Virgin Media to trial piracy-detection software

The BPI, the trade association of the British music industry, currently employs specialist firms to eavesdrop on people who make copyrighted material available to download. The firms record their IP address, a code that can then be used to identify the alleged filesharer’s internet account This process is costly and time-consuming. The BPI must first go to court and present evidence of wrongdoing by an individual to force a broadband provider to hand over the details of that person’s activities on the internet. The threshold of evidence is high, making it impractical for the BPI to pursue more than a handful of cases. Now, however, Virgin Media is trying out new technology that can automatically detect if a customer’s broadband connection is being used to download copyrighted files illegally. Virgin, which has more than 4m UK broadband customers, offers the fastest connection speeds in Britain and is consequently a popular ISP for filesharers. Hit films such as Pirates of the Caribbean can be downloaded by Virgin users in minutes. Called deep packet inspection (DPI), the detection technology categorises all internet traffic that passes over a customer’s connection — be that email, general web surfing or online gaming. Traffic identified as filesharing is subjected to a deeper scan and is said to be checked against a database of music and, potentially, films. Detica, the firm that runs the system for Virgin Media, claims it can tell within seconds whether the specific data being downloaded are, say, family photos or the latest Lady Gaga album.

Source: http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/the_web/article6989510.ece