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Rightscorp Threatens Every ISP in the United States (torrentfreak.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Following a court win by its client BMG over Cox Communications this week, Rightscorp has issued an unprecedented warning to every ISP in the United States today. Boasting a five-year trove of infringement data against Internet users, Rightscorp warned ISPs that they can either cooperate or face the consequences. "For nearly five years, Rightscorp has warned US internet service providers (ISPs) that they risk incurring huge liabilities if they fail to implement and enforce policies under which they terminate the accounts of their subscribers who repeatedly infringe copyrights," the company said in a statement. "Over that time, many ISPs have taken the position that it was simply impossible for an ISP to be held liable for its subscribers' actions -- even when the ISP had been put on notice of massive infringements and supplied with detailed evidence. There had never been a judicial decision holding an ISP liable."

35 of 225 comments (clear)

  1. Meh. Take the Trump approach. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    If things head south, declare bankruptcy and walk away.

    1. Re:Meh. Take the Trump approach. by shmlco · · Score: 3, Funny

      Or just find somebody to sue. Should be fun...

      --
      Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
    2. Re:Meh. Take the Trump approach. by PolygamousRanchKid+ · · Score: 5, Funny

      If things head south, declare bankruptcy and walk away.

      Aw, gee Wally, shucks. When I read your title, I was hoping that you would encourage Second Amendment folks to "take care" of both Comcast and Rightscorp.

      --
      Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
    3. Re:Meh. Take the Trump approach. by Archangel+Michael · · Score: 3, Insightful

      OR take the Clintion "What Difference, at this point, does it make" approach. I didn't _________ (fill in the blank scandal lie)

      --
      Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
    4. Re:Meh. Take the Trump approach. by Archangel+Michael · · Score: 2

      Or the Elizabeth Warren's approach ... and make Trump just "disappear" (veiled threat???? )

      Of course, the press didn't cover that the same way .. or at all.

      --
      Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
  2. Tiny dog barking up big tree by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If you threaten the safe harbor status of the ISPs you are going to get stomped.

    1. Re:Tiny dog barking up big tree by greenfruitsalad · · Score: 4, Insightful

      This is not Sparta, this is USA. People you are thinking about are not called Leonidas and Gorgo, they're probably named Todd and Leshaniqua. And therefore there will be no stomping other than by a rich corporate boot.

    2. Re:Tiny dog barking up big tree by geek · · Score: 2

      This is not Sparta, this is USA. People you are thinking about are not called Leonidas and Gorgo, they're probably named Todd and Leshaniqua. And therefore there will be no stomping other than by a rich corporate boot.

      Here is what I don't get. Why don't the ISPs just refuse service to Rights Corp? They are within their rights to do so. Rights Corp is obviously network scanning their customers. If it was any other organization they would be kicked off of their network for that.

    3. Re: Tiny dog barking up big tree by EmeraldBot · · Score: 2

      I don't see why the ISP's don't simply claim immunity due to their common carrier status. Of course, that would make them concede to the FCC, but on the upside they also aren't liable for things like terrorist attacks coordinated through their infrastructure.

      Because it's not a profitable decision. Being liable for terrorist attacks, eh, maybe a $150,000 settlement once a decade, and potentially some bad press which doesn't mean anything when your reputation is crap. On the flip side, the FCC is the only entity with significant power that wants an open Internet, and that scares ISPs shitless. If they become regulated, they'll actually be required to provide decent service for a reasonable price, and they would probably have to invest money into upgrading their infrastructure. Worse yet, there would be at least some form of compeition, as opposed to the current scheme where they all conveniently agree to not charge below certain prices. What's a few dead people and some angry bloggers compared to that red ink?

      --
      "Set a man a fire, he'll be warm for the rest of the night. Set a man afire, he'll be warm for the rest of his life."
    4. Re:Tiny dog barking up big tree by BitterOak · · Score: 2

      If you threaten the safe harbor status of the ISPs you are going to get stomped.

      Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't the safe harbor statute require you to do something if you receive a notice of infringement? According to the article, Rightscorp has been sending notices of infringement and the ISPs haven't been doing anything.

      --
      If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
  3. Can I sue the government for drug smuggling? by jellomizer · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Nearly 100% of the drugs that are smuggled are going over the public motorways.
    Unlike the popular Slashdot opinion I am all for Intellectual Property rights, however the ISP should focus their work on moving the data not being the judge of it.

    --
    If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
    1. Re:Can I sue the government for drug smuggling? by Quirkz · · Score: 2

      I think the trick is in having a button that you can press without being able to tell if you've really pressed it or not, because the combination of high resistance and minimal give, plus the unpredictable timing and organization of every particular stop light, ensure that you've got to hit it again and again, just in case, until you actually see it change.

      Presumably on the back end the city electrical grid is powered by all these extra button pushes, and they're making a massive profit on the generated electricity. Only reason I can come up with that they'd make them so confoundingly lacking in feedback.

    2. Re:Can I sue the government for drug smuggling? by Cinnamon+Beige · · Score: 2

      Unlike the popular Slashdot opinion I am all for Intellectual Property rights ...

      I don't think that Slashdot readers want to abolish Intellectual Property rights completely. We just want reasonable terms. Start with copyright duration. Author's death + 70 years would be ridiculous if it wasn't true.

      This. We don't have any problem with the spec of intellectual properly and copyright, we have problem with the implementation. While we have many frivolous ones, the patent system is actually a great idea - it allows people protection to turn a profit, and thereafter turns it into the public domain. By making copyrights last almost 150 years, in some cases, you completely stunt our cultural development - do you think the Greeks and Romans would have had such a rich literature if they had to wait 150 years before they could retell a story? Do you think the US would have become a world power if everything had been locked up and restricted by the various European countries?

      Honestly I'd just start with adding a requirement that for all of the current protections you've got to provide a digital archival copy to the LOC & maintain some way for people attempting to locate you as the owner of that IP. The digital archival copy should serve as both legally establishing a date and content, and to ensure a copy exists to enter the public domain. Digital will be easier to store and preserve, probably.

      The latter would simply neatly solve the orphan works problem: If you don't make an effort to be identifiable, you lose your claim permanently. You might get arguments when the problem is nobody's quite sure who owns it but multiple parties are willing to come forward and fight over it...but that happens with real estate, too, and has for thousands of years. I'm pretty sure we've got a decent idea how to sort that problem out...

    3. Re:Can I sue the government for drug smuggling? by dbIII · · Score: 2

      damascus steel

      I get your point but maybe a bad example because Damascus steel was made in India at a small commercial scale until a bit after WW2 and the "secret" was used with similar steels with two different starting materials in a lot of places. It was supplanted with a cheaper process that resulted in a material almost as good with far less effort but never really "lost". Before WW1 there were wrought naval artillery pieces made the same way but with steam hammers (Imperial Japan).
      Cool stuff, but the "quenched in the blood of a redhead" or "ground up and fed to chickens then the powder forged" fictions have overwhelmed the real information about huge amounts of forging, careful temperature control and long tempering times that is of interest to metallurgist but dismissed as boring by people craving the romance of the lost. A lot of historical artifacts have been polished up and examined under the microscope to see if that banding is from that same pattern welding as seen in India, and those same materials as seen in India, so it's pretty conclusive that the "it's been lost" people were just not asking the people who knew how to make it.

  4. The BIG problem.. by thesupraman · · Score: 5, Interesting

    So, I now assume that:

    If you are caught driving around with copyrighted material, your drivers license is revoked?
    If someone hears copyrighted music playing over a phone call, your phone line is terminated?
    If a broadcaster accidentally broadcasts some copyrighted material without license, all their views/subscribers the service terminated?

    That land of the free must be a wonderful place to live, what with all those 'protections' and all..

    Oh, I forgot didnt I, civil violations over the internet are the new terrorism, and must be crushed by the state. Silly me.

    At least the general public still get their fair half of copyright, by the timely entry into the public domain of the works that WE, through the tax
    funded state, have protected for the holders. Oh wait, damn! how did that happen?

    1. Re: The BIG problem.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Wrong. Eventually they will label all traffic they can't snoop as terrorism, and that will be enough for them to raid your house.

  5. Makes sense by LichtSpektren · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I mean, we prosecute mailmen for drug trafficking. We prosecute telecoms because terrorists use their phonelines every day to conspire against the United States. We prosecute sulfur miners murder, since they provide society with the element required to make gunpowder, which enables mass murderers via guns. When a company goes bankrupt due to mismanagement, the CEO always ends up penniless for the damage he caused.

    In our country, if you can't catch the people who break laws, we ALWAYS make sure some unaffiliated distant party takes the fall for it.

  6. Solution for the people by operagost · · Score: 2

    Get the justice department to bring racketeering charges against Rightscorp.

