What a 'Six Strikes' Copyright Notice Looks Like

The new Copyright Alert System, a.k.a. the 'Six Strikes' policy, went into effect on Monday. Comcast and Verizon activated it today. Ars Technica asked them and other participating ISPs to see the copyright alerts that will be sent to customers who have been identified as infringing. Comcast was the only one to grant their request, saying that a "small number" of the alerts have already been sent out. The alerts will be served to users in the form of in-browser popups. They explain what triggered the alert and ask the user to sign in and confirm they received the alert. (Not admitting guilt, but at least closing off the legal defense of "I didn't know.") The article points out that the alerts also reference an email sent to the Comcast email address associated with the account, something many users not be aware of. The first two notices are just notices. Alert #5 indicates a "Mitigation Measure" is about to be applied, and that users will be required to call Comcast's Security Assurance group and to be lectured on copyright infringement. The article outlines some of the CAS's failings, such as being unable to detect infringement through a VPN, and disregarding fair use. Comcast said, "We will never use account termination as a mitigation measure under the CAS. We have designed the pop-up browser alerts not to interfere with any essential services obtained over the Internet." Comcast also assures subscribers that their privacy is being protected, but obvious that's only to a point. According to TorrentFreak, "Comcast can be asked to hand over IP-addresses of persistent infringers, and the ISP acknowledges that copyright holders can then obtain a subpoena to reveal the personal details of the account holder for legal action."

Comments

All about the money

[Anonymous Coward]

So this is why my comcast bill went up last month...

Queue the false positive stories...

[Anonymous Coward]

in 3...2...1

"In-browser popups?"

[Animats]

"In-browser popups?" On what pages? Is Comcast tampering with web pages not their own to insert messages? Do they do MITM attacks on secure pages to break in there?

Re:"In-browser popups?"

[Anonymous Coward]

There is *NOTHING* that can be done now about this. It is the law of the land, plain and simple. And it will probably spread across the globe.

Re:"In-browser popups?"

[bhcompy]

I imagine it's through using their DNS

Re:"In-browser popups?"

[cbhacking]

Most people browse the vast majority of the web via HTTP. Even leaving aside sites that don't even support HTTPS, damn near everybody will visit an HTTP page at some point. Hell, Slashdot auto-redirects from HTTPS back to HTTP. Absolutely no need to MitM SSL connections (which they'd have to get an intermediate trusted CA cert for anyhow).

Re:"In-browser popups?"

[Anonymous Coward]

That is complete and utter non-sense. Checking a certificate is sufficient to solve this problem.

Re:"In-browser popups?"

[Anonymous Coward]

If it is legal to edit the source of a web page on the fly, why is it illegal for media boxes to skip advertisements on television programmes?

Re:"In-browser popups?"

[dougmc]

There is *NOTHING* that can be done now about this. It is the law of the land, plain and simple.

As I understand, it's a policy, shared by several ISPs -- not a law. Are you saying that there's actual government laws behind this too?

Re:"In-browser popups?"

[WaffleMonster]

Most people browse the vast majority of the web via HTTP. Even leaving aside sites that don't even support HTTPS, damn near everybody will visit an HTTP page at some point. Hell, Slashdot auto-redirects from HTTPS back to HTTP. Absolutely no need to MitM SSL connections (which they'd have to get an intermediate trusted CA cert for anyhow).

While the vast majority of sites may be HTTP or even HTTP only it is also true there is a significant percentage of users who ever go to a very short list of sites like facebook, google and youtube all of which have SSL. SSL use is growing significantly. In a few years time you will not be able to buy a server without AES-NI.

Re:"In-browser popups?"

[dougmc]

That is complete and utter non-sense. Checking a certificate is sufficient to solve this problem.

The "problem" being that your http streams are mucked with? You don't seem to understand the situation then ...

1) certificates are only used by SSL connections. Most web pages are still plaintext HTTP, not HTTPS.

2) even if you do look at the certificate and see that it's not what it should be (and therefore reject it) -- you're still not getting the page you asked for. At best, "checking a certificate" will allow you to avoid seeing their warning. Which might be nice, but things are *still* going to break until you see it and click "Click to Close" or whatever they have on it.

3) they might not do MITM attacks on http requests, but instead DNS requests. So you look up *anything*, and it gives you the address of their server that gives these notices. That will break *everything* until you click on it, not just http requests. (Thought it would work if you didn't rely on DNS requests going out for whatever reason.)

Re:"In-browser popups?"

[Anonymous Coward]

That is completely meaningless, in a time of popup blockers, ad blockers and malware-filtering personal firewalls!

The Comcunt "popups" (hell, who even still uses a browser that supports popups?) will be blocked and filtered in 3.. 2.. 1..

Re:"In-browser popups?"

[doesnothingwell]

I had this sudden urge to try out google dns earlier this week.

Re:"In-browser popups?"

[Anonymous Coward]

What if you are using Open DNS?

Re:"In-browser popups?"

[Anonymous Coward]

Is Comcast tampering with web pages not their own to insert messages?

If they are, then they are making unauthorised derivatives of a copyrighted work.

Re:"In-browser popups?"

[DarkOx]

Either way it would be fun if everyone who gets one of these ( and has not infringed; dont worry it will happen) calls their local prosecuters office and demands their ISP be charged with uttering. Either they are altering a document you understand to be from another party or they are knowing sending an DNS reply that is untrue. Either way it might be possible to convince a court that it fits the definition of uttering. That might have implications for all those wifi registration systems too.

Re:"In-browser popups?"

[N!k0N]

1) certificates are only used by SSL connections. Most web pages are still plaintext HTTP, not HTTPS.

While definitely true, that only speaks for ~today~ (or at least Monday). If you're running sites that may run afoul of this, you're probably gonna set up HTTPS ... or cut off the US.

3) they might not do MITM attacks on http requests, but instead DNS requests. So you look up *anything*, and it gives you the address of their server that gives these notices. That will break *everything* until you click on it, not just http requests. (Thought it would work if you didn't rely on DNS requests going out for whatever reason.)

And yet another reason to not use the ISP-provided DNS servers ...

Re:"In-browser popups?"

[Anonymous Coward]

Was it when Comcast DNS broke down again on Tuesday morning? I couldn't believe I still had a computer not set to use google or OpenDNS.

Re:"In-browser popups?"

[BrokenHalo]

they might not do MITM attacks on http requests, but instead DNS requests.

I guess a simple solution there would be to either use someone else's DNS, or alternatively run your own.

Re:"In-browser popups?"

[Rich0]

They're making unlicensed copies of copyrighted works every time they retransmit a packet.

For whatever reason this kind of trivial argument is allowed to make things like EULAs enforceable in some court rulings (you copy software into RAM to run it), but it doesn't apply to wire transmissions. The bottom line is that the first case gives big corporations more power, and the second case would just cost them money.

The saner approach to copyright is to consider all of this stuff non-infringing - they aren't reselling movies and such, which was the whole point of copyright back before all the nonsense took off.

Re:"In-browser popups?"

[spottedkangaroo]

I haven't seen it, but this almost certainly works like captive portal wifi gateways. It'll spoof a 302, redirect your browser to a local WAN page with the warning, and then surfing will continue as usual. I expect the comcast rep simply didn't know the lingo.

Re:"In-browser popups?"

[ls671]

They could easily redirect your requests to Google DNS to their DNS.

Re:"In-browser popups?"

[OolimPhon]

And yet another reason to not use the ISP-provided DNS servers ...

That's not going to work without some extra effort. All they have to do is trap tcp/udp to port 53.

Re:"In-browser popups?"

[Anonymous Coward]

They could easily redirect your requests to Google DNS to their DNS.

Google search for "Run your own DNS" now trending

Re:"In-browser popups?"

[Charliemopps]

No, this is common practice for a lot of ISPs. I believe they just re-direct you with DNS. This is why I don't use my ISPs DNS.

Re:"In-browser popups?"

[shentino]

If they start blocking outbound DNS afterwards I'm going to be pissed.

My college wifi did that and it made their dns filtering software damn near bulletproof.

Re:"In-browser popups?"

[shentino]

Because big corporations have more rights than individuals.

Even completely ignoring the blatant corruption and bribery involved in politics, the corporation having a superior legal budget gives them a very strong de-facto immunity to many things you'd get hanged for as a person.

Re:"In-browser popups?"

[Anonymous Coward]

Run an open wan link, isolated from your own, and boom - instant, persistent defense.
Also, talk to your community leaders of creating an Internet Cooperative to replace the standard big morons, making it clear that they will NOT cave to the Illegal activities of the RIAA/MPAA or your country's equivelent.

Drop / discontinue business with the providers that caved - enough of us leave them and they will tell the RIAA/MPAA to go screw themselves.

Re:"In-browser popups?"

[Anonymous Coward]

DNS Requests....

Does that necessarily mean to their DNS servers, or the ones I use on my hosted machine?

I'm wondering just how far they will go with interrupting your traffic to make sure you get that fucking pop-up. This is absurd for sure!

Re:"In-browser popups?"

[dywolf]

thankfully its not the law.
and once the first bad actor exploits this vulnerability for nefarious purposes they will also be open to suit.

not to mention the 35$ fee just to have them "review" your case, with no garuntee of overturning the decision.

Re:"In-browser popups?"

[dywolf]

Hmmm. Dont those Computer or Wire fraud laws cover MITM attacks?
Or would that only apply if your name is Aaron?

Re:"In-browser popups?"

[Anonymous Coward]

I expect the comcast rep simply didn't know the lingo.

Yes, how foolish of us, to expect that an ISP would have spokespeople who understand Internet teminology.

Re:"In-browser popups?"

[Mashiki]

$20 says they're using sandvine boxes and injecting it right into the stream.

Re:"In-browser popups?"

[mjr167]

I stopped using comcast DNS a long time ago.

Re:"In-browser popups?"

[Bill_the_Engineer]

I think he means that will become the accepted norm.

Are you saying that there's actual government laws behind this too?

Well in this case, Comcast can say that they are complying with the six-strike law by using this method of notification.

Re:"In-browser popups?"

[Bill_the_Engineer]

That's one way. I had an issue with Comcast that caused computers to be redirected to the modem registration page for no apparent reason. The only computer that wasn't affected was my computer which used Google DNS. They eventually fixed it, but if it wasn't for my daughter's computer defaulting to Comcast DNS, I would have never known there was an issue.

Another way is that they could just simply redirect HTTP requests via you cable modem.

Re:"In-browser popups?"

[Nikker]

Couldn't you just get a really cheap VPS and forward port 53 over 22(SSH)? Even run SSH on a different port everyday.

Re:"In-browser popups?"

[Anonymous Coward]

Many wireless carriers inject javascript into web pages, usually as part of bytemobile "optimization."

3G is my best option for internet at home, so I have to proxy HTTP through a VPS to keep Sprint from screwing with my web pages.

Re:"In-browser popups?"

[shentino]

They had a somewhat vigilant network administration department.

Pulling something like that would likely have gotten me expelled for circumvention.

Re:"In-browser popups?"

[fredprado]

There is no six-strike law for illegal downloading in US. At least yet.

Re:"In-browser popups?"

[Aaden42]

Hmmm... My DNS servers are 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4. Can't imagine getting any Comcastic interference through there... (And I'm a TimeWarner customer which makes it especially unlikely I'd be harassed by Comcast, but any who...)

That and the SSL Everywhere plugin are a good start anyways...

Re:"In-browser popups?"

[Aaden42]

DNS over SSH tunnel is surprisingly difficult. The default is UDP, not TCP. It's doable, but it's a PITA. Much simpler to just VPN the entire connection.

Re:"In-browser popups?"

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd never heard of "uttering" as a law and had to look it up; we have no such laws that I know of in the US. But according to wikipedia, it wouldn't work. "Forgery was the creation of a forged document, with the intent to defraud; whereas uttering was merely use — the passing — of a forged document, that someone else had made, with the intent to defraud."

That last part would be pretty hard to prove.

Re:"In-browser popups?"

[Anonymous Coward]

Which pushes requests where, exactly, when they aren't locally cached?

Re:"In-browser popups?"

[Bill_the_Engineer]

Good catch. Technically it is a policy to give you six chances to stay in compliance with an actual law DMCA.

In Comcast's case I just read their accepted use policy (shocking I know) and they state that they don't actually monitor your traffic. They only notify you when someone files a claim of copyright violation against you using two possible methods: (1) In-browser popup notification and/or (2) Email to the main subscription email account. Comcast also claims that termination of service is not part of their copyright alert system (CAS) and that they claim that "CAS was designed so that content owners will not have access to any customer’s personal information."

Re:"In-browser popups?"

