Six-Strikes System Starts In U.S.

New submitter mynameiskhan writes "Major internet service providers today will start monitoring the internet traffic to their customers' computers and will warn them if they download copyrighted materials using peer to peer network. The article says, 'A person will be given up to six opportunities to stop before the Internet provider will take more drastic steps, such as temporarily slowing their connection, or redirecting Internet traffic until they acknowledge they received a notice or review educational materials about copyright law.' Furthermore, if you appeal the warning you will be required to pay $35 to state your case. Have the ISPs have had enough of RIAA pestering, or are they siding with RIAA?"

Comments

Of course

[Anonymous Coward]

Furthermore, if you appeal the warning you will be required to pay $35 to state your case. Have the ISPs have had enough of RIAA pestering, or are they siding with RIAA?"

What do you think, genius?

Of course they're siding with the cartels...and they've figured out a nice little side earner while they screw their customers.

EFF

[Threni]

Are they getting involved? Perhaps share a copyright-free file, get people to download it, get reports raised against it, get complaint, ignore complaint, get to 6 strikes, then ask the ISP to take further steps against them. A few million people doing that at the same time should be fun.

Re: First strike

[ShaunC]

I've already seen similar shit in my area where an ISP claims you have a "virus" and pulls your plug if you use more data than your average grandma.

This is actually a soft warning tactic I've encountered in many corporate and education scenarios. They'll identify folks using a lot of transit, and send them a notice along the lines of "hey, we noticed you're using a lot of bandwidth... Maybe you've got a virus or something?" These notices work particularly well in cases where someone's been found to be downloading gigs of porn on the office computer, etc. The user realizes he's being watched, says "yeah! that must be it! I gotta virus!" and suddenly the behavior stops.

I'm not defending the ISP you mention, just saying this tactic is pretty common. It's their way of asking you to knock it off, without accusing you of anything.