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US ISPs, Big Content Reaching Antipiracy Agreement

Posted by Soulskill on from the i-would-download-a-car dept.

Chaonici writes "The word from CNet is that an antipiracy agreement between a number of ISPs (including Verizon, AT&T, and Comcast) and the RIAA & MPAA is nearing completion. Under the agreement, ISPs will step up their responses to copyright infringement complaints against subscribers. If a subscriber accumulates enough complaints, the ISP can throttle their bandwidth, limit their Web access to only the top 200 websites, and/or require participation in a 'copyright awareness' program that explains the rights of content creators. ISPs and rights holders will share the costs of the system. Ars Technica confirms the story with notes from an industry source, who mentions that the Obama administration is 'generally supportive' of the agreement."

43 of 342 comments (clear)

  1. What is this? by GameboyRMH · · Score: 4, Insightful

    What is this, fascism week?

    --
    "When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
    1. Re:What is this? by jaymz666 · · Score: 3, Informative

      good luck finding one!

    2. Re:What is this? by Doctor_Jest · · Score: 5, Insightful

      That would be great if there was actual market competition in the broadband arena. It's pretty simply a monopoly, and if you factor in the government sanction that provides the monopoly... then yes... it is fascism.

      This is vastly more sinister than the government adopting this stance officially.. because we can vote the bastards out who passed it. With the current state of broadband in the US, the only voting out we can do is canceling service in protest, something I suspect the Great Unwashed is unwilling to do.

      This has nothing to do with actual infringement. All you need is to piss off the right people and zing! you're throttled and limited. There is no due process. If you get "enough complaints"... your ISP is going to screw you over withholding service that YOU paid for. How equitable is that? How is that not illegal? The EFF needs to sue.

      Without competition, we are, to put it bluntly... fucked. And this sort of nonsense has made it more and more clear that the *AA's don't want my money. That's fine. I'll keep it. If only 20% of the people in the US did that, we'd be able to force change. As it stands now, about all we can do is shake our fists and shout insults as the *AA's burn down the orphanage and assrape the kids escaping the fire.

      --
      It's the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.
    3. Re:What is this? by king+neckbeard · · Score: 2

      It's a good bit closer when both of those private businesses have government backed monopolies in their respective fields.

      --
      This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
    4. Re:What is this? by JMJimmy · · Score: 2

      I smell a lawsuit.

      Great for businesses not in the top 200!

    5. Re:What is this? by Threni · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Isn't Pirate Bay in the top 200 sites?

    6. Re:What is this? by Anonymus · · Score: 2

      Lucky you for living in an area where that's possible. In huge areas of the USA, there is literally only one option for high-speed non-satellite internet. In most other areas, there are only two or three choices... the two or three choices that are now in agreement to do something anti-customer. If they weren't a colluding oligopoly, that wouldn't be possible.

    7. Re:What is this? by squidflakes · · Score: 2

      Ok, cool. We can make all the happy freedom loving LANs we want, but who are you going to get your internet pipe from? How much does a 100Mb metro ethernet line cost per month where you live? How many people would you need to get on-board paying for it before it becomes economically practical? Is that number of people going to saturate your link? Finally, what do you do when the **AA comes knocking on the door of your bandwidth provider (read: ISP) and starts making demands because Grandma wanted to watch last night's Glee and someone showed her how to use BT? Don't get me wrong here, I like the suggestion of a more distributed internet, but until we're able to break necessity of huge capital investment for for peering, we're sort of stuck.

  2. The wording scares me by Combatso · · Score: 3, Insightful

    "complaints" and "suspected pirate". From what I can tell, to the MPAA and RIAA everyone is a "suspected" pirate..... I wonder if ThePirateBay is in the top 200 website list?

    1. Re:The wording scares me by idontgno · · Score: 2

      "There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power government has is the power to crack down on criminals. When there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws."

      -- Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

      As much as I find undiluted Objectivism distasteful, it's hard to argue with what I see... If you can only control through intimidation, and your charter is to intimidate the "bad guy", you have to make everyone the "bad guy" in order to control everyone.

