintained by VNU eMedia. No copyright violations will take place, these files will merely have arbitrary sizes similar to the length of a 3 to 4 minute MP3 audio file encoded at 128kbps. Clients which connect to our peer-to-peer clients, and then afterwards attempt to illegally access the network will be immediately blacklisted from Information Wave's network. The data collected will be actively maintained and distributed from our network operations site.
Excellent development, I wish that they would distribute their blocklist so that other ISPs who want to actively protect their customers, would benefit from IWT's efforts. As they operate their own network, law gives them full legal rights to block "parties that may cause harm" from their network.
Source: IWT's Press release