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AT&T Has Begun Issuing RIAA Takedown Notices
suraj.sun writes with this excerpt from CNet:
"AT&T, one of the nation's largest Internet service providers, confirmed on Tuesday the company is working with the recording industry to combat illegal file sharing. At a digital music conference in Nashville, Jim Cicconi, a senior executive for AT&T told the audience that the ISP has begun issuing takedown notices to people accused of pirating music by the Recording Industry Association of America, according to one music industry insider who was present. In December, the RIAA, the lobbying group of the four largest recording companies, announced the group would no longer pursue an antipiracy strategy that focused on suing individuals, but rather would seek the help of broadband providers to stem the flow of pirated content. The RIAA said an undisclosed number of ISPs had agreed to cooperate but declined to name them. This is important because the RIAA has said that repeat offenders faced the possibility of losing service — at least temporarily — as part of the music industry's 'graduated response' plan."
This, correct me if I'm wrong, is completely legal; so I would rather them pursue this vein of inquiry than through legal action.
Is there anyway to defend yourself from these claims? Is there no burden of proof on the RIAA's side? Will AT&T simply punish those accused?
In short, screenshot or it didn't happen.
Those who believe the Internet is private,
find their privates are on the Internet.
I still find it amazing that ISPs go along with thi....wait...we're talking about Comcast/Verizon here. Same people who used to throttle legitimate P2P traffic. I guess we can assume that if you're shut off for 3 months for downloading music, there will be a fee greater than the bill for 3 months of service you missed to reinstate your account.
Warning: Corny karma killing post above.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Note that the accused is just that: the accused. Being accused of piracy is enough to get you kicked off the Internet. No trial. No jury. No judge. To AT&T and others, to be accused is to be guilty. God help us all.
Fata viam invenient.
When are they doing to do something about the plethora of zombie computers on their home subscriber feeds? They'll police the "illegal sharing" of content but they don't care how much spam their users generate? Sounds a little fishy to me.
One of the 187.
I still find it amazing that ISPs go along with thi....wait...we're talking about Comcast/Verizon here. Same people who used to throttle legitimate P2P traffic. I guess we can assume that if you're shut off for 3 months for downloading music, there will be a fee greater than the bill for 3 months of service you missed to reinstate your account.
It took me a while to figure out what was in it for them as well. After all, this is a lot of work just to piss off your customers. But you hit it with the comparison to P2P throttling - what they want to do is get rid of their most unprofitable customers - those using the most bandwidth. One subset of people using lots of bandwidth includes people downloading music illegally. As it happens, that's a group easy to go after - but they certainly won't stop there.
If you want to see this go away, we need to push for the demise of flat-rate pricing. If the carriers were *more* money by the people using more bandwidth (for whatever reason), they'd be telling the RIAA to go pound sand.
As long as They don't screw with my traffic, I can accept this.
As long as you can accept this, they will screw with your traffic.
I steal signatures. This one used to be yours.
As much as I love encryption and would like to see more bittorrent clients using it I hope you realize that it means absolutely nothing with regards to keeping RIAA from knowing you are sharing.
The typical method that they use is to connect to the tracker and get a list of the clients who are sharing the file(s) in question. It doesn't matter if your client is running encryption or not -- they are going to find out that your IP address is sharing this file. The only solution for this is private trackers. In the end all RIAA is going to accomplish is to drive file sharing underground.
Take heart though, it will take us geeks popular again. When that cute girl down the street is too stupid/scared to figure out how to pirate music on her own who do you think she is going to come to? ;)
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
I remember, as a younger lad, playing games like Cyberpunk and Shadowrun and thinking that these future-fantasy worlds where megacorps ruled the world, competing and colluding with each other in a massive game, with governments relegated to the role of their legislative pawns was a lot of fun but far out there and obviously fictional.
Oh, how I miss my youthful days... Getting older and watching fiction become reality is not pleasant...
No they don't, they simply have to prove that your peer transferred a significant portion of the file to another peer - that is still distribution under Copyright Law, and enough of a case against you to procede to court under.
Slashdotters seem to absolutely love hiding behind technology when it comes to other peoples content. Heres a novel idea - if you don't like the copyright terms, or the licensing terms, avoid that content and find something else. Its that simple - you do not have to have the latest Britney Spears right now, you don't have to watch the latest TV program right now, you don't need that movie right now. Find someone else who is distributing content under terms you agree with, and work with them rather than opening yourselves up to potential harm and thinking hiding behind technology and weak beliefs shouting 'nah nah nah cant get me!' simply because you want the current mainstream content.