FAST is slow

Trawling the tubes this afternoon, I stumbled across this article by pcpro.co.uk, an interview with John Lovelock, director general of the Federation Against Software Theft (FAST). FAST is a UK organization advocating the criminal treatment of those who download software illegally.

I just had some comments.

How do you propose ISPs tackle the problem of file-sharing and illegal downloads?

We understand ISPs can’t monitor all the content going through their pipes. What they could do is, where it has been demonstrated their customers have abused rights holders’ intellectual property and we provide evidence of this, they should close the accounts of those particular customers.

Why? Close the account? No warning? No investigation? What about people stealing WiFi? It’s not always the account holder who is committing the crime.

Once people see you can’t use the internet for illegal activity, because you’ll lose your account, that will act as a deterrent.

Uhhmm… no… it won’t. It will just piss people off, especially those who are wrongly accused.

Secondly, like the insurance industry, the ISPs could compile a register of customers that have been investigated and been found to be abusing the terms and conditions of the ISPs, whereupon they shouldn’t be conducting illegal activity.

Whereupon? What is this, 1869? Anyways, what right does the ISP have to share that information with another private organization? Certainly that violates the customer’s right to privacy, regardless of whether or not they (allegedly) violated the terms and conditions.

Then these people would have no place to hide by going from one ISP to another.

You speak as if people who download pirated software are career criminals who should be cut off from society. “No place to hide.” Who are we talking about, here? Software pirates, or serial killers? Regardless, what’s stopping them from hopping on someone else’s unsecured WiFi? Or getting a cellular phone with Internet access? Are you going to ban them from mobile phone providers as well? Isn’t that a little excessive?

With unsecured wireless accounts and file-sharers potentially falsifying their IP address, isn’t there a danger innocent people are going to find themselves cut off?

This is part of an education process now. There is so much protection available to people: if I use my wireless here, it will show three or four wireless networks around me, but they are heavily encrypted and it’s not possible to do it. The technology’s there to stop that happening.

Just because the technology exists doesn’t mean that everyone uses it, or is obligated to. Until I see legislation written stating that WiFi users are required to encrypt their network, this is bunk. If I forget to lock the door to my house, and someone walks in and steals my computers, and then proceeds to burn my house down, does that mean it’s actually my fault, and I am not only no longer entitled to help from the Police, but also guilty of grand theft and arson? Utterly ridiculous.

Furthermore, “protection”? Please. WEP encryption can be cracked in 10 minutes with some very simple tools, and a crappy laptop. WPA takes a little bit longer, but is similarly easy to circumvent. Heavily encrypted is a severe overstatement. Both WEP and WPA are very insecure encryption schemes, and saying that it is not possible to use an encrypted wireless network without knowing the key is simply an outright fallacy, put out there by a software industry lobbyist who doesn’t know the first thing about the very industry he represents, let alone the technologies that support it.  

Lame, lame, lame, lame, lame. FAST, you aren’t protecting software vendor’s rights, you are scapegoating the users for the vendors’ greed.