Movie Studios Want Automated BitTorrent Warnings

daria42 writes "The lawsuit filed by movie and TV studios against Australian Internet service provider iiNet appears to have taken a new twist, with the studios using early judgments in the case to attempt to push other ISPs towards what it has described as a 'standardized automated processing system' for BitTorrent copyright infringement notices that would integrate with the ISPs' networks and automatically forward messages to customers when they were sent by the studios."

Comments

"We want to spam all your customers at will..."

[Chris Mattern]

"...but it's too much trouble to do it ourselves. You do it for us."

Re:"We want to spam all your customers at will..."

[causality]

"...but it's too much trouble to do it ourselves. You do it for us."

If they keep pushing this, the result will be predictable enough.

It will eventually result in a new distributed peer-to-peer protocol. This new protocol will have mandatory strong encryption, will be obfuscated, will likely not have central trackers of any kind (perhaps it will rely on something like DHT), and will generally make it much more difficult to identify individual users. In turn, the pirates, who already feel quite bold, will likely share even more copyrighted material as a result of the reduced risk.

If they really want to drive it even more underground, they can, but they will regret the results. Meanwhile, the more unreasonable they become the more likely it is that Joe Sixpack will start to see them as little more than greedy thugs. Right now a lot of people who don't keep up with these developments have at least some sympathy for them. There are still many who will entertain arguments claiming that infringement of copyright is exactly the same thing as theft of tangible goods (which it is not) and the like, but the copyright cartels are on a certain path towards changing that.

Unreasonable asshats with control complexes who have politicians in their back pockets are a recipe for lawlessness, both of the unprincipled type that just wants a new movie/game/mp3 and of the civil-disobedience type who promote and support what the cartels are trying to stop as an act of protest. Exactly how many thousands of examples are needed for this to become something obvious that "everybody knows" and no longer wants to try?

Another warning proposal

[Pieroxy]

Can we also have a warning for *AA affiliates exec? It should be triggered everytime they approach a public statement, it should say "If you're about to talk about piracy, please consider the fact that you're about to make a fool of yourself. Again."

ISP response: sure, studios - here's the BILL

[Anonymous Coward]

The ideal ISP response to this would be to agree and then send the studios a bill at, say, $10000 per notification to cover "costs". Hollywood accounting works both ways...

Yep. This is not a free country.

[Anonymous Coward]

Just notify EVERYONE. They're all dirty pirates, right?

Yeah. That's how America works these days.

Treat everyone as a terrorist - search them at airports, train stations, on the road, etc - ever been for radiation therapy? Look out!

Everyone is a potential meth addict - gotta show your driver's license to get 10 pills of Sudafed!

Everyone is a drunk driver - that's why there are road blocks where they stop everyone to see if they're drunk - sucks when you're working weekend nights and you're automatically considered a drunk!

On the internet? Well, you're pirating and downloading child porn unless proven innocent!