MPAA lobbies Obama for Internet filtering

To support its campaign for Internet filtering, the MPAA requested views and information from academia and technology companies. Eleven universities and companies responded, including Advestigo, Audible Magic, Auditude, Gracenote, Intellivision, Magix/AudioID, NTT, Philips, Thomson, University of St. Andrew of Scotland, VidyaTel and Vobile, according to an MPAA spokeswoman.

If only a few of those names look familiar - like NTT, Philips, Thomson and St. Andrews - that's because Internet filtering is a new technology frontier that is, much like the dot-com goldrush ten years ago, attracting startups slavering for federal and telecom money.

The corporate security state establishment sees dollar signs in the prospect of installing pervasive Internet filtering in the US. And it's correct. If approved, the implementation of universal traffic filtering throughout the US Internet infrastructure will be tremendously expensive. It's just the sort of boondoggle that sustains the US military-industrial complex.

But Internet traffic filtering to block media content cannot possibly work in the long run.

That's because, faced with Internet filtering, people will develop and adopt capable and easy to use encryption that defeats it. At best, Internet censors will find themselves locked into a technology arms race in which they'll always be playing catch-up and cannot win.

Suppose Internet filtering is in place and can detect and block copyrighted movie and televison files.

And suppose that I have an online respository of such files and that I want to make them available to you for download over the Internet.

Initially, I encrypt the files and provide you with the keys along with the files. Those who are filtering traffic acquire copies of those files and start filtering the encrypted versions too. All I have to do is change my encryption keys and they are back at square one again.

The filtering censors change their approach. They start filtering based on my encryption keys, that is, they trigger blocking of file transfers when they detect my known encryption keys. That cat and mouse game could go on for a long time, but it won't. I'll get smarter.

I can distribute my public key to affiliated sites... and elsewhere. You can encrypt your public key using my public key, and request a file. I can then encrypt that file using your 'public' key - which has never traversed the Internet in its unencrypted form - and send it to you. The Internet filterers won't be able to detect what file is being sent. Checkmate.

Infinite variations of such encryption schemes are possible, including the use of one-time encryption keys and file sharing sources at many Internet addresses, but the point is that Internet filtering to block file transfers cannot be successful for very long, and it will fail.

That's why Internet filtering is a potentially very costly bad idea that can never succeed.