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Six Strikes Officially Begins On Monday

Copyright

from the warm-up-your-vpns dept

Fri, Feb 22nd 2013 02:55pm -

Kevin Collier over at the DailyDot claims he’s got it on good authority that the “six strikes” system, officially known as the Copyright Alert System, officially kicks off on Monday, many months later than scheduled. For whatever reason, the organization behind the program, the Center for Copyright Information, has been insisting for some time that there was no official rollout date, and the various ISPs would be individually choosing when to turn on the random assortment of punishment mechanisms made available to copyright holders based entirely on accusations, not conviction or other proof. Apparently, what they meant was that everyone would roll it out in a single week, but on different days. Because that makes so much sense.

The ISPs—industry giants AT&T, Cablevision, Comcast, Time Warner, and Verizon—will launch their versions of the CAS on different days throughout the week. Comcast is expected to be the first, on Monday.

So, now we get to watch people get falsely accused, those with open WiFi suddenly have to fear bogus slow downs to their networks and other assorted collateral damage. Oh, and does anyone actually expect to see a sudden spike in “sales”?

Oh, and the Center for Copyright Information has put up a snazzy new website and video over some non-descript smooth jazz that I’m sure they licensed, and which practically screams the following basic message (note: message paraphrased): “Hey, we’re just your friendly neighborhood copyright maximalists, out here trying to make friends and, oh, oops, we just wanted to let you know, in the friendliest way possible, that we think you’re lying, thieving pirates, and we’d really like it if you stopped, or we might have to make your internet connection completely useless. But we don’t want to have to do that, because we’re all friends here, enjoying the internet. Isn’t the internet great?”

The video makes a few blatantly ridiculous claims, including suggesting that they have some foolproof technology for seeing whenever you infringe. They claim that the system is designed to “support the creative work that we all love and enjoy.” Which is kind of amusing, since nothing in the system is about giving people a reason to buy. Just a reason to get pissed off at ISPs and copyright holders for making accusations. I’m sure that’s going to convince so many people to buy.

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Companies: at&t, cablevision, center for copyright information, comcast, time warner, verizon

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Comments on “Six Strikes Officially Begins On Monday”

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217 Comments
fogbugzd (profile) says:

I am still dubious about whether cable providers are going to be willing to actually cut off customers. Each residential customer is worth from $800 to $1800 of revenue per year and business users with open wifi are worth considerably more. The marginal cost of supporting a subscriber are low. Every customer represents a significant profit point. How many cable companies are going to be eager to cut off profit points, especially in a market is essentially subscribed-out and has flat growth potential?

Some companies like AT&T actually seem eager to roll out 6 strikes, and that seems very odd. I wonder if they want to use 6 strikes to leverage in some type of “paid content” model that results in tiered internet services.

It is also possible that the movie industry has offered some sweetheart deals to cable companies that roll out six strikes. That would make the behavior of companies like Comcast and AT&T more understandable, but it would call into question the wisdom of the movie industry giving up revenue without any apparent way of actually increasing their own receipts. The cable companies may piss off their customers, but from the standpoint of the cable companies their subscribers are usually a captive audience with no other service options. The MPAA, on the other hand, is going to piss off their customers who do have a lot of other entertainment options.

It will be interesting to see how this whole thing works out in places like Kansas City where there is a viable option to subscribing to a 6-strike cable service.

Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Re: Re: Re:

I used “currently” with that because it very well may change. But the poster I was responding to was under the impression that 6 strikes was currently forcing companies to cut subscribers after 6 strikes, which at this time is not true.

Personally, I expect it to follow what is going on in New Zealand right now in the future, right holders realizing they shouldn’t ask for disconnections, but rather should ask for fines instead. That makes all the companies happy, ISPs don’t lose customers and the RIAA/MPAA make more money, at the expense of consumers.

PaulT (profile) says:

Re: Re: Re:3 Re:

If I understand correctly, most people in the US aren’t exposed to real competition (at least with cable) and so if they wish to have the same level of service there may be nobody else to go to. Until that changes, I suspect most of the major carriers don’t really care whether their customers like them or not.

Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Re: Re:5 Re:

Anyone that goes around complaining about entertainment industry trade groups is almost 100% guaranteed to be a pirate, as using them as a boogeyman is one of their favorite rationalizations for their theft.

Which is what it is: stealing.

So yeah, no one gives a fuck what they claim they’ll do. Go pound sand.

art guerrilla (profile) says:

Re: Re: Re:3 Re:

and RIGHT THERE is the nub of the problem:
i do despise my ISP already; they don’t give a fuck, ‘CAUSE THEY DON’T HAVE TO: (practically speaking) I HAVE NO CHOICE…
they KNOW i am not going anywhere else, ’cause it will be two cans and a string…

now, ‘whose fault’ is that ? ? ?
(if you want to get all dickish, you will say it is voters who vote the assholes in, BUT THAT PRESUPPOSES we have NON-assholes to choose from…)

THE ones to blame, are the putative defenders of the ‘free-market capitalist’ system who do NOT -in fact and in deed- actually behave according to those principles… (setting aside whether such principles are complete in themselves)

‘our’ (sic) representatives at ALL levels -from city/county, to state, to federal- have essentially colluded with Big Media and made unconscionable and unconstitutional decisions which lined their pockets, and picked ours:
what are the figures? some 75-80% of us have NO choice of ISP’s, and a LOT of the remaining have little effective choice…

this works great for the conspirators, not so great for us li’l peeps…

art guerrilla
aka ann archy
eof

Milton Freewater says:

Re: Re:

“It is also possible that the movie industry has offered some sweetheart deals to cable companies that roll out six strikes. That would make the behavior of companies like Comcast and AT&T more understandable”

The deal was put in place after Comcast merged with NBC Universal … doesn’t get sweeter than that.

Internet Zen Master (profile) says:

Yeah, I was pretty much flipping off my computer screen for 2 minutes

Pointless gesture? Yes, but it made me feel good.

Also, that voice was almost as irritating as “Rachel from Cardholder services”.

And the kicker is that this comes on the heels of yet another judge stating the obvious of IP addresses not equaling people.

I predict an increase in people visiting their local libraries, armed with proxies, tor and vpns.

On the other hand, it’ll be interesting to see if anything actually happens on Monday. I mean, how will we know if the Six Strikes plan is active or not?

As the Zen Master says, “We’ll see.”

That Anonymous Coward (profile) says:

Re: Re: Re: Yeah, I was pretty much flipping off my computer screen for 2 minutes

But they have this line in them that allow them make changes and your totally allowed to end use of the service.
Of course if they are a monopoly in your area, you can just do without internet access.

I’m waiting for someone to start pushing State AG’s to file suits. They get access to public lands at cheap/no cost and have monopoly control in many areas and they are now acting like their own legal system. Taking allegations that are unproven and very questionable at best as gospel truth and taking punitive actions based on them alone.

The system is different depending on provider and the only challenge allowed is arbitration you have to pay for and accept being limited to a set of asinine responses written by the accusers.

I think its time that people complain to the elected officials about stopping this, removing monopoly control in many areas, and stopping any Federal Subsidies these providers get. They obviously have enough money and control so why do they need hand outs?

Cynyr (profile) says:

Re: Re: Re:2 Yeah, I was pretty much flipping off my computer screen for 2 minutes

I would say sure, but if I had signed a multi-year contract, then surely I’m allowed to get some form of compensation when they break contract?

Also in my apartment building there are 2 providers. Centurylink and comcast. Once changes happen twice what am I supposed to do to to maintain an internet connection. These days internet is more like water or electricity than anything else. Where do you get tax forms in the analog world? (no cheating and using the internet to look it up)

Mason Wheeler (profile) says:

Re: Re: Re: Yeah, I was pretty much flipping off my computer screen for 2 minutes

While we’re on the subject, I wonder if people can take them to court for serious violations of the law?

