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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."
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
http://eugeneciurana.com | http://ciurana.eu
I imagine it's through using their DNS
Who in this day and age still has pop-ups enabled in their browsers?
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
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?
In many regions, there's not even any collusion necessary, as there's only one ISP available for broadband.
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
...someone takes the CAS screenshots from TFA and incorporates them into a phishing scam popup?