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Big ISPs Expected To Start Six Strikes Program This Weekend [Updated]

(Mis)Uses of Technology

from the just-what-we-need dept

Wed, Jun 27th 2012 06:31am -

Update: Dah. Got fooled on the date. Someone had sent that one anonymously, and we missed that the date was from back in March. Others are reporting the program won’t go into effect until the fall.

At this point, it’s no surprise, but the RIAA’s Cary Sherman has now confirmed that (as had been previously stated) the big ISPs (Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Verizon) will be ready to kick off their “six strikes” plan this weekend. Apparently, the idea of actually giving the public a seat at the table, and looking into whether or not this made sense, wasn’t seriously considered. Of course, none of this will do anything to bring revenue back to RIAA or MPAA members. It won’t even do anything to stop infringement in the long term. As always, people will figure out ways around this. We’ve already seen the massive failure of an even stricter program, Hadopi, in France. Can anyone seriously claim that this will somehow work better in the US? Instead, it won’t be long until we hear the stories of false accusations, or families who have their internet connection limited or locked down because a neighbor maybe downloaded some infringing content. Little Susie needs to do some research for her homework? Not tonight, kids. Hollywood has to teach you a lesson. Of course, the only real lesson is that the entertainment industry needs to stop blaming customers, and start looking inward, at its own failure to innovate. Pissing people off by limiting their internet connections is not a productive path forward.

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Companies: comcast, mpaa, riaa, time warner, verizon

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Comments on “Big ISPs Expected To Start Six Strikes Program This Weekend [Updated]”

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148 Comments
Lowestofthekeys (profile) says:

This out to be fun.

Over at torrentfreak they talked about the possibility that repeat offenders (those who violate the six strikes) can have their identification and data reports sent to the RIAA/MPAA for possible lawsuit action…from the back section.

http://torrentfreak.com/mpaa-riaa-ponder-suing-persistent-bittorrent-pirates-120618/

Milton Freewater says:

Re: Re:

“Over at torrentfreak they talked about the possibility that repeat offenders (those who violate the six strikes) can have their identification and data reports sent to the RIAA/MPAA for possible lawsuit action…from the back section.”

Well, yeah, but legal action was already possible. BT swarms are public data and anybody can pull IP addys off them. The problem is that there’s no effective way to get a judgement in U.S. court against a Bittorrent user. (Some would say it’s de facto legal.)

The strikes also “fall off your record” after a year of no notices, FYI. I always assumed that Comcast etc. would cancel subscribers after only a couple of notices, which is why I keep my nose clean on BT. I guess I was wrong, haha.

The one thing I wonder about is what torrents will be monitored by the third party doing the monitoring (it’s not the ISPs, they’re just counting notices and doling out the consequences) They’re only supposed to monitor stuff released by the big media corps int eh partnership … but those companies issue false claims all the time (false DMCA takedowns, for example). If they send out notices for stuff they have no right to say is infringing, watch out.

silverscarcat says:

Re: Re: Time for Darknets now...

Huh…

So I guess the 150 I spent last month on my entertainment in my disposable income means that I’m just ripping stuff off?

Maybe you shouldn’t say stuff, because all you do is make yourself look stupid.

I’m just tired of being called a thief by the MPAA and RIAA, nevermind that I haven’t watched any movies in Theaters or gone to any concerts, I don’t pirate movies or music (I’ll record off the radio for music or just buy a CD if it’s good enough)

The only thing I “Pirate” are television series, and even THEN, I still end up purchasing most of them because they’re good and I wish to share.

So… Wanna try to stop looking like a moron.

Oh, and BTW…

“Or do something crazy like get a job”

I work two jobs.

RD says:

Re: Re: Time for Darknets now...

“Or do something crazy like get a job and pay for the for-sale content you rip off…”

Just as soon as you and Hollywood show me where I can buy a legit copy of the 1978 Star Wars Holiday Special. Did it suck? Yes, it was pretty bad, but its the one piece of Star Wars I dont have for my collection because it has NEVER BEEN MADE AVAILABLE FOR SALE FROM THE COPYRIGHT HOLDER.

