Battleangel

BBC went seriously overboard with the Friday edition of Newsnight, launching into a blistering tirade against the Bittorrent protocol and its relationship to, listen to this, terrorists and pedophiles. Also they insisted that what little non-conspiracy, nonmalignant end-of-the-world usage there is left was simply “theft.” And as evidence for this they brought in ex-CIA spook Robert Baer to back up their wild assertions, and add some of his own. Way to go. Being the UK, I’m surprised they didn’t characterize Bittorrent as anti-social and encouraging loitering and binge-drinking as well. Of course, the media industry has been trying to go with this rationale for years in order to get the authorities to do their bidding. So, you see, it’s all connected in a sickening web of deceit, where the powers that be collaborate to shaft the little people, keeping them in servitude, terror and ignorance.

As for the claim that Bittorrent encryption, as shown in Azureus, enables privacy it is simply wrong. The maximum encryption available is MUCH too weak to enable a barrier against government snoops. Especially the snoops at RAF Menwith Hill, shown in the program. A facility by the way that is run by the NSA and has compromised European sovereignty since 1966. Anyway, the encryption is clearly meant to obscure data enough to let it (perhaps) slip through ISP checks. It wont save you from the NSA if they really put some effort into it. Plus the protocol itself is still transparent, plus it still uses TCP/IP over the established Internet. Hence it is by no means a DarkNet.
The BBC program also made it sound as if the government (and in this case a foreign government) has a right to spy on you and that you are being difficult and a burden if you enable encryption. Because the listening centers are “going deaf.” Given that one still can determine where the data is coming from, and given the low probability that “terrorists” would post their super secret plans on a known torrent tracker, this complaint seems redundant at best. And if indeed it clogs up the surveillance because the spook and snoops are too stupid to do their job, well, good riddance. Bittorrent will unwittingly have given power and freedom back to the people twice over.

But I suspect this hatchet job of disinformation is a joint venture between governments, secret organizations and corporate interests. It just has too many flaws to be the work of a single uninformed researcher or agency. In fact it is a masterpiece once you tally up the number of assertions that were made in just over four minutes. Be prepared for the infowar.

Also, here comes the partial apology from the BBC.

First though, an apology. File sharing is not theft. It has never been theft. Anyone who says it is theft is wrong and has unthinkingly absorbed too many Recording Industry Association of America press releases. We know that script line was wrong. It was a mistake. We’re very, very sorry.

Original clip from BBC available at Pirate Bay.

Also, seeing the latest Channel4 Dispatches, “Stealing Freedom”, with Peter Hitchens didn’t do much to reassure anyone about the path that Britain in particular has taken. While not related to copyright per se, it is the other side of the same coin, where the rulers have started to govern their subjects with an increasingly heavy hand, as Hitchens puts it, and conjured up magnificent ghouls to do so.