The actions of the corrupt MP Mr Mandelson have horrified me (again, oh and I’m not too happy with Alan Johnson either!) and if you have found this post through Google then you probably already know why and I expect you also already know that he is may be a sock puppet to the music industry. Maybe he really has no firm grasp of why his actions won’t work, despite so many warnings from industry experts such as TalkTalk, but why try and get a grip on such things if your pockets are >possibly< being lined by industry fatcats?

Even MI5 are against this legislation and rightly so, because people such as myself will blog about this sort of issue and how to get around it.

Anyway, accusations aside,  you are terrified that your packets might get sniffed? Well the time has come to get yourself protected.

Avoid Deep Packet Inspection

Dan Klein, media accounts director at Detica stated that “Encryption of the data packet would defeat us, We’re not going to put the processing power into defeating it.” – source

So you know what to do, get encryption! Now simply enabling encryption within your torrent software will not help I’m afraid. You need to get yourself a VPN, essentially an encrypted connection that you set your downloads running through. These are incredibly cheap and there are plenty to pick from, ideally you want one local (in my case Europe) with good reviews and a torrent friendly policy. There are plenty of excellent torrent friendly VPN services out there such as BTGuard (my personal preference).

Wait There’s More

Now it’s worth noting that ISPs are not the only body that will be collecting data on your downloads, there are many organisations that gather information on illegal file sharers and I would heartily recommend you taking a look at Peer Block, the successor to Peer Guardian. It’s an amazing project, the application is easy to use and updates itself based on the latest compiled lists of corporate spys, it should stop these 99.99% of these organisations from getting your IP address, win.

Further Action

If you are in the UK and are concerned about this sort of thing then perhaps you should consider getting involved with or supporting the UK Pirate Party.

I leave you with this delightful video from Dan Bull, nicely put Dan.