So, you can stuff your “for-sale content you rip off” right up your Shillhole.

Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Re: Re: I don't normally do this....

2% is a small percentage but a small percentage doesn’t stop the numbers making up that percentage count as lots.
For example, 2% of the US population is Six Million Two Hundred and Thirty One Thousand, Eight Hundred and Thirty Eight people.

It may only be 2% but it is also, Lots.

Josh Taylor says:

Re: I don't normally do this....

I don’t torrent. But we got to worry about the Beijing Actors treaty which goes into effect after it’s ratified by 30 member states including the US. That includes cropping a photo of a celebrity using photoshop. Wikipedia will have to abide the Treaty or it will be forced to shut down by ICE. That’s includes taking down photos off Wikipedia that has been uploaded without the actor’s or performer’s permission. Otherwise, It was nice knowing Wikipedia.

el_segfaulto (profile) says:

Re: I don't normally do this....

I torrent all of the damned time. Whenever XBMC puts a new version out, I’ll be there. Whenever Debian rolls out a new distro, I’ll be there. Whenever the geniuses at OCREMIX put out a new album, I’ll be there (and donating!). Torrents aren’t illegal. Music isn’t illegal. There is so much good stuff out there that isn’t part of the MPAA/RIAA cartel that I still can’t figure out why people still download the Top 40 crap.

Anonymous Coward With A Unique Writing Style says:

Wow. An article about Google followed by an article with the first words in the headline being “Big ISPs”. Somewhere a man named bob just felt as if his every “delusional fantasy” was being proven true and brought to light for the world to see.

He is going to have a field day this morning. I am certain of it.

Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Re:

It’s not a delusion, it’s a fact.

Google wants all IP to be free so they can continue to exploit it without paying. So they can continue to make billions.

You’re an idiot foot soldier for their sick corporate greed.

At least Masnick gets paid to promote it.

Wake up and stop being such a gigantic loser.

Zos (profile) says:

Re: Re:

no, you’ll open up the internet one day after downloading a torrent, to a screen saying your account has been suspended, until you call this number.

Then you’ll explain to the nice man that you keep an open router, they’ll tell you why that’s a bad evil thing to do, and offer to help you set a password. then they’ll turn your shit back on.

basically the rights company monitors the swarm, takes the low hanging unproxied IP’s, and sends a notice to your ISP, who then forwards it on. Get BTGUARD, or another good proxy and you’ll never have to worry about it again. At least that’s how it’s always worked up until now.

ChrisB (profile) says:

Re: Re: Re: Re:

The pirate bay does not link to anything, it contains hashes of links, and the links point to torrents, and the torrents allow you to download copied content. Many steps removed from (possibly) infringing. If the pirate bay is infringing, then thinking about downloading is infringing.

Further, shouldn’t uploading be the crime? If I find a bootleg CD on the ground, am I breaking the law, or is the bootlegger breaking the law?

All these X-strike programs will do is send a lot of people to VPNs.

Jeremy Lyman (profile) says:

Re: Re: Re:

But everything created in the last 70+ years is protected by copyright. And using any part of the web is predicated on downloading that material. See how the two systems are at odds with each other?

Mayhaps you meant “didn’t download anything that infringed copyright” but when the downloader and the copyright owner don’t know whether something infringes, how is the deliveryman supposed to tell the difference?

RD says:

Re: Re:

“Let’s say that I access The Pirate Bay website (as in, I open it, and then close it). Will I get a “strike”?”

No, you get a strike because you are using the internets. The strike can be over any perceived infringement, is based on accusation only, and you have virtually no recourse to contest it. They don’t have to provide any proof. They don’t have to allow you to defend yourself or protest the action.

This action against you will be taken at the accusers accusation at face-value, with ZERO substantiated proof required. It will happen simply by them saying “I accuse thee.” ANY copyright holder can bring this action against anyone, whether it is true or not. There is no oversight whatsoever, of any kind, in any form, for ensuring or verifying that the accusations have ANY merit whatsoever.

They don’t even have to prove that it was actually your actual connection that did the “crime,” they only need an IP address. Whether that is your actual address, or was actually used for the “crime,” or someone just spoofed your IP address or used your WiFi without your knowledge, does not matter.

The ONLY, single recourse you have is to pay, up front mind you, $35 PER incident to have the ISP “review” the strike. They will, in turn, go to the accuser, say “he protests,” the accuser will confirm that the info they gave was Right and Good, and the ISP will deny your protest, pocket your $35, and the strike will stand.

This WILL happen in virtually ALL cases, bank on it.

Your rights as a consumer or human being mean not one thing to them for this process. You are, after all, the accused, and that is the same thing as guilty in their eyes.

Pray you never get accused, as it will be permanent and irrevocable.

Anonymous Coward With A Unique Writing Style says:

Re: Re:

I’m not sure how it’s going to work, but I know you can probably get a “strike” pretty easily. I have a secure network at home and I received a warning once. I’m with AT&T and they forwarded the message from I forget who. Someone supposedly downloaded the movie “Charlie St. Cloud” on my network. Well, the only person with a computer in my home at the time the infringement supposedly took place was myself and I hadn’t downloaded the movie. So I just ignored the letter.

The letter itself (from whatever studio it was) was the usual bluffing/scare tactics and threat of a possible lawsuit if I had downloaded said movie. The message from AT&T included separately was basically, “Hey, we got this letter. We have no proof you did or didn’t do anything wrong, so we’re not going to do anything to you. We’re just forwarding this because we have to. However, if we get more letters we have to forward we are going to look into this and if you’re doing something you shouldn’t be we will disconnect your services. If this message is in error and you’ve done nothing wrong just feel free to ignore it.”

The one thing that does suck is locally, there are tons of areas where you can only have one service provider of almost any kind. Satellite, cable, DSL, home phone service, etc. There are some overlapping areas naturally, but for the most part it’s a choice of Verizon, Time Warner, or AT&T. So it’s not much of a choice at all. Where I live, you want (or need as is the case with me for work) phone service or DSL you HAVE to go with AT&T. So it would majorly suck if they did disconnect my services.

Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Re: Re:

The one thing that does suck is locally, there are tons of areas where you can only have one service provider of almost any kind.

I swear you people are so out to lunch you don’t even realize what you’re writing.

Maybe this is why Lowery touched such a chord: because he was right.

You blindly throw money at huge corporations like the telcos and Google and think absolutely nothing of the damage done to musicians by the loss of royalties that occurs when you rip off their music instead of paying.

I suspect you do know this though, and feel at least some guilt, as the idiot rants against record labels show- pretending that some instance of major label malfeasance represents a justification for ripping everything off.

And don’t any of you sociopaths come back with some fucking fake indignation.

It’s sick. Not one of the pirates on this silly blog is fooling anybody.

MrWilson says:

Re: Re: Re: Re:

It’s cute that your argument basically precludes counter-arguments by pre-emptively calling anyone who responds a dirty pirate.

If we’re all dirty pirates breaking the law, report us to the police. If we’re not fooling anyone, you must have evidence. Or maybe you’re just convinced that anyone who doesn’t like copyright or government granted monopolies or the way in which the music labels have been ripping off artists for decades despite claiming, as you do, that they care about artists, is a dirty freeloading pirate.

If you care so much about artists, I’d like to see your proposals for legislation outlawing Hollywood accounting practices that deprive the people who do the grunt work on movies from getting royalties from the movie studios because the movies never turn a profit on the books, by design.

If you care so much about artists, I’d like to see your proposal for getting label artists better contracts that don’t involve charging the artists for all production and marketing done on their behalf from the small percentage they make from product sales before they see a dime.

