Bye Bye torrents; ISPs Are About to Crack Down on illegal File-Sharing
Love to download and share
music and movies? Well, don’t be surprised if you get a ‘love’ letter
(actually, email) from your provider on or after November 28.
This will be the implementation
of an earlier agreement signed in July 2011 between the a
coalition of U.S. Internet providers — including AT&T, Verizon, Comcast,
Cablevision and Time Warner Cable — in order to crack down on online copyright
infringers.
The terms of the agreement supposedly emphasize user
education over user punishment. Instead of cutting offending users off from
Internet services, the providers cooked up a “six strikes” approach to
infringement notification: copyright holders would do their standard scanning
for infringement. They would then cross-reference suspect IP addresses against
the ISPs that control them. The copyright holders would then send a warning message
to infringers — and, under the agreement, the ISPs would in turn forward those
messages to their customers.
For up to six of those messages.
The agreement’s goal, Ars Technica noted at the time,
was to “educate and stop the alleged content theft in question, not to punish.
No ISP wants to lose a customer or see a customer face legal trouble based on a
misunderstanding, so the alert system provides every opportunity to set the
record straight.”
Allegeldy, TorrentFreak obtained
internal documents from AT&T specifying a Nov. 28 launch date for the alert
program. Those documents also suggested that the cooperation between service
providers and copyright holders could facilitate legal action against
infringers.
The ISPs will send "copyright alerts," a series
of messages warning users that their (alleged) activity has been detected and
that penalties could result if it continues. These notes continue
repeatedly—two, three, even four warnings likely won't result in any
penalties—but the scheme certainly does have a punitive component.
NJ Gubenatorial Candidate Speaks Out Against Six Strikes: ISP Shouldn't Decide What You Can Download
ISPs have agreed to institute "mitigation
measures" (or, as you and I know them, punishments) which will begin with
the fifth or six alert, and they may include "temporary reductions of
Internet speeds, redirection to a landing page until the subscriber contacts
the ISP to discuss the matter or reviews and responds to some educational
information about copyright, or other measures that the ISP may deem necessary
to help resolve the matter."
There is no requirement that ISPs disconnect a user's
Internet connection at any point, and indeed ISPs say they will refuse any
measure that might cut off a user's phone service, e-mail access, "or any
security or health service (such as home security or medical monitoring)."
But ISPs are free to disconnect users if they wish (as indeed they have always
been).
Even though these measures will put a dent in your P2P
activity it still a far cry from SOPA which would not only curb it but kick you
and your PC to the curb (if they don’t put you in jail). Even though the goal of
this action is to provide enough "education" so that any possible punishment
is deferred, there's no avoiding the fact that the "mitigation
measures" are the result of private, unverified accusations not evaluated
by a judiciary. This may be problematic for those who take the Internet access
to heart – as a human right proscribed by the UN. Personally, I think that any
measures by ISPs should only come after judicial scrutiny, but hey, how much
power do we really have in this matter?
In the end, copyright owners hope that most subscribers
will be scared into heeding the first few warnings which effectively curbing further
‘illegal’ activities.
What do you think about this measure and do you believe
that P2P is really hurting the music and film industry?
US internet 'six strikes' anti-piracy campaign begins
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