    Threatening an entire industry should bring consequences.

    --

    Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
  7. How are they to know what is allowed by MooseTick · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Just because something has a copyright doesn't mean it is illegal to share it. If the owner of the copyright allows their content to be shared on site x, then it is ok. Therefore, how is an ISP supposed to know a content's owner has given site "x" the right to store/share/distribute their content. Also, that right could be granted for an hour, a day, a month, or longer. Most mainstream artists license their work to be used via multiple venues. There is no real way for an ISP to know who has a legitimate right to store/share/distribute content for any particular time period. It would be like holding UPS responsible for me shipping antibiotics to someone. They don't know the contents of the package and if they did, they don't know whether the recipient has a legal prescription for that medication.

  8. Re:Cox Vs RIAA by dejitaru · · Score: 2

    RIAA... I actually like Cox (the internet provider not... well... yeah...)

  9. Re:Cox Vs RIAA by Jason+Levine · · Score: 4, Interesting

    RIAA. While we might hate our ISPs, at least there's something useful about them - the Internet Service they provide. It might be subpar quality (speed, customer service, etc) and they might overcharge for it, but there's a bit of value there. With the RIAA - or more specifically in this instance, RightsCorp - there's nothing of value there for us. They exist solely to serve themselves and at no point does their existence give us anything of value.

    --
    My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
  10. You wanna put an end to this? by fustakrakich · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Demand that the ISPs become common carriers.

    --
    “He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
    1. Re:You wanna put an end to this? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Demand that secondary liability lawsuits be banned.

    2. Re:You wanna put an end to this? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      It's bitztream, the moronic autism-hating Slashdot troll!

  11. man, I'm not looking forward to this shitfest by Thud457 · · Score: 2

    It took IBM FOURTEEN YEARS to put down SCO group.

    --

    the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

  12. Re:ENEMY by HBI · · Score: 2

    The problem of course is that Rightscorp is a shadow entity, and attacking it directly will be difficult. You'll end up at the doorstep of the copyright cartel. Which i'm shocked hasn't been a target up until now.

    --
    HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
  13. Might be a blessing disguise by Facekhan · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Comcast, Verizon, AT&T, Cox, TW, all sued into bankruptcy, then the government steps in and nationalizes the last mile infrastructure. FTW!

    1. Re:Might be a blessing disguise by CanadianMacFan · · Score: 2

      Look at the state of the nations roads, bridges, and overpasses and ask yourself if you really think the government would really be an improvement.

  14. Re:Dumb pipe by tsqr · · Score: 2

    I really don't get how all these ISPs that discriminate traffic can get away with remaining non-liable. The safe harbor is ONLY if they are unaware, thus this should be encouragement for not knowing what is happening on their network.

    I agree with you, but that's not what this particular issue is about. Rightscorp isn't telling the ISPs they have to detect users' copyright infringing activities. Rightscorp is telling ISPs they have to implement and enforce policies whereby users' connections can be terminated if they (the users) engage in excessive copyright infringement. The ISP cooperation they want works like this:

    -- Rightscorp identifies copyright infringement
    -- Rightscorp notifes ISP
    -- ISP tells user to knock it off
    -- User continues infringing and Rightscorp identifies it
    -- Rightscorp notifies ISP
    -- ISP terminates user's internet connection

  15. Shit like this is what will destroy the Internet by kheldan · · Score: 4, Insightful

    As someone else said: one direction this could go, is that ANY traffic that isn't sent in the clear could be classified as some sort of copyright infringement. That would even include https:/// traffic, since technically an ISP is not supposed to be snooping on that; under current laws they would be committing a cybercrime if they did. Also anyone using TOR or any other onion-routing network would have to be considered potentially infringing on someone's copyright, since it's encrypted and therefore they would have to assume that it's something illegal. Add to this the well-known fact that technology-ignorant (or just power-hungry; you be the judge) politicians, government officials, and law enforcement all would love it if all encryption was outlawed (except, of course, for them, and doubtlessly the rich 1%, who will have 'exemptions' because they're 'important' or somesuch bullshit; but I diverge..) and everything was sent in the clear -- even banking transactions, I'm sure, since they want to know where every penny you have is going (you might be funding terrorism, or buying something illegal!), all of which would essentially make the Internet completely unusable for any serious purposes; after that point only a fool would use it for anything, knowing that every single byte that goes in or out would be sifted and analyzed even worse than it is right now..

