Belgian ISP: Filtering P2P traffic impossible
Last year, Belgian ISP Scarlet was ordered by a judge to begin blocking the transfer of copyrighted materials via peer-to-peer programs. After trying several methods, they are now asking the court to lift this order because they are technically unable to comply with the order.
They tried two systems: a system from Cisco for slowing down all P2P traffic, and a system from Audible Magic that is supposed to block all transfers of copyrighted materials. The Cisco system appeared to work, but caused lots of complaints and still allowed all transfers, and the Audible Magic system didn’t work at all:
Audible Magic said they had implemented this technique at Verizon and an asian ISP; when contacted, Verizon denied ever trying their technology, and Audible Magic refused to give the name of the asian ISP.
The ZDnet article about the case has some more details (translation).
October 25th, 2008 at 11:49 pm
[…] asked the court to cancel this order because the systems Sabam proposed for filtering traffic didn’t work as advertised; Sabam has already apologized to the judge about providing incorrect information. The court has now […]