Slashdot Mirror


ISP 'Six Strikes' Plan Delayed

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."

22 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. Re:Make up your damn mind! by Zmobie · · Score: 4, Informative

      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.

      Just wait until they've done this to about two dozen decent programmers... they'll invent some new crypto protocol that makes bittorrent look like the redheaded stepchild of piracy... "You can't stop the signal, Mel." -- Mr. Universe

      Already been done. It is called BTGuard and you can get it plugged into most torrent trackers for a small monthly fee. Lifehacker ran an article about it not long ago.

      http://lifehacker.com/5863380/how-to-completely-anonymize-your-bittorrent-traffic-with-btguard

      http://btguard.com/

      Also, as outlined in the lifehacker article there are other solutions to mask the traffic from an ISP and there is no way in hell they can block some of them because they have much broader uses than just hiding your torrent tracking traffic. VPNs are way too widely used by so many businesses for telecommutes and other such, so it will ALWAYS be an option. And since (at least I think) it would be illegal wiretapping for them to capture your packets and decrypt them, there is not a damn thing they can do about it.

  2. CCI by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    It's good to know that this will be handled by an impartial organization...

  3. I do not think that word means what you think... by Taibhsear · · Score: 4, Informative

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

    It is, inherently, not consumer friendly.

  4. Well, you know what I think? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    Comment has been edited to fit with Comcast's Anonymous-Posting Policy found in our ToS.

    Thank you for using Comcast, anonymous poster!

  5. 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?

  6. Just as long as they don't monitor by Overzeetop · · Score: 3, Interesting

    usenet. Keep ports 119 and 563 out of their meddling hands and I'll remain a happy camper.

    --
    Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
  7. Violates the Data Treaties with Canada and the EU by WillAffleckUW · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Too bad this violates the Data Treaties that the US signed with both the EU and Canada over Data Privacy and Copyright.

    Canadian citizens have a stronger right to use material, as was ruled yesterday, and since the US Senate affirmed both International Treaties, it is bound to respect their rights, as treaties override any national laws or actions, as our US Constitution specifies.

    But, hey, nice fake out, greed heads.

    --
    -- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
  8. 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?
  9. Respect for Privacy: The new ISP differentiator by jcadam · · Score: 3, Informative

    Oh cool, I was beginning to view internet access as a commodity, with no real difference between ISPs... Now I have something to use as a discriminator when selecting a new provider.

    So.... AT&T, Cablevision, Comcast, Time Warner Cable, and Verizon just managed to remove themselves from ever being considered by me again (and no, I don't ever knowingly download copyrighted material without paying for it).

    Something tells me the mom&pop ISP down the road doesn't have the time/staff/inclination to bother with this kind of crap.

    --
    P.S.: Internet business idea #3,633,235: Privacy-focused ISP.

  10. Re:No COX? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    Cox doesn't fuck around. I have their 50 Mbps package for $100 a month. I don't have cable. I don't get OTA broadcasts, because I've not bought an antenna. I do download about 2 TB of data a month between Netflix, Pandora, and others. I've never had a word said to me about it. They even give me additional bandwidth for the first few megabytes of a transfer when network congestion allows. They call this Superboost, I think. Works well when downloading a bunch of very small files that will be decoded and combined into a bunch of bigger files. They don't seem to care that their are effectively Superboosting the entire multi-gigabyte download.

  11. Re:No COX? by rickb928 · · Score: 3, Informative

    Cox has had a 3 strikes policy regarding DCMA notices since 2008. Enforcement has been spotty, but they treat it as a TOC violation.

    Wanna try it out and see if they still enforce it?

    --
    deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
  12. Re:Too Late by lightknight · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Which reminds me. Has anyone else noticed the price for fiber optic cables (outdoor) are extremely low these days? They can carry a signal for a mile without a repeater.

    Over the hill, and through the woods...

    --
    I am John Hurt.
  13. Sue the ISPs by DL117 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I'm not a lawyer, however, I believe this could a breach of contract law. If the ISPs are making an agreement with third parties for conditions to terminate an agreement with their users, that could be considered acting in bad faith towards the consumers.

  14. And how are these 'warnings' sent? by tekrat · · Score: 5, Interesting

    If I know any of those major ISPs, they'll be emailing you at the @comcast or @verizon email address that they assume you're monitoring, because they gave you that email address when they became your ISP.

    They aren't going to assume that you've been using the same email address for decades, long before you signed up for their broadband, and that's the email address you monitor.

    I can see it now, they shut you off claiming you haven't responded to any of their emails -- meanwhile you're unaware that a mailbox you've never checked in your life is where those emails are....

    I very likely have a Verizon mailbox, but damn if I know what it is. Or how to access it. My email comes to me through a mom&pop ISP where I have my webserver, not through my broadband provider.

    And I'm sure I'm not alone in this -- how many people have a Yahoo, Hotmail or Gmail account as their primary email address?

    --
    If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
    1. Re:And how are these 'warnings' sent? by Comen · · Score: 3, Informative

      From this link http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/threatlevel/2011/07/ispplan.pdf

      Subsequent alerts may include notifications in the form of pop-ups or redirection
      to a special page displaying the alert. Failure to respond to these alerts will lead
      to additional steps designed to ensure that the account comes into compliance.
      These steps, referred to as “Mitigation Measures,” might include, for example:
      temporary reductions of Internet speeds, redirection to a landing page until the
      subscriber contacts the ISP to discuss the matter or reviews and responds to some
      educational information about copyright, or other measures that the ISP may
      deem necessary to help resolve the matter. These steps will only be taken after
      multiple alerts and a failure by the subscriber to respond. This system consists of
      at least five alerts.

  15. 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."
  16. Re:No COX? by spire3661 · · Score: 4, Informative

    Officially, your account is capped at 300 GB/mo. I have the 25 Mbps Cox package and they 'cap' me at 250 GB, although i make sure i never hit that high. They now show your usage on their website if you care to look. Internet Usage i think its called. Somehow i doubt you are pulling 2 TB/mo without hearing anything from Cox.

    --
    Good-bye
  17. 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."
  18. 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.

  19. Re:Violates the Data Treaties with Canada and the by oxdas · · Score: 4, Interesting

    A woman sued Universal for issuing a DMCA takedown request to Youtube for a video of her baby dancing to Prince (see, Lenz v Universal). The EFF took on the case and she has won nearly every argument so far (The case started in 2007 and has a summary judgment hearing scheduled for October 2012). So, yes, I think someone will sue. The bigger question is could it be turned into a class action suit. If they win a test case, then lawyers will be salivating at the deep pockets involved.