[ledow]

It's not hard to transparently forward packets to a particular server. We do it all the time for HTTP, and for DNS it's just a matter of changing the port on an iptables line.

Given me being the only gateway at the other end of your connection, I can screw with anything you do if I want. Once you're marked as "restricted", you could basically end up on an internal VLAN that prevents all outside access. It's not even that difficult without VLAN-specific support, these people are being trusted by you to talk to 8.8.8.8 or whatever on your behalf anyway and return the packets - there's nothing stopping them setting up an "offline" Internet with 8.8.8.8 just being redirected wherever they like.

You *think* you're talking to 8.8.8.8 but it's really just my internal DNS returning always "1.1.1.1", which (although it is also a valid external IP address) is really just an internal address that I put a webpage up at.

Until you click "I agree", you don't get put back on the normal network, and the restricted network can block anything and everything.

If you need a real-world example, go to a wifi hotspot. You can do what you like and set what settings you like, but until you pay money through their portal page, nothing will resolve properly, not even google's DNS servers. Every page you try to access will go to the captive portal webpage. And then, when you're authorised, it'll go back to "normal" and you can send email, use Google's servers, etc.

Just because you think you're being clever, doesn't mean it'll work. As a further hint, how does the SSL certificate for any page verify that you're on www.google.com without trusting the DNS response from the network (answer, it doesn't). Sure, there are solutions (DNSSEC, etc.)

Re:"In-browser popups?"

[fredprado]

There is no relation at all between this agreement and DCMA. DCMA excludes the ISPs of any responsibility and never applied to the end users. This is a pure commercial agreement, it is not designed to comply or help to comply with any law.

Re:"In-browser popups?"

[Anonymous Coward]

There is *NOTHING* that can be done now about this. It is the law of the land, plain and simple. And it will probably spread across the globe.

As I understand it, this is not the law. It is a private agreement between big media and the 6 major ISP's. Big media made it a private deal because they could not get it in an actual law. And being private there is no legal oversight. If you are accused of a crime under a law, it doesn't cost you $35 to find out what you have been accused of, and you are allowed a legal defense instead of a private "arbitrator" who is paid by big media and thus has no reason to ever see your side.

Re:"In-browser popups?"

[Jrono]

I've actually seen this before with Cox. A few months back throughout the day as I was browsing different websites a popup would come up alerting me to an ongoing Cox email outage (which I don't actually use). They appeared to inject the popup directly into the HTML of different websites. It wasn't on every website, but I think it was time limited (popping up once every few hours).

And I just noticed this was reported on Slashdot: http://tech.slashdot.org/story/12/12/15/2230230/cox-comm-injects-code-into-web-traffic-to-announce-email-outage

Re:"In-browser popups?"

[ultrasawblade]

OpenDNS takes queries on 5353, tcp and udp. Also you could do all your DNS queries over Tor.

Re:"In-browser popups?"

[ultrasawblade]

Again, DNS over Tor.

Re:"In-browser popups?"

[ledow]

How's that going to work when no packets reach the "real" Internet at all until you've clicked agree?

Not saying Comcast do this, but it's trivial nowadays and available in every captive portal technology. The usual method is a blanket firewall over every packet EXCEPT packets to and from the desired services (e.g. ordinary DNS and HTTP) that are redirected through to internal servers - no exceptions. When you say "Yes", then you get your proper Internet (and thus ability to talk to a Tor node at all) back.

Re:"In-browser popups?"

[kelemvor4]

3) they might not do MITM attacks on http requests, but instead DNS requests. So you look up *anything*, and it gives you the address of their server that gives these notices. That will break *everything* until you click on it, not just http requests. (Thought it would work if you didn't rely on DNS requests going out for whatever reason.)

This is important to me. I don't use my ISP's DNS because I have kids and use openDNS for content filtering. On my unfiltered machine, I use google because it's faster than my ISP's server. My other device is on VPN 24x7 and uses the corporate DNS. Given that I've got kids I'd really like to ensure I get a notice in a timely manner so I could do something about it before getting into more trouble. I've told them a hundred times, don't download copyrighted stuff here. Kids will be kids, though.... Throttling the heck out of my connection would mean I have to drive to the office.

Just a side note, I'm not on the side of copyright - I just don't think civil disobedience is going to get me anything but trouble here.

Re:"In-browser popups?"

[Beorytis]

Except that Comcast users have probably already agreed to Terms of Service that allow them to do what they're doing.

Re:"In-browser popups?"

[Anonymous Coward]

your "unlicensed copies of copyrighted works every time they retransmit a packet" is completely different than his "unauthorised derivatives of a copyrighted work"

yes, packet transmission is in no way an unlicensed copyright issue (as you state); you imply that modifying webpages in flight is not an unauthorized derivatiion, but it is. (comcast has no authorization to modify my web pages being served to my visitors and there is no reasonable "fair-use" defense for doing so.)

Re:"In-browser popups?"

[N!k0N]

So, use something else to get around the ISP blocking 53 -- Tor, nonstandard port, etc. If it _really_ comes down to it, there's always /etc/hosts.

Admittedly, this isn't necessarily something that grandma would be able to do -- but it's not like she's exactly doing much more than looking up a recipe or checking email (even then, phone is usually better)

Re:"In-browser popups?"

[bluefoxlucid]

They're trafficking child pornography and other illegal works. Comcast is now providing a content-regulated stream of information and is responsible for the content of that stream.

Re:"In-browser popups?"

[maztuhblastah]

> If it is legal to edit the source of a web page on the fly, why is it illegal for media boxes to skip advertisements on television programmes?

Because it's not illegal to do that.

Re:"In-browser popups?"

[dougmc]

This is important to me. I don't use my ISP's DNS because I have kids and use openDNS for content filtering. On my unfiltered machine, I use google because it's faster than my ISP's server. My other device is on VPN 24x7 and uses the corporate DNS. Given that I've got kids I'd really like to ensure I get a notice in a timely manner so I could do something about it before getting into more trouble. I've told them a hundred times, don't download copyrighted stuff here. Kids will be kids, though.... Throttling the heck out of my connection would mean I have to drive to the office.

Just to be clear here ....

1) I mentioned that they can muck with DNS because HTTP is not the only thing they can muck with. (They guy I was responding to seemed to think SSL was the answer.) And even if they do it with DNS, just because you run your own DNS server, that doesn't mean you're safe from it.

2) As ledow said, they can (and probably will) give you your own network rules where *everything* fails and *all* roads (except those that they haven't programmed for) lead to their captive copyright warning. Public WiFi acccess points do this all the time when you first use them -- you have to click on OK to their ToS at the front page before anything works.

3) It's not like the mucking is extreme -- click on "Click to Close" and it's gone. (Though you'll need to do a bit more at the later levels.)

This would be a bigger problem for systems that aren't run by a human, however. For example, suppose you've got a security system that uploads pictures from your camera, and one of these messages comes up, and that breaks everything until you click on it, but the script uploading pictures doesn't know how to click on it, so your pictures don't get uploaded, and while this is happening -- your computer gets stolen.)

4) Even if you foil this, all you're foiling is an ad. A single ad. Is it really worth it? If it progresses to the later stage where things are slowed, well, foiling the ads previously won't stop that.

5) And even if you make the ad go away, I don't think this system is replacing the "sue a few thousand John Does in court" system, but instead supplementing it. So maybe you need to better control your kids if you don't feel like paying somebody $3,000 because it would cost $30,000 to fight them in court even if you won.

6) I never said I was in favor of the system (I'm not.) All I said is that it's not going to be foiled by simply using SSL.

7) Don't like it? Complain to your ISP, and if (in reality: when) they don't care, vote with your feet. If they're a monopoly, complain to your city -- cable and DSL companies generally have a lot of agreements with the local city, and the city has a lot of control over them. Though really, I wouldn't expect much help from them, as they'll immediately assume that "you're a criminal, who cares if you're inconvenienced (or innocent)?"

Personally, what *really* pissed me off is that you can appeal a later complaint ... for the fee of $35. Really? I have to pay to clear my good name? And apparently I can't do anything to clear my good name until it gets to the point that bad things happen.

And I have to wonder how secure the channel is for content providers to say you're infringing upon their copyrights. And is there any penalty on them if they're wrong? How long will it be before somebody claims that their copyright was infringed on "Butthole Pleasures 12" by thousands of innocent people, and that appears on their screens? How many marriages will be damaged? Want to hack something? Hack *this* system!

(Looking more carefully, at least Comcast's messages give zero information about what the violation really was. That's even worse.)

Re:"In-browser popups?"

[Anonymous Coward]

Sadly, Sonic.net's speed at my new place is ~1 mbps. I called Comast, and agreed to internet access for a certain amount of money a month for the next 6 months. I agreed to nothing; not even their "terms of Service" when I signed up. Now, they'll no doubt follow up with something in the mail, but we've already had an offer and acceptance between us.

Re:"In-browser popups?"

[Locke2005]

If they can tell the cable modem to redirect HTTP requests, then it's not YOUR cable modem, it's THEIR cable modem. Third party cable modems are available...

Re:"In-browser popups?"

[dougmc]

Good catch. Technically it is a policy to give you six chances to stay in compliance with an actual law DMCA.

No, I don't think so.

I think it's a policy where they have a system in place to tell you when you're accused of violating copyrights, and to punish you (through a slower connection) for being repeatedly accused of violating copyrights. Not that I said "being accused of violating copyrights", not actually doing it, because at the later stages, you can pay $35 for an actual investigation (I wouldn't expect much actual investigating, however) into if you really were violating copyrights.

(I'll bet there's no penalty for making false accusations that somebody is violating your copyrights. Man, that would take trolling somebody over a /. post that pissed you off to the next level ... start making bogus copyright complaints to their ISP.)

I see nothing in this that benefits the customer, beyond telling them that they're on somebody's radar now. More precisely, I don't think this will stop somebody from suing you if they think they see you uploading their copyrighted stuff, even once. Or sending a DMCA complaint against you or your system, even if you did something only once.

This is a policy. It's not a law. It does not affect or replace the laws already in place.

Re:"In-browser popups?"

[Anubis IV]

You really need to scroll down that page further. There's a whole section about uttering in the U.S., so yes, the U.S. does have laws related to it, though you are correct about the intent to defraud portion, since it would be hard to argue that they are trying to pass something off as something else.

Re:"In-browser popups?"

[Anonymous Coward]

They're making unlicensed copies of copyrighted works every time they retransmit a packet.

First of all, IANAL.

This (actually the "parent" comment) is a very interesting take on the subject. Because it's so true.

If we start labelling all HTML pages with a clear ND license, you can actually quite convincingly make the point that they're making illegal derivatives. And it's not the same as copying for transmission, because that's essential to the system's operation, whereas those alterations are not.

Take it a step further, and those (illegal) alterations have the (sole) purpose of opening an unrequested popup on your browser. It's taking control of your browser for that specific purpose. Is that legal under the CFAA? If so, would it still be legal if I used that same mecahnism to insert some publicity? Does that make sense?

Re:"In-browser popups?"

[sjames]

Aren't they creating an unauthorized derivative work out of someone else's copyrighted work when they do that?

Re:"In-browser popups?"

[Anonymous Coward]

You can do what you like and set what settings you like, but until you pay money through their portal page, nothing will resolve properly, not even google's DNS servers.

Actually that's not how 99% of wifi hotspots out there work.

You HAVE TO resolve the DNS correctly with captive portals because clients cache the answer, and not every DNS client respects the expiration values. If you poisoned the client's DNS cache before they paid up, their internet would be partially broken until the cache got flushed out. So the standard way to do it is to block everything except port 80, resolve domains correctly, but run all http traffic through your own proxy until they pay up. (Incidentally, this is why things like DNS tunnels still work on the vast majority of closed networks out there. The correct way to deal with that is to severely rate limit DNS requests, but everyone seems to be too lazy to do it)

Re:"In-browser popups?"

[roc97007]

> 3) they might not do MITM attacks on http requests, but instead DNS requests. So you look up *anything*, and it gives you the address of their server that gives these notices. That will break *everything* until you click on it, not just http requests. (Thought it would work if you didn't rely on DNS requests going out for whatever reason.)

...or if you're using an alternate DNS service...

Re:"In-browser popups?"

[roc97007]

I thought the whole point of intercepting and altering DNS requests is trying to pass something off as something else.

Re:"In-browser popups?"

[DigiShaman]

Please review the OSI Model. There are 7 layers. Layer 1 is hardware and all the physics that make it work (light, microwave, electrons...etc). Layer 7 is the application layer.