Think about it for a moment:

Copyright infringement is against the law.
Enforcement of the law, and bringing those who violate it to justice, is very strictly the purview of law enforcement and the justice system. Private entities usurping their role in society is known as vigilantism, and is highly illegal.
Six-strikes programs involve private entities punishing people for (allegedly) breaking the law by committing copyright infringement.

Seems to me anyone who actually tries this could end up charged with some very serious offenses.

teka (profile) says:

Re: Re: Re:2 Yeah, I was pretty much flipping off my computer screen for 2 minutes

Ah, but this is just private agreements between private groups of corporations privately working together in ways that you totally agree with and support (due to the “agreement” that they reserved the right to change, and changed)

yeah, it’s that bad.

NA Protector says:

Place your bets

How long into this 6-Strike Out Plan will it be before each ISP that supports this plan starts to loses customers?
1. 30 Miniutes
2. 1 Day
3. 5 Days
4. Never because its a good plan

What percent of people that change ISP because of this plan will actually be pirates?
1. 5%
2. 20%
3. 50%
4. 100% because only dishonest people will hate this plan

broca says:

Re: Re: Place your bets

This is what makes me think this will run into legal trouble. A private entity is allowed to accuse people of infringement and charges a fee to contest it (is that still part of this deal?). There exist no checks or balances and subscribers are screwed over by franchised monopolies and unable to go elsewhere. Is this a rico thing? It’s late. I just think this will be the downfall of this.

Rekrul says:

Re: Re: Place your bets

I want to bet that the encryption age is dawning.

Not only pirates will get encryption tools non-pirates also will run for it, since it shields everyone from prying eyes.

Encryption by itself does absolutely nothing to protect your identity when using file sharing software.

Everyone seems to think that their ISP or the CCI is going to be magically snooping on all their data transfers looking for copyrighted bytes. They’re not.

The CCI is going to collecting IP addresses from file sharing networks. Encryption alone doesn’t do anything to hide your IP address. It can’t, or the whole file sharing system wouldn’t work.

Can someone call you without knowing your phone number? Can you call someone else without knowing their phone number? Well, your IP is your computer’s “phone number” on the internet. It HAS to be available to the people at the other end in order for their computers to know where to send the data.

When someone downloads something through BitTorrent, their computer broadcasts their IP address so that everyone else will know where to send the data to. The CCI is simply going to be using a modified copy of a BitTorrent program that records all the IP addresses that are sharing a particular file, filters out the non-US ones and then sends infringement notices to the rest.

The only way to hide your IP address online is to use a VPN service. Technically you could use a proxy, but you’r never going to find an anonymous proxy that will allow BitTorrent use. Hell, it’ll take you hours just to find an anonymous proxy that will let you access Google. With a VPN, you connect to the VPN and the VPN connects to your destination. When the CCI collects IP addresses it will end up with the IP address of the VPN service. If it’s a good one that doesn’t keep records, they will have no way to match the IP address to the person who was using it at the time.

Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Re: Re: Place your bets

What do you think a VPN is?
VPN also don’t guarantee privacy or anonymity more so than encryption tools, since the paid VPN services are a third party that hold records and can be touch by law enforcement.

OneSwarn is an anonymous encrypted option for bittorrent, Retroshare is another option that is better than VPN since the only people who will see you is your friends that you know who they are, which can guarantee a very high degree of privacy.

Calypso the new Mute network also works wonders for anonymous filesharing.

The TOR Bundle is almost completely anonymous, it could be more if they multiplexed the packets requests through dozens of different exit points randomly, and it would get faster too.

Rekrul says:

Re: Re: Re:2 Place your bets

What do you think a VPN is?

A VPN is a combination of encryption and a proxy service. Notice that I said that encryption alone wouldn’t do anything to protect your identity while file sharing. It’s the proxy part that actually hides your IP address.

VPN also don’t guarantee privacy or anonymity more so than encryption tools, since the paid VPN services are a third party that hold records and can be touch by law enforcement.

Actually, there are some VPN services that don’t keep logs. The TorrentFreak did an article on them a while back and asked several VPN providers if they log user connections. There were several that didn’t.

I suppose law enforcement could go to them with a court order authorizing them to set up a real-time ‘tap’ on the system to catch a particular person in the act, but I doubt that they would do that for copyright infringement. It would have to be something like child porn, and even then, how do you identify one person out of hundreds or even thousands using the system? You could watch for a particular file, but how do you know it would be the same person? It would basically be a fishing expedition, and a court might have a problem with that.

Bergman (profile) says:

Re: Place your bets

Given that copyright laws also grant certain rights to consumers, and it’s not a one-way street from the content providers to the public…

How long until the first strikes for various violations of copyright law are filed against major content producers and the MAFIAA?

1. 30 nanoseconds
2. 30 seconds
3. 30 minutes
4. 30 hours

Internet Zen Master (profile) says:

God this video is bad

It makes Aperture Science’s videos look good by comparison (granted, that’s a rather high bar to set, but whatever). Is the CCI’s video team trapped in the 1990s or something?

I mean, good Lord, I’ve seen POWERPOINTS that are less cheesy/more effective at conveying information than this video.

Yakko Warner (profile) says:

Do I get kicked off after six?

Funny, the video doesn’t mention anything about what might happen after six strikes.

It does say there’s a way to challenge alerts, but only after you receive several? Why can’t I challenge the first accusation? (Not that I have any faith the challenge will be heard fairly — who’s funding this “independent” review system?)

Internet Zen Master (profile) says:

Re: Do I get kicked off after six?

That’s what I’m wondering as well. I heard mitigation, so I’m assuming they’re saying that after 6+ strikes, rightsholders are cleared to sue away (which directly contradicts their claim of “we won’t share your personal info”.)

And yeah, I’d like a way to challenge the first alert as well.

As for the review system, its run by an arbitration organization (can’t remember which one), but I have a strong feeling a certain collection of businesses (coughMPAA/RIAAcough) are funding the arbitration…

That Anonymous Coward (profile) says:

Re: Re: Do I get kicked off after six?

They keep the strikes attached to your account records for a period of 12 months since the last one.
If you hit 6 they stop forwarding notices, and when the rightsholder attempts to sue you they will ask the court for a subpoena of the ISPs records which now include these spiffy records of strikes which totally will prove that your an evil infringer.
Infringement is a civil case, where they just have to prove its more likely than not… and hey we have 6 strikes on the record they MUST be guilty.

Scam_sniffer says:

Re: Do I get kicked off after six?

Sure you can challenge the alerts….for $35 a pop! WTF is up w/that? WHERE/WHO will that money go to??? I smell a scam. WHY should a a falsely accused/innocent person have to pay $35, to challenge a bogus claim? If a person is found innocent, should/will they be reimbursed? Will the ISP prorate their bill, for any time the “victim’s: connection was wrongfully, but deliberately slowed? I bet you’ll see a LOT of people start getting falsely accused. For 1, it’s a way to extort a $35 tax/fine from each person. And 2, when people are accused & their connection is slowed, it’s a great way for ISPs to free up bandwidth. (while bilking customers at the standard rate. Down the road, I suspect this law/policy will be challenged, possibly even with some type of class action suit.

Sandy says:

Re: Re: Do I get kicked off after six?

That would be great! A class action lawsuit. The problem being if you are an innocent victim and you have family members that are felons and digital communication thieves; you ;the innocent party is treated as an “ACCESSORY” to every one of their crimes.If they are really good or appear to be an “innocent grandma” not knowing how to use the internet the tables will be turned on you!
After the incessant network intrusion destroys your connection, speed, and devices they are trying to track without any PROOF of doing so; the ip provider will treat you as if you are “paranoid” and they have “no idea what you are talking about”although you may be armed with evidence, screenshots, ping results etc.they come back with “they dont know what you are doing to cause this” I took the phone one day and slammed it about 20 times on my kitchen table trying to get an answer WHY time warner would not share with me WTF is going on; yet cashed that check real quick for shitty or no service at all.
In the end the only thing I have worth any value left because I used to use them for business online is destroyed. All evidence destroyed so conveniently.My hp was locked up and I could no longer access it; I called hp and microsoft; no answers; no apologies; no replacement. My phone APPLE iPhone 4; blacklisted, hacked, and banned from communicating. I called apple numerous times; explained my phone somehow had an ios iPhone 3 operating system yet I had an iphone 4 and all my apple accounts being hacked as well; the answer I got was “hmmmm thats interesting” yeah!Really interesting your phone is the biggest security breach since Edward Snowden… Nobody will help they will all walk away as if nothing ever happened leaving you to replay events, search answers in your head, and remain blacklisted unless you move to Russia for NO GOOD REASON AT ALL! We are in America…land of the free… NOT!

Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Re:

sooooo pirate weekend anyone?

You’re in the right place for that. TD is pirate central. You are surrounded by them. Mike’s even telling everyone to fire up the VPNs. I haven’t seen him this excited or out of the pirate closet in a while. It’s nice that he’s finally being somewhat honest. We all know why pirates like yourself hang out here. You are surrounded by friends. Mike draws in pirates by the droves.

Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Re: Re:2 Re:

If by “pirate” you mean anyone who bypasses DMCA to back up stuff or downloads anything not laden of DRM, or someone who’s peeved at how legitimate products hurt the consumer more than the pirate… then, sure, there’s a lot of pirates. Given how everyone already pays a “you must be a pirate” tax what rationale is there to not be one? “Congratulations, you’re not a pirate. Have some system-crippling DRM!”

Anonymous Coward says:

The public reaction to this going online will be interesting. Those involved have done what they could to try and say they aren’t cutting off connections, and at worse there is a couple day slow down on what we have seen so far for a number of infringements. But that said, there seems to be much more fear as to what many people think the program is now vs what it actually is. Now don’t get me wrong, there are many problems with this, but despite the best efforts of the program to try and show the contrary, it remains to be seen how the fearful public reacts to this. I would not at all be shocked if after a high profile mistake or two that the whole thing quickly comes to a halt.

Internet Zen Master (profile) says:

Re: Re:

People are against this for a few reasons:

>Most netizens like our Internet fine just the way it is, and corporations/politicans should stop trying to “fix” what wasn’t broken in the first place! Leave the Internet in the hands of the geeks, the nerds, the techies, the (whitehat/blackhathackers, the script-kiddies, the casual browsers, and most importantly, the network engineers. Leave it in the capable hands of those who understand how it works, not in those of greedy, over-enforcing groups like the RIAA or some incompetent bureaucratic entity like the ITU.

The other big reason is:

SOPA. SOPA SOPA, SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA, SOPA! SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA! TPP SOPA, SOPA ACTA SOPA, SOPA SOPA PIPA SOPA SOPA SOPA.

So you’ll have to forgive people for not being exactly warm to the idea of having their internet access monitored by some entity like CCI, who’s been identified as having deep ties with Hollywood.

Also, a lot of people are frankly insulted by the whole thing. We’re adults, stop treating us like children who can’t be trusted and installing a country-wide Net Nanny program to look over our shoulder.

Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Re: Re:

I understand that, and I’m against this too for those reasons and in addition the whole finding you guilty without a court of law angle. But that said, the misconceptions that the larger audience has (beliefs that it currently leads to accounts being disabled, that your ISP is watching everything for this purposes rather than some company watching torrent swarms) will play a big role in the public outcry that is sure to happen next week.

That Anonymous Coward (profile) says:

Re: Re:

“for a number of infringements”

I think you meant ALLEGATIONS. There is no proof the account holder infringed or knew of the infringment. Infringment is a finding left to courts and a legal system, not baseless allegations coming from a company that has created file sharing infringements.
AFACT vs iiNet – Dtecnet uploaded and seeded copyrighted material and collected IP addresses to try and force ISPs in Australia to accept a system like 6 strikes.

So this entire program relies on a company that uploaded infringing works to share with the world…
Is this like allowing a convicted murderer to claim other people are murderers because he thinks they must have?

DisappointedCommenter says:

Prepaid Wireless and Cable services coming to town!

This video seems cheesy.

Still, it’s likely going to move people to prepaid accounts. I read that Comcast is trying Prepaid interwebs in back east.

It may be the way to go, or also Clearwire/Broadband wireless service too!

http://ecreditdaily.com/2013/02/xfinity-prepaid-service-comcast-cheaper-pay-go-internet/

That Crazy Freetard (profile) says:

Re: Re:

All that little tagline did is point out how ridiculously deluded it is, the notion that you can stop someone from doing something on the internet. It’s a battle that can’t be won, which certain parties insist on fighting.

Also, this whole notion of guilty by accusation is utter bullshit and you know it. It also happens to be one of the tenets of the DMCA, and I hate it.

We both know that you are going to milk this thing for all it’s worth.

Which, to you, means what?

Chronno S. Trigger (profile) says:

Re: Re:

I would remind you that they have no idea who the pirates are. So they’re not just watching those who download illegally, they’re watching you as well. This is why people use encrypted VPNs, not to hide illegal actions, but to hide actions that private companies just don’t need to know about.

I already spend half my time on the web using encrypted connections. Not for anything illegal, but because Google doesn’t need to know where I surf all the time. If I don’t want Google knowing where I’m going, just imagine what I think about an “independent” entity setup by a group that wants to take my freedoms away.

Chronno S. Trigger (profile) says:

Bittorrent Week

I propose a bit-torrent week in protest of this crap. Next week, starting Monday, fire up your torrent clients and visit and download from any (or all) of the following websites.

Vo.do
http://www.publicdomaintorrents.info/
http://www.clearbits.net/
https://www.humblebundle.com/ (if you’ve already bought some)

And probably about a billion other places. Then, when (not if, but when) they start sending you warnings, send them a screenshot of your torrent client and tell them to go f**k themselves.

Hell, why leave it at a week. Let’s make it a month.

Rekrul says:

Re: Bittorrent Week

I propose a bit-torrent week in protest of this crap. Next week, starting Monday, fire up your torrent clients and visit and download from any (or all) of the following websites.

Vo.do
http://www.publicdomaintorrents.info/
http://www.clearbits.net/
https://www.humblebundle.com/ (if you’ve already bought some)

And probably about a billion other places. Then, when (not if, but when) they start sending you warnings, send them a screenshot of your torrent client and tell them to go f**k themselves.

Why exactly would that generate infringement notices?

Your ISP isn’t looking for general BitTorrent usage, the CCI is looking for the IP addresses of users who are sharing copyrighted files. Are the files on those sites copyrighted?

RadialSkid (profile) says:

Re: Re: Bittorrent Week

And how, precisely, does your ISP know which files are copyrighted? Do they look at a torrent called “Sherlock Holmes,” and know automatically whether it’s a movie with Robert Downey Jr., or a Creative Commons published student film of the same public domain character?

This is precisely why many here, including myself, are dubious of this plan…it’s going to be rife with false flags. I plunged head first into Creative Commons and public domain media back in 2008 and haven’t looked back…but if the retail media industries can label public domain repository “The Internet Archive” as a “rogue site,” then they can just as easily cut off my means for appreciating said material altogether.

That One Guy (profile) says:

Re: Re: Re: Bittorrent Week

Whenever you need to get an estimate as to how many false positives you’ll get with a person controlled system like this, just ask yourself one question:

“What is the penalty for being wrong?”, or in this case “What is the penalty for making an incorrect accusation?”

As I’m betting the answer to that one is going to be “None whatsoever”, yeah, expect a ton of false positives, at least until enough people get mad enough to bring the issue to court and refuse to settle before it gets there.

rukidding (profile) says:

Re: Re: Re: Bittorrent Week

“And how, precisely, does your ISP know which files are copyrighted? “

According to the video the ISPs are not the ones doing the monitoring. Instead, it is the copyright holder that is monitoring P2P networks for people sharing files that the copyright holder knows is infringing.

But I have a problem understanding how doing that can be considered infringing:

First, if the copyright holder is “listening” for requests for the copyrighted file then how is that actually infringement if no content of the copyrighted file is actually transferred? In this case the alleged infringer is simply asking for the file. If the copyright holder does not respond with actual content of the file then the copyright holder is essentially saying “no” to the “request” and no infringement has occurred.

