Anti-Piracy Firm Offering ISPs Money For Outing File-Sharers

mytrip points out news that an anti-piracy firm called Nexicon has been offering financial incentives to ISPs in exchange for having the ISPs police their own networks for copyright infringement. Nexicon would offer their services (for a fee) to help the ISPs pinpoint users who are illegally sharing files, and then give the users an option to "settle" through their "Get Amnesty" website. The revenue generated by such settlements would then be shared with the ISPs. Jerry Scroggin, owner of a smaller ISP in Louisiana, is still skeptical, saying, "I would still wind up losing customers. I would also have to pay Nexicon for this ... I have to survive in this economy but I don't have the big marketing dollars that bigger ISPs have. I have to fund 401(K)s and find ways not to lay off people. Giving free rein to the RIAA is not part of my business model."

Comments

Huh, madness

[someone1234]

A small ISP could fake the logs and sell out some of their customers.

they pitch an interesting plan

[v1]

"I would still wind up losing customers. I would also have to pay Nexicon for this ...

They do address this on their web page

THE VALUE: GetAmnesty provides content owners with a new revenue stream by collecting settlement fees on their behalf from those who illegally download their copyrighted content. Further, violators are tagged with a complete history of their downloading activities, which is easily translated to create customer profiles for online marketing purposes.

Looks like they intend for the loss of customers to be more than offset by the extortion payments you receive from some of them.

I'm betting NOT. Suing (or extorting, threatening to sue and selling "protection") your customers has never been an effective business model. You'd think they'd have learned that by now.

Re:they pitch an interesting plan

[stranger_to_himself]

I'm betting NOT. Suing (or extorting, threatening to sue and selling "protection") your customers has never been an effective business model. You'd think they'd have learned that by now.

True, but the average customer might never know or figure out that it was the ISP that sold them out.

Re:they pitch an interesting plan

[Kindaian]

And as they are at that, what differentiates a legal from an illegal download?

Specially as they don't know if I've or not a license to the download or not!

Re:they pitch an interesting plan

[McGiraf]

"(or extorting, threatening to sue and selling "protection") your customers has never been an effective business model. "

Tell that to the real Mafia.

great business model there jim

[timmarhy]

pay us money, and we MIGHT give you a cut of any profits we make. fuck that, sounds like a pyramid scheme to me.

Re:great business model there jim

[damburger]

Welcome to the world of 'Intellectual Property'. The owners of huge amounts of IP demand they be given lots of money on the premise that this will ultimately (through some only vaguely specified mechanism) result in artists being rewarded for the quality of their work.

More than losing customers

[davmoo]

Besides losing customers, if ISPs start policing their networks like that, don't they then give up some of their "safe haven" protections and all that?

making money from illegal activity?

[petes_PoV]

So they wait until they find someone doing something illegal[1]. They offer to allow them to atone (financially, of course) for their "crimes". They then share the proceeds with the very ISP which allowed them to perform these acts in the first place.

Apart from the highly dubious moral position, this sounds like either a protection racket or entrapment, or both.

[1] although it won't ever get to court - they'll hope people will just roll over and pay up. So the legality of this "sting" won't ever be tested.

That pill is poison.

[Anonymous Coward]

Once the ISP's start accepting this money, good bye safe harbor provision. You can't claim to be a common carrier once you've accepted responsibility for policing your content.

Now it's easy--someone with one of your ISP's IP addresses downloaded my copyrighted content? I don't even need to know who they are--I sue the ISP and win.

The potential legal liability an ISP would be signing up for to participate in this is MASSIVE. You're now potential liable for every copyrighted piece of data on your network.

Short Term Gains! Sell Out Your Customers!

[erroneus]

They may not be your customers for long, but we will pay your Tuesday for a customer sell-out today!

Ahh, I see

[Xelios]

So the RIAA/MPAA's strategy in stopping the lawsuits was simply to outsource that operation to a 3rd party in an attempt to distance themselves from the negative publicity they've been getting. Should anything go wrong, this company will just be cut loose and left to deal with whatever mess they've gotten themselves into, and the cycle will start again with a new company.

A little information about Nexicon

[Xelios]

I found this through a quick google search. It seems Nexicon is the company behind YouTube's video identification software, and that it used to be known as Cyco.net, an online seller of cigarettes. After acquiring two small IT companies it had a change of heart, and decided to change its business model from selling tobacco online to providing the content industry with copyright infringement solutions. It makes perfect sense.

Article about the renaming to Nexicon
Article about their work with Youtube