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How Verizon's 'Six Strikes' Plan Works
An anonymous reader writes "With the 'six-strikes' anti-piracy plan set to begin in the U.S. soon, TorrentFreak has gotten its hands on a document showing how Verizon in particular will be dealing with copyright-infringing users. For your first and second strike, Verizon will email you and leave you a voicemail informing you that your account is involved in copyright infringement. For your third and fourth strikes, the ISP will automatically redirect your browser to a page that requires you to acknowledge receiving the alerts. They'll also play a video about the dangers of infringement. For your fifth and sixth strikes, they give you three options: massively throttle your connection for a few days, wait two weeks and then throttle your connection, or file an appeal with an arbitration service for $35. TorrentFreak points out that the MPAA and RIAA can obtain the connection information of repeat infringers, with which they can then take legal action."
If everyone runs their WIFI AP's open.
Aren't there only 3 strikes in baseball?
Can I place copyright infringements with Verizon to get people blocked? We all know that the MPAA and RIAA use their internet connections for infringement, so it should be no problem for us to throttle their access.
Somehow I bet that only a select anointed few will be allowed to make these evidence-free complaints against the rest of us.
So, basically, Verizon is saying if some kids go there and hack my wireless router, they'll shut me down forever?
Seriously?
Good thing I encrypted it ... but most people don't know how to do that.
Is a strike an accusation of copyright infringement? Or does it need to be proven?
They should be reporting you to the police at the first notice of copyright infringement.
why you would use torrent freak when there is Amazon, Netflix, Youtube, Hulu, and dozens of other ways to get video online.
unless you are trying to find some hard to find video -- (like Aleksandr Ptushko's 1972 Russian fantasy film, Ruslan and Ludmila?.. oh wait, thats on fucking youtube for free) -- what is the point of "avoiding paying for" transformers 3 or harry potter? I mean can you not afford the massive 4 dollar price or whatever that they charge you to watch this stuff online? Is 5 bucks going to break you?
I wonder what they are getting out of this deal???
Karma: Bad
As a longtime Verizon customer I can see a problem here. Verizon is not known for its customer service - I think they have people in India reading scripts. So if you collect strike two or four, and want to dispute it or get an explanation of what it's about, you're probably out of luck. Strike four (or maybe strike two?) means it's time to find a new ISP because if you stay with Verizon you're going down.
Deep packet inspection, volume of data, targets and returned IP addresses... will a securely tunneled and encrypted connection to a proxy service thwart this monitoring - or will they simply use such as indirect evidence of torrenting, since the standards of such evidence are set by the MPAA/RIAA?
As for commercial proxies - how probable is it that such services are more-or-less instantly compromised - as in a visit from FBI agents conscripted to work for movie companies ? Whom do you trust to manage connections?
How does one pay for such connections, if the act of using a credit card automatically locks down your identity? Does the use of pre-paid money cards such as Vanilla work (if you buy them from someone who doesn't care much about taking your real name down)? I understand that many say they do not, but other posters have mentioned that one merely has to provide Vanilla a zip code on the registration page to make them usable to pay online services.
I'd do all the above just to watch Netflix. I'm that much of a bastard. We managed to use the postal system and phones for over a hundred years without a spy system reading our every word and listening to every call, and I don't see why we need to start now. Especially now that ATT is about to shut off the old phone system and go completely IP, which means the old laws mean nothing.
And for the generation who never knew privacy, I preemptively say: yes, it matters. It is sad you may never care or even understand why it does. Your are happy goldfish, exhibits in a zoo. Think about who is outside your bowl, watching. You've spent your lives being told to be afraid of strange adults and white vans - yet you let actual, secret versions of those kinds of people follow your every move and listen to your lives? Think about it. The creeps you've been told to fear your entire lives aren't really real, for the most part. The creeps who are locking down human existence, building the last and only secret police the world will ever need - they are real and they are here and you need to fight them.
Little weasels...
I noticed that there is no mention of a complete disconnection--leaving the door open for continued billing even though you have an almost useless connection for two weeks. Me thinks Verizon is afraid they will start losing customers permanently if they disconnect them, even for a short time. There is no discussion of a 7th strike, or an 8th...what happens then? You get another two weeks of shit connection. Will they charge you less? Doubtful.
