Disconnection of Illegal Filesharers...

[#1]

The Register has just released this article
How could an ISP determine if the file being shared is infact illegal?

[#2]

I would imagine, after being informed by a third party (BPI/RIAA etc.)
In the past we've received notices from software houses where we have been obliged by law to provide the details of end users who have been sharing copyrighted materials. Take a look at Dave's blog post here. it makes interesting reading.

[#3]

The simple answer is that it can't.
Even if the file was from a source whereby illegal copies of said file were available, an ISP has no way of knowing if you have an independant agreement with the owner of said file to use it.
PN wouldn't know if I had a license to download Oracle 11g for example.
It might be legal download and use, or it might not.
I don't see what ISPs have to do with it, other than what they do now, ie record and supply information about who was using a specific IP address at a specific date and time, if asked in the correct manner by the correct authorities.
The policing has to be done seperately - all ISPs can do is help by providing info in compliance with the above.
Politicians Ideas != Common Sense

[#4]

Thanks for that link, its good that PN is transparent and pragmatic with its approach.
I was thinking of central database holding the most common games/films titles where http requests are parsed against it for ISP to report against.

[#5]

Quote from: sophos9

I was thinking of central database holding the most common games/films titles where http requests are parsed against it for ISP to report against.

Wouldn't that depend on the file name having a specific filename...
Also if somebody creates a file that has the same name as a film, which is totally independent and nothing to do with the film..  you download it, and the next you got people knocking at your door... 
I fully appreciate proactive moves to stop piracy but this type of policing would simply not work... 

[#6]

Actually, you could compute some kind of hash of the file content and use this as to generate a probably accurate key to use in a database lookup.
However, since a sizeable portion of bit torrent downloads take place as encrypted traffic, the ISP can't even detect whether it is P2P or not.
Anything from simple rearrangement of the bits to a highly secure encryption would defeat this approach.
I wonder who the ISP would report this information to? It would be difficult for them to maintain that they simply transport the data and have no control over the content.