Second, if the copyright holder does transfer any content of the copyrighted file to the requester isn’t doing so an implied consent of the copyright holder allowing this, which therefore makes that particular transfer non-infringing since it was the copyright holder providing the copy?

The only way that I can see this working for the copyright holder is to identify files that are being seeded by others for which they own the copyright and then request that file from anyone and everyone seeding it.

Anonymous Coward says:

Law Enforcement Without the Law

The Obama Administration pressured ISPs into adopting this system. The result is a system of private copyright enforcement without the protections generally afforded to those accused of infringement. The government is not involved in enforcing the law, so there’s no due process.

People should be worried, especially considering the government’s role in getting the system going.

jameshogg says:

VPNs might have a hard time here, as most strikes could very well be aimed at them.

There are many political movements around the world, especially in Asia and the Middle East, who absolutely need these kinds of anonymous masks.

It’s not a laughing matter. These clueless idiots have no idea what they are trying to harm. If a VPN cannot exist due to this utter nonsense, it means war. Because people could seriously end up dying all over the world from less anonymity as a result of attacking VPNs.

They have no fucking moral high ground whatsoever. I’m sorry, but, whining hollers of “stealing” is what justifies all of this? When it’s no different from borrowing DVDs from friends?

…And they say that DVD-borrowing-equivalents are “terrorists” to boot?

I am so fucking through with anyone who talks like this.

Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Re:

There are many political movements around the world, especially in Asia and the Middle East, who absolutely need these kinds of anonymous masks.

Encryption, and use of TOR or a VPN only hides content and the other end of the connection. In regimes where dissent is dangerous, using such services is also dangerous as their use is easily detected. steganography is a much safer, as the communication is hidden within an activity like sharing pictures on a sharing site.

Guest says:

Re: Re: Re:2 Re:

“Totalitarian regimes are even less interested in proof of wrong doing than the RIAA/MPAA.”

The RIAA/MPAA isn’t interested in proof of wrongdoing. They can’t get that, so they’ve given up.

Instead, they make up laws and rights for themselves and bully consumers, some of whom might be breaking one very minor misapplied copyright law.

That Anonymous Coward (profile) says:

And remember kids, the company monitoring and sending out the accusations has in the past created copyright infringement itself.

AFACT vs iiNet. Dtecnet seeded files to capture IP addresses, so AFACT could claim ISPs needed to do more to stop copyright infringement… except they were paying someone to create the infringement opportunities.

Isn’t it nice we can be accused by professional torrent seeders?

That Anonymous Coward (profile) says:

Re: Re: Re:

The larger problem is you can be accused and punished for the actions of others. If your wifi was open/got hacked/etc they claim your 100% responsible for that happens on your network.

I’d like to suggest we apply that standard to the ISPs from now on. CP was accessible over your network so we are going to punish you for providing CP.

Besides it would be easy to spot them uploading stuff, they would leave the commercials in. And then there is the question if the rightholder or someone authorized by them shared the content isn’t every copy authorized?

Tex Arcana (profile) says:

Re: Re: Re: Re:

So, if I am unable to lock down my wifi router (Suddenlink cable Internet), because they left the login:password as the default; and someone “hacks” it (ridiculously easy, since the there’s no effective password), meaning they can get my wireless password quite easily; and they run some kind of spamop or mass download, I’m getting tagged no matter what??

I smell a class-action lawsuit coming… Hello, EFF? Can you help me sure them!

out_of_the_blue says:

Wrong as usual, Mike. VPN won't help you.

As I’ve said before, and you fanboy-trolls scoff at, ALL that’s necessary is to look for unusual upload/download ratio to know who’s torrenting, or for just plain high downloads. And byte caps are being put in place probably nationwide.

Because automated monitoring will actually be fairly accurate, the public will largely accept it. That’s a key feature. Don’t expect public protest because it’ll be targeted at egregious examples and ratcheted up gradually. You may be among first examples of pirates “hanged”.

And with pro-corporate “leaders” like Mike, you’ve been cut off at the knees philosophically, with notions such as corporations have “rights” but you don’t — and you signed away the rest when you got cable installed: read your “terms of service”. And you’ll soon learn there’s effective collusion with ALL ISPs following about same practices (assuming you even a choice of ISP).

Now, yet again, just because I state unpleasant facts, I’m not cheering the tyranny. You’ll all too soon join me in REALLY despising corporations and monopolies.

Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Wrong as usual, Mike. VPN won't help you.

Not a word about increased revenues for anyone but a serious amount of confusion suggesting that torrents must by definition be of unauthorised copyrighted material.

I’m fascinated by these byte caps, will they be put in place by orthodontists and if so what will their effect be? Perhaps to protect trolls teeth from the peril caused by grinding whilst their mouths foam with an acidic substance.

MIlton Freewater says:

Re: Re: Wrong as usual, Mike. VPN won't help you.

“I’m fascinated by these byte caps, will they be put in place by orthodontists and if so what will their effect be?”

Byte caps are already in place, but they’re enormous. Comcast NBC Universal wants you to download terabytes of NBC and Universal content, just “legitimately.”

Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Wrong as usual, Mike. VPN won't help you.

Your buddies at the RIAA had a decade to prove the accuracy of their “monitoring”. They’ve been doing a bloody horrible job of it.

“Plain high downloads”? Oh, right, because the only reason why anyone would want to download anything would be because they’re a filthy pirate.

“Targeted at egregious examples”? Uh huh. Which is why the French decided to spend two years catching the wrong guy.

Your “pro-corporate” rant is a joke, each and every time you post it. But what do you expect when your head is so far up the RIAA’s ass that you can’t see that your causes are defended by corporations, dummy?

Milton Freewater says:

Re: Wrong as usual, Mike. VPN won't help you.

“I’m not cheering the tyranny.”

Fair enough. But you are completely off topic.

Six strikes has nothing to do with looking for upload/download ratios, automated monitoring, targeting egregious examples or anything else you randomly just fantasized about.

It is true that any ISP can terminate service for even one proven instance of copyright infringement as per its terms. But obviously, that is irrelevant in a discussion about soft responses.

That Anonymous Coward (profile) says:

Re: Wrong as usual, Mike. VPN won't help you.

“Because automated monitoring will actually be fairly accurate”

Based on what evidence?
A review of the technology by a group that was paid $675K and stands to get an ongoing paycheck to keep rubber stamping this system?

Dtecnet’s system is useful at allegedly tracking people who downloaded content they made available. One has to question the wisdom of companies who hire a 3rd party to put their copyrighted material online and then sue people for accessing what they made available with the consent of the rightholders. One could argue if their upload was authorized any copies resulting from it are authorized.

Redlight cameras were claimed to be accurate, but we’ve had evidence they were not. Issuing tickets to parked cars on multiple occasions seems to not be accurate.

The more people made aware of this perversion of the legal system for corporate law the more pushback we will see. I doubt people will lay down and roll over to take it in the ass from corporations much longer.

Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Wrong as usual, Mike. VPN won't help you.

How does an unusual up/down ratio prove anything? I have a cable modem, and do not have cable television. We download all of our entertainment to a set-top box, and it’s all completely legal. Am I suddenly an infringer because I use msot of my 350GB cap every month? You’re a clueless idiot, but we all knew that, already.

Tex Arcana (profile) says:

Re: Wrong as usual, Mike. VPN won't help you.

I already despise them, nearly as much as I despise you.

You are SUCH. A. FUCKING. MORON. Masnick a “pro-corporate leader”?? Hell, if anyone is a corporate whoring shill, it’s YOU!!

I wouldn’t be surprised if you’re not running bots and ip scanners to collect for your overlords, so you can put anyone who actually loves freedom into jail–jails you likely had something to do with privatizing.

Ninja (profile) says:

Re: Wrong as usual, Mike. VPN won't help you.