Layer 1 = CAT5, fiber optic, and switches.
Layer 2 = Ethernet protocol, VLANs
Layer 3 = IPv4, IPv6 protocol
Layer 4 = TCP, UDP.
Layer 5 = TLS/SSL
Layer 6 =
Layer 7 = DNS

Your ISP can jack with Layers 1 - 4 and there is nothing you can do about it. This effects layers 5 - 7 on your end.

Re:"In-browser popups?"

[Anonymous Coward]

I wold have taken that bet if it were $35

Re:"In-browser popups?"

[Anonymous Coward]

Even if you set the DNS to a different server like 8.8.8.8, if you own Comcast money you still get re-directed pages to contact them and pay up, so I am not sure it is purely DNS.

Re:"In-browser popups?"

[Anubis IV]

Typically, sure, but if they make no bones about the fact that they are not the page you are looking for, it'll be hard to suggest that they're trying to pass themselves off as that other thing. Based on what you've seen, would you believe that a regular user will ever be misled into thinking that, say, CNN.com is showing them a message about their allegedly illegal downloading behavior?

Re:"In-browser popups?"

[pclminion]

What they are doing is creating a "derivative work" by altering the content of the HTML stream you are receiving from the website in order to make the pop-up appear. If you're browing foobar.net when one of these pop-ups appears, perhaps you should contact foobar.net and inform them that Comcast is altering the content of their website to produce an unauthorized derivative work. Nail them with copyright law.

Re:"In-browser popups?"

[Bill_the_Engineer]

There is no relation at all between this agreement and DCMA. DCMA excludes the ISPs of any responsibility and never applied to the end users.

The "Safe Harbor" provision of the DCMA only applies to the online service providers and ISPs. The copyright alert system that is being called "Six Strikes" is a mechanism being used by the participating ISPs in order to comply with "Safe Harbor" status as given in Title II of the DCMA (part of the Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitations Act).

In other words, YES "Six Strikes" is a policy being used to satisfy the terms of Title II of DCMA (OCILLA) law. So semantics won't win this discussion.

By the way, "end users" enjoy no such "Safe Harbor" protections.

Re:"In-browser popups?"

[Cyfun]

If that's the case, how many people use alternative DNS and might not get these messages? My ISP started hijacking my searches a few years ago and I promptly switched to Google's DNS.

Either way, via DNS or deep packet injection, this assume that the account holder is using their browser very often, and actually uses their ISP's email. Let's take an example of a teenager living with his folks, using their internet, a very likely candidate for someone torrenting on another's connection, and also the type to do so unsafely. Instead of the account holder getting a notice along with the bill from their ISP that they always read, the kid, who is surfing the Internet cause he's online 10x as much as his folks, does get the browser popup warning of Strike One. And yes, it wants you to sign in, but dad's password is saved in a cookie, or the kid already knows the password cause he's basically the in-house IT guy, so he signs in, agrees that he received the notification (he doesn't want his parents to find out, durr), and goes along his merry way. Months later when he's clicked through all six strikes, either their internet gets shut off or throttled, the dad calls tech support to find out why, only to FINALLY be informed that they've been detected as pirating software.

Yes, fool-proof plan, you guys! Can't wait to see how this pans out in the real world.

Re:"In-browser popups?"

[roc97007]

I'm just playing devil's advocate here, but it sounds like you are going on "what would a reasonable person believe?" which I personally think is a very good test. However, looking at the quality of the typical lawsuit, the test appears to be "what would a slightly retarded irish setter believe?" (Apologies to irish setters.) This lowering of the bar of the acumen ("do not use this hair dryer while taking a shower") normally annoys the hell out of me. But I wonder if in this case we could make it work in our favor.

Re:"In-browser popups?"

[Bill_the_Engineer]

You may want to read the part of the DCMA where it states the requirements for an ISP to claim "Safe Harbor" status.

Re:"In-browser popups?"

[fredprado]

Sorry but you are ridiculously and blatantly wrong. ISP are already excluded of any liability from the DCMA regardless of what they do. Period. And although users can be prosecuted by the DCMA that is not the ISP responsibility. ISP has the single responsibility to provide the identity of the IP user whenever a judge orders a subpoena.

So no, you are just wrong.

Re:"In-browser popups?"

[fredprado]

As explained above ISP are included in the safe harbor by the nature of the service they provide. They do not need to do anything to keep this status except keep providing the service they do.

Re:"In-browser popups?"

[pseudorand]

Almost all good points, but...

> Just because you think you're being clever, doesn't mean it'll work. As a further hint, how does the SSL certificate for any page verify that you're on
> www.google.com without trusting the DNS response from the network (answer, it doesn't). Sure, there are solutions (DNSSEC, etc.)

Yes, in fact, it does. The SSL cert verifies that you're on www.google.com because that's the entire point of the SSL cert. You trust the certificates of the CAs that shipped with your browser. One of those CAs has signed the cert provided by the host your connecting to. The cert itself contains 'www.google.com' in the Common Name field. You foolishly believe that the CA did some sort of meaningful verification that whoever they gave the signed cert to owns www.google.com AND that that person too the necessary precautions to protect the private key corresponding to the cert. But assuming all that is true, the MITM can't present an SSL cert for 'www.google.com' that your browser won't complain about.

So yes, you can trust that your ISP can't spoof an SSL connection even if they control DNS.

It will be interesting to see how ISPs actually do those warnings though. One would assume they will transparently route traffic like a wifi hot spot as you suggest above. But I wouldn't be too surprised if some of them just used DNS or something that smart consumers could circumvent. I would be surprised if they did the MIMT HTML injection thing though. Seems to legally risky to alter someone else's content. Plus, I think a lot of consumers would be horribly freaked out to learn that their ISP can do that, which would be bad for business.

Re:"In-browser popups?"

[Anubis IV]

That was indeed the test I was applying (and, oh, how I wish your test was the one we could apply), though in just thinking about it a bit more, a more likely one might be, "Have reasonable steps been taken to ensure that a person would not incorrectly believe that this notice is coming from the site they were attempting to reach?" I do agree with your idea about making warnings for the lowest common denominator sorts of people, but in the case of forgeries and the like, they need to try and pass it off as true when it is not in order to have engaged in any wrongdoing. Though IANAL, it doesn't look like they're trying to pass this off as anything but a notice directly from your ISP (they even have it branded with their logo and name, and later warnings force you to log in and confirm you read it on their site).

I suppose it might depend also on whether this is simply a case of using DNS to serve up a different page or if this is a case of injecting HTML and/or Javascript into a page I was already surfing. If it was DNS, we'd have even less of a basis for believing it was the original site. If they're merely making this a lightbox-style pop-over on a site, however, I could see how some people might confuse it at a glance for an ad or something.

Re:"In-browser popups?"

[Bill_the_Engineer]

You are correct. I was looking at 17-512(c) of the DMCA and not the more applicable 17-512(a). The injunctions set forth in 17-512(j) all begin with a court order.

Of course Comcast is free to do as it wishes when it comes to the service agreement and I may add that Comcast isn't explicitly looking at your traffic out of some decency on their part. It is so that they can claim limited liability as provided 17-512(a). Section 17-512(c) which provides a legal framework for takedown notices only applies to the web hosting and file storage portion of Comcast and not P2P related activity.

Interestingly enough, if Comcast is actually monitoring our internet traffic then it seems that 17-512(c) would be more applicable. This would make sense if they continued interfering with P2P communications or otherwise disqualify themselves from the limited liability that comes with claiming to having no knowledge or control of what happens on their networks.

Re:"In-browser popups?"

[Bill_the_Engineer]

Disregarding my previous gross error of thinking that this was to protect Comcast's safe harbor status, I still believe this is directly related to the DMCA. Commercial ISPs are doing this to save them money that they would otherwise spend on answering court orders to provide subscriber information.

The educational route seems less draconian than just having the violations reach a level where it now is worth the MPAA/RIAA's time to collect damages. As a parent, I would gladly risk $35 to contest continuing copyright violations than to have a lawyer serve with me a subpoena for a civil case with a much higher expense. I think the theory that copyright violations are happening without the parent's knowledge is a good way to eliminate a large number of P2P nodes operated by teenagers.

Re:"In-browser popups?"

[fredprado]

Exactly. By doing this they actually become more liable not less. Not only diminishing their protection granted by the DCMA, as now they will be aware of at least some infringements as they are actively policing it, but making them vulnerable to being sued by the users for spying on their traffic.

Re:"In-browser popups?"

[Anonymous Coward]

IEEE 802.1X

Re:"In-browser popups?"

[bzipitidoo]

That's exactly how many motels do their Internet service. There's no getting around the gateway when it is the only one.

I think the only real solution to your ISP doing this to you is political, not technical. Employ the technology to avoid this situation ever arising. But if it comes up anyway, hit back. Too late for TOR after you've been accused. Switch to another provider, if there are any. If not, could take them to court. If you paid for the service by credit card, you could dispute the charges on the grounds that you aren't being provided what you paid for. It might also be possible to sue them for having allowed infringing activity. Prodigy found out that you can't be both net nanny and common carrier, when they lost that kind of suit. Everyone else was able to win on the grounds that they are not responsible for the content.

Also, help campaign to have Internet access recognized as a fundamental right. These copyright goons are taking advantage of the fact that cutting off Internet access is very nearly as crippling as cutting off a person's air supply, and that the law is, as usual, very behind on recognizing how important Internet access has become. If you rely on the Internet to pay your bills, shop, seek for jobs, communicate with friends and relatives, keep up with the news, and look up information and do research, you can't stand to have it abruptly cut off any more than you could stand to have the road leading to your home blocked and torn up.

Re:"In-browser popups?"

[Shagg]

The Service Providers are going along with the wishes of the Content Providers, because in many cases, they're one and the same.

Re:"In-browser popups?"

[ultrasawblade]

I wasn't clear if, when your account is flagged for a notice, if Comcast's DNS hijacks you or if they do indeed do what bzipitidoo does. I haven't used Comcast's DNS servers in years.

Well, if DNS resolutions still work through this captive portal (even if you can't get to the destination IP), there's always iodine (http://code.kryo.se/iodine/) - assuming you have a remote system to tunnel through.

Re:"In-browser popups?"

[Anonymous Coward]

Since the qualifications are for the entity and not the activity there is a good chance that section C would apply more than section A. This conundrum is faced by educational institutions. So depending on the lawyers involved, you both could be right.

Re:"In-browser popups?"

[yenot]

They could easily redirect your requests to Google DNS to their DNS.

I stayed at a hotel, whose Internet service was run by Comcast, which did exactly that (continuously, not just for login). If you want to detect hijacked DNS, I added a feature to my Device Fingerprint website to help. Loading the page triggers a unique DNS query. You can view information on the outbound IP of the DNS server that performed the lookup in the "DNS Data" section.

Re:"In-browser popups?"

[Jane Q. Public]

"They could easily redirect your requests to Google DNS to their DNS."

The fact that technically they may be able to do it, does not make it legal.

I am pretty sure it would be illegal for them to mess with my choice of DNS.

Re:"In-browser popups?"

[Anonymous Coward]

Can't they just put your CPE (i.e. your cable modem) into an unroutable losernet and refuse to give you a routable IP again until you click through their notice?

Re:"In-browser popups?"

[Anonymous Coward]

(That is, if you keep evading the pop-up they need you to acknowledge.)

Re:"In-browser popups?"

[Anonymous Coward]

Practically speaking, the Internet and associated protocols don't actually use the full OSI model, but close enough. The point about non-routable subnets is accurate.

Re:"In-browser popups?"

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, if you want Google tracking your every movement.

You do realize that the only reason Google has public DNS is to harvest it for marketing purposes, don't you?

Re:"In-browser popups?"

[Anonymous Coward]

Because Google's DNS isn't a honeypot for data or anything...

Only the clueless will be hit by this

[ciurana]

Netflix Instant Play monthly cost: less than $10, vs. IPREDator or equivalent VPN at about $5. Get a half decent Usenet or BitTorrent client, and the system has been circumvented.

I suspect that ISPs adopted these measures more to appease the content providers than to fight the actual problem.

Why won't the content providers address the obvious, and just make the content available through Netflix/iTunes/Amazon/VUDU/etc. soon after release? Such venues would enable them to profit from the home user who'd then download and pay without a hassle, and at the same time protect secondary international markets where other deals may be in place.

I guess these people learned nothing from Napster, iTunes, and music stores.

Cheers!

E

Re:Only the clueless will be hit by this

[Nyder]

Netflix Instant Play monthly cost: less than $10, vs. IPREDator or equivalent VPN at about $5. Get a half decent Usenet or BitTorrent client, and the system has been circumvented.

I suspect that ISPs adopted these measures more to appease the content providers than to fight the actual problem.

