AT&T To Cut Off Some Customers' Service in Piracy Crackdown (axios.com)

AT&T will alert a little more than a dozen customers within the next week or so that their service will be terminated due to copyright infringement, news outlet Axios reported, citing sources familiar with its plans. From the report: It's the first time AT&T has discontinued customer service over piracy allegations since having shaped its own piracy policies last year, which is significant given it just became one of America's major media companies. AT&T owns a content network after its purchase of Time Warner earlier this year, an entity now called WarnerMedia. Content networks are typically responsible for issuing these types of allegations to internet service providers (ISPs) for them to address with their customers.

Comments

Alleged Copyright Infringement = Loss of Essential

[Anonymous Coward]

What a shithole country!

corporate plaintiff, judge, and executioner

[sittingnut]

" discontinued customer service over piracy allegations"

allegations!

a tech/media corporate decides who allegedly committed alleged crimes (alleged "piracy", alleged "hate speech", alleged "election interference", etc are just the beginning) against related or fellow tech/media corporates or supporters, and deal out de-platforming punishment too.
welcome to rule by big corporates, according to their rules and their courts.

Re:corporate plaintiff, judge, and executioner

[lactose99]

As engaging in media piracy isn't a protected class this is just doing business.

Re:corporate plaintiff, judge, and executioner

[Anonymous Coward]

It's their terms of service, if you violate them (or give them reasonable cause to believe you violated them) then of course they are going to not offer their service to you.

If you invited me to your house and then suspected I had stolen stuff from you would you kick me out? Or would you continue inviting me in until you had obtained proof enough that you could satisfy a court of law?

Re: corporate plaintiff, judge, and executioner

[Anonymous Coward]

Alleged. You missed the point that we should all be presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.

Re: corporate plaintiff, judge, and executioner

[Anonymous Coward]

And you missed the point that any two parties can stop doing business with each other any time they want. This company has decided it's not going to do business with people it suspects steal from it. Stop the freakin' presses, oh lord, end of the world.

Re:corporate plaintiff, judge, and executioner

[rogoshen1]

We give them monopoly power, then wonder why they behave like a monopoly.

When it comes to regulations or blocking community broadband they'll bleat "free market..!" (how's that for mental gymnastics?)
But they'll *gladly* take gigantic government subsidy gibs for infrastructure improvement that of course they'll never deliver on.

They also managed to get one of their stooges (okay, the last couple at least) To run the agency that's supposed to regulate them.

The internet as it has existed since the 1990's has been nice. But once it was found that there was significant money to be made, it had absolutely no chance of lasting in the long-run. Fantastic times we live in.

Re:corporate plaintiff, judge, and executioner

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong analogy.
This is not about invitation to a private house, it is about a publicly offered service, usually provided by a monopoly or an oligopoly. A service sometimes tightly tied to taxpayer funded government services to the point of no being easily available elsewhere.

As such, mere allegations of violations should not be the cause of banishment.

     

Re:corporate plaintiff, judge, and executioner

[Anonymous Coward]

If they terminate service early, do I get to charge *them* the early termination fee?!

Re:corporate plaintiff, judge, and executioner

[mark-t]

That probably depends.... did they sign a contract with you agreeing to pay such a fee if they terminated service before a certain date?

Re:corporate plaintiff, judge, and executioner

[Anonymous Coward]

The internet as it has existed since the 1990's has been nice. But once it was found that there was significant money to be made, it had absolutely no chance of lasting in the long-run. Fantastic times we live in.

Oh don't be such a sad doom-and-gloom preacher when things are hardly that bad. This isn't about the death of internet, the internet is thriving. You can still do all those old things from the 90s perfectly well on the internet. In terms of money this view of a provider not offering their services to people they believe to be pirating content means they lose money.

Yes the system won't be perfect and I'm sure somewhere along the line some AT&T customer is going to suffer a service disruption because of some chain of events that causes them to be mis-identified as engaging in piracy. No justice system is perfect but that doesn't mean we simply forgo one on that basis.

Re: corporate plaintiff, judge, and executioner

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, especially since the 12 can all just get service from the competing provider in the area...

Capcha text "inequity"

Re:corporate plaintiff, judge, and executioner

[rogoshen1]

I really don't think content providers and ISP's should be allowed to co-mingle like this. It leads to a situation where you have a company that's positioned itself as a regional monopoly (either naturally, such as access to coax; or through pure evil -- shutting down community broadband, or other competitors) that's able to completely control communication. And in this particular case, if you do something they don't like, they can completely cut you off. Besides, the bigger the company, the more abusive they are to their customers.

ISP's should be dumb pipes for getting whatever bits you request to your box. Letting them do anything else is just inviting disaster.