How is it that the music is making millions of dollars, yet the artists are seeing very little from the studios, and the people who aren’t paying the studios more money are the bad guys?

You talk about us blindly throwing money at huge corporations and then argue that we’re violating copyrights and thus not blindly throwing enough money at huge corporations…

Gwiz (profile) says:

Re: Re: Re: Re:

You blindly throw money at huge corporations like the telcos and Google and think absolutely nothing of the damage done to musicians by the loss of royalties that occurs when you rip off their music instead of paying.

What the hell are you rambling on about?

I pay my internet provider for providing me internet service. Period. This isn’t a hard concept to understand.

As for Google, the only thing I have ever paid to them is eyes on ads and perhaps some of my surfing habit info. In exchange I get a pretty good search engine, maps, image search, Google docs, some pretty cool open source software, the Android OS, etc. etc. Pretty fair deal to me.

As for my personal music collection, 95% of that came from ripping me and my wife’s extensive CD library. CD’s that we already purchased.

Josef Anvil (profile) says:

Odd

TimeWarner, Comcast, and Verizon. It’s odd that ATT is absent from that group. Well it looks like a boss ad campaign for ATT, Sprint, T-Mobile, Qwest, and any other broadband provider to pinch customers.

Because of how cable companies have a near monopoly in their respective territories, it won’t bother them so much. Verizon seems to be taking a huge chance though.

I mean I get that these providers want to move away from net neutrality, so it seems they are using the excuse that the reason they don’t want net neutrality is so they can protect the content industry.

That’s all I have as far as making this make sense.

Anonymous Coward says:

This is the problem with too many of the so called ‘big business’ types who fear a big government trampling over their rights. They all too often have no problem once so ever with big business stepping in acting like a big government trying to tell you what you can and can’t do.

To those big business types at the RIAA, etc, this is perfectly reasonable. But someone else in the government telling you what to do is a fundamental violation of every single freedom we hold.

Maybe we shouldn’t be all that surprised with all the evidence of this kind of stupidity. After all, a poll released a few days found people HATE Obamacare, but if you describe EXACTLY what’s in Obamacare and call it something else then support for it suddenly goes up 30 to 40 points! Why? Simply because too many people are stupid enough not to know what’s in Obamacare, or because people were too stupid realize that Obama had endorsed that exact same approached when it was described to people, and they just hated Obamacare in the first place simply because they hate Obama, and if Obama endorsed it then it MUST be bad.

Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Re:

“Maybe we shouldn’t be all that surprised with all the evidence of this kind of stupidity. After all, a poll released a few days found people HATE Obamacare, but if you describe EXACTLY what’s in Obamacare and call it something else then support for it suddenly goes up 30 to 40 points! Why? Simply because too many people are stupid enough not to know what’s in Obamacare, or because people were too stupid realize that Obama had endorsed that exact same approached when it was described to people, and they just hated Obamacare in the first place simply because they hate Obama, and if Obama endorsed it then it MUST be bad.”

Republicans demonize ObamaCare despite the fact it started out as RomneyCare!
And, when it was RomneyCare, Republicans backed it to the hilt!

Anonymous Coward says:

any complaints, any reasons, any excuses are a complete waste of time. all the entertainment industries are interested in is maintaining what they think is their control over who can have what content, when they can have it and at what price. the obvious fallout isn’t being considered, nor is the pissing off of customers. the competing is a non-starter and governments worldwide are helping. the industries still think that everyone will be flocking to get the music and movies just as before. hopefully, they will get a big surprise!

Jeremy Lyman (profile) says:

Re: Re:

We can get into a whole debate elsewhere about why copyright laws are what they are, but the issue we’re discussing here is how the law is enforced, who is enforcing it and why.

