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Criticism Of Copyright Alert System Mounts
Dangerous_Minds writes "This last week, the Copyright Alert System was rolled out. Now that everyone is getting a better idea of what the alert system looks like, criticisms are building against the system. Freezenet says that the mere fact that ISPs are using a browser pop-up window opens the floodgates for fraudsters to hijack the system and scam users out of money. The EFF criticized the system because the educational material contains numerous flaws. Meanwhile, Web Pro News said that this system will also hurt small business and consumers."
The EFF has gradually changed from protecting important rights such as the right to free speech and the right to privacy to being an advocate for wide scale copyright infringement. It's interesting that their agenda seems to dovetail mostly with that of Google - and that they've become about as independent of Google as the NRA is of the Republicans. We need an internet rights association that actually cares about defending rights beyond the right to bittorrent Hollywood crap.
Here is the link : Copyright Alert
This is exactly the same as other totalitarian regimes did and do to re-"educate" (or to say it plainly, indoctrinate) their citizens with ideological propaganda to support the system. The USSR did it before the wall fell in 1989, and now the megacorps are doing it in the USA. Most Russians were clever enough to see through such propaganda, I'm curious to see if Americans are just as smart.
Aren't they protected from liability as long as they act as "dumb pipes"? Doesn't his mean they are opening themselves up for liability? Yeah, I understand the ones that own media companies but what about the rest? Seems like a way to lose customers is all.
Everyone should draw a crappy picture in paint, host it on something free like google sites, and spread links that bring people to a second page that says "You don't have permission to click this link" with a link to the picture itself. Then bring copyright complaints to all the ISPs of all the people who inevitably click that and hence download your copyrighted crap without permission. Flood the fuckers.
"residential Internet accounts are the focus of our program. The vast majority of businesses, including those like Starbucks that provide legitimate open Wi-Fi connections, will have an Internet connection that is tailored to a business operation and these business networks are not part of the CAS and will never be sent a Copyright Alert."
the rest of the site looks like an advertisement for the major media companies, directing you to "their" content as if it is the only game in town, while appearing to mom and dad as an official legal page
The fact that the content industry has no problems with having the ISP industry monitoring their CUSTOMERS use of the Internet makes me sick.
Some rights are more important than others. My right to not be spied on by a company I (not the content industry) am doing business with is much more important than the content industries desire to make sure they're paid every dime they think they deserve.
The ISPs should have fought like hell to achieve a common carrier status which would have allowed them to tell big content to pound sand. Oh and as for the content industry owning many ISPs our government should have never allowed that.
I'll say it again. If your business model requires a police state to be viable, you need to fucking go out of business.
Browser hijacking popup?
Noscript says "wat?"
It seems to me that the content of an IP packet should be protected under wiretapping laws. What gives the ISPs the right to monitor my traffic. If they do have this right, do they also have the right to break or somehow spoof encrypted traffic as well?
The difference between Canada and the USA is that in Canada healthcare is a right and gun ownership is a privilege.
If, as is described on the copyrightinformation.org website, the copyright alert system is implemented such that the IP addresses it gathers genuinely are being used by infringers, I don't have much of a problem with this, since I don't download infringing content, nor do I do anything which might permit or enable other people to use my internet connection who may, and I do not hold much sympathy for those who do.
There are, however, two major flaws that concern me greatly. The first is that if they are falsely alleging that a subscriber infringed on copyright with one of these alerts, the subscriber cannot actually challenge the alert until after about the 3rd or 4th one. The other issue, an even bigger one, is that all of the alerts, even including the ones which permit an alleged perpetrator to appeal, are worded very much like a form letter, and do not contain any particulars about the accusation, like what work was allegedly infringed on, which network the alleged infringement occurred on, when it occurred, etc. It doesn't even identify the *TYPE* of alleged infringing content, which strikes me as incrediby unfair.... and has a very similar feel in my opinion to the notion of, say, being stopped and given a warning by a police officer, but them not telling you what it was that you supposedly even did. If you don't know what they are even talking about, then how are you expected to sensibly respond, beyond calling them liars?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
This is not an educational system. It's a system designed to assign IP violation liability to the owner of the IP address where by eliminating arguements like "I didn't know it was occurring" or "it was an unauthorized user. I'm very glad to see scrutiny rising on the topic, there was little coverage in the days leading up.
True. When this was first posted, I didn't need to read further than "browser pop-up" to realize it's a bad thing. I am a professional IT security expert, after a couple of years you get an intuition about stupid ideas.
Will it work? Are you kidding me?
Will it have unintended consequences? Nah... neeeeever... what could possibly go wrong?
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
And let's not forget this is a system where you are guilty until proven innocent and the MPAA get's to decide who is guilty and it costs you $35 to even attempt to prove your innocence.
I cancelled my Verizon service today. Every time I use bittorrent, my internet connection slows to a crawl. This has been going on for months, and I'm sick of it. I only used bittorrent to download old movies. I did download the Star Trek movie, but the torrent was so terrible, it was cut off at the top and had a woman's hair in the foreground (obviously recorded at a theater), so I went to see it at the theater, and paid full price, because the 'preview' I downloaded looked really cool. I probably wouldn't have seen it at all if the torrent didn't exist.
