• CNET News.com , Thursday, January 17, 2008 1 PM

For a while now, Internet service provider AT&T has been testing new filtering technology to look for illegally distributed copyrighted material that travels over its network. The decision has caused a ruckus among privacy groups and supporters of net neutrality, who say that AT&T shouldn't be allowed to play network cop. Legal watchers are at odds over whether the telecom giant has the right to do this; business world critics warn that the company could turn off customers.

Columbia law professor Tim Wu points says there's a contradiction here. "AT&T spent six years and millions of dollars lobbying for a law so they wouldn't have to filter for copyrighted material on their network," he tells CNET. "And now they want to do it."

AT&T has confirmed talks with Vobile, a content filtering software provider in which the telecom has also invested. It is also working with the Motion Picture Association of America and the Recording Industry Association of America to figure out ways to stem the flow of copyrighted material over P2P networks, which eat up valuable bandwidth. Stemming the flow of traffic to those sites would give AT&T's network more bandwidth and thus, a faster network. As yet, AT&T is the only major ISP to publicly declare its intention to filter its Web traffic.

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