I’m going to go ahead and imagine many Americans would have a HUGE problem if their gas station started issuing speeding and seat belt citations, threatening to cut them off over incorrect or incidental infractions of laws that most people agree are worthwhile but not intractable.

silverscarcat says:

Re: Re:

You can’t enforce stupid laws, ac.

Don’t believe me?

Hint hint: Prohibition.

Protip: War on Drugs!

Spoiler alert! Technology is always 3 steps ahead of the law.

I know that it must hurt your masters in the Content Cartels, but the truth is, you can’t stop it.

Not unless they start treating people like customers rather than thieves.

silverscarcat says:

Re: Re: Re: Re:

Nice use of a false argument to trying and defeat logic.

All those things you mentioned… All of them…

Result in the loss of something (life, property)

What sort of loss does infringement entail?

Note, I said “stupid laws”.

Laws against murder, car theft, rape and shop lifting are not stupid laws, they are there to provide restitution for the wronged party.

Copyright Infringement doesn’t wrong anyone, because there’s nothing of value being lost.

If I copy a movie from one DVD to another and give it to a friend, nothing of value has been lost.

If I took a DVD from a store without paying and gave it to a friend, then something of value has been lost.

See the difference?

Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Re: Re: Re:

Not sure how we can make this easier for you.

Make an argument that supports the creation and continued support of the law.

Not the law itself.

Invoking a law as an argument in of itself does nothing to explain your position or provide any real discussion or insight to your position.

TtfnJohn (profile) says:

Re: Re:

Logical fallacies aside, I’m left to wonder just who is tilting at windmills here.

As Hadopi has failure stamped all over its forehead so let’s just try it here and without the open government backup it has in France! To me that looks like an enormous windmill though I could be wrong about that.

Then there’s the minor detail that an IP address does not identify an individual human being, it identifies a connection in a given location which anyone can use. It’s also easily spoofed which lessens its value as and identifier of any kind. Those infringing/pirating on a “commercial” scale are using/going to use fake IP addresses.

Enforcement, on a criminal or civil level, is only as good as the methods used to ID the baddies. Too many false positives will inevitably lead to an increase in dismissals. So much for your enforcement.

The other thing I wonder about is are these ISPs going to use deep packet inspection to discover whether or not the torrent in question is being used to distribute “pirated” material? Not all torrents do, you know. The majority are used for perfectly legitimate reasons.

I can see a few lawsuits coming from this from the falsely accused, who can afford it, and a large political backfire.

Care to debate that without resorting to logical fallacies?

Mike Masnick (profile) says:

Re: Re:

Tilting at windmills and whining about the law being enforced against all of his pirate buddies.

This entire post is about a voluntary agreement that has nothing to do with the law. In fact, the law doesn’t come into play at all, because it’s based on accusations (not convictions) of infringement and ISPs taking voluntary actions based on accusations with no official review as to whether the law has actually been violated.

Look, as DH shows below, we know when backed in a corner you’re going to revert to “but it’s the law!@!@!@#” because you have no real argument, but if you could just stop and think for once, you might realize that some of us are discussing something serious that goes beyond the law.

Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Re: Re:

Hey good job completely blowing this “article.” ROFLMAO! If you actually did one minute of actual journalism, you wouldn’t look like such a fucking idiot all the time. I know, I know. You have no intention of ever doing any journalism, yet you want the world to value your posts like they were written by a real journalist. LOL! You’re a piece of work, Masnick.

Niall (profile) says:

Re: Re: Re: Re:

Hey good job completely blowing this “response.” ROFLMAO! If you actually did one minute of actual answering, you wouldn’t look like such a fucking idiot all the time. I know, I know. You have no intention of ever doing any rebutting, yet you want the world to value your posts like they were written by a real person. LOL! You’re a piece of work, Anonymous Coward.

Way to bring some quality to the discussion, as well as well thought-out points.

Doug D (profile) says:

pro-competition anti-monopoly benefits

Hey, maybe this’ll serve to get more customers off of Comcast, Time Warner, and Verizon.