Why won't the content providers address the obvious, and just make the content available through Netflix/iTunes/Amazon/VUDU/etc. soon after release? Such venues would enable them to profit from the home user who'd then download and pay without a hassle, and at the same time protect secondary international markets where other deals may be in place.

I guess these people learned nothing from Napster, iTunes, and music stores.

Cheers!

E

I thought the content owners either were ISP also, or they are buying up various big ISP.

Re:Only the clueless will be hit by this

[Unknown Lamer]

Seriously?

First of all Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, iTunes, etc all suck. I definitely won't be switching to any of them. They don't work across platforms and are infected with digital restriction crap (for instance I don't have access to ANY of them) with the Linux distributions I run. They aren't remotely standards complaint. There depending on proprietary crap like flash and silverlight. Both aren't widely supported anymore (if they ever were) and what support exists is disappearing fast. iPads, many Android tablets, and other devices don't support either format not to mention other devices on the market. Firefox for instance isn't getting updates beyond security. I don't use chrome either. Not to watch movies/tv shows online anyway.

Actually, at least Amazon Prime's "free" content (my roomate has a Prime account, I have XBMC, and we share a living room...) and Hulu are just using RTMPE... utterly broken, and it's pretty great. There are easily available XBMC plugins (bluecop repository) that integrate reasonably, and the experience is at least better than cable. Which sort of makes me wonder (given that DVDs have effectively been DRM free since ever and bluray is easily broken by people who really care) why the video industry even bothers with DRM. I'm kind of bummed that I can't use stuff like Netflix, or actually buy tv series and whatnot on Amazon (buying the permission to stream DRM encumbered crap from a third party isn't exactly buying if you ask me... just let me download the files, I don't upload my music to the pirate bay trust me I won't upload the movie either guys).

I hate being treated like a bad person just for wanting content that doesn't look horrible on a 50" screen without atrocious DRM (bluray's whole thing where new discs can prevent you from reading old discs or anything at all at the hardware level is just plain evil, and they wonder why the optical media industry is dying).

Re:Only the clueless will be hit by this

[guevera]

Why won't the content providers address the obvious, and just make the content available through Netflix/iTunes/Amazon/VUDU/etc. soon after release? Because a) they're whole strategy is to safeguard their cable revenue and b) netflix money is not cable money. Netflix costs $9 month. Cable costs 5-12 times that. You think some of the richest companies in America want to give up that kinda money? You think they'll give that up without a fight? Would you?

Re:Only the clueless will be hit by this

[skine]

You seem to make the assumption that DVD + legal home downloads generates more money than DVD + suing people at random.

Re:Only the clueless will be hit by this

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to mention mucking with your more acceptance of self signed SSL's, Torrents, Proxy's, DNS settings, VPN, having a look at the tor network and there is new one out I can't remeber the name of off hand.

Fibre will handle all this traffic.

Re:Only the clueless will be hit by this

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably the goal is not to protect that content owner, but to use the content owner to develop a controlled society...

The "browser sign" method is also a great way to force you to use the "correct DNS", since "not signing" most probably means that the ISP has the right to cut your connection until you "fix your dns", or even better they can reroute any DNS ip/traffic to their DNS.

And of course the issue of using Netflix/iTunes/Amazon/VUDU/etc ... is that albeit people would probably end up agreing to provide some % of their phone bill to have content access, this does not define who is getting this % ? and if you have to pay to everybody then it starts to be real expensive.
And if you pay to only "one" then they become the gatekeeper of all your information, wich is probably the "endgame" ...
iTunes vs Amazon ...
and your identity is handled by Facebook...

Please pinch me I'd like to wake up from this nightmare and get back to the real internet (who am I kidding it never existed ...)

Re:Only the clueless will be hit by this

[Anonymous Coward]

I do what's right not what's for the money. You?

Re:Only the clueless will be hit by this

[Anonymous Coward]

Netflix made a business choice, you made an ideological choice, don't blame them because Linux is first and foremost a mindset.

Re:Only the clueless will be hit by this

[Anonymous Coward]

They can't because (for example) each of the 15 content producers want 15 cents of every dollar as a licensing fee and in lies the problem... greed So now a company must pick and choose what content they want on their site and negotiate hard for ones they pick.

Re:Only the clueless will be hit by this

[Anonymous Coward]

He's not "blaming" them; he's saying they don't offer something useful to him. They're not going to get his wallet's vote. And third parties who assume they they would or shouldget his vote, are out of touch with reality. Saying Netflix is good, is like saying Coca Cola is ok. It's not necessarily wrong but it's not right, either.

Oh, and if you still think it's just an ideological choice to avoid proprietary-client streaming services, not also a technological choice based in pragmatism, then you've been bending over too long and have forgotten how nice tech can be. Come to the 21st century and you might like what we have here. If you don't want to, that's ok, but then don't be an arrogant dumbass when you speak from your little prison.

Re:Only the clueless will be hit by this

[Anonymous Coward]

No. It's a first step, to ease you into it.
To make you think "it's really not that bad", while you're already going 30 mph downwards on the slippery slope.

Re:Only the clueless will be hit by this

[Anonymous Coward]

Netflix Instant Play monthly cost: less than $10, vs. IPREDator or equivalent VPN at about $5. Get a half decent Usenet or BitTorrent client, and the system has been circumvented.

Clue: OTA is free. OTA doesn't track my viewing habits or have my personal information, so

a) it can't target, personally
b) it can't profile, personally

I want something more in line with OTA, not Netflix. What immunities does that $9/month buy you? You'd be better off stashing it into a legal defense fund.

Re:Only the clueless will be hit by this

[gunnaraztek]

http://serverdragon.com/openvz.php

$10 for a year...

I do admit it IS a vps, so you'd have to use ssh tunnel or set up the vpn daemon yourself but hey, 500 GB/month...

Nonsense.

[Anonymous Coward]

People act like this will only affect pirates, but that is far from the truth. There is no oversight to this, so this, like DMCA notices, will harm innocent people.

adblock?

[Anonymous Coward]

Would using adblock or simply preventing unwanted "popup" from opening block this notice? I've honestly never seen a single popup since I've started using Opera over 6 years ago, not to mention ads.

SOPA vs 6 Strikes

[ohnocitizen]

The outrage that defeated SOPA is missing. Is it because the harm isn't as clear, big companies like google aren't stepping into the fray, or the association with "pirates" is too toxic? Or is it d) all of the above?

Re:SOPA vs 6 Strikes

[naff89]

First they came for the torrents, and I didn't speak out, because I did not download torrents...

Re:SOPA vs 6 Strikes

[ThatsNotFunny]

Perhaps it's because it's the ISPs making the rules, instead of the government.

Re:SOPA vs 6 Strikes

[boldsoon]

I noticed it too. But I hope this mild approach will push the sharing software further in accommodate our privacy, since we can't take it for granted anymore. On another stance, hopefully, people will continue to share, and the moral grounds in wich each one takes "piracy" into their personal access of copyright material will be based on economically and intellectual grounds rather than by a black or white of legal or illegal stance.

Re:SOPA vs 6 Strikes

[mark-t]

Probably because the likelihood of identifying an IP that actually had nothing to do with an infringement is small to insignificant. If a person a) doesn't download infringing content in the first place, and b) doesn't casually permit connectivity to others (which they probably aren't supposed to be doing with residential ISP service anyways, according to their ISP's TOS), then it seems only natural that the likelihood they would ever even get a first notice is vanishingly small.

Re:SOPA vs 6 Strikes

[Anonymous Coward]

Then they came for my grandmother, and I didn't speak out...

Re:SOPA vs 6 Strikes

[biodata]

P(false positive) >= P(downloading content which is incorrectly flagged as infringing +P(someone else spoofing ones IP) + P(software or database or configuration error at ISP) +..... All of these probabilities are unknown, so your statement about the likelihoods is baseless, unknown, and in my opinion wrong, unless you can offer evidence otherwise.

Re:SOPA vs 6 Strikes

[Anonymous Coward]

Also because SOPA was an actual law while the 6 strikes is just an agreement between two industries. It has no force of law behind it, I for one am waiting to see how this shakes out when the actually start dropping people.

Re:SOPA vs 6 Strikes

[Lazere]

I tend to use TPB for legal download (mostly Linux distros). Care to guess how many legal torrents are flagged infringing on TPB?

Re:SOPA vs 6 Strikes

[mark-t]

1) Having actually read extensively about the exact process by which they will even identify infringement, it strikes me as highly unlikely they would wrongly associate incorrect content with infringement in the first place, since it evidently involves checking some of the actual file content associated with a suspect individual shared file, and verifying that the content really does belong to them before they can take action and request the ISP to issue an alert.
2) IP spoofing involves either forging the source address in the IP header, whch can trivially be rejected by your ISP's router, since they know exactly which IP's are assigned to you, or else through the use of a proxy, wherein the end point might identify the IP address of a proxy rather than your own, unless you are the one who is actually running a proxy service for other people (which again, is probably a violation of your ISP's terms of service for residential internet service).
3) software error is admittedly possible, but there is no logical reason to assume that it is particularly likely. I find the assessment that because its likelihood is unknown to mean that it is invalid to assume it's unlikely to be baseless, and therefore wrong. If evidence should surface that conflicts with this assessment, I shall alter my views, accordingly, but at this juncture, I have no reason to assume that software errors are probable.

The only issue that I *do* have with this is that, if your IP *IS* somehow incorrectly identified as having downloaded infringing content, you apparently cannot challenge the allegation until after about the 3rd or 4th alert.

Re:SOPA vs 6 Strikes

[mark-t]

Do *YOU* know how many legal torrents on TPB are actually flagged as infringing? And even then, since the content is supposedly legal to distribute, we'd be talking about stuff that's probably available elsewhere online anyways, and more than likely just as easy to find elsewhere, so it's not like there's even a significant chance of censorship. If you have any evidence to support the notion that this is an entirely regular occurrence, happening all of the time, to a vast majority of legally distributable content, please cite your sources and provide links.

Re:SOPA vs 6 Strikes

[Shagg]

it strikes me as highly unlikely they would wrongly associate incorrect content with infringement in the first place

I have a bridge for sale, are you interested?

Re:SOPA vs 6 Strikes

[mark-t]

The assessment I made was informed. Is yours?

I suppose you could allege that the process that is described for how the CAS system is supposed to work (I don't have a link handy right now, but you could probably google it and find something fairly quickly) is actually just a fabrication and they are just going to do things the same way they have in the past, but that assessment is founded only on opinion.

Re:SOPA vs 6 Strikes

[Shagg]

I'm sorry, you're absolutely correct. The corporations involved with this policy are well known for their honesty and integrity. If they promise that they will only ever accuse guilty people, that's good enough for me.

Re:SOPA vs 6 Strikes

[mark-t]

It's less a matter that they've promised they will only ever accuse guilty people (they haven't explicitly done so, in fact, to the best of my knowledge) as it is that the process they are evidently using to disover the IP addresses of infringers is actually pretty likely to produce valid results (insomuch as that an IP they get associated with particular infringing content was genuinely downloading the specified infringing content, not that the subscriber who personally leases that IP was necessarily directly responsible for the infringement). Thus, if a person does not download infringing content, and does not allow anyone who might download such content to use their internet connectivity, it strikes me that the chances of a genuinely false accusation are going to be pretty low.

Re:SOPA vs 6 Strikes

[Shagg]

the process they are evidently using to disover the IP addresses of infringers is actually pretty likely to produce valid results

If you take their word for it. Has there been any validation that it does what they say it does?

The method they claim they're using is nothing new, and false positives have been a problem for a long time.

Re:SOPA vs 6 Strikes

[mark-t]

Actually, the method they are using seems quite new compared to what they were doing before (although not necessarily particularly innovative... arguably obvious, in fact), and seems like it may even theoretically be blockable by a individuals, as long as they know every single one of the IP addresses that are ever going to be used to hunt for infringers.

Re:SOPA vs 6 Strikes

[Anonymous Coward]

By the way, who decides what content is infringing? The content providers. They are the ones that have the control of the system, not us. Who do we complain to if they get it wrong? Apparently, them. The circularity of this process approaches a disc.

We may go back to the early days of Youtube, where the way around the copy detector was to play it in reverse, or mirrored, or mirrored and slightly distorted... Why is it so important that, say, one movie, made 50 years ago, still has to make money for the rights owner every time someone wants to watch it, that we have to warn people they're screwing over the rights owner by grabbing a copy?

Who's making these laws?

[naroom]

Since when can corporations act like governments?

Re:Who's making these laws?

