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ISP 'Six Strikes' Plan Delayed

Posted by Soulskill on from the do-you-even-know-how-baseball-works dept.

MrSeb sends this excerpt from DailyDot: "Shortly, a new system in the U.S. will allow your ISP to give you gradually sterner warnings and possible punishment if you download copyrighted material. The Copyright Alerts System (CAS) — more commonly known as the 'six strikes' policy, after the number of warnings users receive — is coming. Soon. Any minute now. Really. But it's not here yet, even though several news outlets — including CNN — said the system would go online yesterday, Thursday. Speaking to the Daily Dot, a press contact for the six strikes system says: 'We do not intend to launch until we are confident that the program is consumer friendly. We expect our implementation to begin later this year, with each of the ISPs launching at potentially overlapping but different times.' ... The six strikes system is officially helmed by an industry coalition called the Center for Copyright Information (CCI), which was created by the MPAA and RIAA. It counts the U.S.'s five top ISPs under its umbrella: AT&T, Cablevision, Comcast, Time Warner Cable, and Verizon."

9 of 157 comments (clear)

  1. Make up your damn mind! by geminidomino · · Score: 5, Insightful

    the 'six strikes' policy, after the number of warnings users receive â" is coming.

    We do not intend to launch until we are confident that the program is consumer friendly.

    Either you're going to eventually launch it, or not. It will never be 'consumer friendly' since it's a blatantly anti-consumer move intended to whore out to an unrepentantly anti-consumer organization.

    1. Re:Make up your damn mind! by betterunixthanunix · · Score: 5, Insightful

      "Consumer friendly" in this case means, "Making sure people remain friendly." The last thing anyone wants is for consumers to realize they are being exploited.

      --
      Palm trees and 8
  2. Too Late by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Already switched to a local ISP -- the moment people realize some have it and others don't they will flock to non implementing parties. It's only those without a choice getting screwed.

    1. Re:Too Late by crazyjj · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Already switched to a local ISP

      That's great if you're one of the rare few who have that option for broadband. I have exactly two options for broadband in my community: a big telco and a big cableco (both of whom will certainly be participating in any MPAA/RIAA scheme). If you count 3G as broadband, you could add a couple of more options to that--but with such small bandwidth caps on those, no one is going to be using them for much pirating anyway.

      --
      What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
    2. Re:Too Late by 0racle · · Score: 3, Insightful

      You are giving the general population far too much credit. They won't care.

      --
      "I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
  3. Hollywood accounting is stealing by Dan667 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It is a much much bigger problem and steals directly from Artists and Musicians as well as US Taxpayers. When does it get some attention?

  4. Bluffing by pwizard2 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I wonder how much of this is bluffing. There's no way they can watch everyone all the time. Even if they could, it would cost too much to do it indefinitely and if it cuts into profits too much (especially for another company that is giving little or nothing to them) I'm guessing the ISPS will only make a half-assed attempt to carry this out.

    Are they seriously going to monitor every single FTP transaction or every Torrent swarm that passes through their infrastructure? Many people just go in, leech, and get out of the swarm as soon as they have all the pieces which leaves only a small window of time to catch them.

    --
    "It is a denial of justice not to stretch out a helping hand to the fallen; that is the common right of humanity."
  5. How will this work? by oxdas · · Score: 3, Insightful

    How can any ISP determine whether or not I have received the rights to any given copyrighted item? What if the items I am downloading are fair use productions using copyrighted material? Nobody really knows what fair use is and is not (it is very subjective), how can you write an algorithm to detect it? I just don't understand how this is technologically possible.

    Courts have already ruled that you can sue for DMCA requests that don't consider fair use. It doesn't seem a stretch to apply that to "strikes" as well (and strikes are probably easier to demonstrate harm). The ISP's are going to have to tread very carefully to avoid class action lawsuits.

  6. Yikes! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    will allow your ISP to give you gradually sterner warnings and possible punishment if you download copyrighted material

    Yikes, that's awful.

    Or maybe the submitter meant to say "copyright-infringing material".

    GPL-licensed material is copyrighted. In fact, copyright is the mechanism used to enforce the provisions of the GPL license.