Remember when there were a gazillion small ISPs out there? That was better for the health of the internet than the current situation. It’d be good to see those days come back.

(Me? I’m currently on speakeasy/megapath.)

AzureSky (profile) says:

Re: pro-competition anti-monopoly benefits

the problem is, most places in the states there are 2-3 options tops.

cable with comcast/timewarner/heus/charter

DSL from quest/att/exct

dialup: why list dialup providers….dialup sucks

the problem is that in most markets all of your choices will be part of this.

you are very unlikely to get more then 1 cable and 1 dsl provider in your area, just so you know…

its sad. but its what the govt of the Incorporated States of America supports….we love our market monopolies…

wallow-T says:

"July 1" is old date and probably obsolete; how about "fall"?

The referenced Cnet news story is from March. (Somebody else in the blogosphere dredged it up yesterday.) I had thought there was a later story indicating there are hangups and delays.

The Center For Copyright Info’s Twitter feed points to a June 26 story in Time, and that story gives a vague “fall” start date for the program.

This is the first Twitter item from the @copyrightinfo account since April, so we can see how active the copyright folks are in engaging with the Internet. 🙂

The MAFIAA Dies says:

Excuse me - who's in charge again? Oh, right. The people are.

The limp-dicked old 20th Century kidnapping rapists of the MAFIAA are so far out of touch with 21st Century reality that they actually think 21st Century people have Stockholm Syndrome and actually give a shit about them.

Well no law (of nature or statute) says we have to keep these suicidal old degenerates alive in the 21st Century. The MAFIAA wants to die – let’s help them reach that goal ASAP.

As for the ISP’s, your actions will quickly alter your fates. Go ahead and fuck soon-dead old whores if you want, ISP’s. Some of you look pretty close to the end, yourselves.

Lord Binky says:

Lulz all around if this happened.

So if hypothetically the personal IP addresses of politicians/MAFIAA/lobbyists were spoofed and included in the swarms for all major copyrighted works to increase their chances of reaching strike limits. It would be fairly entertaining for those who created such dispicable policies to have them used against themselves. Kind of like a city planner being stuck in the traffic jam his designs made.

Al Antouring says:

Message to the sell-out ISP's:

Since most of you “major” ISP’s are just a bunch of ex telco and ex shoe-selling marketing shill know-nothings with zero technical background, I’ll let you in on a computer-world saying that you’ve likely never heard:

“Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway.”

Translation for those ISP’s mentioned above and any other really, really dumb people:

The computer-world got along fine without you for decades before and we’ll get along fine without you now.

And the computer-world is millions (if not billions) of times bigger now than it was then! And there is a reason that people have massive hard drives and its not to hold that drm shit.

Bwah Hah Hah Hah !!!!

***

We interrupt this message for a news-bulletin:

This just in: The MAFIAA is still dead. And in a related story, several formerly major ISP’s are on their death beds following a massive drop in revenue.

We return you now to the message.

***

Go ahead, ISP’s – I dare you.

Can someone out there say “enormous revenue opportunity?”

How much do you want to bet that Google (with its already massive revenue and massive dark fiber reserves) has been holding its breath for just a moment like that?

The ISP’s lose. Game, set and match to the opponent.

***

What’s next, dying MAFIAA – you get your errand-boys in the US government to outlaw the copy command and send in the drones?

Just admit it – you’re through.

Bwah Hah Hah Hah !!!!

***

Why do the actions of the dying MAFIAA always remind me of the Monty Python skit with the knight with no arms or legs left and blood spurting out of every hole?

vastrightwing (profile) says:

US Post office is next

Change ISP to USPS and imagine mailing hard disks to your friends with infringing material on it. Now imagine the post office scanning your packages for hard drives with infringing material on them. Then the USPS notifies you that your mail will be shut off because you are using the USPS to steal from artists. Well, the idea is exactly the same.

That Anonymous Coward (profile) says:

So let us look at the problems step by step.