[naff89]

Corporations have a right to run their businesses however they want. The problem here is that, by all agreeing to restrict the rights of their customers in the same way, the corporations are colluding with one another to prevent those customers from simply switching to a competitor.

Re:Who's making these laws?

[sqrt(2)]

In many regions, there's not even any collusion necessary, as there's only one ISP available for broadband.

Re:Who's making these laws?

[Anonymous Coward]

Corporations have a right to run their businesses however they want

You state that with such conviction. It's not true.

Not even in the US with its institutionalized bribery and corruption is this true. It is FAR from true in many other places.

Re:Who's making these laws?

[Anonymous Coward]

ROFL! Where have you been since NAFTA and the like was introduced? Politicians have sold themselves to the highest bidder and that ain't us, buddy.

Re:Who's making these laws?

[oztiks]

Corporations have a right to run their businesses however they want.

Corporations don't have the right to run whatever however they want. As an executive or director you MUST always act accordingly and responsibly and you MUST maintain an ethical stature and operate within the confines within the law *.

As a rule of thumb any new policies and procedures a company institutes which later affect another business' income, then for the suffering business suing for loss of business is quite possible and quite winnable regardless of any clauses in contracts that say things like "we can disconnect you for any reason".

They weigh these new rules knowing that the risks of such things are low and they also know that a big and nasty enough legal defence can make those take down notices not worth the paper they are printed on. This is just an ass covering process for the ISP, nothing more.

* Though seeing this is in practice is a rarity, it is actually supposed to be the norm.

Re:Who's making these laws?

[Anonymous Coward]

Since the government decided that they made great proxy spies and hit men.

Ever heard of Equifax? They "protect" you from identity theft by compiling huge databases on you. It just sucks
now that you can't get a job because of a financial crises a decade ago. Oops, did they forget to delete it.
Sucks to be you.

Ever heard of Facebook? They are the every spy agencies dream proxy.

Unfortunately, there seems to be too few of us who have actually ever read the US Constitution.
Governments are instituted by PEOPLE to PROTECT PEOPLE. Corporations should are NOT people and
they sure as hell don't PROTECT people.

Re:Who's making these laws?

[penix1]

Unfortunately, there seems to be too few of us who have actually ever read the US Constitution.
Governments are instituted by PEOPLE to PROTECT PEOPLE. Corporations should are NOT people and
they sure as hell don't PROTECT people.

That is rich... You are arguing that you have a Constitutional right to violate the Constitution...

Article 1 Section 8 Clause 8:
The Congress shall have Power...

To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;

You may not like it but to argue that trying to enforce this clause of the Constitution is unconstitutional is the weakest argument to make.

Re:Who's making these laws?

[Soluzar]

It isn't "for limited times" anymore, so... nobody is sticking to that particular clause.

Re:Who's making these laws?

[Anonymous Coward]

He claims to have read at least part of the constitution but fails to explain how the two cases that he brings up actually violate the constitution. The reason of course is because they don't.

Re:Who's making these laws?

[Mr. Slippery]

To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;

First: the text says "Authors". Not publishers, not employers of authors, not people to whom the author sold "rights", not descendents of authors.

Second: Congress has the power to secure this exclusive right, not a mandate to do so.

Third: Congress has the power to secure this exclusive right only for a limited time.

Fourth: "Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press". Given that, the "exclusive Right" mentioned in Article I Section 8 cannot be the exclusive right to speak, perform, or publish a piece; only the exclusive right to sell it. Laws against non-commercial sharing and use are a violation of the First Amendment.

Re:Who's making these laws?

[Mr. Slippery]

Since when can corporations act like governments?

Corporations are children of the government -- who do you think issues those charters? They are artificial people created by the government specifically to allow a certain group of natural and artificial people (the corporation's "owners") to have special powers and to avoid certain responsibilities.

Re:Who's making these laws?

[elvis the frog]

Fourth: "Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press". Given that, the "exclusive Right" mentioned in Article I Section 8 cannot be the exclusive right to speak, perform, or publish a piece; only the exclusive right to sell it. Laws against non-commercial sharing and use are a violation of the First Amendment.

Obvious to you, obvious to me - not obvious to the entertainment industry lawyers, congress, and other people with big money at stake.

Re:Who's making these laws?

[Kjella]

Fourth: "Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press". Given that, the "exclusive Right" mentioned in Article I Section 8 cannot be the exclusive right to speak, perform, or publish a piece; only the exclusive right to sell it. Laws against non-commercial sharing and use are a violation of the First Amendment.

If you're going to be that anal about it, I would bet they reply that it says freedom of speech not any other form of communication or medium. Pedantry strikes both ways....

Re:Who's making these laws?

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem isn't if there are or are not providers that have some particular offer for their service, it is whether or not competition is possible, whether or not the rest of people in society are permitted to make a service, whether or not we are allowed to create what we want for ourselves. In the realm of telecommunications, this is not the case. The capital is available, the expertise is available, but the peaceful economic environment is not. We suffer from extreme economic fascism that protects state granted monopolies from the rest of society.

This is true at all levels of political process. The federal level is utterly locked down, but it is still bad at the municipal level as well. Existing telecommunications corporations enjoy franchise utility monopoly by the favor of the political process. The FCC both acts as a suppressing force against new comers and as a front to confuse us into believing that these monopolies are regulated. In absence of direct dependence on customers to determine their sustainability, we are presented with a small group of bureaucrats to determine what services society can offer to itself.

The cartelization that you describe above is a function of the fascism in which this industry operates. I do not dismiss your argument that it is indeed a problem. However, where society is permitted to operate peacefully, these problems are solved on their own. For detailed proof of this, see both the empirical fact that cartels do not exist where there is no state violence and the apodictic reasoning that coordinating price controls(or service quality) in a peaceful society always presents an incentive to break rank and serve customers better, thus dissolving any nascent cartel: http://mises.org/humanaction/chap16sec6.asp

Re:Who's making these laws?

[skine]

That is collusion of itself, since the companies agree not to have more than one cable and one DSL company compete in any given area.

Re:Who's making these laws?

[Shagg]

Since the governments started letting them.

Re:Who's making these laws?

[bluefoxlucid]

Why does everyone assume the Constitution is perfect and infalliable and that the framers made no mistakes and didn't write anything that desperately needs to be repealed?

Without hefty punitive downloading enforcement, the music industry would eventually implode. No, people won't pay "to support the industry," they'll take the cheapest thing they can get. If we all know we get this stuff for free, none of us is going to buy it.

With hefty punitive downloading enforcement, we get all kinds of other problems.

Problem is hard.

Re:Who's making these laws?

[Anonymous Coward]

I may be nitpicking, but...

Second: Congress has the power to secure this exclusive right, not a mandate to do so.

I think you mean they have the mandate to do so, but not the obligation.

And again:

Third: Congress has the power to secure this exclusive right only for a limited time.

The fact is that the power was something they never had, due to the slowness of bureaucracy vs the speed of technological invention, which inevitably leads to draconian measures like these.

Whether these measures will actually be empowering still remains to be proven in practice of course. When I read "browser popups" I can't help but wondering what those even are, I haven't seen one in a decade. If a simple and free (as in beer) plugin can block any and all advertisement pop-ups driven by big money, surely a DOJ pop-up isn't going to be much of an issue? Or did they somehow manage to develop the unblockable pop-up, and NOT sell it to the highest bidder?

Re:Who's making these laws?

[Anonymous Coward]

You know who is the "Author" of any TV show? Not the person who gets the "written by" credit. It's the network.

Any TV writer who signs a contract with a network discovers that the network is the Author. It comes as quite a shock, to realize that writing and authorship are so disconnected.

Re:Who's making these laws?

[Jane Q. Public]

"That is collusion of itself, since the companies agree not to have more than one cable and one DSL company compete in any given area."

And, I think, likely illegal collusion. It's legal for one company, like a franchise, to divide things up into territories. But I don't think it's legal for "competing" companies to do that.

Pop-ups?

[flyingfsck]

Who in this day and age still has pop-ups enabled in their browsers?

Re:Pop-ups?

[Anonymous Coward]

Who in this day and age still has pop-ups enabled in their browsers?

Those of us who have to, due to shitty software/web interfaces.

Re:Pop-ups?

[Anonymous Coward]

My ISP (Rogers) does this for their bandwidth warnings. I think you get one at 75% used and then one at 100% used.

It's not actually a pop-up, it's just a little bar that appears at the top of every webpage that alerts you and has you click "I acknowledge". It isn't very intrusive, doesn't stop you from browsing and it doesn't pop up.

Comcast may be using a different system, but like you said, who allows pop ups these days?

Re:Pop-ups?

[n7ytd]

Who in this day and age still has pop-ups enabled in their browsers?

Beyond just pop-ups, what happens if I:

a) Have never checked whatever @comcast.com e-mail address was created for me when I set up the account. I literally have no idea what that address is, and need another e-mail address like a hole in the head.

and,

b) Never use a web browser at all? I do use browsers with AdBlock, but more and more my bandwidth is being used by game consoles, a Netflix-enabled Blu-ray player, and a smart phone that talks IMAP and Exchange, plus apps that pull their own data without opening a general-purpose web browser.

Seems like the day is fast approaching when sitting down at a desktop and launching a browser will be a quaint, old-fashioned notion with some people.

Re:Pop-ups?

[Anonymous Coward]

Who in this day and age thinks that standard "pop ups" are the only way to make a message show up in a browser?

Go to any reasonably well secured wifi place that charges money, and watch what happens when you try to get around paying. That's not a popup. Some would call it a walled garden.

After 6 strikes, watch a video and start over?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like it's a fair price to pay if it means that we can't get brought into court for pirating just about anything. If that were the case then I'd be ok with it but of course this is not a black and white world we live in.

appeal fraud

[shentino]

Apparently even if you successfully challenge the "back breaking straw" copyright alert that triggers a mitigation notice, you have to defeat at least half of ALL notices to get the mitigation removed.

Kinda like getting your license suspended after getting your 6th ticket, but then having to overturn not only your 6th ticket but also 2 other tickets to get your license reinstated.

You have to sign the notice???

[wolverine2k]

Firstly, I think popups are generally disabled by people who know how to use torrents. And secondly, they require the popup to be signed so you cannot say "I didn't know" further down the line. Now what happens if you see the popup and just close it (CTRL+W or CTRL+F4)? Does it count as seen? Or better still, pull the popup window to a side and keep doing what you are doing. And shutdown after you are done. Now does that count? And what if I challenge the ISP to show me proof for the notice. Will they do it or just ignore me? If they ignore me, I can ignore them and so the story can go...

Re:You have to sign the notice???

[Anonymous Coward]

Note that "popup", like most words once used by a small group with a well-understood meaning, lost the specificity of that meaning as it gained popular use -- spouted by a PR goon, it could mean anything these days. Most likely, it's a DNS hijack that displays the nth strike warning page instead of whatever you were trying to browse to. If you don't "sign" it, I expect they keep shoving it in your face by more DNS hijacking. (And while many torrenters know to use an alternate DNS, many do not.)

If you use a non-comcast DNS, IDK, maybe claiming you don't know because you don't check your comcast email is enough to get let off... once. (Of course, using an alternate DNS is probably a TOS violation in the first place...)

Re:You have to sign the notice???

[UltraZelda64]

I was also just thinking this might be a DNS hijacking based on the summary. If so, sounds like I'll remain unaffected from their attempts to waste my time doing what I want with my web browser, because I haven't been using the ISP-provided DNS resolver for quite a while now. And I don't even know what my ISP-provided e-mail address and password even is, let alone the site to go to, to get to their webmail interface. If it were a standard webmail service, the account would have been deleted years ago due to inactivity.

Re:You have to sign the notice???

[ls671]

They can redirect your DNS queries to their DNS if they want.

In truth, no DNS tampering is needed, all they need to do is redirect any request to port 80 on any IP to their web server.

Re:You have to sign the notice???

[ls671]

My friend ISP does just that when he doesn't pay his bill, redirect anything to port 80 to their web server. Everything else, including DNS, https, mail, skype and what not continues to work normally.

Re:You have to sign the notice???

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, did you sign that electronic form. Or does the reciept of the form on your set acknowledge that you have seen the form?. Even if someone else from your household saw the form, does that mean you saw the form? Does the reciept of the form at your site, mean that you saw it? Just start interposing question marks.
Okay so they got this to be law, what's next, change the" no cut off" to eliminqate the tube, because of threat? Because we really didn't mean 6 strikes, whats the next in this game?

Re:You have to sign the notice???

[Anonymous Coward]

"And what if I challenge the ISP to show me proof for the notice. Will they do it or just ignore me?"

No, they won't ignore you. They will charge you $35. From TFA:

"Those accused of infringing can file an appeal for $35."