Make their fears a reality.
The solution is to drop them the moment they throttle you...and never come back...and NEVER COME BACK. Trust me--when they start seeing ANY loss of revenue, they will rethink this. Verizon is obligated, by law, to act in the best interest of their shareholders--how long do you think shareholders will put up with lost revenue?
Wow. And to think we still have people that don't think Net Neutrality legislation is necessary. When carriers link up with trade industry groups to unilaterally dictate what you can and can't send over public networks, we have a problem. If you don't think this (and systems like it) will be be abused to stifle competition and censor speech.. Well, let's just say I have a bridge to sell you.
Libertarians/shills about post some angry screen about the govt picking winners:
Stop. Just stop. The adults are talking now.
Which generation would that be, exacty?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Does most of YouTube qualify?
I like what you have to say. I'm a male.
wait until the ISPs that are also content owners or carriers get in on this (ie. comcast and AT&T)
.iso s and other homegrown or otherwise free legitimate content and then homogenous corporate media will have won....
there won't be a Chinese wall in the world big enough to keep the isp departments from ratting you out to their big content departments and to the MAFIAA
and they will probably use this to crack down on Linux
-I'm just sayin'
Just more evidence that these regional monopolies could use a dose of heavy regulation.
Internet, like water or electricity, should be a utility, and not subject to arbitrary and reckless slowdowns or shutdowns to meet the concerns of an unrelated third party. We'd look at it as reckless and stupid if they could cut off the electricity to a house for watching pirated movies, right? (Yes, yes, Internet's not -quite- as important as electricity, except perhaps when it's necessary for work, banking, school, tax filing, etc.)
Hopefully people are looking for an alternative to their ISP on the very first "strike", and loudly complaining if there isn't one. Unless they're paying the bill there's no reason for copyright interests to have any say whatsover in how ISP service is delivered. Seriously, these ISPs need to remember who their customers are.
Is there anything in there saying you will be told exactly what caused their system to flag your account? I mean in detal such as what a firewall log might show, not some general "infringing activity" at such and such a time crap.
If, say, six Verizon employees cut-and-paste web images into corporate PowerPoints, will Verizon go by the book and shut itself down?
After few notices they will make sure that dl'ers are not found dl'ing any illegal stuff. For example by using vpn's.
The current one. And the next one.
Schools are basically jails, and train kids to accept prison conditions - look at it objectively. Tracking devices in the phones. Recorded calls, recorded messages, emails. Soon, tracking built into the computers in cars, unkillable. Ebooks recorded, times, dates. Anything that flows in packets, recorded. Your movements, recorded, even if you ditch a phone and a car, 'cause cameras will watch you - and listen, too. The cameras and trackers and mics are shrinking, and with zero societal will to stop it, will be everywhere.
Yes, this generation. It starts in the schools, the acceptance of strip searches, phone tracking, drug searches, notebooks with cameras that watch the student... come on, the new crop of adults have been in jail since they were born, figuratively, and have been trained to accept it.
The next generation? Just keep exponentially increasing the surveillance, and the acceptance. Police states are not, historically speaking, unwelcome. People trade freedom for safety all the time, always have, if they are scared properly. The few who become bullied and targeted by the people behind the cameras and trackers are not interesting to people. "They" are by definition criminals, anyway.
I ain't afraid of evil bastards half as much as I am afraid of a population that doesn't understand what freedom actually means, and what they give up to be "safe". They has been zero effective backpush against this era, and it will get worse.
How to stop piracy: 1 Create great stuff 2 Make it easy to buy 3 Same day worldwide release 4 Fair price 5 Works on any device Either do that or go after your customers and threaten them with a lawsuit. See how much they like being your customers after that.
Just run some blocklist software and keep yourself out of their radar.
I have a "One Strike" plan. If an ISP threatens to interfere with my use of the Internet without illegal activity on my part having been proven under due process, then I will never, ever do business with them.
The list of corporations to whom I pay no mind continues to grow, apace.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Just fuck them. The universe doesn't and shouldn't fucking revolve around them.
