Nicholas Weaver speculated that what AT&T planned to do to stop copyrighted material from crossing its network was to farm the work out to the MPAA & others:

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.

Which garnered this response from Richard Bennett:

Is there any reason that such an automated system should not be used, or does Net Neutrality now connote a license to steal?

Ignoring the intentionally inflammatory wording of the choice, I’d like to present an argument for why it should not beyond the privacy, free speech, and common carrier arguments I’ve read: such a system will inevitably be used for evil.

The only question if it’ll be immediately, after a few months, or if they’ll wait for everything to be settle down. How can we be so sure of that? It is, after all, a legal system designed to a good end.

History provides copious examples of power granted for innocent purposes abused, but I want to focus on one that involves the players here who would be tasked with not abusing their position.

A long time ago, when the DVD standard was designed, they put in something that took control away from the consumer for the consumer’s presumed good: the Prohibited User Operation (PUO). This was supposedly there so that people couldn’t skip the FBI anti-copying warning and such good stuff, which everyone fast-forwarded through on VHS. In authoring a DVD, they could set the FBI warning to play for 20s or 20m and disable the controls to force you to stare at it. They took the user’s ability to use the object in certain ways in order to show those dumb warnings. The warnings, of course, did nothing to reduce piracy, and soon, the PUOs were being used for evil: forcing people to watch a preview, or an ad, or three previews, or something ridiculous — Disney probably being the worst of these offenders. By controlling technology designed to take away control from the end user to promote a larger goal, they were able to force a horrible consumer experience on everyone who bought the DVDs and do it without consequence, because there was no recourse.

Now take the legal state of copyright today. Fair use is frequently decided not on the merits of the case but on the inability of single artists to fight those suing them, and even more frequently isn’t decided at all, because no one tests it. Danger Mouse can’t mix Beatles samples with Jay-Z vocals and create the Grey Album without having EMI and Sony/ATV try to stamp him out. Labels are aggressively pursuing P2P lawsuits against single users, often with scant evidence of wrongdoing, and against even Google for linking to something that links to a potentially illegal download. SFWA issued blanket DMCA notices against people hosting suspected science fiction works — and nailed people publishing critical essays, stuff licensed under Creative Commons, you name it.

What happens to the next Danger Mouse in this new world?
1) DJ Example uses 2,000 1-second samples to record a mind-blowingly cool version of “Sympathy for the Devil”
2) Puts it up on his website as a torrent
3) MPAA, representing the Rolling Stones, joins the torrent and shuts down everyone attempting to distribute it
4) DJ Example briefly considers suing for restraint of trade, gives up, becomes a quality assurance specialist at the toothpaste factory
5) DJ Example is poisoned by tainted flouride, dies

That’s a significant harm to freedom of expression.

What we’ll see, beyond that, is the kind of over-reaching we see today. The copyright holders will pursue the most profitable copyright law interpretation possible, and continue to stretch the limits of what they claim infringes until

Take a film like “This Film is Not Yet Rated” which embarrasses the MPAA. If that came out under a Creative Commons license, distributed by torrent, its spread would depend not on whether clips it uses are fair use but whether anyone of the potential claim-holders is particularly angered by its message, at which point they shut it down. Commentary could be entirely destroyed.

Further, consider for a minute the distribution of documents that offend a particular party and are subject to frequent legal fights — for instance, the Scientology documents that came out in court, are public, but may still get you sued if you post them. Will they be allowed to use this auto-spigot?

What then — can anyone who wishes to stop the spread of any document they don’t like simply hit the big switch and stop all trade in it?

Is that really what anyone wants for a future?

I’ve been spoiled by circumstance: by being broke for so long, I haven’t bought any computer components of any kind in well over a year. So I was happily rolling along when I needed to replace my DSL modem.

No problem, I got that and a new hard drive. Six hours later, neither of them work. I’m online (to look up support docs) on the old, erratically-working setup while the gleaming new D-Link modem sits and looks annoyed… and I’ve rebooted I don’t even know how many times trying to get the hard drive recognized… it may be DOA, but it shows up as a new device…. sometimes. And then not in Disk Management which — joy of joys — is really difficult to use… Reboot, BIOS, reboot, windows, repeat.

I’ve been writing a lot about this in the book I’m working on — looking back at the sci-fi visions of how computers worked, one of the things that always annoys me is that they’re all slick and perfectly integrated. Re-reading Neuromancer, I wanted to cheer when Case has to find an adapter for his deck’s cable. Not that it’s particularly realistic. But that’s one of the things I love about cyberpunk: the starship Enterprise doesn’t ever have an untraceable bug that may or may not cause the control consoles to lock up when under severe display loads… but they should. Because it’s a good 15 years (!) since I first plugged an ethernet cable into something, and over twenty (!) since I first got my hands on a hard drive, but you still can’t plug and play them consistently.

What reason is there to believe that in 2030 we’re all going to be using seemlessly integrated, bugless portable devices that connect to an entirely orderly world data sharing network?

Today, driving on some remarkably ice-slick roads to work, I was on a three-lane arterial, minding my own business when – despite there being a ton of space behind me – someone in the right lane sped up next to me, cut me off, and braked. I went full antilock and everything for a second, no harm done except the month it probably took off my life, and kept on. After not a quarter of a mile, they went back into their lane and took a freeway onramp.