And another Ars article that is linked with that sentence: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/10/six-strikes-system-goes-live-this-fall-appeals-to-cost-35/

"Finally, [Jill] Lesser explained to Ars that consumers will have to pay $35 to the CAS to initiate a review procedure, which will be refunded if the consumer wins the review."

Though I haven't read any reports that specifically state this, I would guess that the burden of proof would be on you in order to get your 35$ back -- not on them to prove that they deserve to keep your 35$. And Jill Lesser, credited as "the program's head" in the article, clearly states that the 35$ fee is meant to deter people from appealing.

"'I think the expectation is that if the methodology works correctly and if the alerts work, we hope that there will be very few appeals,' [Lesser] added. 'Because I do think that for some people if you are just throwing up a trial balloon [to see if you’re right], you’re not going to pay $35 and appeal.'"

Re:You have to sign the notice???

[nabsltd]

And secondly, they require the popup to be signed so you cannot say "I didn't know" further down the line.

I'm not sure how you "sign" a popup, but what happens if someone other than the account holder does whatever it takes to dismiss the popup? It could be someone else in the house or it could be someone leeching off your WiFi (either open or not). Or, what if you are just typing along in a web page when this popup displays, and the next key you happen to hit is "Enter" and away goes the popup?

And what if I challenge the ISP to show me proof for the notice.

There's no way they can, as it's obvious that there are too many ways for the popup to be gone without the account holder knowing it ever was there.

Re:You have to sign the notice???

[Shagg]

And what if I challenge the ISP to show me proof for the notice.

It doesn't matter. This isn't a law and courts are not involved. They don't need proof of anything. There's no due process, innocent until proven guilty, burden of proof, etc. Getting rid of those things is specifically why the 6 strikes policy was implemented in the first place. What this policy really boils down to is: "Our TOS says we can take action against anybody we want to".

Here's the form

[Zembar]

Apologies to the author of the original(can be found at http://craphound.com/spamsolutions.txt):

Your law advocates a

(x) technical (x) legislative ( ) market-based ( ) vigilante

approach to fighting piracy. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal law was passed.)

(x) Legitimate bittorrent uses would be affected
(x) It is defenseless against VPNs
(x) It will stop piracy for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it
(x) Users of netflix will not put up with it
( ) Microsoft will not put up with it
( ) The police will not put up with it
(x) Requires too much cooperation from pirates
( ) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once
(x) Many internet users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential employers
( ) Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career or business

Specifically, your plan fails to account for

( ) Laws expressly prohibiting it
(x) TOR endpoints in foreign countries
(x) Asshats
(x) Jurisdictional problems
(x) Unpopularity of net restrictions
(x) Pop-up blockers
(x) Eternal arms race involved in all filtering approaches
( ) Extreme profitability of piracy
(x) Joe jobs and/or identity theft
(x) Technically illiterate politicians
(x) Dishonesty on the part of pirates themselves

and the following philosophical objections may also apply:

(x) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever
been shown practical
( ) Any scheme based on opt-out is unacceptable
( ) IP headers should not be the subject of legislation
(x) Blacklists suck
(x) Whitelists suck
(x) We should be able to watch youtube without being permanently disconnected from the net
( ) Countermeasures should not involve wire fraud or credit card fraud
( ) Countermeasures should not involve sabotage of public networks
( ) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually
(x) Why should we have to trust you and your servers?
(x) Incompatiblity with open source or open source licenses
( ) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem
(x) I don't want private corporations suing me for downloading my own files

Furthermore, this is what I think about you:

( ) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work.
(x) This is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid person for suggesting it.
( ) Nice try, assh0le! I'm going to find out where you live and burn your
house down!

Re:Here's the form

[Anonymous Coward]

I think this guy overreached a little bit.

The following don't seem to actually apply in this instance:
(x) Legitimate bittorrent uses would be affected - We don't know this.
(x) Users of netflix will not put up with it - Why would that be? It seems like it would not affect Netflix/Prime
(x) Many internet users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential employers - Huh?
(x) Technically illiterate politicians - Not sure what politicians have to do with this one
(x) We should be able to watch youtube without being permanently disconnected from the net - Are you sure we can't?
(x) Incompatiblity with open source or open source licenses - Again, huh? I don't see why open sources comes into the picture here. This isn't DRM.

Illegitimate legitimacy

[WaffleMonster]

It is amusing to see comcast and others think just cause everyone else is doing it or because they have "industry" documents like RFC 6108 this somehow insulates them from "stupid".

Injecting shit into http is HARMFUL no matter what BS you can get accepted by throwing your largess around and sponsoring IETF meetings. You simply cannot know a-priori what side effects of injecting javascript crap into HTTP transactions are. In case you have been living under a rock for the past decade sadly everyones using HTTP for transport these days.

As I type no doubt the phishers are working overtime on fake popups emulating comcasts piracy notifications.

I hope sleeping with the MPAA is worth bad press, legal exposure and pissing off your paying customers.

Re:Illegitimate legitimacy

[nospam007]

"Injecting shit into http is HARMFUL no matter what BS you can get accepted ..."

Wait and see.

Some clever dude will analyze how it works exactly, build a special environment that is vulnerable to it, so that it loses data/business/whatever and sue their asses off.

Re:Illegitimate legitimacy

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope sleeping with the MPAA is worth bad press, legal exposure and pissing off your paying customers.

They're not just sleeping with them, but happen to be one of the guilty parties. Doesn't anyone remember the Comcast-NBC-Universal merger thingy? Nope, no potential for conflict of interest there, no siree Bob!

Re:Illegitimate legitimacy

[causality]

"Injecting shit into http is HARMFUL no matter what BS you can get accepted ..."

Wait and see.

Some clever dude will analyze how it works exactly, build a special environment that is vulnerable to it, so that it loses data/business/whatever and sue their asses off.

This is a great idea -- use their own system against them. I hope that clever dude makes millions because that would encourage others to do the same!

Re:Illegitimate legitimacy

[CelticWhisper]

Punitive damages would be fine too. I don't really care whether the clever dude MAKES millions, as long as those involved in six-strikes LOSE the millions.

No details offered?

[jd659]

From the TFA, the message from Comcast reads:

"As part of the Copyright Alerts System operated by the Center for Copyright Information, a copyright owner has sent Comcast a notice claiming your Internet service from Comcast was used to copy or share a movie, television program or song improperly...."

There are absolutely no details about who the copyright owner is, what specific content was infringed, when the alleged infringement was made, what details identifies MY "Internet service", etc.

A more legally correct wording could state "Someone who claims to be the copyright owner, claims that the copyright was infringed from the specific IP which we, Comcast, claim to be belonging to your account at the claimed time of the infringement." But that would be just too many "claims"!

Re:No details offered?

[sqrt(2)]

Supposedly that information is sent to your @comcast.com e-mail account. You can probably count on one hand how many people actually use their ISP-provided e-mail address, so few people are going to see the details of their alleged infractions--by design, I'd say.

Re:No details offered?

[dissy]

I am a Time Warner customer, and I signed up during their beta testing roll out back in 1995. I still have my "signup packet" here sitting on the same shelf for these last 18 years, and this is the first time I've touched it in those 18 years.

There is absolutely no mention of an account or an email address with them.

I can only assume an email address would have been assigned to me, but I have no idea how to sign in to it. It looks like they now maintain a customer portal as well, but again I have no idea how to sign in to it.

While I don't use bit torrent these days at all nor download commercial music or movies, for SOME silly reason I have little faith this new system will have zero false positives despite the lack of infringing activity.
My online video watching is limited to youtube blip and twitch, primarily gaming videos (completely created by those that post them I should add) and whatever random link clicking youtube may take me to... At least until this last weekend.

I noticed over the weekend my public IP changed, and ever since then my service has been running slow as shit.
20+% packet loss, speeds under 1 megabit (for 10mbit down service), it takes a good 30 minutes to buffer a 10 minute youtube video, and for the first time ever my network meter app is showing a line reporting "Blacklisted IP ratio 5/72"

I can't help but wonder if the two are related, and what sort of situation I might be/get stuck in.

I use Firefox with adblock and noscript with a fairly tight whitelist. They give no details about what "popup" means but the traditional popup I will never see. At least I am not seeing any time warner related URLs under the noscript menu.

I'm now thinking about trying out one of these many VPN services just to see what happens to my connection speeds. The first couple I checked have a free trial period (Either most do or I just got very lucky)

Since the ISPs don't seem to have any issue throwing around accusations without proof, I won't feel so bad having not collected more proof when calling them up complaining about the results with my own assumed accusations.

Perhaps if their phone support techs get enough comments about it, that count will get passed up to someone that matters. Doubtful, but you never know. Maybe I'll get lucky and be one of the calls monitored by a manager.
I've never been one to yell or get angry at the poor tech answering the phone, but have no issue bringing up questions they are likely sick of hearing, nor mind playing dumb when they treat me as dumb first.

"Yes sir I know, but we have to follow the trouble shooting guide. Now reboot your computer again, and reboot the cable modem again, I'll wait here..."

"You know I've heard about this new internet monitoring spying thing the US is doing everywhere.. You think it's like in the movies where hearing breathing in the phone would cause my connection to have these problems? I bet that would cause a lot of problems, so many connections to keep up with. Are you absolutely sure that isn't the problem? It still sounds like it to me."

Re:No details offered?

[Anonymous Coward]

It'd sure be fun to get the IP addresses of the ISP executives and their families and file spurious copyright infringement claims against them.

Re:No details offered?

[infinitelink]

This is all theoretically based, but:

I'm betting they're using deep packet inspection, perhaps looking for signatures if content going across is encrypted, such that perhaps (probably unencrypted to facilitate this) someone should start "sharing" with himself from one location, pulling from home, and doing so through his own web interface, and wait to get these notices; then when they finally terminate service he'll have grounds to bring suit: (1) for illegal derivation from a copyrighted work without permission of the rights holder (for which that person will have, as the rights holder, the right to sue); (2) for unlawful eavesdropping; (3) for false claims of copyright infringement, and assistance in the claim; (4) for unlawful termination of services (I believe under TPA that cutting-off utilities is defined as an act of terrorism...); (5) for installation of software or code (these pop-ups) upon a computer without permission of the owner... Essentially they need to screw off, or nerds really need to lawyer-up and start fighting, building their own networks, and working to make possible avoidance of unethical companies.

Speaking of all this: let's all put banners at the top of web pages with the words "if you get a copyright infringement notice from your ISP on any of these pages, please take a screenshot and contact me, so I can sue them for unlawfully making a derivative of my copyrighted work."

Also, comments from here, http://yro.slashdot.org/story/07/06/23/1233212/isps-inserting-ads-into-your-pages likely apply to this too. On many levels this appears to be very illegal. At the least eavesdropping--and "monitoring" is only acceptable insofar as the justification was to automatically adjust the network traffic flows to keep the whole stable and flowing--and making derivative works. The law has already established that just because communications take place across even PUBLIC utility lines, that doesn't make it not eavedropping to listen-in: the police were hammered pretty hard after trying to make that argument (and it's logic consistent with the Constitution which needs to rightfully be returned and applied to roads and your persons and effects in a vehicle as you travel on them, your vehicle, and any number of areas that Statists have successfully convinced sometimes all-too-willingly collusive Courts to make fishing/spying free-for-alls), and merely being "private" doesn't mean eavesdropping becomes legal.

Combine this with e.g. yesterday's post...

[vikingpower]

..."Aaron Schwartz: reasons for him being persecuted by DOJ were political" ( as admitted by the DOJ itself ) - and many others.

US = nascent police state.

Re:Combine this with e.g. yesterday's post...

[rsborg]

..."Aaron Schwartz: reasons for him being persecuted by DOJ were political" ( as admitted by the DOJ itself ) - and many others.

US = nascent police state.

What's nascent about it? It's here and in-force. Welcome to your neo-feudalist future.

Re:Combine this with e.g. yesterday's post...

[Anonymous Coward]

You surely meant present...

so much for the ignorance defense

[0111 1110]

They think that the copyright cartels are their buddies for taking their bribes and fighting their fight, but when this fails just like all the rest of their evil greedy plans of never letting so much as a penny slip through their fingers the ISPs participating in this may find it difficult to testify to a judge with a straight face that they have no control of the infringing content transmitted over their network. This strategy may not bite them in the ass today, or even next week or next month, but someday it will. He who sups with the devil should have a long spoon.

Re:so much for the ignorance defense

[Lumpy]

News Flash: Comcast IS a Copyright cartel. They have been buying and merging with big media companies for a decade now...

5 Strikes and i change my ISP!

[Yell0w]

5 Strikes and i change my ISP!

Re:5 Strikes and i change my ISP!

