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In Defense of Six Strikes
Deathspawner writes with a view on Six Strikes we don't normally see around here: "It's been well-established all over the Web that the just-implemented 'Six Strikes' system is bad... horrible, worthy of death to those who created it. But let's take a deep breath for a moment. Can Six Strikes actually be a good thing for consumers? While the scheme isn't perfect (far from it), one of the biggest benefits from this system is that it introduces a proxy, and any persecution you might have easily faced prior to Six Strikes is delayed under the new program. Wouldn't you rather receive a warning from your ISP than be sent a bill or legal threat by the RIAA/MPAA?"
A couple of days ago, someone sent Torrentfreak an actual alert they received from Comcast (the alert itself is a few screens down). Noteworthy is that there is zero mention of the appeals process.
The $35-for-an-appeal fee which they call a "due process" fee makes a mockery of the concept of due process and innocent-until-proven-guilty. Reverse that and it would be a tractably horrible idea, but it would be significantly less interesting to the people who are running it.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
Why do I have to choose between six strikes vs. RIAA/MPAA legal threat?
It's not about supporting arts. It's about supporting a dead business model that rewards little to the artists themselves, and which now has the right to spy on what you do online.
It only costs $35 to appeal, but it will cost your ISP more than that to go through the appeals process. If everyone appeals, the system will be unworkable, and therefore everyone should appeal.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
No. It can, at best, be a marginally better than the alternative.
Wouldn't you rather receive a warning from your ISP than be sent a bill or legal threat by the RIAA/MPAA?"
Yes, but I would also rather have my kneecaps broken than shot in the face. It doesn't make either option actually palatable.
The RIAA/MPAA is doing an end run around the court system and attacking the ISPs. Let's just toss this on the stack of things this private industry is doing to ruin the lives of the people who would ordinarily want to pay them money:
They have copyright terms that last two centuries.
They have the incredibly overbearing Digital Millenium Copyright Act that ensures that anything you do to copyrighted material which you own is illegal.
They have the ability to take down any content on the internet they feel infringes on said copyright without having to prove they hold the copyright in question, that the infringing activity actually infringes, or that they have the right to make the claim under the DMCA. (Oh, and this process is completely automated in many cases, while appeals are not only grounds for lawsuits but must be evaluated by a human being on a case by case basis... Does anyone remember the mortgage foreclosure robosigning scandal? Because I sure do.)
They have been making great strides in persuading countries around the world to make copyright infringement a criminal, rather than civil offense so they can get the law enforcement agencies to do their dirty work. (Oh wait, the FBI raided Dotcom and ICE seizes websites at the behest of private industry without due process... nevermind.)
What really confuses me is that in the big picture the RIAA/MPAA is small potatoes compared to the other things that make money via digital distribution. They wield rather disproportionate influence over the activities of third parties that have nothing to do with them or those they claim to represent.
There was an AC post in another /. article about this I liked. It said something like create a crappy copyrighted work (in paint, sndrec of you singing, whatever). Host it free somewhere. Now create another page that says you do not have permission to download this file, with a link to the hosted file. Spam out the link to the page that says DO NOT DOWNLOAD everywhere you can. Not just one or two places, but thousands. Hell, post it through 10,000 forum backlinks free scams.
Now collect the IPs of everyone who clicks the link and vies the file. Spam the six strike system with those IPs.
If they ignore legitimate notices from you and do not issue alerts, sue, as they are using what is supposed to be a fair arbitration system to only police for content/companies they deem worthy. Keep flooding them with -legitimate- requests until they cannot handle it.
Silence is a state of mime.
1. "Six Strikes" it NOT a _LAW_.
2. Not all copyright holders are participating and none are _bound_ to it.
Because of that, there is no guarantee that you will receive a "strike" before receiving a settlement demand for infringement or before being named in a federal copyright infringement lawsuit!
Example: Let's say you go download the latest LA porn producer's newest amateur flick via a public BitTorrent tracker. This producer is not participating in six strikes. The porn producer is monitoring the torrent, and logs your IP. They are teamed with a lawyer, and sue you as a John Doe in a lawsuit. You find out when the lawsuit reaches discovery.
What will your defense be? "I never got a first strike, let alone a sixth!" Yeah, tell _THAT_ to the judge. They won't care. You're still getting sued. Copyright trolls will continue extorting innocent victims.
What we really have here is a huge anti-trust lawsuit waiting to happen - a situation where the large record & movie companies have banded together to collectively negotiate away our privacy with all of the large ISP's, who themselves have banded together and negotiated it away. Its completely anti-competitive in that, if I had any sort of option to get high speed Internet Access where I live from a company who wouldn't wave the white flag and offer up my information based on an IP address at the first hint of displeasure from the copyright industry, and I'd dump Time Warner immediately, almost entirely without regard for the cost or other aspects of whatever the alternative company might be offering.
Any argument about supporting the artists crumbles in the face of studio accounting practices where no movie is ever profitable if the studios must share the profits, and where music artists basically never see a dime from the music that they record.
Understanding is a three edged sword. - Ambassador Kosh Naranek, Babylon 5
And the best way to not support that business model is to buy alternatives and boycott protected media. Stealing Argo doesn't make a statement, it's a way of justifying obtaining something you want enough to download but not enough to pay the asking price for.
May I recommend Libraries (many, including the one in my city are partnered with digital distributors offering free music and e-books) , NetFlix, Rdio, as new business model alternatives that aren't illegal.
Wouldn't you rather receive a warning from your ISP than be sent a bill or legal threat by the RIAA/MPAA?"
No.
This is a form of the prisoner's dilemma.
Individually, it makes sense for each of us to take the easy way out, but collectively, this is bad public policy.
Private accusations of crime, followed by private punishments, is odious to our system of justice.
More and more court cases are ending up like this one, where minimal evidence gets turned away as insufficient.
The real truth is that the copyright industry doesn't want to prosecute these cases, because lawyers and discovery and expert witnesses are expensive.
Even Hollywood can't afford 10,000 cases at a time.
I am not unsympathetic to their problem, but the solution needs to balance the due process rights of the people with the interests of big business.
That hasn't happened since the copyright owners discovered the scale of infringement couldn't be cheaply addressed by the existing legal system.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
You don't. Don't worry, it's both. The "six strikes" are to build a case against the owner of the connection and after the owner "strikes out," they can expect a summons.
That's why they ask for confirmation: "Click the button below to confirm you received this Copyright Alert"
In court they'll say, "but your Honor, they acknowledge six times that copyright infringement was occurring and did nothing about it - exactly how many warnings do they need?!"
The program they're using has a ton of false positives. It was removing stuff from NASA's youtube channel that NASA uploaded because news programs decided to use the footage.
You realize these 'strikes' aren't for infringements, but for 'claims' of infringements, right? The RIAA has misidentified users before, and it will continue to do so. Not infringing is not a perfect solution.
Which leads to a question- Would it be possible to set up a shell company, and claim infringement on every possible IP address? Then repeat 5 more times?
This is a lot of IP addresses, but it could probably be done. I haven't read the entire actual law but the Wikipedia page doesn't mention anything about punishments for false infringement claims.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
There's a tort called vexatious litigation. It's common law.
There is also a possible penalty under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, Rule 11, for signing your name to a legal declaration that you have not investigated and, thus, do not have good reason to believe that it is true. The judge, essentially, gets to make up any penalty they think is appropriate (within reason).
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