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

"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?"

[bhcompy]

I imagine it's through using their DNS

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?"

[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]

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?"

[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?"

[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?"

[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?"

[Mashiki]

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

Re:"In-browser popups?"

[fredprado]

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

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?"

[ultrasawblade]

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

[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?"

[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?"

[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?"

[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?"

[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?"

[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.

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?

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

[ThatsNotFunny]

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

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.

Pop-ups?

[flyingfsck]

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

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...

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!

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

[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."

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: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.

5 Strikes and i change my ISP!

[Yell0w]

5 Strikes and i change my ISP!

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.

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: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

[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:Who's making these laws?

[Soluzar]

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

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.

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)

Lynx?

[Jedi1USA]

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

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.

How long until...

[Beorytis]

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

My Next Business Venture...

[ponraul]

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