The Cartels have inserted themselves into your contractual agreement with your ISP.

Your ISP to take actions to your connection based on claims made by an outside party made outside of a court of law.

The Cartels are using a “secret” technology, that has been proven time and time again to generate false positives.

The Cartels lovingly provide you a chance to protest their findings, for a $35 fee. This fee is to make sure your serious… do they have to pay the ISP $35 for every notice they send?

You are expected to give an answer to the notice, but the options for response are limited and include the idea that nothing made after 1929 is not covered by copyright.

The Cartels are pushing the negligence angle, well your connection was used so we are asking for your service to be degraded until you lock it down.

This program is run by a PR company, not a technical company.

Oh if you get 6 strikes, they remove you from the program.

Oh and they won’t need to get a court order like the copyright trolls do to get your name and contact information to try and sue you they get to compile all of this all along.

This program can’t detect downloads from cyberlockers.

So I’m pretty sure its only going to take a few phone calls to some AG’s to finally get someone to ask why an outside 3rd party can insert themselves into your contract with your ISP. They are making allegations with the notices that can not stand up in a court of law, and well an IP address does not point to an infringer, and there is no “duty” to protect your WiFi connection to keep the Cartels happy.

This is a PR stunt and not much more, the upside is several of the ISPs who signed up are monopolies in many areas, so they are using their monopoly status to benefit an outside group… That should look very tempting to anyone who wants to break that monopoly. They are misusing their control of the market to the detriment of the consumers.

Anonymous Coward says:

The Three Sad Truths

The first sad truth is that the average person doesn’t know or care about this and that’s why this type of action will succeed.
The Mafiaa and Riaa know that as long as people can see their favorite TV show or movies and get to their porn sites they have nothing to fear in terms of any public backlash or loss of business, so a boycott (or cord cutting) will do nothing to stop them.
The Second Sad Truth (for the entertainment business)is that the pirating of copyrighted material will not be stopped, or even slowed, one little bit!
The 3rd Sad Truth (and the saddest of all)is that the REAL PIRATES (the ones that are raping and pillaging your country and mine)will never be held accountable for their Criminal Acts.

Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Re: The Three Sad Truths

Yes, because the DMCA and Megaupload takedown stopped and slowed piracy.

For that matter, bob has been here consistently complaining that the DMCA not only gave rightsholders too many damn hoops to jump through, but actually benefited “Big Search” (whatever the hell that means).

You’re a poor, sadder, sappier sap.

Overcast (profile) says:

Does this apply to a business too? I wonder how much longer you’ll see ‘free WiFi’ at places… it’s getting to be too much of a liability.

After all; a rule like this is just apt to have people go torrent at some free hot-spot instead of home.

In the end, this could create a new industry of ‘hosts’ that offer a VPN tunnel to block data from the ISP…. lol

Milton Freewater says:

Re: Re: Re:

“no this does not affect businesses and it has nothing to do with fair use and it really is not anything new, media companies have been alerting the ISPs about infringement for a long time but now it has the label 6 strikes which is intended to strike fear into ignorant fools which i see it already has”

Joe, you’re exactly right … UNLESS the third party monitor and the rightsholders treat these like DMCA takedowns and issue a bunch of strikes for, say, mashups, remixes, parodies, documentaries that include copyrighted content such as “Los Angeles Plays Itself,” etc. etc.

It has been too much trouble and little gain for rightsholders to do that before … but now there’s a system that, like the TSA, has to prove its worth. And private companies have no obligation to honor our First Amendment right to access speech.

Joe Shades (profile) says:

Yes there could be potential problems but the ISPs are really not too enthusiastic about this and they already are losing customers so i doubt they will be bending over backwards to help get rid of paying customers that are not cutting the cord by themselves, i pay for cable phone and internet, i would bet my life comcast won’t be cutting me off if i download some movie

Anonymous Coward says:

So, Does This Mean I Can Start Suing.....