      --
      Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
    2. Re:The wording scares me by Burz · · Score: 2

      Her 'innocent men' were industrialists and I'd say right now that they are the ones who are giving freedom a bad name, freely colluding against individual liberty and privacy.

      Rand is still as distasteful as she ever was.

  3. Top 200 web sites? by jd2112 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Good, I'll still be able to get to ThePirateBay

    --
    Any insufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.
    1. Re:Top 200 web sites? by soodoo · · Score: 2

      What's the reasoning behind only allowing the top 200 web sites anyway?
      Why are websites with less traffic bad?

      This is wrong on so many levels.

    2. Re:Top 200 web sites? by JMJimmy · · Score: 2

      Freedom.

    3. Re:Top 200 web sites? by Intron · · Score: 3, Informative

      What's the reasoning behind only allowing the top 200 web sites anyway?
      Why are websites with less traffic bad?

      This is wrong on so many levels.

      Simple. The **AA want you kicked off the Internet, but your ISP still wants to collect their full monthly rate from you. So this way everybody is happy except you and you don't have a vote.

      --
      Intron: the portion of DNA which expresses nothing useful.
  4. oh, the irony by orange47 · · Score: 2

    um, Pirate bay is probably in those "top 200 websites"

  5. subject by Legion303 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    "ISPs and rights holders will share the costs of the system."

    Ha ha! But seriously, customers will share the costs with other customers. RIAA might jack up member fees, but they were probably going to do that anyway.

  6. CONSUMERS will burden the costs of the system by jDeepbeep · · Score: 4, Informative

    ISPs and rights holders will share the costs of the system

    Naturally, the ISP will pass on the costs to the consumer, and the rights holders will find a way to pad the product price with their piece of the cost, but we all knew that.

    --
    Reply to That ||
  7. Bullshit. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    If anything, this is going to push me into "pirating" more. Limit my freedom just because some asshole corporate fuck thinks it's "fair"? Fuck these mother fuckers. I'll advise EVERYONE I know to NEVER do business with Comcast, AT&T, or Verizon from here on out.

    Just because of this, I refuse to buy a movie or song ever again. 100% piracy from now on.

    It's seriously time for a pro-freedom ISP that encrypts everything, logs nothing, and is crazy fast. Anybody have access to some VC capital to make this happen?

    1. Re:Bullshit. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      One more has finally seen the light.

      I don't consider myself pro-piracy. I believe that receiving the benefit from something without the owner's permission is unethical (even if the owner still gets to benefit from it). I am an artist myself, and thus have a vested interest in copyright law. I believe that a reasonable copyright system is worthwhile, and those who try to avoid recompensing artists and authors under such a system should be punished.

      We do not have such a system. We have a system where a person can be punished on the mere accusation of wrongdoing (DMCA takedown notice); where the online equivalent of jaywalking is punishable by fines in the hundreds of thousands of dollars (Jammie Thomas); where so-called "limited-time" copyright keeps getting extended so that nothing will ever go public domain again; where companies can lock up their works so that even when they do go public domain they still can't be accessed (DRM); where the force of law backs this up so you're not allowed to bypass such locks even for legitimate use (DMCA); where copyright infringement is equated to terrorism by assigning it to the organization created specifically to go after terrorists (DHS); where anti-piracy international agreements are made in secret and all we get is a name that equates piracy with one of the most severe crimes of a civilized society (Anti-COUNTERFEITING Trade Agreement); where companies can get away with spamming letters threatening lawsuits without even a hint of accuracy checking so that even people who don't have a computer get threatened without any legal recourse; where giant companies can convince the government to do practically anything just by complaining about how much they're being harmed by piracy even when they're making record-breaking profits; where the whole idea of copyright, which was originally meant "to promote the progress of science and useful arts" now keeps every possible idea locked up so tightly that the law hinders the progress of science and the useful arts, all so that a handful of executives of big companies can each buy a third yacht.