    Nope, nope, nope.. 'Rightscorp' needs to be destroyed, completely erradicated; they are part of the Cancer that is killing the Internet; they are why we can't have nice things. Them, them, fuck them. ISPs should not be part of law enforcement. ISPs may be the gateway to the Internet, but they should not be the GATEKEEPERS.

    --
    Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
  16. Re:Dumb pipe by JesseMcDonald · · Score: 2

    I really don't get how all these ISPs that discriminate traffic can get away with remaining non-liable. The safe harbor is ONLY if they are unaware, thus this should be encouragement for not knowing what is happening on their network.

    It's only copyright infringement if it's not fair use and you don't have a license. The ISP may be able to detect that you're transmitting certain material, but they have no way to know whether what you are doing is actually copyright infringement. That is something that could only be determined in court after the fact.

    Also, there is no way that implementing a handful of automated filters equates to the ability to exercise effective editorial control over the entire Internet.

    --
    "The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
  17. Less than $5M by TechyImmigrant · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Take a look at the market cap..
    https://finance.yahoo.com/quot...

    For less than $5 Million dollars an ISP could buy these idiots out and fire them.

    --
    I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
    1. Re:Less than $5M by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      That's probably what they want. IBM could have done the same with SCO, but that's basically paying the ransom which encourages more people to take hostages. Better to cure it with fire so they don't start a new company, take the small amount of IP they had to base the case on and start all this over again...

  18. Re:Cox Vs RIAA by I4ko · · Score: 3, Informative

    As another Cox customer I can tell you that their recent transition to carrier NAT is a clusterfuck.

    While my CPE is being assigned an IP address that is outside of RFC 6980 space I can't complete a inbound handshake consistently, as I do receive more than one SYN/ACK on the other end or don't receive any. It works only when I have recently sent a packet with that source port.
    I also receive SYN/ACK packets from hosts I never sent SYN to. And because my router is configured to blacklist unasked inbound connections for an hour the first time, increasing it to 5 hours on repeated packet, or just outright permanently blackhole the source if it sends some nonsense as sending me SYN/ACK without me sending a SYN first, I can't open anything on the popular internet, like facebook, twitter, Netflix, news sites and such any more unless I purge my blacklist first. And it is quite unlikely that someone is trying to SYN attack popular websites and choses to spoof my IP, right at the time when they changed the last 2 upstream routers from me to have interfaces within RFC 6980 address space. My outbound SYNs now also at random times are not answered, but if repeated in a minute or two the handshake completes just fine. Before this change, my blacklist averaged around 15 temporary entries and grew with ~300 permanent entries in 6 months. Since this change, my blacklist has grown to 6000 permanent IPs within 1 week and the temporary entries average 300. I get around 20 packets per second inbound consistently without sending any outbound traffic (blocked and routing removed)

    The only way that makes any sense is if they are either incompetent and have configured their NAT and assign the same non-RFC 6980 IP address they have assigned my CPE to other CPEs of other customers and I can only speculate that they are throwing some sort of anycast in the mix there as well, but the fact is that they are misrouting/misNATting packets - I get someone else's packets every now and then, and I'm sure someone else gets some of mine. Or, that they are doing that on purpose, trying to fool me, thinking that if I see a non-special address I won't get to know that I'm NATted, and they are trying to use the same address as both the local and the global side of the NAT. And as a residential customer I can't even reach a competent technical support who can understand my compliant.

    I wish they weren't trying to hide the fact and putting in a complex setup and have just given me a plain 10. or 192.168. address, so I don't have to deal with this shit. I can live with a regular NAT upstream just fine.

  19. Re:Cox Vs RIAA by KlomDark · · Score: 3, Funny

    Enhanced capacitors has to be aligned, because the critical singularity has been reversed. There is a weak singularity next to the plasma which causes temporal ripples around the quantum singularity. I have to boost the core sensor array at the special region. Invert the energys! Strange energy must have been stumped, because the strange hyperdrive has been contained! The singularity power has been not calibrated. The special sensor arrays reverse the special bursts near the galaxys. Expanding plasma conduit, running delta region. Expanding temporal galaxys re-routes the another bursts. I must invert the vortex power near the auxiliary area. The singularity crystal is stumped. Auxiliary gravity dampener must have been aligned, because the weak delta region appears to be inverted. Causing enhanced vacuums boosts the weak sensor arrays. I should boost the burst, because the gravity dampener appears to be in the fluctuations. The matter stream delta region appears to be not aligned.