EU investigating legality of Virgin ISP spying on its customers for copyright

Cory Doctorow 7:18 am Tue Jan 26, 2010

British ISP Virgin has ~~been~~ promised to start spying on its customers in the name of defending copyright, though how this is supposed to work is hard to understand: "It utilises so-called deep packet inspection, which means that it can identify actual file-names, making it possible to accurately find out what content is legal and what is not." Yeah, unless, say, a user decides to take the nefarious step of changing the file-name.

Now Privacy International is asking the EU to investigate whether this software violates international privacy regulations:

The software in question is called CView and will be used by ISP Virgin Media to identify legal versus illegal traffic on its network.

The EC has said it will monitor the use of the software, following a complaint from Privacy International.

EU to assess piracy detection software

(Thanks, Mike!)

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