By jamielendino on August 20, 2008 10:16 AM

RIAA, MPAA Lobbyists Push for Spying on Net Traffic

CNET News has a somewhat scary report on how recording industry and motion picture lobbyists pushing broadband providers to spy on their customers in order to unveil copyright infringements. That’s bad enough, but they’re also pointing to how “the concept is working abroad” as an example of why it should be adopted here.

“Despite our best efforts, we can’t do this alone,” said Shira Perlmutter, a vice president for global legal policy at the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, in the report. “We need the help of ISPs. They have the technical ability to manage the flow over their pipes… The good news is that we’re beginning to see some of these solutions emerge, in particular in Europe and Asia.”

For its part, an AT&T spokesman said the following in the article: “There is nothing inherently wrong with P2P applications, which are legal technologies that are used and welcomed on our network. We have consistently said that AT&T will not become an enforcement agent on the Internet, nor will we inhibit the ability of our customers to access any legal content they want.”

However, AT&T wouldn’t respond to a followup question about whether or not they’re monitoring anyone, and no broadband providers would participate in the panel even though Verizon, Comcast, and AT&T executives were all sitting in the audience, the report said. What we’re trying to figure out is how this privacy invasion is somehow OK, whereas no one used to send people to customer’s homes to rifle through their CD and cassette collections to make sure none of the music was copied.