New Technology Could Be Adopted to Monitor Illegal File Sharing in UK

Talks between Ofcom and Detica, a data gathering and processing company, could result in the adoption of a new system developed by the latter to help identify the illegal P2P traffic on broadband networks

The UK’s concern with illegal file sharing has taken various forms. From Lord Mandelson’s plans to disconnect copyright infringers to the latest option that Ofcom (the independent regulator and competition authority for the communication industries in the UK) is considering – to use Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) technology developed by Detica and called CView to monitor file sharing (P2P) traffic on broadband ISP networks and asses the level of online piracy among customers.

Sources say that rather than being used against individual users CView could have the role of measuring the level of illegal downloading on a network, data which is quite precious for copyright owners. So far no details about how the system will actually work have been given.

Key principles of CVIEW-based system:

• anonymous data collection — all records collected from the network have their IP addresses strongly anonymised such that no reference to an individual can be made, even in conjunction with other ISP systems. No content data is recorded (e.g. URLs).

• proportional to right to privacy — traffic is inspected to establish what the content is and the application being used, with no persistence of traffic data or identity information.

• closed system — no traffic data or identity information is ever made available to a person. Traffic application data is produced by an entirely closed and automated “lights out” system. Appropriate hardware, software and process controls prevent intentional or accidental breaches of privacy (e.g. preventing access to the live system when data is being processed).

• no feedback loop — none of the behavioural data collected can ever be attributed back to a person or drive action against an individual

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