      I'm not pro-piracy. I'm anti-broken-copyright-system. It's gotten to the point where I consider it more unethical to give money to those who support such a system than to copy or share something that does not belong to me.

      Don't blame me. I'm just a product of the system. The system has declared war on me, as it has on everyone who has ever read a book, watched a movie, or listened to a song and wanted a copy of it for ourselves, but not at the price nor in the format that is on the market. And when you declare war on that many people, don't be surprised if some of them fight back.

  8. contracts? by king+neckbeard · · Score: 2

    I don't recall the fine print of my TOS, but I would really wonder whether or not the contracts signed allowed for this bullshit, and whether or not such things would hold up in court.

    --
    This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
    1. Re:contracts? by Registered+Coward+v2 · · Score: 2

      I don't recall the fine print of my TOS, but I would really wonder whether or not the contracts signed allowed for this bullshit, and whether or not such things would hold up in court.

      You'll probably find a "we can alter the terms if we notify you" clause in the fine print. You're option would be to cancel the contract rather than accept the change.As a side note, that can be a way to get out of a contract with a termination fee without paying the fee.

      --
      I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
  9. Internet Access Is a Basic Human Right by ALeavitt · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The UN recently declared internet access to be a basic human right. I wonder what they would have to say about the government colluding with corporations to curtail the basic human rights of citizens of the United States.
    Oh, who am I kidding. They probably won't have anything to say about it at all.

    --
    This sig has been stolen. Return it to its original user for a reward.
  10. Anybody surprised? by MCSEBear · · Score: 2
    This is the same administration that declared the details of the draconian ACTA treaty to be freaking State Secrets:

    Plenty of folks are quite concerned about the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) negotiations are being negotiated in secret. This is a treaty that (from the documents that have leaked so far) is quite troubling. It likely will effectively require various countries, including the US, to update copyright laws in a draconian manner. Furthermore, the negotiators have met with entertainment industry representatives multiple times, and there are indications that those representatives have contributed language and ideas to the treaty. But, the public? The folks actually impacted by all of this? We've been kept in the dark, despite repeated requests for more information.

    When the Obama administration took over, there was a public stance that this administration was going to be more transparent -- especially with regards to things like Freedom of Information Act requests. The nonprofit group Knowledge Ecology International took that to heart and filed an FOIA request to get more info on ACTA. The US Trade Representative's Office responded denying the request, saying that the information was "classified in the interest of national security pursuant to Executive Order 12958." This is a treaty about changing copyright law, not sending missiles somewhere. To claim that it's a national security matter is just downright scary. As KEI points out, the text of the documents requested have been available to tons of people, including more than 30 governments around the world and lobbyists from the entertainment industry, pharma industry and publishing industry.

    But when the public asks for them, we're told they're state secrets?

  11. What does it take to become an ISP? by Cholten · · Score: 2

    So someone will just rent a big pipe from a company that's not signed up to this, split it and sell it on (full encrypted) to downline customers. Sounds like a business model to me...

    Another thought - do corporations realise that their 'net feeds will be deep packet sniffed to look for copyright infringing material? I wonder how much they will like the ISPs no longer being just a bunch of tubes...

    1. Re:What does it take to become an ISP? by hairyfeet · · Score: 4, Informative

      Won't work sadly, as ALL of the backbone is owned by....dum dum dum...assholes like AT&T! I know because a friend had a business just outside the area where cable and DSL end (and good luck EVER getting them bastards to expand, in my area they haven't moved an inch in 20 years) so he paid a crazy amount of money to have a T-1 run out there and started his own ISP. All well and good, American capitalism right?

      Nope, because AT&T got wind and cut off his backbone access, some bullshit excuse about "number of connections" or some shit, made a few phone calls and made sure nobody else would sell to him either. Their answer was a bald faced "try to sue us, we're fucking AT&T!" and his lawyer said "Sure you'll win, but it'll take anywhere from 10 to 15 YEARS and cost...ohhh...about 3 MILLION dollars in lawyers fees". So he closed up his business and moved away, and those people that had a decent Internet were forced back onto AT&Ts $75 a month dialup.