Here’s the thing: I could take a survey of people and I’d bet at least two-thirds could guess what kind of car they were driving, and they’d be right.

Isn’t that weird? I wonder if at some point each of these asshat driver thought “hey, that moron drives like me and I too have $65,000 to drop on a car — to the dealership!” and a demographic was born.

White House spokesman, asked about the 80 bajillion missing emails:

MR. FRATTO: I think our review of this…I think to the best of what all the analysis we’ve been able to do, we have absolutely no reason to believe that any emails are missing…we have no reason to believe that any email at all are missing.

Q So where are they?

MR. FRATTO: Where are what?

The biggest story right now is that the Bush White House deliberately took apart a system the Clinton administration put into place for the archiving of emails to comply with the law, and then deleted the backup tapes, destroying 1.2 million – 1.5 million emails. Government emails covering the outing of a CIA agent working against nuclear weapons proliferation to damage her husband politically, the run up to the Iraq war, the firing of US Attorneys… all of it, gone. It is, and I say this without reservation, the largest incident of its kind in American history. It’s the famous gap in the Nixon tapes times a hundred thousand.

Working out this morning, the fitness center had the TV turned to CNN. I learned:
– Winning American Idol is not a guarantee of musical success
– Zach Ephron had a medical issue. He was in some movie
– Rosie O’Donnell wrote a blog post about how Britney’s going to die like Princess Diana

This last story went on forever, and included a heated debate that included a woman identified as an “investigative journalist”.

Really. She was arguing about Britney and Rosie.

I could not believe this. I thought that at any moment they would swap back to real news (Republican Congressman raised money for Al-Queda!) and it never happened. I watched that thing for 20m.

Crazy. Just crazy.

I went out to go replace my car’s stereo this morning, and the place I went was out of the particular harness or whatever to fit my car, so they gave me two options:
– wait for them to go get it
– go pick the part up myself from the other store and bring it back for $10 off my tab

I almost had to bust out laughing, and not for the obvious reason. I realized immediately that there were actually three options:

– wait for them to get it
– go to this other branch, pick up the harness, drive it back for them to get a $10 reward, have them install it, go home
– go this other branch and buy the whole thing from them, have them install it, go home

Option 1 is a little annoying, but not a huge deal.
Option 2 is frankly ludicrous. It’s barely worth the gas, much less my time, to do this.
Assuming I’ve got a little time on my hands and don’t mind driving, I’d go for Option 3.

At which point, the original store (and the sales guy who made me the offer) is out the commission on the whole job. That’s a fair chunk of money.

And then I started asking some other questions:
Why would you even make me that offer?
Would the other branch be honorable enough to not mention that as long as I was up there… ?
Does anyone ever take them up on an offer like that?

Really, if you’ve gone into a place in order to get your replacement deck installed by someone qualified rather than order it off the Internet and do it yourself or go to some cut-rate place and trust your car to some random guy with a power drill, you’re obviously willing to pay some premium for convenience and assurance.

I’m surprised they’d even let me know that another specific location had all the parts, allowing me to figure out that the option existed.

Here’s the EULA for SyncBackSE, one of the candidates for “program I’d be using to back up remotely”. For ease of reading, I’ll bold the particularly horrible section:

SOFTWARE is provided as is without warranty of any kind. To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, 2BrightSparks Pte Ltd its suppliers, its distributors, and its affiliates, or others who may offer SOFTWARE, will not be liable for any damages whatsoever, whether direct or indirect, special, incidental, consequential, or punitive of any kind (including but not limited to damages for: loss of profits, loss of confidential or other information, business interruption, personal injury, loss of privacy, failure to meet any duty – including of good faith or of reasonable care – negligence, and any other pecuniary or other loss whatsoever) arising out of, or in any way related to the use of, or inability to use our SOFTWARE or support services, or the provision of or failure to provide support services, or otherwise under, or in connection with SOFTWARE documentation, or any provision of these terms and conditions, even if 2BrightSparks Pte Ltd or any supplier, distributor, or its affiliates has been advised of the possibility of such damages.

Really? I don’t even get good faith? If someone files a bug and says “on alternate Tuesdays when I run SyncBackSE it deletes my files and then overwrites them with 0s and 7s repeatedly to eliminate any chance I might recover them” and they don’t fix it, ever, I can’t do anything?

Oh, and it gets better:

2BrightSparks Pte Ltd furthermore disclaims all warranties, including without limitation any implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and on infringement.

Even if you pierce all of that, you get your money back, and that’s it:
Any liability of the seller will be limited exclusively to product replacement or refund of purchase price.

Data destroyed because we totally sent all your backup files to a data haven in the Dutch Antilles? How about a copy of the next incremental version, in which we may or may not have fixed that bug. After all, it’s not as if we’re bound by even a requirement to make a good faith effort to solve it. Or, specifically:

2BrightSparks Pte Ltd is not obligated to provide support, maintenance, or updates for the SOFTWARE (either by email, phone, or otherwise).

WOW.

And yet on their product page:

SyncBackSE ensures your most valuable asset, data, remains protected

No it doesn’t. It fucking well does not. SyncBackSE explicitly does not ensure your most valuable asset, data, remains protected.

I looked it up ensure on M-W:

ensure
: to make sure, certain, or safe : guarantee

Argh. This stuff drives me nuts.