[MMC Monster]

Exactly how many broadband providers do you have in your area?

And how many of them are just as good or better than your current one?

What will I do? Probably cancel my premium cable and use the money to get a VPN service.

Re:5 Strikes and i change my ISP!

[Yell0w]

You have a point, several providers, but only one im happy with. Decent VPN next!

Summary inaccurate

[Wallslide]

I read the article. In the summary, the following is stated:

"The article outlines some of the CAS's failings, such as being unable to detect infringement through a VPN"

The article says no such thing. The reference to VPNs in the article states that if a user is always tunneling through a VPN, Comcast will be unable to inject data into their datastream, and thus the user may never see a "popup" warning in their browser. Added to the fact that users may not be aware that their Comcast service comes with a Comcast email account (or they may never check it), and there is no guarantee that a user will ever see a warning sent by Comcast.

Re:Summary inaccurate

[Anonymous Coward]

I read the article. In the summary, the following is stated:

"The article outlines some of the CAS's failings, such as being unable to detect infringement through a VPN"

The article says no such thing.

From TFA:

When Ars asked him to confirm that Six Strikes would not be able to see a potential violation if the user was using a VPN, he responded: “I think you’re right."

Which damn well is such a thing.

The reference to VPNs in the article states that if a user is always tunneling through a VPN, Comcast will be unable to inject data into their datastream, and thus the user may never see a "popup" warning in their browser.

Unless "Six Strikes" means "a user" and "a potential violation" means "a copyright alert", your interpretation has nothing to do with what TFA says. Dumbass.

Punishing the sink?

[Kwyj1b0]

I always wondered why possession/acquiring of copyright material is a crime.

The whole problem of making possession/downloading illegal is it tries to fight human nature in a clumsy way (I get that while downloading torrents you also MIGHT seed it - there might not be anyone else downloading from you). People will always want free stuff. If I find a copy of a popular book being sold at half price on the pavement, I will buy it (esp. if the print is great).

At certain times, fighting human nature is important/worth it (e.g. stealing and killing others is illegal). At other times, it is just plain stupid (e.g. War on XYZ). In the end if people want it badly enough they will find a way to get what they want, consequences be damned (see how much stealing laws work against a starving man). You are trying to make natural behavior illegal, and coming up with technical measures to prevent it. Which has the gaping loophole that most technical barriers can/will be breached. And there is little cost to building digital workarounds.

Re:Punishing the sink?

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't get copyright alerts for downloading only for uploading.

Re:Punishing the sink?

[flimflammer]

It's not the download. When you're in a torrent swarm, you're uploading while you're downloading. The uploading is what they're anal about.

That's why people only really get in trouble through torrents or other direct P2P activity.

Re:Punishing the sink?

[Myopic]

"People will always want free stuff"

I suppose so, but I prefer the phrasing "humans will always desire to participate in human culture". Is it legitimate to permanently legally lock up most products of human culture so that most humans can't access them? In my opinion, no, that is not legitimate. Given the prevalence of downloading such cultural products, my opinion seems to be widely shared.

A balanced approach would be a ten-year non-extendable non-free non-automatic commercial copyright available on complete works to original authors.

* Non-free, non-automatic means you have to register your work and pay a fee.
* Commercial means that copyright protects commerce meaning non-commercial use cannot be construed as infringement.
* Complete works means sampling and collage cannot be construed as infringement.
* Original authors means the actual human beings who created the work; "works for hire" would not be a concept, because a company is not a human so a company by definition cannot "create" anything.

Lots of workaround

[terminal.dk]

Install TOR (if not against AUP), and tell them that you do not download crap not worth paying for, but that you are an exit node for TOR. Thustraffic from your IP can be assumed to originate from other computers. Inform FBI about the same thing, such that a judge can never issue a warrant as there is no reasonable suspicion against you. And that if you want to download crap, your traffic will use TOR to originate from another IP.

Use a VPN or virtual server for you criminal activities. You can get $2-$5/mo virtual servers powerfull enough for VPN. You can get them in Europe, Canada, South Africa. You name it, you get it.

But again, the whole idea is to hit the stupid guy with below average IQ and below average income. They are the ones least likely to get a qualified defense.

Re:Lots of workaround

[gsslay]

Thus traffic from your IP can be assumed to originate from other computers. .. if you want to download crap, your traffic will use TOR to originate from another IP.

"I'm not downloading copyright material illegally, I'm just aiding anonymous others to do it, and they are anonymously returning the favor." Yeah, the FBI and judges will have absolutely no problem with that.

You can get $2-$5/mo virtual servers powerfull enough for VPN.

Hang on, didn't you say it was crap not worth paying for? Here you are paying for it, and presumably spending time watching/listening to it. Your time has absolutely no value that it you actively seek out crap to waste it on? Or is the value of this "crap" conveniently flexible enough to fit whatever point you want to make?

Re:Lots of workaround

[CtrlAltieDel]

Exactly how would Tor or a Tor Client be used to circumvent these measures? For instance, using Tor with Firefox still requires the use of a third party BitTorrent client in order to download movies or music from a site such as PirateBay, KickAss Torrent, MiniNova, etc... About the only thing I can think of that can be downloaded using Tor are pix or documents or files of some some sort that have a normal browser download avenue. Otherwise, you can use Tor all day long but, as soon as you start downloading with your BitTorrent client, they got 'ya. The old, and discontinued, OperaTor may have worked for what you are suggesting because Opera has a BitTorrent built into the browser and you would be using Tor and Opera and the BitTorrent client simultaneously but, it's not available any longer. I used to get "Violation Notices" from Charter all the time but they never did anything. They also aren't currently on the list of ISP's that have joined this exercise. Nevertheless, the notices did kind of scare me, so, I started using the BitTorrent client called Transmission, coupled with IBlock List and haven't had another warning since. I'm assuming this method will continue to work.

Re:Lots of workaround

[ledow]

And show me an ISP that lets you run Tor in their AUP. Because pretty much all of them forbid any sort of proxying for others, which would be taken to include Tor.

Hell, even my external virtual server has a clause about "only proxying for your own use" (so I can set up a VPN, or email proxy, and proxy my connection, but only for me to use - I can't go advertising it or selling it to others)

Re:Lots of workaround

[Anonymous Coward]

Although I don't condone the use of Tor for torrenting, one might use whonix to Torrify all connections. It comes as two virtual machines: a gateway and a workstation. Any and all connections made on the workstation are routed through the gateway, neatly preventing any leaks.

Re:Lots of workaround

[Pleski]

I'm pretty sure they won't let you run an exit node on a residential connection.

Re:Lots of workaround

[Anonymous Coward]

Bittorrent over TOR is a bad idea for a number of reasons (https://blog.torproject.org/blog/bittorrent-over-tor-isnt-good-idea), but you don't seem to understand that you can direct traffic from other applications to use a proxy. There's nothing magical about the portable version of FF that comes bundled with TOR - it's just FF portable, with preconfigured proxy settings.

Re:Lots of workaround

[Anonymous Coward]

Install TOR (if not against AUP), and tell them that you do not download crap not worth paying for, but that you are an exit node for TOR. Thustraffic from your IP can be assumed to originate from other computers. Inform FBI about the same thing, such that a judge can never issue a warrant as there is no reasonable suspicion against you. And that if you want to download crap, your traffic will use TOR to originate from another IP.

Use a VPN or virtual server for you criminal activities. You can get $2-$5/mo virtual servers powerfull enough for VPN. You can get them in Europe, Canada, South Africa. You name it, you get it.

But again, the whole idea is to hit the stupid guy with below average IQ and below average income. They are the ones least likely to get a qualified defense.

running a tor exit node is no way to deal with this.

man in the middle

[SkunkPussy]

Man in the middle attack is completely unacceptable.

Re:man in the middle

[Skapare]

• HTTPS
• IPsec
• ssh -D ->free/cheap instance/virtual server

Re:man in the middle

[SkunkPussy]

the fact that there's a workaround doesn't really make it more acceptable

Write a virus that

[future assassin]

attack computers on those networks then make those computers download copyrighted materials. Eventually 1000's will get the notice and maybe they'll notice.

Re:Write a virus that

[nicoleb_x]

I think that is a good idea. Someone who doesn't think they should pay for content is going to rent a bot army and share files that trigger the CAS system for the sole purpose of annoying people in the hope that false positives will bring down the system.

Sigh.

[ledow]

A pop-up I wasn't expecting inserted into my normal web browsers, and breaking any secure sites that it might pop up on prompting security warnings, asking me to click a button, sign-in, etc.?

Yeah, that won't be a scam, will it?

How about this - you have these people's address and billing details, send them a damn letter by recorded delivery if you want them to read it.

Personally, everything I've been advising my users NOT to do for the last ten years would ensure that those warnings are ALL ignored and/or the person runs off to check their antivirus because they are quite obviously not supposed to be there when you have typed in www.google.com or whatever.

Re:Sigh.

[Anonymous Coward]

I give it a few more days before spammers / scammers start popping up such messages, but with a live link in the pop-up that directs users to a malware-infested site. It will work even better than those "FBI message" ransomware worms.

Also, check the comcast (or whatever) ISP e-mail account? Do most people even use those anymore?

Re:Sigh.

[Anonymous Coward]

A pop-up I wasn't expecting inserted into my normal web browsers, and breaking any secure sites that it might pop up on prompting security warnings, asking me to click a button, sign-in, etc.?

Yeah, that won't be a scam, will it?

Exactly - there are doubtless already phishers cloning this exact behavior so they can steal people's Comcast credentials. Nice job, Comcast...

Re:Sigh.

[Anubis IV]

Exactly. Besides which, this method isn't even guaranteed to reach the intended target. If my network is open to the public or I have friends over who use my Wi-Fi, one of my neighbors or guests could very well receive the pop-up and click the button to confirm that I've read it, meaning that I'd never see it at all. If you want to serve someone with a legal document, there are channels for doing so. A pop-up in a browser is not one of them.

Sign in to confirm? Hah

[wonkey_monkey]

They explain what triggered the alert and ask the user to sign in and confirm they received the alert. (Not admitting guilt, but at least closing off the legal defense of "I didn't know.")

If only there was some way of getting around that, like, um... not signing in and confirming you've received the alert? Yeah, that loophole's well and truly closed, well done.

Re:Sign in to confirm? Hah

[CtrlAltieDel]

You will likely be unable to proceed on to another page or site without first confirming receipt of the warning, as was being discussed earlier in the thread.

Re:Sign in to confirm? Hah

[wonkey_monkey]

Well, that sucks. I underestimated their evil. I also assumed an "in-browser pop-up" to be an addition to a webpage, rather than a replacement.

Re:Sign in to confirm? Hah

[mjr167]

Cause when you get a pop up asking for you to type in your name and password for something unrelated to the site you visited you totally do it? I know I always click on the links in emails asking for my log on credentials.

Re:Sign in to confirm? Hah

[flimflammer]

The issue is the meaning of the word "popup." People are assuming it's a literal pop-up window that shows up unannounced. What it more likely is, is a DNS hijack that redirects all web traffic to one of their landing pages like you get right before you activate your service with them, and won't let you resume web browsing until you acknowledge the receipt.

Re:Sign in to confirm? Hah

[Skapare]

Unless you are doing:

• HTTPS
• IPsec
• ssh -D -> free/cheap instance/virtual server

Re:Sign in to confirm? Hah

[Myopic]

You made that mistake because you relied on your understanding of technology. You won't repeat this mistake if you become an ignorant jackass like the people implementing this CAS nonsense.

Re:Sign in to confirm? Hah

[TomatoCo]

And if literally all network traffic is simply dropped until a plain, unencrypted, hijackable request can be caught?

Re:Sign in to confirm? Hah

[Skapare]

You mean like shutting OFF the service?

How about NAT and having several computers?

[Anonymous Coward]

So, when they detect piracy, what http stream will they inject their warning into?

There may be none at the moment, because the 'piracy' may have been done using torrents/ftp/whatever. But they can obviously just wait for a http connection to open.

But many homes have several computers. And the ISP cannot know, due to NAT routers. So what if I am doing an "apt-get upgrade" which fetch 40MB of (legal) packages over http every week, while someone else pirate something? If such an ISP inject a warning in a random http stream, they are most likely to corrupt my fully legal http file transfers - because they will be the majority of http traffic through that NAT router.

And if they hit my browser - well, not only does it block popups, it also blocks both javascript and third-party URLs unless I explicitly whitelist the site. They will perhaps notice that their stuff does not even get downloaded.

Re:How about NAT and having several computers?

