According to Japan's Yomiuri Shimbun: "The nation's four Internet provider organizations have agreed to forcibly cut the Internet connection of users found to repeatedly use Winny and other file-sharing programs to illegally copy gaming software and music, it was learned Friday."
The four organizations include the Telecom Service Association and the Telecommunications Carriers Association. About 1,000 major and smaller domestic providers belong to the four associations, which means the measure would become the first countermeasure against Winny-using rights-violators used by the whole provider industry.
They organizations plan to launch a consultative panel, possibly in April, together with copyright organizations including the Japanese Society for Rights of Authors, Composers and Publishers and the Association of Copyright for Computer Software. They will then begin making guidelines for disconnecting users from the Internet who leak illegally copied material onto the Net.
The story says an ISP threatened to do this two years ago. "However, the provider abandoned the idea after receiving a warning from the Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry that such an approach was regarded as Internet snooping and might violate the right to privacy in communications."
Winny is an obvious target because the program's developer, Isamu Kaneko, "was arrested for suspected conspiracy to commit copyright violation by the High-tech Crime Taskforce of the Kyoto Prefectural Police" in May 2004, according to Wikipedia, and fined 1.5 million yen.
It would be pretty simple for any ISP to ban peer-to-peer file-sharing under its terms of service, so the people who don't do it (eg me) could join up in the expectation of a better service. Of course, there are legitimate organisations using P2P, including the BBC, and people who still want to share will use ways that make it impossible for ISPs to see what they are doing. Also, it would still be possible to "leak illegally copied material" using services such as MegaUpload and even YouTube. However, I'd have thought that P2P traffic patterns would be recognisable, even on an encrypted bit-stream.
I'd sign up for a service that guaranteed a high average speed and blocked all P2P-style traffic. Wouldn't you? Why not?
There's a discussion at Slashdot.
