Verizon Says "No" to Content Filtering

Here's a shocker: A major U.S. ISP is standing up to Hollywood to protect your privacy.

The New York Times is reporting that Verizon—unlike competing phone company and ISP AT&T—isn't interested in helping the music and movie industries crack down on piracy by, essentially, spying on its customers. Indeed, Verizon spokesman Thomas J. Tauke told the Times that the company is "reluctant to get into the business of examining content that flows across our networks and taking some action as a result of that content."

The controversy over network filtering (or in this case, ISPs actively scouring their own network traffic for illegally traded copyrighted content) heated up in early January, when AT&T and other ISPs admitted that they were talking to the RIAA and MPAA about filtering content on their respective networks. Naturally, the news raised the hackles of privacy activists, who don't want ISPs looking over their customers' shoulders.

Of course, landline and wireless telecom operators aren't responsible for what's said on their networks; for example, if I call up my buddies and we conspire to jaywalk on Broadway, it's not up to T-Mobile to eavesdrop and warn the police (nor would T-Mobile want that responsibility, I'd imagine).

Frankly, I'm amazed that AT&T would offer itself up as a traffic cop. Say AT&T goes ahead and takes responsibility for monitoring the data on its network, and an illegally traded song slips though its filter; would AT&T now be liable for failing to catch the perps?

For its part, Verizon seems to be taking a supremely sensible approach. As its spokesman said in the Times interview, Verizon doesn't want to step into a potential legal quagmire over filtering. "Once you start going down the path of looking at the information going down the network, there are many that want you to play the role of policeman."

And of course, there's that sticky privacy issue. "Anything we do has to balance the need of copy protection with the desire of customers for privacy," Tauke told the Times. Hear, hear.

Sounds good to me. Unfortunately, the Times story goes on to note that Verizon, like Time Warner Cable, is considering a tiered-bandwidth approach that would replace unlimited data plans—meaning that if you're looking to download movies legally over services such as Apple TV or Vudu, you may end up paying dearly for the privilege. Ugh.

Related:
Verizon Rejects Hollywood’s Call to Aid Piracy Fight [The New York Times]