... if you can't do the time. Don't do it!
the world is rofl at you.
This does mean they're giving up their common carrer status and are now legally liable for any criminal activities their network is used for, right? Right?
Sunwalker Dezco for Warchief in 2016
Verizon are combining baseball with homosexuals in the military. Operation Fudgeball, you could call it.
Do they even make DVDs of talk shows like Real Time with Bill Maher?
If it's your local team, then why aren't the games available over rabbit ears?
I wish my dialup was 256kbps
for my torrents and i already use encyrption on my usenet. BTGuard is quite slow, but I'm apparently safe. Thinking of maybe going VPN instead of BTGuard, but I need to find one that is fast, and doesn't keep records.
So I'm paying an extra $6 a month to be safe, seems fine to me.
Be seeing you...
Worse yet. If you decide to take legal action against the ISP for unfairly throttling your connection down the evidence will come from them, their registers, over which they have complete control and can easily tamper with. So basically you can't win.
True, for non-interactive video, the obstacles to "works on any device" are business rather than technical in nature. But how is it possible to make and publish a video game that "works on any device"? How would a single video game, for example, work on a Windows Phone 7 phone, a Chromebook, and a PlayStation 3?
If an ISP threatens to interfere with my use of the Internet without illegal activity on my part having been proven under due process, then I will never, ever do business with them.
Once both the cable company and the phone company have interfered, enjoy your dial-up.
I don't know much about the Canadian television market other than that each station has a Canadian content quota. But in the United States, the big three professional sports (baseball, basketball, and American football) are routinely shown on free television. Hockey is often relegated to cable, but that's because hockey is in fourth place in the United States. Is hockey also in fourth place in Canada?
They don't broadcast it locally unless the game is sold out.
The NFL has the same policy, but very rarely does a game fail to sell out. Half of the NFL has consistently sold out for over the past decade, and only five teams have failed to sell out even once in the past two NFL seasons.
It's a death rattle. This is the bed you made for yourselves.
Will watching the video they supply for srikes 3 and 4 constitute strikes? Will watching the video require one to download and install Flash?
Is this perhaps a 2 strike tax on people with Flash installed?
The worst part about this is that they will spy your internet usage to find out about it.
Look. It's simple. Stop talking all sorts of hype and bullshit and then dumping the MPAA/RIAA a shit load of money to go see Hobbit in the theater and buy your fifth iteration of special boxed blu-ray LOTR movies. I got tired of their shit in the 90s and have not gone to see a movie or bought a CD since X-Files in 1998. You're not fucking helpless. It's just fucking movies and there are other (even legal) ways to still be entirely entertained. Your life won't end because you didn't see Looper the month it came out.
Stop willfully being someone's bitch while whining about being their bitch.
First, their profit is maybe 10% of their expenses. Because one torrent is the size of 4,000 web pages, torrents etc. make up maybe 10%-15% of their bandwidth and therefore total expenses. (About the same dollar amount as their profit.) So eliminating illegal use of their network would roughly double their profit.
Secondly, when content creators repeatedly notify the ISP that a particular customer is using their network for digital theft over and over again, the ISP is complicit in the unlawful activity if they continue to allow their network to be misused. Imagine if a neighbor loaned a crowbar to a crook to use to break into your house. They KNEW the crowbar was being used to break into houses and they KEPT letting the crook use it to break into your house. Wouldn't you want that guy held responsible for helping the crook break into your house? That's the ISPs - once they know you're using their service for unlawful taking of my property, they had better do SOMETHING about it. Otherwise, I'm coming after THEM for helping to take food from my baby's mouth.
Jails for some, yes - but they were designed to prepare people for working in factories.
But factory work isn't that much in demand any more - creative work is.
Say I have evidence that someone on a Verizon connection is violating my copyright, can I send a notice to Verizon and cause that person to have a "strike" added or do I need to be a big powerful media company to do that?
i really wish people would just get on with it and do the open mesh thing already. this is retarded.
If i have to move to Timbuktu to do it.
I am going to be held responsible for what others do on my network but they are not held responsible for what others do on theirs.
I can no longer in good conscience give them my money.