      You see the problem isn't fascism, its corporatism. The corps OWN the courts, they OWN the congress, they OWN the lines, they OWN the media. So download all you can while you can friends, because until we have our own Arab Spring this country is gonna have its very own little dark age, with more and more draconian laws designed to royally fuck you in the ass, and there is nothing you can do about it. Vote? you tried that, how's that "Hope & Change" working out? Vote with your dollars? More than 70% last I checked of the population is under monopolies when it comes to the net and ALL are under the same backbone providers, which guess what? Are listed above.

      So snatch every damned thing that ain't nailed down, slam the shit out of the ISPs. pretty much all the Internet will be in less than 3 years is the Home Shopping Network and that's the way big business/government wants it because it is easier to control the population if they can't organize, and easier to shut down any "troublemakers" if you make sure they can't be heard. That way they can control the "spin" and make anyone who doesn't go "America Fuck yeah!" into an evil socialist pedo/terrorist. Think I'm crazy? They already got Valenti's dream of "forever minus a single day" copyrights, and with the above they'll kill the net. The party is over folks, the dream is dying. Enjoy as much as you can while you can, because our kids are gonna look back from their dreary media controlled lives and consider this a mythical "golden age" where people could actually converse freely and share ideas. Those days are sadly about to end. Don't forget to hit the lights on your way out.

      --
      ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
    2. Re:What does it take to become an ISP? by DavidTC · · Score: 3, Insightful

      You are entirely right, except:

      You see the problem isn't fascism, its corporatism.

      That's what 'fascism' is, dude. The corporations and the government, working together. The corporations do what the 'government isn't allow to' (Like find people guilty of crimes without due process), and the government makes sure the corporations stay well feed, and invulnerable to any sort of lawsuits or prosecutions.

      Don't go around inventing another word. It already exists, it's 'fascism'.

      I pointed this out back when the government asserted the right to immunize the telecoms for the telecoms' illegal spying at the government's request. In short, the government hired corporations to commit felonies, and then forgave those felonies, and classified their end of it so they couldn't be prosecuted either.

      We're not in some hypothetical hysteria people making up stuff...we're in actual, literal, dictionary-definition fascism. Sadly, people seem to think fascism requires concentration camps or something....it doesn't, ask the Italians.

      We are also, I feel I should point out, in a dictionary-definition police state. Because of Gitmo. The executive claiming the power to imprison and hold people without charging them with crimes is the definition of a police state.

      --
      If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
  12. Piracy not cool anymore... by mabhatter654 · · Score: 2

    Personally, I think we're on the downward side of piracy anyway. Of course the President would be on-board with this because the frivolous complaints against 10k people at a time are a misuse of the courts and a waste of time.

    I think piracy is on the way out anyway. Things like iTunes, Netflix,& Hulu make it really easy to get almost anything legally. I don't think regular folk will like getting the first warning letter one bit... Having a warning system in place will get people warned their actions have consequences sooner... Just knowing somebody takes notice is enough to get many people to stop. I think most people have "grown up" and are sick of all the spyware, viruses, and hacks from torrent sites anyway.

    1. Re:Piracy not cool anymore... by glwtta · · Score: 2

      I think most people have "grown up" and are sick of all the spyware, viruses, and hacks from torrent sites anyway.

      What are you talking about?

      How exactly are videos and music going to carry spyware or viruses? Or "hacks" for that matter - are there a lot of people who have been hacked by, what, I guess tracker operators?

      The most you'll see on BT are those ridiculously lame "go to www.lulz.sk/~kodeks to download the proper codec for this movie" videos (where I assume you're invited to download 'rapemycomputer.exe'). That's right, BT viruses work on the honor system - you have to download them yourself.

      It's not like they're hard to spot beforehand either, and anyone who falls for this type of "leet haxoring" wouldn't be able to figure out Hulu anyway.

