Brilliant Digital Entertainment announces a new technology for ISPs. Once the ISP detects that the request concerns an illegal audio files, it would block the link and propose an alternative link to purchase a legal version. The company already proposes legal distribution using P2P.

Some interesting facts:
– The announce of this new technology has been made by two former rivals: Kevin Bermeister (formerly KaZaa) and Michael Speck (former anti piracy of Music Industry Piracy Investigations)
– The business model is interesting. Brilliant Digital Entertainment would share some part of their revenues gained from sales with the ISPs.

Now, let’s have a look on the technical tidbits. Very few information are available (only the announcement). The site itself has no reference to the new technology. It seems that the ISPs would intercept the request of the illegal file. This means two things:

• A mean to detect illegal files; It is probably associated to a list of hash codes of contents that have been spotted as illegal. Similar work will have to be done for instance for French graduated answer. Fingerprinting technologies should allow to find some infringing files.
• A mean to spot the request; In view of the described method When the architecture of the internet that has our technology recognizes one of those proven illicit files, it blocks it, disconnects the link to it and adds to the search results the opportunity to purchase the legitimate material , I would guess that they replace the illegal trackers by legal trackers powered by AltNet (the technology of Brilliant Digital). It means that they have a way to spoof the request.

As a rough analysis, the second point may be Achilles heel. This may work if the request is done using a typical browser calling the tracker sites. It may be more difficult if using dedicated tools such as Che for instance. With collaborating tracker sites, they could secure the answer.

It is an interesting initiative that we have to follow.