A big part of the loss of privacy you cite centers on cellphone/mobile usage. That isn't trading freedom for safety. Its trading freedom for convenience. There is a big difference.
The only connected mobile device I carry is a disposable Tracphone. I "hook in" when I like using my Galaxy Tab or iPod Touch over wifi, and thus seldom feel disconnected.
People for the most part don't need to be immediately reachable 24/7 and people will figure that out if/when it becomes important to them.
How do they know what you are downloading is is pirated? I agree that people should buy their media.
The secret to a police state is keeping it out of the public eye. If you make it unpleasant for them they will go around you. End to end peer encryption sounds like a viable solution. And when they block that then we move to spread spectrum frequency hopping radio internet. They are better off monitoring us than blocking us.
Really guys? Do we REALLY need weekly posts about the RIAA/MPAA and all other censors and inquisitors?
Seriously?
If you didn't know, there have been cryptographically strong and extremely resistant networks in operation for years.
You can publish and consume all you want with them. No one can find you.
All you have to do in return is run a node giving back as much bandwidth as you consume, multiplied by the network hop count.
http://i2p2.de/
http://torproject.org/
http://code.google.com/p/phantom/
There are more, just look around.
Go ahead and try that in court. The judge is going to scratch his head and not understand what you're talking about and find you guilty.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
How does this make the US safer from Terrorists?
Digital theft? What is that?
That's when I work 60 hours a week to make cool stuff for you, then you, being a complete scumball, steal it rather than paying the damn $3. So I go out of business and have to go work for Homeland Security. You're a pitiful excuse for a human being and THAT is why we can't have nice things.
Your delusional excuses make about as much sense as NAMBLA's and deep down you know that. You just don't want to admit to yourself what a steaming pile of dogshit you are, thief.
Another way to solve the problem - stop being a scum sucking thief.
I worked 60 hours a week to make cool stuff for you, then a bunch of assholes, being complete scumballs, stole it rather than paying the damn $3. So I went out of business and had to go do work for Homeland Security. They're a pitiful excuse for human beings and THAT is why we can't have nice things. Their delusional excuses make about as much sense as NAMBLA's and deep down they know that. They just don't want to admit to themselves what a steaming pile of dogshit they are, thieves.
EVERYONE on Verizon start pirating. Six strikes later, Verizon has no customers left. Next...
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
Why are the ISP's being so accommodating of everything the MPAA/RIAA want? Given safe-harbor rules, it's not like there is any legal reason they have to do this is there?
Go on and live in your paranoid prison school world where the teachers are out to eat the demons in your teeth, the rest of us will worry about actual problems, like global climate change, net neutrality, and the Breaking Bad finale.
Will it only apply to torrent users, or will they be going after usenet users, too?
I already paid for this content, I pay for Netflix, I pay for Verizon Fios Cable and Internet, I pay for HBO, Showtime, I pay for all of that content to be sent to me. I just want to watch it on my schedule. Explain to me why that should cost an extra five dollars per movie or show when I'm already paying over two hundred. I know the question wasn't directed at me, but I'm in the same boat as a lot of people, I'm paying for all of the content and I'm even using their distribution methods when possible, but frankly I get better quality consistently than streaming provides by downloading episodes and movies instead of streaming. So no, it isn't about being entitled to anything, it's about getting what I'm already paying an obscene amount of money for.
Creative work is not in demand. Unless you mean what business drones consider "creative".
Because
a) not every piece of video is on those services. Often, stuff just isn't for sale by the "distributor" since they can't make enough money by selling it. Disney Vault?
b) not everyone can order those. True, in the USA you probably could, but there are more countries on the planet and a lot of what you name just isn't available to the rest of the world and even if the services are, the content often isn't.
c) There's more on BitTorrent than just video's you can watch on a streaming service. There are plenty of books and music albums you just can't buy anywhere any more, to name some examples.
d) Stuff your government or another government outlaws. WikiLeaks publications are quite a good example why using BitTorrent in the USA (or anywhere) should not be forbidden.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
If I'm going to be sodomized by Verizon no matter what I do, at least it'll be over quick! ..wait. "strikes" not "strokes"??
My bad.