My boyfriend lives in Vegas, and I live in Arkansas.

One of the things we love to do is pick out a movie on iTunes, buy it (we take turns), get it downloaded, and then press the play button at the same time while we are in Mumble together.

It’s almost like watching a movie together. Close enough for our case.

However, 90% of the time, we have to deal with “Error -35”
or “Error -50” or some other stupid “crap, pause it, I’m locked up” “hold up I need to reboot to get it going again”.

Can I now start holding THEIR feet to the fire on charging as much for the download as they do the DVD, yet I am not receiving the experience I am being charged for.

Is this the only industry that can get away with still being in business when there are SO MANY CUSTOMER COMPLAINTS?

Gawd. Imagine if the content industry was a diner that got away with poisoning the customers, got complaints on a daily basis, and still was able to stay in business by passing a law that anyone that walked down the same street as the diner had to pay a fee just for being around. How do I get in an industry like that?

wallow-T says:

Re: Need confirmation

1) Mike Our Gracious Host picked up a March story, predicting the start of the Copyright Information system on July 1. Ooops! An error in hasty journalmalism. As I mentioned earlier, a Time story dated June 26 (yesterday) puts the start of the program as “fall”. Repeating myself, I have a feeling that the start of this program is going to remain three months in the future for some time, as the ISPs both drag their feet, and deal with the awesomeness of the task of identifying customer accounts from IP address/date/time information, accurately and in high volume.

2) I have no idea who Mediacom is.

3) The amount of FUD flying around on this is truly awesome. The Copyright Info program is specifically aimed at p2p file sharing (uploading) originating from residential customers. This would definitely include BitTorrent, and might include whatever else is left in the Gnutella world. This will not include file lockers such as MediaFire, Usenet, or any other pure downloading system.

The ISPs are not monitoring traffic. The ISPs have agreed to:
– accept IP address/date/time copyright complaints from the copyright holders, without question.
– match those reports to a customer, and forward warnings on. (There is no guarantee that the report or the match will be accurate, and the report is not to be challenged.)
– keep count, with vaguely escalating penalties.

wallow-T says:

Re: Re: Need confirmation

Let me re-emphasize two things about the Copyright Info program:

– The Memorandum of Understanding between the content industry and the big ISPs is out there on the web. You can read it. I highly recommend reading it yourself; the document is poorly represented in all of the news coverage I have seen.

– The content industry is not engaging in any subterfuge in collecting allegations of copyright infringment. They are, acting like any other member of the public, joining public p2p networks (BitTorrent trackers, swarms, whatever, and whatever is left of older technologies like Gnutella), firing up (probably modified) user clients, and collecting what is essentially public information.

The big open question is: Will the Copyright Info system examine a download of a suspect file to get better evidence that the file is really what it says it is? Or, will the Copyright Info system opt to economize on time and just take directory listings, and string-search on those directory listings to create allegations of infringement?

The other big open question, for me, is what will be the error rate as the ISPs match copyright complaints to IP address log data? Accuracy is expensive; the Copyright Info system, as far as I can see, accepts a sacrifice of accuracy for cost effectiveness and waves away collateral damage.

wallow-T says:

Re: Re: Need confirmation

Late thought: Once the ISPs have completed the chore of automating high-volume mapping of IP addresses/date/time to customer accounts, they will lose of the major defenses against making this information available in bulk to copyright troll court cases, where the goal is to extort money from the named customers.

Wally (profile) says:

Legal or not?

Would it be illegal to traffic all our torrent traffic to the following IP Address?

69.172.201.20

That’s the DNS to the MPAA’s website.

I would like to constitute that these policies violate certain privacy laws that ISP’s must follow. I typically get video game music from OCRemix.org. It’s a sight full of user made music from classic video games. They use BitTorrent to download sound track compilations. The point is, they will have access to your computers illegally, and the ISP’s mentioned are accessories to said violation.

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