Virgin to Use CView to Monitor File Sharing
Thursday, December 17th, 2009Virgin Media, the UK’s leading broadband provider, has announced plans to use Detica’s file sharing monitor tool CView to assess the extent of file sharing activities over its networks. This was revealed by company sources during an interview with news site The Register.
The tool will be used to monitor peer-to-peer (P2P) traffic across Virgin broadband. CView has earlier been used by Detica to assist government and government agencies to track unauthorised activity across their networks. The Deep Packet Inspection tool is expected to give an accurate picture of the intensity of illegal activity over the internet.
Virgin sources have said that this inspection is becoming necessary ahead of the proposed music package offerings that are shortly to be unveiled by the provider. In addition, stronger governmental regulations may soon be introduced to ensure copyright protection of data on the web. The CView assessment will help determine the extent of internet piracy and the nature of measures that need to be taken to combat it.
CView will not reveal personal data or usage information on an individual basis, Virgin assures. This is why the company does not think it necessary to warn the 40% of its customers who will be under the scanner. Naturally, these views are not shared by scores of privacy campaigners, including members of NoDPI.og, who are calling this a huge invasion in net users’ privacy.