It would not surprise me if multiple providers were going to make similar announcements. If Comcast does this, I think a valid tactic against them would be filing antitrust complaints with the FTC because Comcast owns Universal Studios, and would then be an owner of a member of the MPAA.
Just curious what time frame do you have to get six strikes in? Infinity? What if a person gets two strikes right away then nothing happens for a year? Then they get three, then a year later they get four? Also will they reduce their fees for the time they throttle you? I'm sure several State Attorney Generals would not particularly like that. BTW one way of protesting the policy is after the third or four strike, simply call them up and say "I didn't realize that downloading stuff was bad. Now that I do I won't do it anymore. Oh and since I won't be downloading, can you reduce my account to the slowest one you have?" Before any one assails me with complaints about how they are now working for Homeland Security because no one would pay for the workproduct of their 60 hour weeks, I would like to point out that I generally do not believe in downloading stuff that I do not have permission to download from the copyright holder. I also am a realist and recognize that it is almost impossible to stop people from copy and redistributing a bunch of electonic ones and zeros, and I object to schemes which cannot work while making life more inconvenient for me.
Only thing I use Verizon for is my MiFi and I don't do anything infringing on it (and it is password protected). But at home on Comcast I've had AirVPN for months now.
But I'll still be able to buy an AR15, right?
The entertainment industry bought this law specifically to make it guilt by accusation. No trial, no rights. It's an attempt to build the digital middle ages where there are the privileged few and the unwashed masses who must both serve and pay.
So what happened to fair use? If I want to rip all my dvds and blurays and store them on a box on my network so I can stream them from anything on my network....WHY, WHY, WHY is shit like Cinavia allowed? I have a Samsung Bluray player hooked to a flatscreen for this very purpose and it has fucking Cinavia on it! It doesn't even advertise it ANYWHERE like on the box! HOW the fuck is that legal????
If they are going to play dirty, they best not expect their customers(aka EMPLOYERS) to play fair. There is no legal ground here and yet they still stand....
"I worked 60 hours a week to make cool stuff for you..."
Oh, wow. How's it I didn't even notice?
C'mon. Keep your cool stuff all to yourself. I don't know what it is nor do I want to.
And for goodness sake can someone please just kill 3D already.
Close one eye. Problem solved.
1. Advertise top speeds and possibly (formerly?) even unlimited bandwidth
2. Slap a presumption of guilt on those who actually use what they paid for
3. Demand a ransom from anyone who cares to clear their names lest they be ratted out to the MAFIAA (and lose the access promised for their fees)
4. Profit?! (At least because networks will never need to be built out again, at forced ever-declining usage...)
Different in which way exactly from a racket scheme?
Some people still don't get it. Many wont. Remember when an album had to be good for people to buy it? Then they started putting crap out with only one to three good songs on each album and still charged up to $26 bucks for their crap! Well we fixed that with file-sharing. Recently there was another problem us computer guise were facing having to do with money. And we are working on that one with BTCs.
and yet the idiots on Slashdot will talk about anything BUT the Jews who cause all this in the first place. The Jews who never do manual labour, and instead print money from nothing and then expect us, their 'cattle', to work for the rest of our lives to keep THEM from doing manual work. How kind of them.
Who runs the Federal Reserve, and almost all the banks? Who tells Congress what to do? Which country tells the United States what to do? Why, it's 'precious' Israel, isn't it.
The JEWS are the problem.
www.jewishproblem.com
This is all very well and good, but you still didn't NAME THE JEW. The JEW is responsible for all of this. Who is it who lives among us, uses us as their slaves, and is desperate to stay hidden, in case we find out who is responsible for our slavery? The eternal JEW.
www.jewishproblem.com
If it cant technically work on a device I don't see anyone pirating it to play it on said device as it doesn't work.
That depends on what advances in emulation and high-level emulation happen between the release of the game for one device and five or ten years later when the platform is emulated. Nintendo 64 games were not playable on a PC until the release of UltraHLE.
The problem is you are trying to limit the distribution of knowledge. It is the 21st century, and information is now free
No, people who create knowledge and entertainment are trying to create it and maximize distribution. Pirates limit it, by not doing their part. To seek out great talent, hire the best sound engineers, produce a hit song, and popularize it so you know about it costs about $3 million. Your share of that cost as a listener is $1. One measly dollar. By refusing to pay your $1 share, it's you breaking the system and reducing production.
