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?"

[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]

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.

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

[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?

Pop-ups?

[flyingfsck]

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

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!

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: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.

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: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.