[ledow]

I haven't read TFA, and am not speaking for Comcast (nor condoning them), but most of your concern is probably misguided:

They probably insert a javascript popup into javascript / HTML files that are accessed. Yes, it will affect all NAT'd users but you can't say "Well, you informed my flatmate but not me the account holder" because you used a different connection to the one warned.

I imagine they intercept ALL HTTP requests that provide an HTML response. Thus, everyone behind the NAT sees it. And no downloads or other services are affected. Because it's an inserted code into the HTML stream, it doesn't matter if you block popups, nor even that Javascript is turned off. When you request www.google.com, they will send you an HTML file that contains the popup and won't stop doing that until you "agree" to it (the question of who ends up clicking that agree button is a legal minefield, I admit). It won't set off SSL warnings because you can't inject into an HTTPS stream without breaking things. It won't matter what browser or settings you use - any HTML request will respond with the page that you need to agree to.

It's the same method used to operate wifi hotspots all over the world.

How do I know? My ISP used to have something similar 10 years ago. If they detected port 139 was unsecured on your network (by the presence of packets heading out of the network) they would block your web access until you agreed that you would take responsibility for it. I clicked that dialog four times in my life, I think (and, no, I didn't have open SMB shares exposed to the world, I'd just done a couple of nmap scans on my own external machines and it caused the alerts).

It didn't break anything, it was pretty certain that someone would see it and agree to it (and this was back before browsers supported half of what they do now), and it was effective (they had logs of when I had "agreed" to it, which was used by one of their tech support reps to determine that I know what I was talking about when I later had a problem - "Ah, an nmap user, okay, could you just do this for me...").

Re:How about NAT and having several computers?

[flimflammer]

Likely all of them. The most obvious answer is that it's going to reroute all web requests from that subscriber to their six strikes landing page.

Re:How about NAT and having several computers?

[Skapare]

But you could be using HTTPS for as many sites that accept it, IPsec for more that accept that, and ssh -D via a free cloud instance or cheap virtual server for all the rest. You'd then never see the popup because you'd never get the injected Javascript. Your neighbors borrowing your wifi might, and might acknowledge for you. But with security like that, they'd never see your downloads, either.

Re:How about NAT and having several computers?

[Anonymous Coward]

It didnt break anything then, nowdays would you be so sure?

obligatory comment...

[Anonymous Coward]

I for one, pay heed to our new corporate masters!

Waste of time

[suckitharder]

This is only going to scare the people using public services. 99% useless and a complete waste of time and money. Typical of the majority of out problems in this country.

What is improperly?

[Anonymous Coward]

“What is ‘improperly?' This is one of the problems with the system,” Derek Bambauer, a tech law professor at the University of Arizona, e-mailed Ars after he saw the alert pages.

Obviously the proper way to do it would have prevented Comcast from being able to see it. See VPN and other suggestions posted above.

What if your child sees this and clicks it away?

[Anonymous Coward]

A lot of people (not most slashdotters lol) have children. What if this pops up and the kid just clicks it away and never mentions it to his parents? It could easily get up to message #6 without the parents ever knowing about it. And then what?

Jam the claim system

[ThatsNotPudding]

There are absolutely no details about who the copyright owner is, what specific content was infringed, when the alleged infringement was made, what details identifies MY "Internet service", etc.

A more legally correct wording could state "Someone who claims to be the copyright owner, claims that the copyright was infringed from the specific IP which we, Comcast, claim to be belonging to your account at the claimed time of the infringement." But that would be just too many "claims"!

It would be fun to see bots filing bogus copyright claims with all the ISPs with the IP addresses of entertainment MBAs, their lawyers, lawmakers, celebs...

Purely an intellectual exersize; I would never advocate such a thing.

Perish the thought.

Re:Jam the claim system

[Shagg]

I assume the ISPs only accept copyright claims that come from the RIAA/MPAA/etc. I don't think everyone gets to file copyright claims under this policy.

Browser popup

[Anonymous Coward]

so you run firefox, with pop-ups blocked, you will never get a notice? How "stupid"! Do not track marked, and they will never see how you got there, come on folks, they have packet sniffers, on your set, no at the bad guys place. Violation of your rights.

Comcast

[Jafafa Hots]

may not ever use account termination as a way of enforcing this, but I certainly will use account termination as a way of dealing with it.

That thing where they tell you you have to call them?
That call will be to cancel my service.

(and no, I don't use torrents, (except steam) but that hardly matters)

Post public domain triggers

[tdc_vga]

If anyone can pulls an alert from a public domain torrent, please post the link. I'd really like to get my 5 alerts out of the way this weekend so I can speak with the CAS team about how utterly useless they, and their entire scheme, are before my account cancels.

Re:Post public domain triggers

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.debian.org/CD/torrent-cd/

Americans..

[Anonymous Coward]

I pity you.

Europeans..

[Anonymous Coward]

I pity you too.

Re:Europeans..

[Skapare]

But many Europeans actually have real competition, and thus reasonable prices ... and, importantly, a place to go to when voting with their wallets. Americans only barely have that in Kansas City and Chattanooga.

The Trolls will have fun

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't wait for all the spam, look-alike pop-ups, not to mention all the drive-by trolling of open WIFI AP's. How long until people get locked out of their ISP's just due to having an unsecured (or not very secured) WIFI?

Lynx?

[Jedi1USA]

Will this work properly in Lynx? Or do I need to file a complaint about cross browser support?

Re:Lynx?

[poofmeisterp]

Will this work properly in Lynx? Or do I need to file a complaint about cross browser support?

You can file if you can tolerate a complete lack of response. :)

It's kind of great to have a 1st World Problem...

[rmdingler]

There is always a way to vote when the offensive action is perpetrated by a money grubbing entity: with your wallet. Unfortunately, most people won't be willing to give up their darling televisions on principle alone. It is an inexpensive babysitter for some, a mind eraser for others, and an escape from the day for too many.

DNS

[umop3plsdn]

To all the people crabbing about them redirecting DNS "We have designed the pop-up browser alerts not to interfere with any essential services obtained over the Internet." meaning this would cause a disruption in services. Therefore this is not going to be the course of action.

Man in the middle.

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm, so they pop up a window on MY machine when I am browsing the Internet? Sounds like a man in the middle attack to me.

And what happens when someone is using a popup blocker? They don't see it then? This system fails in a lot of areas.

Re:It's kind of great to have a 1st World Problem.

[Jafafa Hots]

I haven't owned a TV in almost 20 years.
I have comcast for internet only.

How long until...

[Beorytis]

...someone takes the CAS screenshots from TFA and incorporates them into a phishing scam popup?

Re:How long until...

[Anonymous Coward]

More importantly, how long until someone appeals one of the notices saying "I could not tell for certain that it was not a phishing attempt done by a third party imitating Comcast?"

Re:How long until...

[PPH]

I'd grab a copy of each popup and start work right now, but they have a Comcast logo. And I wouldn't want to violate their trademark. That would be wrong.

Re:How long until...

[ediron2]

Yeah, one of my least favorite enterprise circlejerks was watching IT and InfoSec debate endlessly 'which email do I trust' and 'not doing an external survey because it involves clicking a link from an email' etc.

Re:How long until...

[Shagg]

I bet someone already has.

"It's junion rodeo time"

[RogueWarrior65]

"oh, no, not junior rodeo..."

Seriously, wtf? By what right do ISPs have to be judge, jury, and executioner?

petition

[Anonymous Coward]

for all y'all who are interested.
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/stop-cas-copyright-alert-system/KjBZN4mV

Please Help Me Understand

[Anonymous Coward]

I've ignored this issue for the past year and now I am confused.

Is this new "six strikes system"(CAS) is a federal or state law?

Or, is this collusion between ISPs to deny service to consumers?

If the latter, how long before they are sued?

Fall out

[Anonymous Coward]

I see 2 very real possibilities in the near future as fall out from this:

1) scammers will replicate the typical warning pages the ISP's display in malware/trojans but with the added page areas to "pay a fine : input your credit card details to restore your internet connection to full speed"

2) hackers will develop malware/trojans that incorporate a Peer-to-peer client that downloads know high profile infringing material to force HUGE numbers of people into speed reductions/trouble etc.

"Account Termination" is never needed because ...

[Skapare]

... we can just cap them at the equivalent of 300 baud.

They are pretty different things

[Anonymous Coward]

First of all, the government isn't directly involved. (It's indirectly involved, in that government policies are where you might not be able to easily "fire" ISPs which cooperate with the scheme.) And it's easier and simpler to petition Congress to abstain from doing a destructive thing, than it is to petition them to do a useful thing (force regulatory agencies to force ISPs to not cooperate with this stupid shit).

Second, there's the scale of damage from false positives. SOPA endangered DNS. Imagine Slashdot or Facebook or the New York Times being falsely accused and taken offline. Now imagine someone's residential DSL being taken offline. Those are different-scale disasters.

Also, there's pirates' perspective, but it's not about toxicity. Everybody in the world, pirate or not, had reason to oppose SOPA. But this isn't going to impact "serious" pirates; only casual pirates and innocents are going to be harmed by this. As a "serious" pirate, since I know this won't harm me ("I wasn't innocent, so I didn't speak up for the innocent...") it's hard to get passionately inflamed. This is only going to either do collateral damage against the innocent, or help to train newbie pirates to use better practices. And as the industry herds more and more of us into becoming "serious" pirates, there's a smaller share of people to advocate against poorly-conceived plans like this one.

What I mean is, SOPA threatened me either as a consequence of my piracy, or also as errors from false accusations. This is only going to get me through a false accusation. I'll be pirating all the time, but if I get a notice, it'll be because of something my neighbor did, incorrectly attributed to me due to someone making a mistake when reading a DHCP lease log. So I'll pay the $35, fight, win, and get my money back, at net cost to my opponent! That's practically a win. SOPA had no win condition, for anyone. Even MPAA would have eventually advocated to please repeal SOPA because they'd want to get mpaa.org back.

Also, this may end up having interesting side-effects and possible uses. If someone communicates with my ISP with the intention of getting my ISP to violate their contract with me, maybe I can sue them for tortious interference. Since it'll usually be triggered by a false positive, that's tortious interference combined with fraud. There may be potential in using this program to cost the MPAA even more money, punitive damages kind of money. Let them get outraged and do the work and bear the expense of ending this program, next year. I'm not litigious enough to follow through with that, but some people might be licking their chops over all the false positives this is going to turn into money in their pockets.

Re:What if your child sees this and clicks it away

[Skapare]

Or the neighbor kids for those without their own.

I'm Not Sure I Understand What This Is About

[assertation]

Is this a new technology and policy that some ISPs are voluntarily adopting?

Will a person be at risk is s/he watches streaming videos?

Streaming videos from another country?

Going to the Pirate Bay site and using a torrent link from to use a torrent client to download something?

Any way to protect yourself?

Funny, that...

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me get this right... In order to inform me that I am breaking copyright laws, the ISP will alter the content of a website in order to display a message to me? In other words they are taking advantage of someone else's copyrighted content in order to force me to read their message? Isn't that the same fuckin' thing they are accusing me of?

"Don't hit people!" said dad, as he emphasized his point with his fist.

Missing versus changed

[phorm]

I suppose it might come down to context, but in the internet world it would seem to be the difference between your ISP blocking a page versus allowing it but changing the content.

No media boxes I'm aware of can substitute product-placement, in-show banners, etc. They just don't record for certain times.

My Next Business Venture...

[ponraul]

Fake six-strikes popups which ask for credit card numbers to resolve the complaint.

Re:"Account Termination" is never needed because .

[Shagg]

Forget 300 baud, just cap them at 0 and keep sending them a bill. Technically, that's not "Account Termination" either.

ISP email

[issicus]

I hope they don't try sending notices that way. I'm pretty sure I have one but have no idea what it is or how to access it.

Last month?!?

[Stu_28]

Every month my bill goes up! Between all the different constantly fluctuating "fees" (UCC, Regulatory Recovery, Local Franchise, FCC Regulatory, 911, State Assessment, etc.) my bill goes up about a buck or more a month.

Boycott Comcast

[eyendall]

So when does the boycott start?

Re:Boycott Comcast

[CaseyJParker]

As soon as there are alternatives ... (in my area, there are literally None)

Six Strikes Rule

[Anonymous Coward]

Forgive my noobness, but would using an online proxy site get around this at all?

Pointless?

[CaseyJParker]

Let's see ... as a non-moron, I use (during normal browsing) a Proxy, a VPN, NoScript and AdBlock+ plugins, and popups are utterly disabled ... I'm a Comcast customer, but I've never once seen my own Comcast email. Wouldn't this entire thing be utterly pointless and never noticed in my position?