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ISPs Will Now Be Copyright Cops
An anonymous reader writes "Wendy Seltzer, Fellow at Princeton University's Center for Information Technology Policy, talks about the new plan by ISPs and content providers to 'crack down on what users can do with their internet connections' using a 6-step warning system to curb online copyright infringement."
Wikipedia says she's a lawyer who founded Chilling Effects and used to work for the EFF.
Alright 6 warnings! Now I know to cut it out after the 5th.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
As an artist, I'm dismayed that works that took years of effort and money just get pirated without any compensation at all.
All works of authorship are based in part on other works. Would you want to get your Internet access cut off for having inadvertently included too much of someone else's work in your own work?
I will be glad to pay you directly for your work. The problem really is the greedy dinosaurs between you and me who try hard to stay relevant despite technological advances.
Haven't we been arguing this since the invention of the copy machine? As long as people want something bad enough, they will get it. The cat and mouse game will never end and the cat will never win. For every torrent site that gets shut down, 3 new ones appear. The genie technology has been let out of the bottle. People will find new ways to transport and hide/encrypt their files.
She explicitly said that "study after study has shown that those who pirate the most frequently are also the ones who are willing to pay the most for legal access to that copyrighted material." And then she also pointed out that it's disturbing to see the conglomeration of media companies and service providers like NBC-Comcast.
I like this lady, and I hope she manages to make those points to others!
That is numbers from movie and music companies, Sure we all remember story's in the past of these companies inflating their loses to make it look worse then it was.
This could really only be a problem in the United States because there is such little competition in the market. In any market where true competition exists, a company that attempted to restrict access in a way that did not have a clear economic benefit or cost would slowly lose customers. Restricting access to certain websites or data could never work in a competitive marketplace. The only reason the United States has bandwidth caps is because of a lack of competition as well... But at least there is an underlying economic reason for the ISPs to do so.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
It is really crazy how blatant and out of control copyright has become in our society. I'm all for just abandoning or totally revising the concept altogether.
As an academic, I'm dismayed that research up to 70 years old and paid for with public money money can just be locked off for no reason at all. And that the essential right of citizens to acess the public internet can be interdicted by private corporations. It's time governments do something about this.
May the Maths Be with you!
My ISP (Cox) is already suspending accounts for privacy. A friend of mine called Cox to find his account had been suspended for pirating Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. He doesn't play video games, but also doesn't know jack about Wifi security. After a little looking around for him, I saw someone had been squatting on his connection and then locked it up for him. Despite he explained someone apparently used his network without his permission and broke the law, Cox didn't give a rat's ass about it. It's much easier and cheaper for them to shoot now and ask questions later.
Chewbacon
The Bible is like Wikipedia: written by a bunch of people and verifiable by questionable sources.
Private industry has absolutely NO place as judge, jury and executioner. NONE. Zero. Zilch.
If one is to be found guilty of anything, a court should be involved. Perhaps there should be changes to the law, to make small claim's court responsible for minor copyright infractions by users.
Regardless, in no way should one private company provide proof to another private company, which results in any sort of detrimental action being taken against a citizen of a free country! In fact, if that information is wrong, the copyright holder could be sued for slander/libel, along with the ISP being sued for various other things.
That never has existed for ISPs and lately, the biggest ISPs have dreams and intent on being content providers as well. If they hope to get you to pay for streaming content, they need to limit your access to free materials in whatever forms. So they are not interested in common carrier status. This is precisely why we need network neutrality laws firmly in place... of course, if someone were to try to get it passed, there would be so many little tweaks in there it wouldn't even resemble the original intent. (Look what happened to Obama's healthcare reform... it might have been nice.)
If encryption gets banned, there is an ally that the bought-and-paid-for Congresscritters *will* listen to.
Go to the NRA. Seriously. Strong crypto was classified as a munition, making crypto a Second Amendment issue. Congress doesn't give a shit about the ACLU or the EFF or any of those types, but they will listen to the NRA.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
ISPs are not common carriers, they were granted some of the benefits that common carriers get but without the obligations.
If encryption gets banned, there is an ally that the bought-and-paid-for Congresscritters *will* listen to.
Go to the NRA. Seriously. Strong crypto was classified as a munition, making crypto a Second Amendment issue. Congress doesn't give a shit about the ACLU or the EFF or any of those types, but they will listen to the NRA.
Somehow the thought of Sarah Palin encrypting a moose just doesn't work for me.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
A symptom of having a society that actually governed by rule of law
The idea behind the rule of law is that the law is codified and impartial, as opposed to rule by individual humans who can make different decisions based on how they feel. Now, take a look at the current US legal system, where the outcome of a court case depends to a large degree on how much you can afford to spend on lawyers, whether you make a good impression on the judge, and which judge you happen to appear in front of. Does that really sound like the rule of law to you?
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