As I’ve said before, and you fanboy-trolls scoff at, ALL that’s necessary is to look for unusual upload/download ratio to know who’s torrenting, or for just plain high downloads. And byte caps are being put in place probably nationwide.

Netflix uses shitloads of downstream. I had to redownload World of Warcraft a while back, left P2P enabled and uploaded over 4Gb. I’m sure you’ll find a way to twist this regardless.

Because automated monitoring will actually be fairly accurate,

Really? So they’ll fire up a full scale investigation to be sure the account holder is actually the one downloading? They’ll make sure that it was not some open wi-fi case or IP spoofing? Will they do deep packet inspection and then carefully research to see if the person uploading copyright content is actually not covered by fair use or actually has the rights for such material to make absolutely sure they will not err. I’m sure they won’t, the MAFIAA sends erroneous DMCA notices all the time. As fir the rest of your statement.. Where have you been living lately? In Chriss Dodd’s arse?

read your “terms of service”

Terms of service are not above the law. They’ll still need to prove you actually did anything wrong before taking any sort of action. Or rather they’ll have to prove once the affected parties start taking them to the courts due to their arbitrary slowdowns or disconnections.

You’ll all too soon join me in REALLY despising corporations and monopolies.

I’m having troubles to understand you. You lack coherence, cohesion and the most basic logic at times.

PaulT (profile) says:

Re: Re: Wrong as usual, Mike. VPN won't help you.

“Netflix uses shitloads of downstream. I had to redownload World of Warcraft a while back, left P2P enabled and uploaded over 4Gb. I’m sure you’ll find a way to twist this regardless.”

I skipped over this moron’s comment but yeah – what’s sad is that the people thinking infringement really is detectable in this way haven’t got a clue as to how people actually PAY for content nowadays.

I pay for several services and make regular purchases online. I stream a lot of content on Netflix (6 movies over this last weekend, usually one a day or some TV during the week, through a VPN which I also pay for due to moronic licencing restrictions). I have Spotify, which streams most of my music listening. I have a PS plus account on my PS3 (free games every month, often topping 10Gb for total download), not to mention my XBox Live account and its occasional downloads and the regular Humble Bundle, Kindle, GoG and other purchases I download. Plus, I have 3 computers with 5 different OSes installed which regularly download updates, on top of my iPhone and the updates for and its apps. All paid for, all legal, and I’d be surprised if I download less than 50Gb in any given month, most months are probably closer to 100Gb+.

By this idiot’s definition, I should be shut down as a pirate because I rarely upload anything and so my download ratio would be “suspicious”. The person actually torrenting everything he consumes next door would be OK, because he seeds and so his ratio is OK. Yet again, his preferred solution is something that will not stop piracy in any way, actively reduce sales, and only affect legally paying customers.

Anonymous Coward says:

WTH?

I don’t know why some people on here are having a problem with “piracy” especially when one claim that “piracy” is “nazism”, What the f*ck?

Piracy was proven to not be a problem anyway and I think this Copy”right” bullshit that’s happening is unconstitution in any way as possible. Since Copyright infringement will always exist, they should be learned that it’s completly pointless to unconstitutionaly go after it since it will never help.

Gene says:

Re: WTH?

“Since Copyright infringement will always exist, they should be learned that it’s completly pointless to unconstitutionaly go after it since it will never help.”

…keep in mind that you’re talking about the people who still think the ‘war on drugs’ is doing something. It makes one wish for some sort of extinction level event that would take out all the dinosaurs in the political system at once. I probably shouldn’t have typed that, now it’s gonna be a SyFy original movie in a couple of weeks.

Jessie (profile) says:

Oh good lordy, here we are again with this BS.

I’m sure that this kind of thing won’t happen to me since when the family got internet out her in Merlin/I live in Grants Pass, the dude who installed the internet didn’t even give us a price-tag or a time to pay the internet bill.

Take that any way you want, but that dude was awesome.

There have been times during the last week or so when my net conked out, but that was mostly due to cloud cover or the recent asteroid passing by the planet and getting into the path of some satellites and caused the internet to turn off for a while.

I’m thinking that the Internet I got doesn’t belong to the major ISPs/Like ComCast or Verizon, and heck, I don’t even see Dish Network in there.

I’m not saying that this may not happen to me/Heck, I’ve been careful about this crud on YouTube as I make sure I only use music that my friends have made to avoid getting a strike on my account.

The only thing I’m probably gonna say about this? Just be careful and do what you need to do to protect your info from those who’d want to use it to give you some form of Jail-Time.

Other than that, though? Just wait and see what happens. If this happens to a good chunk of people, fire up whatever you need to protect your internet.

If it doesn’t happen, just go about your business.

special interesting says:

Isn’t this a privacy issue? And to that point how are they gathering evidence?
Is it some monitoring of p2p networks (evidence gathered the old fashion way)
or are they actually trapping and recording what URLs you enter and searching that?
Is it deep packet inspection (which is really nasty)?
And how will this morph in the future(like increasing the fines and penalties?) Once the smell of money is scented there will be hell to pay so to speak.

Is this not the death of the ‘Free Internet’ as we know it?

I firmly believe that anything you CAN download from the Internet should be legal. Media firms are clever and WILL find ways and things that cannot be just downloaded. Like increasing the resolution from 1080p to some huge and cool resolution? (think of all the new TVs you can sell too) Yes of course some will re-encode it to lower resolution but then that is not the same product. People have shown many times that quality (value) is a purchase point. Example is Comcrast only lets you download 300GB so if one movie is 300GB… not gonna happen.

This stupid scheme (and any scheme that monitors personal actions on the Internet or anywhere) can be used to harass different groups or racial designations. How much you want to bet that politically challenging (questionable in another’s eye) songs and videos will get more scrutiny than others? All one side or the other has to do is pull some political muscle or bribe a Center for Copyright Information employee (which may be a party member anyway). If some religious group wanted to harass LGBT citizens all it has to do is monitor file-sharing and release their ‘hounds of copyright’ on them. This kind of enforcement might lend itself to terrorizing one group over another.

I could imagine (some infamous Florida Church?) someone collecting information on people downloading sexy videos (of whatever particular kind that pisses you off) and giving that info to the original copyright owner to press charges. Easily.

I say that ANY monitoring at all of the Internet is completely out of the question. We need to remove this legislation immediately. Fundamental privacy issues are at stake. Another piece of legislation that any sane judge would bang the gavel once… unconstitutional!

Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Re:

I agree but there are a few problems here. 1. Increasing resolution/fidelity has diminishing returns. There is a point where the eye/ear cannot distinguish a difference and at that point the vast majority of public simply won’t care about the increased quality. 2. Changes in resolution standards are slow to be adopted because it is extremely expensive for everyone. Expensive for the public to replace all of the perfectly working equipment they already have when there is a very limited amount of content available that makes use of the new technology. Expensive for producers to replace equipment they have when there is a very limited market of people that have made the leap to the new technology. Expensive for distributors to replace equipment as well. And the longer a standard is out the more time hackers have to chip away at the defenses they build in.

Anonymous Coward says:

Here is what is likely to happen...

When the notifications start rolling out and the spammers get a look at what the notifications look like, they will start emulating them to the point that people will assume the official ones are spam and phishing attempts. At some point enough people who received both official ones and fake ones will challenge the entire notification process.

special interesting says:

Post #96 you are, currently, mostly totally right. But the future is wide open. (This is not a rant but like complimentary as I am referring to very difficult topics hard to explain even in wordy posts like these.)

I said in post #88: ?I firmly believe that anything you CAN download from the Internet should be legal. Media firms are clever and WILL find ways and things that cannot be just downloaded. Like increasing the resolution from 1080p to some huge and cool resolution? (think of all the new TVs you can sell too) Yes of course some will re-encode it to lower resolution but then that is not the same product. People have shown many times that quality (value) is a purchase point. Example is Comcrast only lets you download 300GB so if one movie is 300GB… not gonna happen.?