      --
      sic transit gloria mundi
    2. Re:Piracy not cool anymore... by houstonbofh · · Score: 2

      I think most people have "grown up" and are sick of all the spyware, viruses, and hacks from torrent sites anyway.

      As opposed to the spyware, viruses, and hacks from Sony, Microsoft, and many hardware vendors? (note that Sony has hacks and spyware, Micorsoft has spyware like WGA, and many companies have released viruses in the driver disks)

  13. Fighting back? by CelticWhisper · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Okay, I'll ask the obvious question: How do we fight this? We know that there's little choice between ISPs in many rural (and even some sub/urban) areas, so threatening to switch isn't always practical. It's not a bill being proposed so we can't direct elected officials to vote against it - do we demand our legislators draft a bill to stop it? Is this FCC territory? FTC? Who do we talk to, who do we demand answers from, who do we petition, and how do we get the message across?

    --
    Help protect civil rights from abuse by the TSA - visit TSA News Blog.
    http://www.tsanewsblog.com
  14. one more nail in their coffin by AarghVark · · Score: 2

    Between actions like this and things such as bandwidth caps it appears that the major ISP's are looking to alienate their customer base. In the mean time, figure it will be possible to DOS someone by placing some complaints against them? How about businesses placing complaints against their competitors? Maybe I should go apply for a business process patent on doing this....

  15. Re:Peer Block by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Peer Block is neigh pointless. All it does it prevent communication with an IP based off a list. This fails in 2 distinct ways. A. You have to have a trustworthy list that assumes they don't rotate their IP addresses and isn't poisoned by those same companies. B. The Trackers have a full list of IP addresses that are part of the swarm and also maintain statistics on upload/downloads. Preventing communication isnt the same as being hidden, dont trust peer block to do much for you.

  16. Cats out of the bag by SmallFurryCreature · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Really, it is out. Look, it is there, sitting on the windowsill licking its... well, that is just rude... but it is out of the bag in any case. No you can't put it back in the back. Or the case.

    Whenever now some new story breaks about the latest means of illegal filesharing and the industry moving against it, I am near instantly asked by non-techies how to do it themselves.

    Educate them? What, that artists like Britney Spear would starve to death without your hard earned money? Yeah, I am sure most of the people I know, some of who have trouble making end meet month to month give a shit.

    Content production has always relied on the artificial limitation of availability (we only print X amount) to keep the price up. With digital reproduction, this limit has gone. Worse, the cost of distribution is approaching trivial. I can share a movie for a couple of cents. How in the world are you going to persuade me to pay MORE for a SINGLE movie then I pay for my internet connection that can give me hundreds of them?

    And yet, movie ticket sales are on the increase. Gaga earns millions. Clearly all this piracy isn't actually affecting anyone. Where are the starving artists, where are the movies that should have been made that are not made (no, the ones that should not have been made but were made do NOT count instead).

    It reminds me of the anti-piracy messages in shows like Futurama. Yeah, you sold me, I felt very bad for downloading the entire series... oh wait, I didn't. The cost of purchasing series is just to high, i am not going to pay that much for a piece of plastic. As for watching it on TV, the commercials are just to long, not just the ones that make money, WHY one EARTH do TV stations struggling to keep viewers watching commercial breaks ADD to the length of the breaks by advertising their own station I am WATCHING?

    Talk about oversell.

    The content industry either re-invents itself or has to just accept the year after year profit increases they been suffering at the hands of pirates (oh, you thought they were making a loss? Nope, in fact investing in music back catalogs is now considered a risk free investment for pension funds).

    Educating me? I am educated thank you very much, I know the costs of printing a plastic disc and the cost me of funding the superstar lifestyle of an artist versus the cost of me not funding it.

    No more music? I could care less. If all the artists of the world want things to change, let them strike. Every single one of them against me not paying for their work. STRIKE. See if anyone gives a shit. Do you?

    --

    MMO Quests are like orgasms:

    You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.

