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AT&T, Comcast To Join RIAA Team
suraj.sun writes "AT&T and Comcast, two of the nation's largest Internet service providers, are expected to be among a group of ISPs that will cooperate with the music industry in battling illegal file sharing, three sources close to the companies told CNET News. The RIAA said last month that it had enlisted the help of ISPs as part of a new antipiracy campaign. The RIAA has declined to identify which ISPs or how many. It's important to note that none of the half dozen or so ISPs involved has signed agreements. But as it stands, AT&T and Comcast are among the companies that have indicated they wish to participate in what the RIAA calls a 'graduated response program.'"
Corporate america is creating a legal regime and prosecution system outside the law.
This has to be stopped.
Comcast et al are seeking cover to squash p2p to relieve their bandwidth problems. RIAA makes a nice scape goat is things go badly.
Wondeful, because there's no other crime that even comes close to music piracy.
Just imagine it, you get arrested and put in a cell with a dozen other people:
Cell occupant 1: "Hey pale skinny white guy, what you in here for?"
Cell occupant 2: "I bet he got caught jacking a 7-11"
Cell occupant 1: "That's what I'm in here for"
Cell occupant 3: "No shit, that's what I did last week, but I got caught today mugging someone"
Cell occupant 1: "So what is it boy?"
You: "I downloaded a Backstreet Boys album without paying for it.."
*all the other cell occupants slowly back away*
To do something right, you often have to roll up your sleeves and get busy.
Work out how much money the record companies think they are losing from piracy
Setup filtering on the ISP's networks to prevent file sharing.
charge people even more for their internet connections while throttling the speed.
Record companies get their money (well, so they think)
ISP's provide less service for more money.
Win win.
Unless you are a customer, in which case its a lose lose. Less access to music, less access to internet, pay more money.
This is the easy solution that will actually be implemented.
-- Senior Software Engineer, Attorney appearance services, locallawyerapp.com.
Nono, that's the first A.
"Recording Industry Assholes of America."
=Smidge=
By dealing with the RIAA at all the ISPs are making a huge mistake. Is my utility company liable if I install grow lamps and start a marijuana farm because they failed to alert the authorities about the power increase? Is my phone company liable if I start calling the state prison regularly and it turns out that I'm organizing to have an informant killed because they weren't monitoring my phone records and didn't recommend a phone tap?
By playing along even in a small role, the ISPs are really stepping in it...
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
These ISPs like to complain about the excessive bandwidth used by filesharers. I can only assume that once they start kicking these evil users off the system, my connection speeds will increase to the advertised rates, and soon they will be able to reduce my monthly bill.
There are two points I was trying to subtly make:
1. AT&T has shown that it is willing to sacrifice its consumers for its own agenda (and profit?) - as in the wiretapping case.
2. Given that they have snooped on users' data in the past, I am not really surprised that they are doing it again, since a) they were protected by immunity the first time, and can probably do it again should this turn out to be illegal, and b) they have the technological framework in place already.
Perhaps I should stop trying to be subtle in my posts and carry a sledgehammer... (yea, I'm new here)
Change is inevitable, except from a vending machine -- Robert C. Gallagher
I could be wrong, but if there is a spike in usage of water or power, utility companies will inform police of a possible grow op.
Even if that's true (and I have no idea but it sounds fishy without a warrant), they are dealing with the government and not some self-declared police agency like the RIAA.
If the phone company started looking for a burst of phone calls to Mexico and informed the Minute Men if there was a spike, people'd be furious.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Yeah, I always find it surprising that more people aren't concerned about the sort of vertical integration that is involved with a company like Time Warner Cable, and the potential conflicts of interest in providing "good service" for each individual service.
They own the infrastructure, they run the Voice/TV service provided over that infrastructure, and then they also run the Internet service that provides potential competition to their own Voice and TV services. In addition, they also own some of the channels provided over their own TV service, as well as owning the rights to many TV shows and movies shown on those channels.
In each case, there must be some kind of temptation to favor their own products over the competing products that they're also providing access to. To be clear, I'm not alleging that they've done anything wrong, but only that there's an inherent ethical problem. For example, let's say Netflix comes up with a plan to partner with ISPs nationwide to provide a service for video-on-demand. They go to negotiate with Time Warner Cable's ISP division to talk about the idea and negotiate a deal. Do you foresee that TWC is going to seriously consider the deal that would diminish their own video-on-demand services? Or that they might partner with Vonage to provide VoIP?
It's for this sort of reason that I think it may be wise to institute some kind of law that limits vertical integration of ISPs with other services. I've thought for some time that we should probably forbid the people who own the infrastructure (the actual hardware and cable) from providing any service, and require that they provide open access at set fees without any opportunity to negotiate special deals. Since these companies own a monopoly (or duopoly) and represent public infrastructure, they shouldn't be allowed much control over what's sent through their hardware.
Incidentally, ISPs are not Common Carriers. Their protection comes from the DMCA Safe Harbor provisions instead.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz