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Why the 'Six Strikes' Copyright Alert System Needs Antitrust Scrutiny
suraj.sun sends this quote from an op-ed at Ars Technica:
"Eight months ago, content owners and Internet service providers agreed to the Copyright Alert System, a 'six-strike' plan to reduce copyright infringement by Internet users. Under the system, ISPs will soon send educational alerts, hijack browsers, and perhaps even slow/temporarily block the Internet service of users accused of online infringement (as identified by content owners). At the time it was announced, some speculated that the proposed system might not be legal under the antitrust laws. ... If I had to explain antitrust in a single word, it would not be 'competition' — it would be 'power.' The power to raise prices above a competitive level; the power to punish people who break your rules. Such power is something society usually vests in government. Antitrust law is in part concerned with private industry attempting to assert government-like power. ... The Copyright Alert System represents a raw exercise of concerted private power. Content owners as a group have control over their product. They have leveraged this control to forge this agreement with ISPs, who need to work with content owners in order to offer content to their own users. ISPs, in turn, have power over us as users."
Finally, the AAs will be able to do something to stop piracy!
That's one, you only have five left. Sincerely Yakov Smirnoff.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
because it's not like a content provider every misidentified something like a bird song as it's own copyrighted material.
If I can't challenge any 'Strike' brought against me to a neutral 3rd party against the ISP, or the content owners themselves, the system is broken before it's even begun.
When did cross-sector Corporations become so buddy-buddy to the point that these ISP's are willing to lose costumers to appease certain Industries?
Anyone else smell conflict of interest, AntiTrust if you will, if ANY ISP or Telco owns, or is owned, by ANY media or content company? You can have contracts together out the wazzo. Those contracts however, shouldn't take priority over my ability to get a lawfully provided service. Wait! It's not a public service is it. It's a private service. Nevermind! Thanks a lot FCC, SEC, and FTC!
From the **AA's, who brought you lawsuits against the dead, comes this latest greatest solution to the problem of not wanting to adapt!
We got a buncha companies owned by our buddies to sign onto a program to screw the consumer.
Our super secret tech, which no one can be allowed to challenge or examine, is never wrong! Except that one time it identified the woman who didn't own a computer.
This great plan will raise the prices for consumers, all to protect our "rights".
The plan is 50/50 funded by the ISPs and the **AA's, both of which will just extract those costs from you by passing them on.
The system lacks any real fairness, and even if you can prove we were high as a kite when we blamed you... it costs $35 to challenge us.
The main goal of this system is to give us the powers of SOPA, without having to waste money on Congresscritters.
Even ISPs who aren't part of this plan now, well we are going to apply pressure and make them cave in.
We might not terminate your service, but it'll work just as well at 1 step above Dialup speeds.
You might want to move to a different ISP, well fuck you we have monopolies in most areas of the country.
Once this plan is moving along perfectly, we plan on adding a requirement for deep packet inspection... we want to make sure you can't "steal" a cent from us by even discussing the plots of our shows. Dare to quote the lyrics of a new song? We'll send you a bill.
It might be time to look into ripping the public funds out of the ISPs, making them purchase the rights to have poles and wires. Remove their monopoly control over communities, and demand actual competition. This is a service provider deciding a 3rd party has a right to control how you use the service your paying for. If someone claimed they saw you speeding, would you expect the car maker to come and make your car slower based on that claim? But your ISP thinks its a great idea.
Its time to get the FCC, FTC, and a bunch of other acronyms to get off their asses and protect the public from this massive overreach.
If you disconnect someone who is factually innocent, give them a right to sue for defamation where intent is irrelevant.
I think we have seen more than our share of false assertions of copyright by parties who professionally act "on behalf of copyright holders." They operate on assumption and without proof. These systems which do not require proof, but instead operate on "good faith" and "...under penalty of perjury" are rife with abuse.
Current systems in place are experiencing an epidemic of abuse by rights holders at the expense of many innocents. The harm this kind of thing causes the many outweighs the convenience and consideration of the many.
And when you've circled through all of them and found that each one does this in turn, what then?
all this and any smart user will just use avpn or tor let them play with the packets all they whant.
Somehow or another, the copyright MAFIAA has managed to hijack the public conversation such that the only value or goal of public telecom policy is to stop copyright violations.
It's time to stop fighting defensive battles on "what's the best way to stop copyright violations".
A better question is, "What should be the goal of telecom policy". My view: freer communication.
Just as we accept that some people will die on the highways, but we don't shut them down. Some people may be offended by various speech, but we don't shut down the 1st amendment. Some people may get shot, but we don't abridge the right to bear arms.
So, similarly, some copyright violations may occur, but we don't abridge the right to communicate. Also the 1st amendment amends the copyright clause.
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
We only have one choice where I live.
Why do you think they chose the name Cox?
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in groups. And never underestimate the size of the coffers controlled by the *AA's. Couple large volumes of cash with large volumes of malignant stupidity and you've got a recipe for an anal rape of gargantuan proportions. And since the *AA's now don't have to try to legislate this, you won't get any lube.
My hunch is lots more VPN traffic, and lots more encryption for those who want to infringe. It makes me laugh when I think of all the trouble these idiots go to in order to stop something that costs them nothing in terms of losses, but immeasurable amounts of goodwill. I wonder if this new "system" will be the thing that makes Joe Sixpack sit up and say "wait, those nerds were right! I'm getting screwed here!" :) Here's to hoping the Great Unwashed have a threshold of tolerance.... and I just wonder if this (like SOPA/PIPA) is the tipping point.
For those of us who don't consume their product any longer (unless it's used DVDs... I had to get Young Frankenstein on DVD... heh.), there is always the chuckles associated with fanatical devotion to a business model that's more outdated than buggy whips, wagon wheels, and 78rpm records combined.
It's the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.
And when you've gotten booted off of every single ISP, they will use that data to lobby for even worse Big Brother legislation to monitor every single communication. The antitrust label is very apt here, because the copyright lobby is basically arguing that their profits are more important than human rights and freedoms, so important that the whole world must bow to their demands.
All I want to say is "Or else WHAT?"
It is truly shameful that what we consider a democratic political system is so nearsighted that it can be trivially manipulated by valueless profiteers. They don't even have an actual product, they're only selling contrived litigation.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
Yeah the Cellular internet caps are ridiculous. I can't believe I actually get more data/month through my dialup line (~12 gigabytes) than through most cellphone providers (3 GB).
Ideally you would want a cell company that lets you use continue using the service, even after it has been slowed down to 128k.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
First, Verizon, Comcast, AT&T, Cablevision, and Time Warner Cable have already signed on to the program.
Second, Comcast is a cable/internet company while Sprint, VirginMobile and Cingular are cell phone companies (with a data plan), so they're not exactly equivalent (and yes, Verizon and AT&T are both).
Third, it doesn't have to be a monopoly to be illegal. A group of companies that dominate a market is called a oligopoly. And when they all agree to manipulate prices, restrict supply or implement other restrictions on the market it's called collusion and it's just as illegal as if one company does it.
A better example might be if you fail to pay for parking at one parking lot, can other parking lots (different owners) black ball you? Can grocery stores join in on the blackball until I pay my parking bill? Can businesses form collaborations to blackball customers? What about in a restricted competition environment such as telecos? On the other side of this, should business be able to refuse to do business with you? If you ran a toy store would you want a convinced child molester in your store with families?
The Corporations control/buys the government which controls you.
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
Let's kill off the beast once and for all and eliminate most forms of intellectual property. The copyright term was so long originally because of slow distribution and printing channels. Now we have high speed internet (until they take it) and fast printing of media. If anything, copyright should be reduced to ten years and nothing more. Once copyright is reduced to a short term, the **AA's of the world will be forced to continually innovate and compete (which was ironically the original purpose of copyright).
Okay so you get tagged for a violation
1 is the tag "correct"? (did you actually download/distribute/ect a "covered" file)
2 Is the File in fact freely distributable??
3 if they later find out you are in fact not guilty will they "untag" you??
4 what about offline channels??
5 exactly how not guilty are THEY??
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Recently, the German ministry for commerce, the ISPs and the content industry tried to negotiate a two strikes approach. The ISPs commissioned a report to evaluate if such agreement would be legal. The report states that such agreement would be unconstituional. And it would not make any difference if the commerical partners made an agreement or the state would make a law. The ministry of commerce thinks differently. However, the ministry of justice has similar doubts. As the report sees a direct violation of basic human rights in such an agreement, I wonder why such thing should be legal in the US. Even if European often think the US is some kind of banana republic, it is not true (at least not more true than for Europe as well). And basic consitutional things cannot be violated.
But maybe I am totally wrong with my assumption about the US. How would your legal system react to such an agreement or law?
We've already had people get slapped for birdsong as copyrighted work. An acquaintance of mine is already wrestling with YouTube because he recorded classical music on his guitar, and he's getting slapped because someone else identified it as a copy of their recording, and YouTube has already jammed advertisements into his video to compensate the accuser, as if he already agreed to a plea-bargain.
Too many false positives, and it costs much less for the people who are already wealthy to make false claims than it does for private citizens to defend themselves against the false claims. This stinks to high heaven.
Any one large ISP that *doesn't* engage in anti-customer actions is
sure to get a windfall of new signups.
Apparently you're new here. Over 90% of America has NO functional choice in ISPs. In the area I live in, we have Comcrap or AT&T and that's it. A few miles down the road it's Comcrap and Verizon FiOS, but no AT&T (their DSLAMs don't reach that far).
Go a few miles out of town, you're lucky to have any choice at all, you'll likely have whatever cableco bought monopoly rights from the city council 30 years ago and that'll be it.
There are some ISPs I've heard good things of. But they'll never serve my area, which is a problem.
Oh, that's ripe.. I don't know where you live, but where I do, I have access to one.. maybe two ISPs. However, as I understand it, you wouldn't be able to do that because ISPs would share a blacklist of violators, thus reducing the ability to switch to another provider.
No sig for you! Come back one year!
That's right. Our legislators are all about preserving and honoring the founding documents, the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.
Unless money is involved, and then it's "because I said so".
Do you know that the big brains at American Legislative Exchange Council have put forth sample legislation that would make it illegal to promote a boycott of any business? To create new protections for corporations in regard to negative speech? In effect extending the libel laws to protect corporations, who are in their eyes "super-people" and thus must be protected from anyone saying, "Hell, AT&T is screwing their customers. Don't use AT&T."
They say it's only "brainstorming", the same way it was "brainstorming" to pass laws preventing students from voting in states where they go to university. Oh, that reminds me: Wisconsin republicans have passed a bill saying a photo ID from a state-run university is not sufficient photo identification to vote, and they've moved all of the early voting sites, which by law are required to be wherever there is dense population, as far away from college campuses as possible. They've also closed almost all of the offices where it's possible to get a stateID in poor or working class neighborhoods and moved them to the suburbs, safely away from any public transportation.
Corporations want to make it illegal for you not to buy their stuff whether or not you happen to want it. And they want to make it illegal to complain and impossible to vote pro-corporate politicians out of office. Corporate super-PAC money is dwarfing any money being spent by actual campaigns this year. It's like 15 to 1 already and we're barely into the real political advertising season. We are so fucked.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Look it up.
Fascist = when a Government and Corporations become "Friends With Benefits"
In such a situation, the people can only watch with disgust.
Just replace the goo with Money and Power and you get the picture.
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
You know why that is? Because people like accept what happens and turn around to say "Let's be realistic, here. This is America. The telcos can do whatever the hell they want and get away with it."
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
The MAFIAA cannot be defeated by any recourse to law or government regulation, they have long since purchased the souls of polititians, judges and lawyers. Indeed it now seems that the media industries are becoming a desirable "retirement gig" for polititians now that banking has become discredited.
Understand that the MAFIAA exist to only one end, money and lots of it. They care nothing for the Constitution or the Law. They have no ideological or dogmatic agenda. They care only about money and to achieve it they have declared war on the people.
However they may have made a serious mistake in their choice of battlefield, they have chosen politics and law, seeking to criminalise their customers and compel them to do business on the industry's terms by force (the only way that any law is ultimately enforced).
In doing so they have forgotten that there are more powerful weapons and the most powerful weapon of all in any market is DEMAND. Simple ecconomics (and for a quick refresher in market ecconomics, go and watch a couple of Ebay listings) dictates that when there is no demand for a product or service its value tends to zero and continued supply of a costly but worthless product becomes a fast route to bankruptcy.