I spent $80,000 creating some cool software. At least 34,000 people downloaded it. I wanted more people to download it, I want to increase distribution, not limit it. Problem is, exactly ONE person paid their share of the cost, $5. Software is NOT free in the 21st century, it cost me $80,000 to produce. Since you guys refuse to pay your $5 share of the cost, I can't create cool new software anymore. Now I have to create stuff for Homeland Security instead in order to eat. I'm just one more programmer no longer making cool shit for you because you won't do your part, pay the $1 or $5 or whatever your share is. Software isn't free, and I can't pay the $80,000 to make you more, so no new software for you leaches. Now DHS gets the software I write.
Ps - I'm also a Linux kernel contributor, and an Apache contributor. The private sector and OSS lost a pretty decent programer by refusing to pay the $3 and $5 share so I wouldn't have had to go work for the government.
Feels a bit like corporations doing end runs around some laws in order to take advantage of other laws...
prq has their best quarter in history!
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
I spent $80,000 creating some cool software.
This isn't that file renaming program, is it?
There is a conflict of interest in mode of operation of ISPs -- they owe their successful business and soaring subscription rates to nothing more but the fact that users use their service to.... PIRATE ! Yes, everyone knows that.
Yes, the emperor has no clothes.
" To seek out great talent, hire the best sound engineers, produce a hit song, and popularize it so you know about it costs about $3 million"
I know many quality bands that record great albums for $25, a case of beer and a carton of smokes.
I don't care how much Justin Beaver or Britney Speared pays her sound guys to make her voice sound good.
It does NOT cost $3 mill to make any album most of us want to listen too.
If no one wants to listen to the content then it wouldn't be pirated. The disconnect occurs when people want to listen to the content, but doesn't want to pay the for the real and actual costs of production
How much did the entertainment industry bribe the major ISPs to implement this?
I charge forward recklessly, leaving chaos in my wake.
Maybe if there was a free market in telecommunications in the united states, this might be defensible.
But it's not, as this Diane Rehm show from Thursday discusses:
The U.S. has long been a world leader in technology innovation. Finding ways to profit from the Internet has been no exception. Think Amazon, Facebook and Google. But the next Google will not come from the U.S. Or so argues the author of a new book on the communications industry. She says we've allowed a handful of cable companies to become monopolies that stifle competition and innovation. Their monopoly status is also why Americans pay more money for worse Internet service than consumers in most other developed nations. Diane speaks with a communications policy expert about who controls Americansâ(TM) access to the Internet and why.
it fits in line with the morals and ethics of the artists producing it.
Or mabey you mean to say the "pirates" didn't cause enough physical violence, or coerce enough women to have sex with them to earn it.
People seem to be forgetting something on both sides of the piracy argument.
Aren't we supposed to follow the Free Market? Wasn't that supposed to determine the value, cost, of all things?
Well, if you really want to follow the Free Market, it seems to me that it is saying that people are sick of paying for things. In fact. Seems to me that money if not well liked in the Free Market if it can be gotten for free. So doesn't that mean we should be following the lessons of the Free Market and away from a pay for economy.
Doesn't matter, if people "didn't want to listen to it" then no one would pirate it. Obviously the music (regardless of your or my opinion of it) has value to some people, or they wouldn't be pirating it. They are taking something which they "value", but not contributing to the real costs of producing said content. Now you can debate what a fair price for the content is, or how it should be distributed, or how you should be free to device shift, or what fair use consists of, but content is not "free" even though digital distribution makes the costs of DISTRIBUTION nearly free, it doesn't make the costs of PRODUCTION free. Just because you disagree with the "morals and ethics" of Exxon, doesn't mean you can knock over a gas station.
That these copyright cartels, have repeatedly for decades ripped off artists...
But where is our 6 strikes law for them?
6th time you rip off and swindle an artist, you lose ALL your copyrights and they all return to the original authors. Sounds good to me.
I pay for my software. I just bought some for $40. Sorry you have to work for the man to get paid.