The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) have absurdly called for anti-virus and spam software vendors to include new code that would identify and "limit or prevent" illegal p2p file sharing on computers belonging to broadband ISP customers.

The disturbing idea, which gives us a unique insight into the mindset of how Rights Holders would behave if they lived in a world where they could do anything they wanted, was presented last month (Download .PDF) as part of a wish list style submission to the USA's Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator's (IPEC).


The dystopia style proposal that Rights Holders could use anti-virus software for the completely unrelated means of spying upon ISP users is patently ridiculous and beyond belief. At least it is for most right-thinking members of the human population, albeit seemingly still an acceptable idea for the creative industry.

We find it hard to believe that any consumer would knowingly agree to install a piece of anti-virus/spam software that would constantly scan their computer for copyright infringing files. Similarly Anti-virus vendors themselves are unlikely to be amenable given that many of the things they block fall into a similar category of Spyware.

One big concern is that some sectors of the current UK and USA governments might actually like the idea. We already live in a country where our website visits and email contacts are monitored and logged, thus building yet more state surveillance into the Internet no longer seems like something that would be considered off-limits.

This is one of the reasons why there has been so much concern over the recently passed UK Digital Economy Act 2010 (DEA). The Act could see innocent users disconnected from the Internet and legitimate websites like YouTube and Google being blocked or hindered. It also makes it extremely difficult to operate a public / open Wi-Fi network without a huge risk of breaking the law.

The MPAA and RIAA have also suggested using existing Traffic Management methods, as employed by many UK broadband ISPs to balance the load on their networks, for the alternative purpose of detecting and monitoring illegal file sharing. Here in the UK Virgin Media is currently trialling CView, a Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) system, which is designed to do exactly that.