However what I refer to is the true power and glory of market forces and well positioned advertising that if the paying public was willing… anything goes. Higher resolution is like high fidelity in the recording industry where the fidelity of recordings was continuously raised to such an extent that some still argue that analog is better than digital. It wasn’t unusual, some 40 yrs ago, to get a decked out reel to reel tape recorder to play your albums once recording them for multiple uses as not to wear out the precious vinyl record. People pay for quality is a proven sales angle used for years.

The progression of vinyl records to 8 track tape to cassette tape to reel to reel to CD to DVD and to BRDVD, with higher sampling rates not just remixing, where each generation of fidelity was successfully sold to the public.

The cassette tape is an interesting example of the true power of marketing since it was engineered as a limited fidelity recording device just barely better than the 8 track and sold to public as high fidelity. Would make a great TechDirt article by itself because it was a quite popular and convenient format anyway. (was there one? I think it has been mentioned a few times. Search on cassette nil. Brain not working atm.)

The dirt on resolution. Kind of technical. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template_talk:TV_resolution

1080p is a tremendous upgrade to the old base TV standard of NTSC (?525 lines in a NTSC image, but only 486 of those are in the visible area? per Wikipedia) TV resolution and the public at large enjoys it obviously. But it is not as good as the human eye and even with 1200p there are limits to small text size and a good eye can still count the pixels without magnification. If we want to display a whole page of a newspaper and still read it 1200p wont do it. (yes my eyes are better than some. Its a curse that will lead one to spend thousands on resolution alone especially as monitors are close up in your face unlike a TV across the room) In this case apples (TVs) and oranges (monitors) are being used for the same thing (watching movies and Internet access) and are merging technologies.

There is also the matter of quantity of displayed content as more information, hopefully a whole newspaper page, might be displayed all at once to avoid the multiple click through. Example: TechDirt just came out with a new format of not displaying the whole article and since I hate clicking am uncomfortable with. (Its not unusable but whatever because it possibly encourages more readers to also read the comments, which is a real treasure of this site, and might even foster more commenting?) What would a higher resolution monitor change that? Who knows.

There are new high density 300GB data format DVDs already possible to make so its not so far fetched technically. All we need is the right kind of market that fosters (forces) this kind of format.

And so… thats how larger formats is related to ?six-strikes-officially-begins-monday?. Its a solution orientated objective analysis (I hope).

Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Re:

I didn’t say that quality improvements won’t happen. The technology for them is already there. However, the adoption rate is slow and complete abandonment of the older technology is even slower. Take for example, Blu-ray vs. DVD. For a great many people, DVD’s are simply good enough not to bother with the extra expense of upgrading. Same with FLAC vs. MP3. Both of these technologies have been out for quite some time but the vast majority of people have not ditched the old completely for the new. Still another example is standard radio vs. HD radio. On the broadcast and distribution side of things, only recently have most providers other than the most popular ones started offering TV in HD and even some of the secondary channels while they are available to the service provider in HD, not all of them are carried in HD.

Tex Arcana (profile) says:

Re: Re: Re:

The reason Bluray hasn’t taken off is simple cost: when DVD costs less than half a comparable bluray, and the average eyes can’t see the quality difference, then it’s a no-brainer, and it ain’t gonna be bluray.

Sony’s Betamax lost to VHS simply because Sony priced themselves right out of the market. HD-DVD is a special case, because they were already well on their way to domination, akin to VHS, when Sony and their cronies bought them out, and firmly entrenched bluray in the US at least–and it was all over “content control”.

And that’s the other shoe hitting the floor: people do not want some nameless/faceless/soulless corporation telling them what they can watch, and when.

****I**** choose when to watch what I want to watch; if I EVER put any disc of mine into my player, and get some bullshit message telling me I cannot watch what I LEGALLY purchased: I will then figure out a way to crack the encryption and copy the disk to DVD or HD-DVD; I will then take the bluray out of the player, snap it into a bunch of pieces, wipe my freshly-shitted ass with each of them, place one piece each into letters sent to the publishers, the “enforcement nazis”, the president, and any other anti-fair-use idiot I can think of, to show them EXACTLY what I think of their bullshit.

And if ever printed books do this, they will get the same fucking treatment.

To the anti-fair-use jackasses: it’s NOT about “piracy”; it’s about RIGHTS, as in MY RIGHT TO USE MY LEGALLY-PURCHASED MEDIA AS I SEE FIT. We get that you don’t like that, we get that you’re puppets for the media corporations (who have ALREADY raped everyone for every dime they can, from the artists, producers, consumers, even the damn government, in the form of taxes not paid), so please go slinking back to your masters, lick their feet and tell them we have flipped you all a really big shit-covered middle finger, a nice FUCK YOU, because we are tired of you stomping our rights for your profits.

It ends now. Don’t like it? MOVE. I hear Iran would love you kind of people.

Anonymous Coward says:

Privacy concerns technical bulletin. (well… not very technical) or ?Basic steps to defend self from hostile ISP?

First purchase your own modem either cable or DSL. Reset the password and user name on it and write it ether on a note-it pad sticking it to the router or in your compy log. Change the MAC address once a year or so you might have to call the ISP to re-initialize the connection no problem. This gives the user some protection from the ISP messing with its program settings. Read through all the settings and try to understand them.

Second purchase an open sourced router (have to look a bit because they are not always available). Reset the password and user name. Then read through ALL the settings because sometimes there is (like on the last page) an unwanted service that checks ‘to see if the sites you visit are safe’ which is a URL leak. If there is a firewall consider using it but for most these settings are complicated and unique to each brand of router. Change the MAC address every year or so. (hint change the first digit or so not the last ones or look up how to on interweb, random is ok anyway but there are assigned block for router manufactures and other devices)

Be careful of the type or brand or router. I remember the LINKSYS cloud based router was purchased with settings set so you could use it as a normal router but they used an automatic factory update system that remotely reprogrammed them and forced you to use their cloud service thus forcing you to sign into and make a personal account at their factory website (the uproar from their, most likely diminishing, user-base forced them to re re program back the way it was). You might have to jump on a lory down to the super telly store to get one.

Three. Get a VPN account with a paypal account of less that 250/year limit its somewhat anonymous. Fund it by purchasing with cash a MoneyPac card at the market. Make sure your VPN originates from a country that actually respects your privacy. (not the UK or US of course they suck). Swiss, Sweden or NL… many sites are written in English. Even if you don’t use them its a good sign that if they allow torrents because they respect your privacy. If the VPN is checking you content in any way its probably a worthless VPN anyway.

Four. Verify that the VPN is functioning by visiting some site that checks your home IP or URL. Always check its operation frequently because they fail sometimes.

Five. Set up a solid firewall on your compy. Learn the ports and protocols you have to allow and open for your VPN to work and make them the exceptions. Try to verify this.

I still have a lot to learn so some one might help on the more technical details. Reading the VPN site helps a ton.

I see a lot of passionate posts which is nice to see people caring about something but its better to actually take steps to secure your privacy that to vent steam needlessly. Obviously with this 6 strikes knocker the US ISPs do not respect anyones privacy.

Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Re: Re:

First, Comcast owns controlling interest (51%) in NBC/Universal. That is not exactly owning the entire company. Second, such interest is a relatively new thing and they are likely just letting the IP maximalists that have run it in the past continue to do so. Make no mistake though, with controlling interest, when allowing that ideology to run amok starts to threaten their core business, they will likely wield that controlling interest and start cutting out the cancer that is threatening them. After all, Comcast owns controlling interest in NBC/Universal, not the other way around.

Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Re: Re:2 Re:

Maybe this indicates a trend. There has long been complaining by the content cartels about ISPs enabling piracy. It appears that the ISP’s may be thinking that this is the path with least resistance whereby they can placate the cartels while causing minimal problems to their customers. When it doesn’t work and blows up in their face perhaps we will see more ISP’s move to take over the media distribution companies to get rid of the problem. Perhaps Comcast’s move is an early one where they already see the writing on the wall.

