An ISP has decided to ban routing to the RIAA’s IP block from its network, on the grounds that the RIAA will attempt to hack its customers’ computers.
Due to the nature of this matter and RIAA’s previous history, we feel the RIAA will abuse software vulerabilities 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.
With the RIAA suing backbones to block MP3 distribution sites in China and ISPs blocking access to the RIAA’s IP block, you gotta wonder, is this the end of the end-to-end principle? Maybe if everyone blocked the RIAA’s IP block, just sent them away into bad netizen coventry, the rest of the net could get on with it.
(via MeFi)