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ISPs Finally Abandon The Copyright Alert System (engadget.com)

"Major internet providers are ending a four-year-old system in which consumers received 'copyright alerts' when they viewed peer-to-peer pirated content," reports Variety. An anonymous reader quotes Engadget's update on the Copyright Alert System. It was supposed to spook pirates by having their internet providers send violation notices, with the threat of penalties like throttling. However, it hasn't exactly panned out. ISPs and media groups have dropped the alert system with an admission that it isn't up to the job. While the program was supposedly successful in "educating" the public on legal music and video options, the MPAA states that it just couldn't handle the "hard-core repeat infringer problem" -- there wasn't much to deter bootleggers. The organizations, which include the RIAA, haven't devised an alternative.
"Surprise: it's hard to stop copyright violators just by asking them," reads their article's tagline, which attributes the failure of the system to naive optimism. "It assumed that most pirates didn't even realize they were violating copyright, and just needed to be shown the error of their ways."

2 of 113 comments (clear)

  1. error in whose ways? by KiloByte · · Score: 5, Interesting

    "It assumed that most pirates didn't even realize they were violating copyright, and just needed to be shown the error of their ways."

    Right. So those Jews who tried to avoid concentration camps were merely misguided and should be told their race is so inferior they should welcome extermination? Arguing that an unjust law is not unjust is not that easy when it's you, personally, who paid for its enactment.

    We should not dismiss the harm of copyright. It grieviously damages culture -- not just receiving culture as in "freeloading" watchers of a random crap movie, but also creating more works. It's impossible to create a cultural work without building atop of references and conventions built up previously -- it would be totally incomprehensible to any reader. Because of copyright, direct references to any semi-modern works are outright banned, and less direct ones are not banned yet only because the copyright cartel didn't yet bribe^W"campaign donate" appropriate legislation.

    Culture is what puts us apart from animals (in the common sense of the word) -- as biologically we are animals with most of the same urge. It's transmission of works that makes humanity. Thus, a crime that hampers this transmission is a crime against humanity itself.

    (You might call my stance "extreme", starting with self-Godwining at the start. Don't let the propaganda that "piracy is evil" cloud you.)

    --
    The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
    1. Re:error in whose ways? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Interesting

      All that work is already done and paid. Nobody worked for free. Or if they got scammed in their contract then should complain to their employers.