Ben says:

Just watch this is what comes next

With this, it now will make consumers targets of network hacking. And anyone in the industry knows that dinky little firewalls are not going to stop it. To many exploits in the average small home router. To that off with vpn, proxy ip spoofing it won’t work at all and just cost hundreds of millions for consumers and businesses…whos going to pay for all the new infrastructure and for all the new routers for people to thwart network hacking. Good thing I don’t live in the states or I would be fuming mad and take it to the government.

Tex Arcana (profile) says:

Re: Just watch this is what comes next

Check out my post above, where I’ve expressed my own concern, because my ISP, in it’s extreme “wisdom”, has laid me wide open with a modem that I cannot change the login info.

My money says that people with a situation like mine will be the very first to get spoofed, and receive bogus “six-strike warnings”. :tard:s

And I’ll bet a few of these AC’s that keep calling us privacy advocates “pirates”, will be the pawns ISPs/MAFIAA use to falsely accuse millions of people, in the name of “stopping piracy”.

Countdown to revolution in …3 …2 …1

special interesting says:

Mostly in response to post #143 but in keeping with the collateral dammage of the 6 strikes ‘policy’ and its effects on culture it kinda grew.

—
#143 I agree with a lot of but again we both reference technologies and concepts that even I like to write down and work out myself. The point of all these different media formats is to keep and transfer our individually created, or copied, culture between each and all of us. This 6 strikes plan will only limit (and worse selectively limit) the ways and means we both share and discover new and different kinds of culture. Its based on a form of sociocultural fear. There are monopolies involved but (bad) government only goes along with it for the cultural censoring and monitoring opportunities it offers. Introduced is the concept of the Family Archive of which would be nice to explore further.

The data storage media delivery market is in a transitory tertiary phase where the public has not yet made any decision or does not even perceive any choice is needed at all and there are more options than they can make sense of. (which button do I push now? Darn this kids are at school every time I need to ask them something important!)

The adoption of the DVD in which the CD is even still available and for compatibility even required. However the two technologies eventual (almost) merged in that almost every player you can buy is both CD and DVD compatible. At the time the data storage and media distribution needs were completely satisfied and delivered such value that nobody cared. Few people at the time cared since digital cameras were not invented and when they were were of unreachable cost for the public. Basically the data storage and media delivery needs until around 1998ad were minimal.

In the progression of data storage there are several factors including permanence of which DVDs are notoriously temporary. Even leaving one half covered under a florescent light for a year would destroy it utterly. Commercially bought media DVDs seem sturdier so that they take, at least, more than one scratch to ruin them. Yet we still use them due to the fact of market momentum (low cost, ubiquitous usage, etc). We basically just learn how to handle them nicely.

Around 1998ad the public started to produce copious amounts of data themselves. In short the rate at which we produced cultural items dramatically increased. Digital photos of ever increasing resolution, videos of higher and higher quality, storage of web pages you want to reference (they are always temporary), sound recordings of increasing sampling rates and preservation of your precious media works whatever the source. Call this the Family Archive. This Archive contains the entirety of your digitally formated cultural history. For cultural preservation reasons its obvious the Family Archives should be private and protected free speech etc. Yeah, it seems that everyone these days wants to edit your own personal culture these days. In the similar way book burning existed the last 600 years or so.

Since the data needs of the public are increasing exponentially the ways we use to transfer and store it will change. Soon that already possible 300GB or more DVD will seem small. This is one of the forces driving the market.

The Blue-Ray (trademarked, copyrighted and probably prohibited for me to even spell out correctly here) vs. DVD is an interesting case and its failure for complete adoption is probably due to insane commercial licensing costs. Basically a Blue-Ray costs more to use than putting your data permanently on a HDD (hard drive: 2 GB Seagate cost ~100usd). Since basic storage costs are at hand its a market force at work thing. That plus the fact that a Blue-Ray compatible player costs as much as three times as much as a plain DVD player. The high licensing cost of a Blue-Ray will likely lead the public to by-pass it as a viable storage technology and media distribution format in favor of HDDs and NetFlix. Keeping in mind the tertiary phase of data storage/delivery there are other emerging technologies like solid state HDDs, USB sticks, MicroSD cards… ect,

In addition digital recording technology is also in tertiary phase where there are several options like Vorbis and Ogg formats arguably better and open sourced to boot. Because of stupid licensing issues its best to stick with open source but many times market momentum rules the day. Mp3s also has market momentum going for it but there are other choices.

FLAC and mp3 is to me kind of funny. FLAC creates very large files and is great for archival storage reasons however few times is that FLAC quality needed and an mp3 (about one third the size of FLAC) is all that is needed. Few times do we need the quality of an FLAC format. Yet so often do encoders use the (bloated) FLAC format anyway. Which brings to mind how we value quality above cost so many times. Quality is a great and viable sales point. Its likely that some new adaptive format will wipe all this away in the future.

The high fidelity radio (high definition is a marketing term) market is also in the tertiary phase where there are so many choices it numbs the mind. There are Satellite radio and Net Radio in addition to HD radio. Hard to say how the market will decide. Unsaid so far is the incredibly stupid copyright problems currently facing the radio market and monopolistic obstacles are huge. Many viable formats for audio media distribution have been eliminated by legal harassing and crazily written laws (and the resulting lawsuits) and the eternal copyright tendencies of industry.

Trying to stay on topic, the 6 strikes plan will edit your cultural choices of what you can include in your Family Archive. It will do this by monitoring the formats you use to obtain this culture. For example they say that the main format to monitor is the torrent files MP3 files, AVI files, etc which by itself does not mean the sharing of copyrighted files at all. We’ve talked about many formats here. What other formats will be deemed unofficially illegal in the future, just because they can?

Your Family Archives (and the culture contained therein), and how you add to and share it, is at risk.

Anyone who shares a part of their culture from their Family Archive is not a bad person. It’s just someone who wants to talk in the morphing changing method of language we use to transfer culture. This changing language we use to express our culture now includes, and not limited to, songs (mp3), pictures (pic, mpg), movies (avi) etc, etc, etc. To single out anyone of these formats or to suppress all of them is constitutionally insane.

Arrg. Post 165? nobody will ever upvote it. (or even read it. Hahah) some credit to Tex Arcana for the Blue-Ray cost topic.

FM Hilton (profile) says:

The wave of the future: private laws by corporations

The most worrisome problem of this entire scheme to extort money (because that what this is, essentially) is that the government (in the form of the FCC) has ignored/neglected to control these corporations so that they now in essence run the internet, and by this act, have take over control of almost 50% of it.
Most users in the US are subscribed to one of those 5 providers. That’s a huge number of people. Enough to make money from forever by yelling ‘piracy’ really loud and clear.
From what I remember all these ISP providers are supposed to be under the watchful eyes of the FCC. Funny how they’re doing this with either silent government approval or complicity.
Next there will be private courts to prosecute a civil case in.
Great country we live in.
When did it become a corporate entity?
Oh, yeah-back when “Citizens United” became law.

special interesting says:

Re: ?My comments were mainly addressing the formats of commercially distributed media more so than blank media or the file formats that individuals use for storing personal created copies.?

Thats OK and thanks for the commentary its been helpful. My goal was to explore the cultural impact of copyright on American Culture. American Culture is such that state that its hard to label it as ‘American’ anymore as even our freedom of expression (of whatever you want to express) seems to be entering an extinction phase.

It seems that we have been developing a ‘culture of intolerance’ which forbade(s) the sharing of even the most basic cultural items we use to express ourselves. Because of the eternal copyright laws currently forced on us by monopolistic corporate empires this means the sharing of copyrighted media.

As an example take the songs of the Beatles and songs of their separate members. We listen to them as children and grow up making them a part of our lives and we use these songs to communicate shared beliefs, hopes and dreams if not just our current mood. We share culture in a way that we cannot do by ourselves. At what point does this commercially derived media become a part of ourselves.

Can I sing Happy Birthday or express Peace and Happiness and or less Materialistic attitudes the way they can? No way! So we use their songs and lyrics as a substitute for our ‘lack of understanding the entirety of the concept’ being expressed.