  17. Re:VPN anyone? by king+neckbeard · · Score: 2

    Who's saying they are entitled? If I can do something, there needs to be a justification in why I shouldn't do that. Big Content isn't inherently entitled to stop me. The only purpose that copyright laws can exist for is to benefit the public by fostering the creation of more creative works. Copyright has utterly failed in that respect, so copyright laws are unjust.

    --
    This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
  18. How will this impact hardcore infringers? by Iphtashu+Fitz · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Answer: It won't.

    Most people who are hardcore infringers are already using things like seedboxes for uploading & downloading torrents. How do these idiot lawyers expect these agreements to impact VPS's hosted in countries like India? Rent 100gig of disk space & bandwidth from another country for $20/month or so, run all your torrents there, then use rsync via ssh, scp, etc. to do an encrypted transfer to/from your home. Even with deep packet inspection the ISP couldn't possibly know that you're copying copyrighted material to/from your seedbox.

    1. Re:How will this impact hardcore infringers? by Iphtashu+Fitz · · Score: 2

      If you can't download them to home, what good are they?

      Wow, you really aren't all that bright, are you?

      Your ISP starts throttling bittorrent on you and doing deep packet inspection of those torrents to see what you're sharing. So you rent a seedbox at a different ISP and do all your bittorrent transfers there where your local ISP has no control. Once you've received the entire torrent at the seedbox then you simply download it to home over an encrypted connection. As I said in my original post you just use scp/ssh or something similar that's SSL encrypted (possibly even a VPN connection). Your ISP can't inspect it. You're not using bittorrent over your ISP's connection so they can't claim you're infringing by sharing.

      And who is going to throttle/block the seedbox in India? Seedbox providers are explicitly providing services intended to allow bittorrent, so they won't block it. And who cares if your ISP or other ISP's do that since you're not using bittorrent through your ISP. That's the whole point of protocols like bittorrent. Let the ISP's block the idiots who are stupid enough to try downloading torrents of copyrighted movies while hundreds or thousands of others rent seedboxes and run bittorrent there. All the bittorrent peers on the seedboxes will continue to run unimpeded while the ISP's block a small percentage of people. You seem to think that only one or two people are using seedboxes which couldn't be further from the truth. If that was the case then it would be easy for ISP's to block those one or two. But with hundreds or thousands of people using seedboxes then any bittorrent throttling the ISP's can do only hurts those who haven't learned about seedboxes or decided to invest in one yet.

      Here's how it works for people who are hardcore infringers: Somebody in the movie industry gets a hold of the latest & greatest Movie X. They upload it to their seedbox in India and fire up bittorrent. They let their friends & other people know about it. Those people fire up bittorrent on their seedboxes in other countries like China, Russia, Japan, etc. Pretty soon Movie X is being peered by dozens/hundreds of seedboxes all over the world. Each of those friends then scp or rsync the movie back from their own seedbox to their own homes over encrypted connections so that their ISP can't tell what it is. Eventually word of the movie gets out to the general public and the torrent files get uploaded to sites like The Pirate Bay. It's then that people try to download the movie over their cable connection at home. THAT is the only thing that your ISP would be able to throttle or block. All the transfers to/from the seedboxes and among the seedboxes are entirely out of the control of your ISP or even US Copyright law.

    2. Re:How will this impact hardcore infringers? by Iphtashu+Fitz · · Score: 2

      I think if they disallowed any encryption other than SSL, most people wouldn't complain because they'd still be able to access their website and email.

      Wrong. Every corporation in the country that relies on VPN's for their employees would complain, as would every corporation in the country who has sysadmins who work remotely using tools like SSH to log into hosts. As would every single person/corporation who uses encryption like GPG to encrypt sensitive e-mails and other data.

      And on top of that you could never trust on-line banking or anything else ever again. There are tools out there to help identify SSL man-in-the-middle attacks that more and more banks are starting to use. Either you'd no longer be able to use on-line banking or you couldn't trust your connection to your bank. Just think - all a black hat would have to do is hack into a major ISP and compromise their SSL-man-in-the-middle server(s) and they'd have full access to the bank accounts of all the ISP's customers who use online banking.

