Post-Napster policing reopens ISP wounds
DMCA
3/27/2001; 10:45:10 PM

'Facing the prospect of a post-Napster world, tension is starting to build between copyright holders and Internet service providers over who should police other file-swapping networks that are poised to step in as replacements....

'"The content community would like ISPs to act as a global police force, and that's not their job," said Dave McClure, chief executive of the United States Internet Industry Association (USIIA), the main ISP trade association. "It seems to me that ISPs don't have the obligation or even the right to monitor the data on their subscribers' hard drives."'

Emphasis mine. The right to monitor data also implies that I must be fully open with that data, because if I'm not, they can't monitor it. I'm not about to relax my security just so my ISP can go snooping around on my drives... which is exactly where the record companies are headed. (If they want that data, they can hack me just like everybody else )

Besides, I really think the content companies are trying to make the wrong entity do their dirty work. Sign a deal with the FBI and use Carnivore. It wouldn't be hard to make the system work well enough for the record companies... sure, it'd be crap, but they just want to stem the bulk and don't mind making the rest of us live in mortal fear, as long as they get to keep making truckloads of money.