It is not possible to win a war such as this by engaging a multitude of enemies simultaneously better to engage them one at a time and ensure total destruction before moving on to the next.
Pick one enemy and do NOTHING!
My strategic analysis is that the film industry is the weakest and least resilient enemy of the people.
Not any random nothing, but a carefully considered and ruthlessly applied set of specific nothings:
1. Spend NOTHING at the box office.
2. Spend NOTHING on DVD and BLURAY.
3. Spend NOTHING on PPV or cable movie chanels.
4. Spend NOTHING on streaming movies.
5. Spend NOTHING on movie merchandise.
6. DO NOT DOWNLOAD - NOT EVEN IF IT IS FREE
7. Do not watch films on TV (even if on a free to air non subscription chanel) - this cuts off advertising revenue.
8. Save more money by cancelling chanels from your pay TV package (you know - the ones owned by the big studios).
9. For added spite, click on their paid advertising links on every website you visit and buy NOTHING at the other end.
That should eliminate 90% of their revenue while at the same time jacking up their advertising costs, however I have not done a detailed analysis - there are probably a few other revenue streams that could be cut in a similar way.
How long?
Depends how many of their target audience were to join in, spreading the word of "DO NOTHING" is a better way to directly crush the promoters of unconstitutional anti-internet law and punish those that have taken their money.
They will be hurting in 30-60 days.
They will be filing for Chapter 11 protection in under 90-180 days (how many $200m total losses can they stand?)
Total bankruptcy will be achieved for the studios, and all major film industry suppliers in 12 to 18 months.
The industry has only one thing of value - it's intellectual property (copyrights) by refusing to pay for it we render it worthless, the liquidators will not even be able to cover their own fees in an auction, particularly if other publishing type companies (think music and books publishers) are warned that ownership of film IP makes them a target.
The various Occupy movements and DDOSing/Hacktivism have achieved nothing except to get people peppersprayed and beaten and arrested - effect on the 1%? Not much!
The example of the Occupy movements is the reason for point 6 - if you download unlicensed copies of films, they will send their lawyers after you and once they start to get desperate they will pay their political friends to order the police to kick down your door - remember kids "downloading is theft" says so at the start of every DVD I own.
To remain safe, obey the law and simply mind your own business while at the same time keeping your dollars in your own pocket for
Yes, a corporate product. How do you think it got passed? The Health Care Reform Act was the biggest giveaway to insurance companies, drug companies, health care conglomerates, right on down the line. It was the only way anything was ever going to change in the US health care system. Medicare Part D was just a dress rehearsal.
Nothing gets done in Washington that doesn't put cash directly into the pockets of corporations.
That was my goddamn point, you imbecile! And it was just a little taste compared to the siphon of money that's going to go into the coffers of the biggest corporations if the corporate takeover specialist gets to be president. Venture capital, my ass. I'll venture that a hell of a lot of capital that people have in their houses and bank accounts and sweat equity is going to flow straight to people just like would-be president Mitt. People with a sense of entitlement that would have made King Louis the XIV jealous. Whatever crumbs were left on the table after the mortgage/CDO scandal are going to be hoovered up. They're going to make sure that nobody in the bottom 99% is going to make a peep for the next three generations. They want you dumb working fucks to put your nose to the grindstone and keep your mouths shut just like their worker template: the Chinese factory worker. Glad to have a job. Won't make trouble or ask for bathroom breaks. Spends everything he gets at the company store. Born in debt, lives in debt, dies in debt. No chance to move up, no chance to make waves. Jesus Christ, it's like these bonehead ACs don't even read the comments before they start to reply.
Back in the 50's, 60's 70's, the middle class was starting to really get a little political power. They had so much money in their little houses and their pensions and their savings accounts that it drove the economic elite crazy. Women with jobs. Blacks with jobs. They could not stand to see middle class workers, women, minorities, start to act like they owned something. Like they were something. They had to put them in their place and slap them down so hard that there would never be the danger of those little people thinking they had a voice again. Cue Ronald Reagan.
And here we are.
You are welcome on my lawn.
And yet we continuously argue over the definition of fascism online. 9/10 people will argue with your very correct definition as people imagine a distinction between "police state" and "fascism" and "corporatocracy" which does not exist.
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