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Media Companies Create Copyright Enforcement Framework
An anonymous reader writes with an article in Ars Technica. From the article: "American Internet users, get ready for three strikes^W^W 'six strikes.' Major U.S. Internet providers — including AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, Cablevision, and Time Warner Cable — have just signed on to a voluntary agreement with the movie and music businesses to crack down on online copyright infringers. But they will protect subscriber privacy and they won't filter or monitor their own networks for infringement. And after the sixth 'strike,' you won't necessarily be 'out.'"
It's not suspicious at all that most of the ISPs signing on for this are owned by or own media companies.
So are we looking at some sort of private blacklisting? Like the one banks employ- figure out who is the 'good' customer and who ain't? And how lawful will it be for them to deny service to you on the grounds that 'it is statistically confirmed that you may use our services to support piracy, therefore we are forced to turn down your application'?
The three laws of thermodynamics:(1) You can't win. (2) You can't break even. (3) You can't even quit.
It's not suspicious at all that most of the ISPs signing on for this are owned by or own media companies.
Since when does 2 out of 5 count as 'most'? Other than Comcast and Cablevision, which ones are owned by or own media companies?
"... are condemned to repeat it." -- George Santayana
This is precisely why historically, the FCC did not allow on company to be both a content creator and content provider or "carrier". There is a huge conflict of interest which is not in the best interest of either innovation or the citizenry in general.
Where were all the protests when Time-Warner became a cable operator? Where were all the protests when any of these providers acquired the creators, or vice versa?
Goddamned American public in recent years has acted like it has never read a newspaper or history book.
...except for the fact that it amounts to incremental-ism. One baby step at a time.
Have you ever gotten a copyright infringement letter? If not, then this probably won't apply to you.
Read the last two paragraphs of the article.
Essentially, after 6 notifications where they contact you about your infringing activities, they will throttle your internet, and possibly disconnect you until you contact them and have a chat about copyright laws.
While I don't like the thought of being disconnected, I really don't like the thought of the government getting involved. (Protect IP Act, anyone?)
How many customers will they be forced to ban before they realize how much this hurts them and helps their competition?
A boycott like this doesn't work unless you get every ISP to join in because 1 service isn't significantly different than another. Nobody says, 'Oh man, I couldn't live if I had to switch to Sprint instead of Time Warner!'
Also, I wonder if there are any laws against this already? It seems to me that banding together to deny service to a certain list of people has got to have some anti-trust laws or something.
And, could this be a major nail in the IP coffin? Judges aren't going to have much respect for them if they do really crazy things in the name of protecting their IP. The tide is already turning on that front and this is pretty desperate.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
false positives have been a issues in the past does this do any thing to fix that?
Let's say some without HSI but has cable some how get some HBO VOD data flagged? or just that they flag the wrong subscriber.
Bad clams
The bank's have done foreclosure on loans they don't even own so what stopping someone from makeing a clam on stuff they don't own or that may be free but some how they thing they own the rights to? What if a game is free but someone flags it based on in game music?
fake clams
One business may just make clams just to DOS a other business.
What about places with FREE WIFI or hotels? (A lot of hotels use cable HSI)
What about if you HAVE the rights to that Copyright and the right to download it and you still get flaged?
"I'm fine with a way for copyright owners to shutdown pirates after repeated offenses."
Please stop helping the media companies to spread misinformation. Downloaders are not pirates. "Pirates" are defined as people who make and sell copies of copyrighted works commercially, for a profit. Equating your typical downloader with "pirates" is a gross injustice. And which is something the media companies want everybody to do, in their minds.
ISP's won't let the MPAA or RIAA abuse their customers. The ISP's will have discretion on how to enforce these copyright claims and won't do anything that will cause them to lose significant profits. If the MPAA abuses its power, the ISP will ignore the request because the agreement is voluntary.
Can we get something like this for government except instead of copyright infringement it is applicable to 3 (or 6 in this case) infringements of individual rights? Now instead of being cut off from the internet they are forced out of office, never allowed to hold office again, lose their pensions, and have to pay back all money and benefits earned while in office.
Time to offend someone
One day big media will understand that they need us more than we need them. Take away my movies, video games and music (that part would suck) and I wouldn't be too happy but I would eventually find something else to do. Occasionally I come across someone that doesn't watch tv and they seem happy. My friend Chris told me that he couldn't imagine being glued to the tv again. Fuck big media.
"We are just a war away from Amerikastan. When god vs god the undoing of man." Dave Mustaine
The first rule of Usenet is we do not talk about Usenet.
The second rule of Usenet is we wave our hands in their faces and say "These are not the NZBs you're looking for."
Usenet - making old tech do things sane nature never intended to allow fall into the clever hands and febrile minds of mortals. (With NZB and PAR2 as the neck-bolts of our shambling creations brought back from beyond the ultimate veil).
Who is John Cabal?
While I must admit, how to execute a DoS attack using clams is a little beyond me, I think the issue of false positives is going to be a lot less funny.
If these companies are doing so little as just checking if an IP address is in a torrent swarm, then I would think just about anyone could be flagged. So even assuming they get the right IP address associated to who had it at that point in time, there is still not even a guarantee the file was being seeded by that IP at that moment. I see connections being made for a torrent long after I've shut it down. And if DHCP were to reassign that address, whoever else got it would probably be seeing a load of incoming traffic that makes no sense to them.
Traffic inspection for specific media is probably damn near pointless since a lot of torrent traffic is already encrypted anyway. In fact, the paranoid probably have legacy connections disabled and only used encrypted traffic.
And I'm also curious about how reliable DHT is in all of this, and if it is possible to poison DHT with IPs not really in the swarm.
I don't really expect any due diligence on the ISPs part, so hopefully the penalties stay mild enough their lack of investigation doesn't cause too many problems.
Fear is the mind killer.
Until they amend the terms of services ... or, it will cost you tens of thousands of dollars to fight.
And, they'll have a nice, cozy arrangement whereby they give each other a reach around.
I want you to be right in hoping/expecting consumers to have some recourse on this. But, recent history and a little bit of skeptical extrapolation tells me that they'll re-write the rules of the game in their favor, and at some point the ISPs will be the ones gathering the information the MAFIAA shills will use to sue their (now former) customers for trillions of dollars in lost revenue based on the inflated statutory damages they got the idiot lawmakers to grant them.
I'm just no longer convinced we're likely to see any sanity in this copyright issue ... they'll sue us for trillions of dollars, but when they infringe by selling compilations with unlicensed songs, they'll settle for a few sheckles.
I'm still hoping for something spectacular like the end of Fight Club ... a sudden, dramatic event which suddenly ends these corporations. Of course, that's just wishful thinking, and I now probably owe someone royalties for mentioning a movie. Fuckers.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Ignore him. Just another ism-ist creating random ist-isms.
Some of what I say is fact, some is conjecture, the rest I'm just blowing out my ass...you guess.
Or people will simply switch to using NZB files pointing to Usenet servers.
Usenet is a messaging system, there are no files there. (whistle)