Pirate ISP

[Vulpes Abnocto]

*via boingboing

Cory Doctorow says:

The Swedish Pirate Party has founded its own ISP, built on the principle of maximum privacy and minimum control. That means no logging. The tech management comes from the folks who run the IPREDator proxy, which has been my proxy of choice for six months now, and is well worth the 5 euros/month for the assurance that my network connection isn't being sniffed, especially when using public WiFi.

Gustav Nipe, student of economics, long-standing Pirate Party member and CEO of Pirate ISP told TorrentFreak that Pirate ISP is based on the hacker ontology. "If you see something and you think it's broken you build a patch and fix it. With that as a reference point we are launching an ISP. This is one way to tackle the big brother society."

"The Pirate ISP is needed in different ways. One is to compete with other ISPs, let them fight more for our internet. If they don't behave there will always be someone else taking their share," Nipe added.

Aside from the competition angle, Gustav Nipe told TorrentFreak that the Pirate ISP will maximize privacy for all its customers. Operated by ViaEuropa - the company behind the iPredator anonymity service - Pirate ISP users will remain anonymous...

"It would be a pity to reveal all the tricks that we have, so we will save those for later. But we have ways to ensure that no customer should have to get a sad letter home from Henrik Pontén."

Moderator's Note: I must take this time to remind all of you that we will remove any links or discussion of "That Well Known Swedish Port".
(hence why the source listed at boingboing is not included here)

 

[Guild McCommunist]

"That well known Swedish site" is in fact The Penguin Bar. Favorite place for penguins to grab a beer.

But that's cool, if I lived in Sweden I'd do this. Although they could just charge you out the hoo-hah for service, but in the end as long as it wasn't ludicrously overpriced, it'd be worth all the shit you're pirating.

 

[Gnargle]

It's OK! The win is being countered by the fail of the British Digital Economy Bill!

 

[Bladexdsl]

whoah penguin bar taking it to DA MAN!

 

[FAST6191]

Interesting move, we have seen proxy/vpn and other such services for quite a while but a full blown ISP is a different, although not unexpected, move.
Couple this with the Finland broadband rights I was reading about the other week as well as the mumblings towards that end from other countries and things might actually be looking up for once rather than a race to the bottom we are presently seeing.

I hope it catches on.

 

[XLarge]

can someone please explain this

 

[FAST6191]

I will give it a go

As it stands ISPs are interesting companies as there are two aspects to them- the frontend and the backend.

The frontend is what most people call the ISP (toledo, Skynet Belgacom, evonet, edpnet to name a few around your way). There are often hundreds of these.

The backend is the cable that runs through the ground (or in the air) be it actual fibre/cable or some DSL variation (DSL, ADSL, ADSL2+ and so on). These are usually owned a few companies, the government or something in between. These companies sort out all the deals on a national level to get onto the various internet backbones and sort all of that out although on occasion big companies will lay their own cable to their company offices to a substation of sorts for various purposes (considerations in uptime, speed and so forth). While the companies with the infrastructure might offer access to the public they are normally a split venture and normal members of the public can simply wire into these places though meaning you have to find a frontend. This is getting off track so back on topic.

The frontend companies buy something- occasionally they will get to stick their servers in the exchange or next door to it while other times they lease bandwidth and some options (such deals are why some premium ISPs are faster on the exact same piece of copper). They bundle this with all that an ISP usually does (email, newsgroups, hosting, a piece of junk router, an IP address/access to a pool of them and so on).
Often these frontend companies are spineless money grabbers and will give details to anyone that asks (namely the person who says you might be downloading/uploading something), block all manner of services (try setting up your own email server using port 25 for instance), have limited bandwidth (although this can be the fault of the people who own the backend limiting what they can offer) and otherwise be useless.

Onto this specific ISP while we have had VPN and proxy services before you still need something to get it from the internet at large to your house and this almost always means you need an ISP- this new company/pirate party spinoff appears to want to take care of the ISP part I just mentioned and at the same time appears to have made a vow not to act like the spineless money grabbers many other frontend ISPs have which has made them attractive compared to many other ISPs.

 

[shakirmoledina]

it means (as little as i know) that those downloading games and apps illegally will not be traced or detected bcz the ISP has hidden such info
FAST as much as u have totally tore apart this topic, they are using iPredator meaning other ppl cannot slyly snoop and check out what we are doing in addition to the ISP not selling customer usage info

an amazing deal for piraters but sweden? either there are many pirates or the law is too strict or not strict (strict enuf to stop piraters and not strict enuf to stop such ISPs)

 

[Thoob]

can someone please explain this

QUOTE(Vulpes Abnocto @ Jul 21 2010, 02:18 PM) The Swedish Pirate Party has founded its own ISP, built on the principle of maximum privacy and minimum control. That means no logging. The tech management comes from the folks who run the IPREDator proxy.

 

[raulpica]

EPIC. I want to live in Sweden

I'd gladly pay some premium to know that my "privacy" is safe

But... wouldn't this also be a double-edged weapon? It may mean piracy without risks, but it could also be the pedos paradise

 

[Scott-105]

I might get the IPredator thing. It seems pretty useful

 

[ProtoKun7]

I see "Cory Doctorow" and all I can think of is xkcd...

 

[Hop2089]

Stuff like this needs to be in America, they can make billions off this, who in the US wouldn't pay for privacy or unlimited piracy.

 

[Hyperlisk_]

But... wouldn't this also be a double-edged weapon? It may mean piracy without risks, but it could also be the pedos paradise

Hum, I hadn't thought about that... Good point...

 

[Hop2089]

But... wouldn't this also be a double-edged weapon? It may mean piracy without risks, but it could also be the pedos paradise

Hum, I hadn't thought about that... Good point...

Their policies on that stuff in Europe is much stricter even more than the Middle East or the US.

 

[Maz7006]

We can do pretty much anything we want here on our ISP's

but our limited bandwidth (ranging from 2-5GB per month) limits us from really downloading anything anyway.

 

[Searinox]

While I commend the pirate party's initiative, I believe the true solution to this which isn't in the grasp of lawsuits and political bribing is an encrypted, decentralized overlay network where the IPs of people have nothing to do with their real IPs. It would be like a second internet, where the ISP allows everyone in, keeps no logs and in fact has no idea who their customers are. All internet services would be available through it, from HTTP to torrent protocols, and there would be no court to shut the ISP down. Such a network does indeed exist, although it is still emerging. There is no doubt in my mind that this pirate ISP will be the MAFIAA's next target. With a client-based approach there are no extra costs nor is there danger.

 

[heavyknight]

Stuff like this needs to be in America, they can make billions off this, who in the US wouldn't pay for privacy or unlimited piracy.

QFT'd.

Having privacy like that would be great. My computer would have more privacy than my room!
I wonder how many people would use it for pirating alone. Blah, screw pirating, it's privacy!

 

[Urza]

I'd gladly pay some premium to know that my "privacy" is safe

It's called usenet.

 

[Deleted_171835]

A bit late...
This would be great if it came to Canada.
Perhaps, a company will follow suit to compete with the big guys while offering privacy like this.