On a tangent though.. regarding your comment about the internet thriving:

You really don't see how the internet is going from a democratizing thing, where people can freely express their opinions and views.. to a curated swamp of social media that's fed through advertising and monetizing personal information?

The thought that's slowly creeping in is that it's the duty of the gatekeepers (be it google, facebook, reddit, whoever) to censor inconvenient or 'problematic' views. They may dress this up with whatever fashionable terms they like; but it's still censorship. Which can sound nice, at least in the near term since it's fringe views that get shut down. (not many people will stick up for a neo-nazi, or antifa or whoever else goes against the current)

BUT that line, or what constitutes 'acceptable' speech will invariably shift towards the middle -- the definition of "being a troll" or "being a dick".

Also troubling is the desire to abolish privacy. Which again, having these gate-keeping companies acting as the arbiters of online discourse, will result in the death of privacy, and as a result -- the death of free speech.

I'd say instead of thriving, it's grown to the point it's liable to tip-over.

Re: corporate plaintiff, judge, and executioner

[NFN_NLN]

Live by the sword die by the sword. Then I should be able to start a new ISP using the tax payer funded infrastructure they laid down and they better not whine and cry about it.

Re:corporate plaintiff, judge, and executioner

[grep -v '.*' *]

a tech/media corporate decides who allegedly committed alleged crimes

Those NAUGHTY, EVIL IP addresses -- they should remove them from the available DHCP range and make them go stand in the corner until they see the transmission errors of their ways.

Re:corporate plaintiff, judge, and executioner

[rtb61]

Prove you have never ever enganged in media privacy, prove it, go right fucking ahead, prove you never copied once or get cut off, you can always spend a few years in court trying to get reconnected. The wrong political speech will be equal to copyright infringement, prove elsewise in court for a couple of hundred thousand dollar of a couple of years and then whoops get caught again and be required to prove your innocence.

Re: corporate plaintiff, judge, and executioner

[CoolDiscoRex]

It's their terms of service, if you violate them (or give them reasonable cause to believe you violated them) then of course they are going to not offer their service to you.

Unless they are in a regulated industry, or are a government-regulated monopoly, in which case, offering their service to you is part of their terms of service with the regulators.

Re:corporate plaintiff, judge, and executioner

[fafalone]

Internet service is essential to modern life, AT&T has a monopoly or is half of a duopoly in most of its markets. It benefits from extensive government subsidies (that just pad its profits, but that's another issue). Under these circumstances, the "business can do whatever the fuck it wants" rule shouldn't apply, and terminating someones access should require proving they were pirating, not a one-sided allegation from the accuser.

Re:corporate plaintiff, judge, and executioner

[BringsApples]

You know, these ISPs have the ability to see encrypted data, right? I mean, legal or not, they CAN do it. Maybe they do it sometimes, if they feel suspicious about certain traffic, dunno. And so, maybe, rather than go through the whole legal system, they just include a bit in their terms of service that says that if you pirate stuff, they kick you. Then later, all they have to do is say, "We think you're pirating stuff, you're banned." and then it's up to you to bring it to court if you feel the need.

This is almost along the same lines, logically, as yelling threats of murder at someone, getting arrested for it, and then claiming you have rights to free speech.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

I do wonder...

[3seas]

...how many of them are AT&T employees.

just now noticing?

[Anonymous Coward]

"discontinued customer service "

I think AT&T discontinued customer server many years ago.

Re:Alleged Copyright Infringement = Loss of Essent

[DontBeAMoran]

It's the first time AT&T has discontinued customer service over piracy allegations...

Maybe these people were using encryption, thus AT&T can't confirm they are not pirates, thus the allegations.

How does "if you don't have anything to hide then everything you do should be public knowledge" sound to you?

Re:Alleged Copyright Infringement = Loss of Essent

[fahrbot-bot]

It's the first time AT&T has discontinued customer service over piracy allegations...

Maybe these people were using encryption, thus AT&T can't confirm they are not pirates, thus the allegations.

How does "if you don't have anything to hide then everything you do should be public knowledge" sound to you?

Sure. And when politician are fully transparent, like releasing their tax returns and stop holding closed-door sessions and accepting anonymous and/or non-disclosed donations, PACs that don't have to disclose their donors and/or expenditures are abolished, and corporations do away with non-disclosure agreements and private meetings, and things like that, then maybe we can talk.

Re:Isn't disabling 911 service illegal?

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

Good thing Internet voting isn't a thing.

And yet politicians

[Anonymous Coward]

with trump in particular repeatedly violating copyright at rallies. I do not understand why these artists have not sent one giant sueball at these flagrant violations of copyright. I thought you got like 250K per infraction. Trump would be in the tens of millions at this point.

Considering the atrocious options in the USA ..

[AbRASiON]

This is pretty bad. A lot of areas seem to be only serviced by one provider, it's kinda terrible.

Time for more VPN use.