      Oh yeah, and guess who would have to foot the bill for your ISP to set up these man-in-the-middle SSL snooper servers and to constantly monitor your traffic? It sure won't be them or the MPAA/RIAA.

  19. The future is here! by mmcuh · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Punishment without trial. Lovely.

  20. Re:VPN anyone? by mercnet · · Score: 2

    I pay 16 euros for 3 months (~$22) for BlackVPN in the Netherlands. Plus I get free months when I search for referral codes or give my friends mine.

  21. Re:VPN anyone? by hairyfeet · · Score: 2

    Well then are they gonna PAY ME when they fuck up my PC? No? Then bite me. I buy my games yet I play the downloaded version, why? Because I have found their shitastic DRM DOESN'T FUCKING WORK and in fact will fuck your shit up buddy! I've seen PCs that acted like they were infected, with crashes and slowdowns, fucking up all over the place, and it turned out to be just SecuROM and Safe disc having a nice little fight! Maybe you should watch this educational video and learn something.

    And what about the shows I never would have bought if it weren't for P2P? I live in a valley so OTA is right out and frankly the cable shows so damned many commercials I can't stand to watch even 20 minutes of a show to find out if I like it because of the constant commercial bullshit. Right behind me as I speak, sitting on a nice shelf with collectors figures my late sis bought me for bookends, is the entire Joss Whedon collection, which set me back about....ohh I'd say a good $500 since I bought them at release. Since my area had NO WB I would have NEVER watched a single episode, nor would I have ever bought or rented it, because really the description sounded lame. I mean the guy from the Taster's choice commercials and a soap opera actress? WTF? But I downloaded a couple of episodes and loved the writing, so I went out and bought the entire series as they were released on DVD.

    They THINK this will get people to buy the frankly God awful horseshit they've been shoveling lately, but they're wrong. Guys like me that try before you buy simply won't be buying much at all, and you certainly ain't gonna get those masses living from paycheck to paycheck to pay, they'll just do without. The dumbshits could have been finding ways to monetize these people, like the way games are going free to play with microtransactions, but instead they'll find out the hard way without the word of mouth brought by P2P their sales are gonna suck the big wet titty. I wonder what they'll blame when they can't blame piracy? Sadly they'll probably just have themselves declared "too big to fail" and take the money directly from our collective wallets with taxes, and give us the finger in return.

    Meanwhile as the US empire gets the short bus to the information superhighway the rest of the world will simply route around and we can just accept the days of the USA being anything but another third world shithole are behind us. The future is information, and sadly most of America simply won't have access to it. We'll all be fat, lazy, stupid, and broke, with nothing to do but stare blankly at the idiot box. Eh I hope India and China enjoy this gift, and become better superpowers than we were, as with no tech they'll be no future tech jobs and we don't make shit here anymore. maybe they think we can all work in Hollywood?

    --
    ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
  22. consumer is powerless by mschaffer · · Score: 4, Insightful

    When all of the business are in collusion, the consumer has no power.

  23. What, no due process? No rebuttal? by mschaffer · · Score: 2

    I should have been a lawyer. They have so much power. Apparently they can just write letters to companies to do their bidding regardless of anyone else's rights.
    So, now we have a situation where, if there are enough copyright complaints, let alone valid ones, the ISPs must comply. No due process at all---it's all about the all-powerful squeaky hinge.

    Trooper: This usage is covered under fair use.
    Ben: The copyrights are for sale if you want them
    Trooper: Let me see your writ.
    Luke fumbles around looking for a signed writ.
    Ben (in a controlled voice): There is no fair use
    Trooper: There is no fair use
    Ben: These aren't the rights you are looking for
    Trooper: These aren't the rights you are looking for
    Ben: We can stop his business
    Trooper You can stop his business
    Ben (to Luke): Move along.
    Trooper: Move along. Move along.

    -----
    Welcome to the USA. Former jurisdiction of the US Constitution.