Growing up in a radio and vinyl record dominated media environment we had several legal means to record, preserve and share our cultural heritage off of those mediums. Today we are only trying to preserve a way of life and culture we grew up with. We did not steal anything or break any laws when we took a recording and gave it to a friend and often if they liked it they purchased it themselves just to get the album cover art, written lyrics and artist song notes (additional value added) not available from just the recordings. I still have all the albums and feel proud of that.

For reasons of cultural expression it is important to force copyright to end before the average lifespan of the targeted audience so that the public can use them to both express themselves and to produce works derived from them. This would allow the expansion of old culture to the extent of what I would term as exponential new cultural expansion. Culture is like radioactivity in that culture breeds culture and when it reaches a certain concentration it explodes in dynamic ways which make society a wonderful cultural experience. Example: Rock & Roll because much of it is based on classical music and folk songs combined with new musical instrument technology.

So what is (extended beyond the life of the average citizen) copyright but the suppression of culture? For these reason I only support a limited copyright of 15-30 years. But… since the current copyright laws and the firms and associations spawned by it are indistinguishable from organized crime.. I feel the complete removal of the copyright amendment is in order regardless of the consequences local, national and international. Fooy on all of them. In fact: Damn them all to hell. As a voter the whole thing just pisses me off.

My post on ANY terms of copyright at all: (it involves the natural tendencies of politicians and special interest forces) http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130212/17065121955/dirty-deeds-french-national-library-privatizes-public-domain-part-2.shtml#c254

my post that derived the apparent criminal behavior of the copyright industry… http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130221/07560622055/riaa-google-isnt-trying-hard-enough-to-make-piracy-disappear-internet.shtml#c1390 (of which I feel fully justified in reaching this conclusion)

Also please read up on what a ‘cigarette argument’ is because we hear them from the copyright industry all of the time (thats right I fully believe they know of the bad consequences of eternal copyright upon culture exchange): http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130215/02462421991/undisclosed-uspto-employees-write-report-saying-uspto-does-great-job-handling-software-smartphone-patents.shtml#c381

and finally please read my (as usual) wordy definition of culture itself: http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130212/17065121955/dirty-deeds-french-national-library-privatizes-public-domain-part-2.shtml#c162

All of my efforts are an attempt to expand the culture passed down by individual citizens (regardless of the source) and not have a top down model of forced media and no sharing of the cultural heritage that we deserve. (and hopefully have the right to? Sheesh!)

P.S. Most of the concepts and ideas are derived from earlier posts over several years and credit to any who recognized them.

Tex, thanks for reading one of my wordy essays. -beams with pride- It takes a while to condense the subject matter so thanks for putting up with me.

yawn -back to sleep-

Internet Zen Master (profile) says:

Something just occurred to me

You know those “casual downloaders” the CCI says that the Six Strikes Scheme is supposed to deter?

Uh, from my experience, “casual downloaders” tend to go the cyberlocker route instead of the torrent route (don’t want the hassle of torrenting software, don’t understand how it even works, etc, etc.)

As for ‘casual torrenters’ (more like people who download stuff and then never seed it/don’t bother using VPNs), they’re likely to follow the majority of the torrenting crowd, or start downloading their stuff from the cyberlockers as well.

In other news, MEGA probably just got an increase in membership because of what Hollywood’s trying to force down people’s throats…

As the Zen Master says, “We’ll see.”

Yanni (user link) says:

Picturing GLADOS

About halfway through I’d started to re-imagine the narrator’s voice as that of Glados. I was kind of disappointed when it got to “… and mitigation…” that it didn’t continue with something ridiculously excessive.

“and mitigation: if the user doesn’t stop with the downloading we’ll send a couple of bots round to rough them up.”

Sandy says:

Six strikes is as bad as NSA spy tactics

I can go on for days and days… the assortment of punishment mechanisms made available to copyright holders based entirely on accusations, not conviction or other proof is unbelievable! They do not use a court order or warrant… they use “informants” in my case; family members.
I had time warner cable isp and my nightmares began 2 years ago and are still very present.
I was a small time seller in NY on ebay.com and ecrater.com I sold mostly used household goods, kids clothing etc. a single mom trying to make ends meet.Some die hard family members with vendettas and evil spirits decided because I found a source to sell dvd’s; and was selling them;they were going to turn me in.
One after another I was getting warnings, DMCA questionares and tutorials on ebay, amazon WARNING…out of nowhere my store shut down one day…upon calling to find out what the problem was the customer service rep stated very coldly “YOU KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING”? Really? Paranoia kicks in…ecrater refused to index any of my items on google, and ebay update… I am banned “indefinately” nobody will tell me why? I was lucky to sell ten dvds a month 70% lower than every seller I have seen? Needless to say; my computer locks up every now and then with the good ole’ Homeland Security logo and I can only sit and stare at my computer screen and running through my mind is No… no way?! Are these people confusing me with some terrorist group or did NSA tap into the wrong network? I am in awe of WTF it is I did that I am treated like some top level importer/exporter of copyright and digital goods?
My network; God as my witness was turned into a hot spot. Cars all hours of the day and night outside my apartment window.I had Time Warner at my home and on the horn no less than 20 times in the past year.I did bandwith speed tests and the Time Warner tech support was speechless when we pinged it time and again as I was running 90% slower than I should have been and no explanation.
I could not and still CANT fix the nightmare that was going on. My iphone was hacked and connected to a VPN; and check this out… my Time Warner services kept auto connecting to a verizon ip address/ user. I am not a verizon customer? I call verizon (who spent approximately 1 year outside my deck a few feet from my second floor door on the pole doing what they referred to as “fios” installation.) 1 year?? They tell me on this phone call “maam, you have a device in your home” I do? NO…I do NOT; I tell the guy…after a few minutes of pointless convo…He then tells me this is a Time Warner issue… okay then.
Fast forward…things start getting worse… day and night the traffic and intrusion outside my home is crippling.I buy a software program that blocks “intruders” oh boy; If I were paranoid; This tool proved anywhere from 10-15 “unknown computers /invaders” were found daily.Nobody was helping me and this was my only defense.
It was a great investigating tool as well.It gave me the MAC address of user, computer system used, ip address, os, etc.
I blocked all 8 of my mother and ex husbands devices and dozens of attempts to hack the network.I even had an IT tech from San Jose Ca. ; (company non- disclosed)I have enough problems; on a hot Saturday afternoon; over an hour outside my apt window 20 feet away trying to connect as I unplugged and restarted the router at least 50 times.
I decide after this meddling and the IT dude was done I would try fixing my settings once again to ping and check out my ip address…well… come to find out it says I am using a TOR proxy server? I am? wow?!! No… I am not. It was saying I did not have an internet provider yet I was connected to the internet… So Time Warner security dept call placed once again.
The response I get was ANGER!! After telling security guy the situation; he says maam… How do you know you are using a TOR? I said Mr. I am somewhat intelligent and it does not take rocket science to check your ip address.He then goes on and on that he has no idea…they have been out here a number of times etc. etc. to fix issues…problem is; the problems are getting worse! pay pal eventually hacked, hp laptop…done; iphone 4… all done.The guy tells me I should have a “family member” look at the computer or “friend” advising me not to bring it to a repair shop… more paranoia… WHY?? Obviously something is going on…2 + years later I am on Time Warner. I am “GHOST” “BLACKLISTED” on a burn list…I still do not know why? I am not being seen on craigslist… banned from all selling venues, literally any source of income that could be made via computer… stripped. I am sick!! My rights…NONE! All based on false stories and accusations. I could go on but I know everyone gets the point. You are being tracked every day, hour, and minute. If you are against SOPA/PIPA, advocate for EFF, etc. you are a target all the more. These bastards hacked all my social accounts as well taking away my voice.I have nothing. Do not think you can fight for your constitutional rights… you have NONE!!Unless of course your Anon and use a VPN or proxy…but be warned that pisses them off and makes them want you more…because HOW DARE YOU try to use the web and not let them track you.Consider yourself warned.

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