Just because you signed something, the constitution and the law still applies, right? Or is the USA constitution and law so silly that people can sign away their legal rights? If so, the USA needs to changes their laws, fast. In most civilized countries, signing something that would give one or more parties in the contract rights that violate the law, that clause is invalid.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
How do us independent musicians leverage this technology to catch thieves? Do i just submit my music then thieves strart getting busted?
You could be inflicting on copyright constantly without being aware of it. I'm fairly certain that if they wanted to, they could easily get you for 6 violations within one week, while you think you're doing nothing wrong. Monitoring systems that are out to punish people will do so, since everyone breaks laws constantly. The average person in traffic (even walking) will commit enough violations to lose more than their daily pay if they would all be fined. We use the legal system to keep the excesses down. If you put in full monitoring, you will kill usage because everyone using it will get "caught" and penalized. This has happened to every system we've done it with and people put an end to it in almost all the cases as well. Some countries still have some of those systems, but the East German Stasi have disappeared. In the seventies, we all spoke about the "Free West" when we referred to East Germany. in 2013, the government is doing more to control and monitor us than the Stasi did in the seventies in East Germany....
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
My ISP is AT&T, and I made a couple of downloads this week, to see whether I would get a message. I didn't. Can it be that AT&T isn't enforcing this policy?
You can find almost any song/album/movie/tv show on youtube. It's a pirate's paradise.
The first two warnings – “educational alerts” – tell consumers they’ve been caught. The email will then direct them to legitimate sources of content with the hopes that the early warnings are enough to scare people into buying content.
I hardly use email anymore. I almost don't use it at all. What I do have, my ISP does not know about, unless they've been spying on my HTTPS connections to Gmail. I don't have ISP based email, or if I do, I have no idea what it is, or have a means to login. Why would I use email that would change if I need to change layer 3 ISP?
And what "legitimate sources of content" will work on my Slackware based computer? If they had that, I wouldn't need to be working around their broken sites.
The next two warnings step it up a notch with what’s called “acknowledgement alerts.” The first two alerts were simply emails, but these next two will actually hijack your browser. You will be hit with a message telling you that you’ve been caught yet again, and must acknowledge that you’ve been caught before you can start browsing.
Criminal actions and privacy aside, how the hell are they going to hijack my browser? I'm using HTTPS whever I can. I have 4 VPN setups to use. Sure, I do some insecure browsing like at Slashdot. But I don't use THEIR proxies, so they would have to add equipment than can do intercepts to traffic. So maybe it's possible for them to hijack my Slashdot traffic. But combining the interception and Slashdot's crazy content format, how can they make a popup appear safely ... for every web site? And how will this even prevent browsing without cutting off service? Cut off port 80 if they think that stops anything of high value?
The next two tiers, and presumably every alert afterwards, will be “mitigation measures.” In essence, the ISPs will begin throttling your bandwidth or blocking Web sites you frequently visit. The ISPs will not be able to cut off your Internet connection under the plan.
I frequently visit Slashdot. I guess they are going to block that And I am paying extra for the higher tier (8 mbps ... and it works). If they throttle below that level, they are violating the service offering they have for that extra payment. So I stop paying the extra.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
All true but why is everyone so concerned now? They had plenty of time to protest this bill before it became law. Why the heck weren't they protesting back then?
Don't stop where the ink does.
Was so true it was downmoderated for what it said. Perhaps that answers your question, since as was said that owning distribution and communications channels allows suppressing truths that others couldn't get wind of or think of themselves by doing just what happened to the posters' post you applauded. Stomp out truths via control of the presses when truths that adversely affect those in control so people aren't even aware of real truths, only the manufactured 1/2 truths. Very simple.
That network that isnt 'ours' crosses a billon public right-of-ways. They may own the wire, but we own the land it runs through, its not as simple as you make it to be. The public has a vested interest in regulating ISPs and we should be doing more to leash them.
Good-bye
for the last week, so far no emails, letters or pop up's from comcast. Ive wanting to see how much downloading does it take before I get flagged. Then once I know the triggers, I can switch to an anonymous vpn and try it again.
I'll take copyright infringement seriously the day that Big Media starts taking the public domain seriously, and not one second before. They thought they could play this game of indefinitely extending the length of copyright terms, effectively stealing from the public domain and all of humanity without there being unforeseen consequences? Guess what? People now take copyrights about as seriously as Big Media does, i.e. not at all.
Fuck your copyrights.
Have a Virgin Mobile USA smartphone? Give VMRoms.com a try!
So exactly how can we, holders of copyright, show in court that CCI is unwilling to enforce our copyrights or how the system excludes we - the little peoples' copyright.
I can and will do without the internet.
I will only use hacked wifi from now on.
http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wireless/wireless-howto/31914-how-to-crack-wpa-wpa2-2012
Works for me.
It is an arms race they want it is a arms race they will get.
Rewards will be offered for one click unix tools.
It isn't ordained by our Creator, and his Law takes precedence over humanly invented copyright laws, hence we can just ignore this crap. Be religious and fuck the lawyers!
>I can switch to an anonymous vpn and try it again.
I thought that that using a VPN would prevent Comcast from being able to detect what I'm downloading, etc. but I've been reading conflicting stories about this on various sites.
Will any VPN work to keep my traffic private?
Do I need to use a particular protocol: will a VPN over PPTP do the job?