Re:Considering the atrocious options in the USA ..

[porlryan]

Americas internet services are10-15 years behind the UK (which is pretty average compared to the rest of the world). Data caps and high prices caused by a lack of competition are causing the US to slip further and further behind with no solution in sight.

Re:Considering the atrocious options in the USA ..

[Rick Schumann]

How do you know you can trust your VPN provider though? And, if everyone started using VPN for downloading pirated content, you'd see a crackdown on VPN providers, compromising their own security, making them useless for not only pirating but for everything else too. If nothing else you might find ISPs blocking access to VPN providers because they're being pressured to crack down on piracy even when they can't prove 'illegal' content is traversing their network.

Ok then

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

It begins.

Giant Internet gateway providers begin filtering content (that isn't inherently illegal.)

Next big fight

[nightfire-unique]

The next big fight for many nations will be securing Internet access as a basic/fundamental service not subject to termination for any reason (aside from non-payment, so long as nothing life-critical depends on it).

Cheap cheezy VPNs

[duke_cheetah2003]

This is a good use case for all those cheap VPN services out there. I wouldn't count on them to protect your privacy much, but it's another layer someone has to peel to figure out you're pirating stuff. Switch between services frequently perhaps. Certainly easier than switching ISPs. Hell run more than one at a time, just to really confuse the spooks.

Piracy always finds a way, this is a meaningless futile gesture by AT&T.

Re:Cheap cheezy VPNs

[Anonymous Coward]

Use of an unlicensed (i.e. not paid for, and without a back door for monitoring; possibly, simply one that's not work-related and not sold by the ISP) VPN will be considered evidence of piracy in the not too distant future.

Re:Alleged Copyright Infringement = Loss of Essent

[Anonymous Coward]

It's the first time AT&T has discontinued customer service over piracy allegations...

Maybe these people were using encryption, thus AT&T can't confirm they are not pirates, thus the allegations.

How does "if you don't have anything to hide then everything you do should be public knowledge" sound to you?

I think if AT&T booted people off their service for using encryption (whether https or some other) we would see a lot more than 12 people get banned. These people received 9 warnings and still couldn't figure out how to use a VPN? They kinda deserve it on stupidity grounds alone.

Re: Alleged Copyright Infringement = Loss of Essen

[Anonymous Coward]

Since the past 10 years where you can barely do anything with being online. Want to find a job? Tough shit, most of the postings are online and most employers will probably want to email you.

I'm not saying it's right but there's plenty of bullshit in society that requires a internet connection now.

2018 sucks

Outsourced it to Lily Tomlin

[Anonymous Coward]

Now I wonder if they'll also start to check that their customers who play Music On Hold to their victims paid the requisite royalties OR ELSE disconnect them for "piracy". Sauce for the goose, etc.

(Yes, the message is very much implied: ISPs playing copyright cops? Don't go there, idiot ISPs. But of course it's a telco that has to go and be just that stupid.)

Internet Partiality and Conflicts of Interest

[cloud.pt]

Isn't this a beauty. Like someone else put it - judge jury, and executioner.

I guess the best thing that could happen to someone is getting the contract terminated for them - something that would, at least in my country, is a terrible endeavour to do by the client, since we basically have to pay the full remainder of the contract. This way ATT is basically begging other customers to use another provider. That's probably the best thing ATT could do to all their clients! Why just a dozen though? Is this some sort of ploy to demonize those 12 guys, as if not everybody else in their network hadn't committed some form of piracy...

Re:Alleged Copyright Infringement = Loss of Essent

[DontBeAMoran]

Wow, nine fucking warnings?

Okay, fair enough.

Re: Alleged Copyright Infringement = Loss of Essen

[techno-vampire]

I recently moved to a town in Colorado, with a population of about 9,000. Before I got my home Internet set up, I could connect through the local library, or if I needed it later in the evening, there are several fast food outlets with WiFi. Sure, it's not as convenient as having it at home, but it's not like you're completely cut off.

what now ?

[fluffythedestroyer]

So if I own a mazda and I go against the law (code rules mostly like getting too much tickets) can they make me stop using their "service" (their cars). I don't get the logic behind this.

Regulate

[zedaroca]

More reason to regulate them like an utility. Also, prohibit them from looking into traffic.

Re:Alleged Copyright Infringement = Loss of Essent

[alexgieg]

Since when is the internet 'essential'? You can live your life just fine without it.

The same goes for phone service (in case it's from another company), electricity, gas, and running water and sewage treatment. If you doubt this, just look into how things were done for the first 99,99% of human history.

As such, would it be okay for your local utilities to cut your service alleging you probably planned and committed copyright infringement using their services to: (probably) talk with your fellow copyright infringement co-conspirators, power your computer, nourish yourself with something cooked while (probably) committing it, and taking pees during the (alleged) committing of those infringements?