Pomeranian Lover
A nitpick: The title doesn't match the date "July 12" mentioned in the article.
About the article itself, how would they even be able to catch every single person who ever downloaded something copyrighted? Are there certain types of copyrighted material that would be specifically monitored? Specific websites that would be monitored? Is there a certain time frame from which they started watching which websites people visit?
Wandering Student ಠ_ಠ
Ah damn. ><
Thank you. And they probably watch for which sites you're going to.
Very big Daydream Believer. "That's not knowledge, that's a crapshoot!" -Al Murray "Welcome to QI" -Stephen Fry
I'm not even sure what to think of this, given that it's not a law a government is putting into practice, but something businesses are doing to ... I guess prevent a lawsuit to themselves? I'm not even sure what this is for. Or even how effective it will be.
Vampire Hunter
As a computer expert, each ISP has their own set of IP addresses which lock computers into them. It may be harder but theoretically possible to do a similar protest against this as what happened with SOPA. Really, you just need to change the "contact your congressmen" with "contact your ISP" and the same tactics could be used again. I mean... the SOPA protests worked so future protests involving the online realm should be based on it.
This, of course, assumes this will be similar to SOPA only with the businesses doing it instead of the government.
edited 18th Mar '12 12:58:04 PM by GameGuruGG
Wizard Needs Food Badly
Pomeranian Lover
@Enfufka: What I mean is, I'm not sure how many users per ISP there are, but it seems like it would be a very difficult job to constantly monitor the internet usage of at least hundreds of people. I guess I'm unsure how this would even be enforced outside of possibly losing at least hundreds of customers by cutting them off. Also, would they be looking for ANYTHING that might possibly be copyrighted, even in other countries (such as anime fansubs) or only things that are made for sale in the US? As in, would they go after people for downloading fansubs of an anime series that isn't likely at all to be even considered for official subtitled licensing?
One other thing I'm confused about is whether or not the monitoring has already started and the "stop downloading or we'll cut you off" emails are going to come out starting on July 12, or does it mean that the monitoring itself will start on July 12?
edited 18th Mar '12 1:27:07 PM by Rainbow
This is unfortunate, but unlike SOPA, I don't really see this as "wrong" since it's only targeting actual illegal activity.
A similar thing was put into place in some places of Canada and it produced huge numbers of false positives with few ways for the user to contest them.
This is a serious threat to everyone who uses the internet.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Aw fuck it. Let's just let the RIAA have the internet and re-discover the joy of playing outside.
someone
Yikes. This can easily be a mess in case something gets mistaken as illegal.
something
As usual, this is a complete farce. Even if they had a solid definition of what does and does not constitute illegal material—which they haven't provided—its impossible to police IP's with any proper procedure. They're just going to knock out a few random people and hope it scares everyone else.
And, of course, real pirates aren't going to be slowed down by this for more than ten seconds.
As someone who is very much not hacker, I'm kind of concerned about what would happen if I did download something without realizing that's not specifically allowed. I am far from the most computer savvy person here.
In any case, is anyone actually organizing a protest against this? I mean, the whole SOPA thing was very nearly last minute, waiting up until they voted on it. Is this going to wait until June 12? How far under the radar is this going?
Fuzzy Orange Doomsayer
Would they even be checking what you download, or just where you went? I've asked questions about emulators on the forums for The Pirate Bay. I don't emulate games I can obtain through legal means, but it sounds like I might get in trouble just for going to the site.
edited 18th Mar '12 8:53:14 PM by feotakahari
That's Feo . . . He's a disgusting, mysoginistic, paedophilic asshat who moonlights as a shitty writer—Something Awful
Well, time to make sure all of my encryption software and proxies are up to date.
Not too worried though. Already converted to only using magnet links as it is. Though it's funny, is this a sign of a change of tactics on the part of the RIAA/MPAA? Did they realize how futile it is to try and target the distributor, and now are going to try and go for the consumer?
This is the equivalent of deciding that you can't crack down on drug dealers, so instead you're just going to do shittons of unconstitutional random drug tests and lock up everybody who pops positive for THC.
They don't realize that the answer is not to shut down piracy, it's to provide a better service than it. Make a movie equivalent of Steam, and I'll start buying my movies through that. Fast download speed, reasonable prices, good selection. Steam is what got me to stop pirating video games. These lazy assholes just figure throwing their weight around and crying about reality is better than putting their heads together and embracing the digital age. Fucking fossils.
edited 18th Mar '12 9:26:16 PM by Barkey
NOT THE BEES
Jesus Christ. Only about half the defendants would make that much in a goddamn decade.
Network survelliance isn't all that hard to circumvent to anyone sufficiently determined, so I'm pretty sure it would do the usual nil against actual illegal activity.
Furthermore, IP holders have been notorious
about gunning for anything resembling competition, whether or not it's actually copyright violation. The thing is, the cost of litigation and imbalance in legal representation is so goddamn high (even under current DMCA laws, much less this absurd bullshit) that even if you're not offending, you couldn't afford to fight it.
I'm pretty sure they know and just don't care. With measures like this they can make almost as much money through rent-seeking and shut down small-time competition for a good deal less effort.
edited 18th Mar '12 9:44:01 PM by Pykrete
^
They could make more money and shut out legitimate competition the legitimate way. They could strip giving further rights to Netflix and Hulu with their fair monthly fee models, with a per view or permanent purchase option. It'd hurt the consumer, but not in a way that is liable to get them into an anti-trust suit the way that this current plan will.
Mark my words, this has anti-trust written all over it.
Besides that, there's a flaw. All it takes is one decent sized ISP to drop out of this deal and go to the status quo that we're experiencing now, they'll corner the market as an ISP wherever they are available because they'll be the ISP that doesn't care what people download. If Verizon, for instance, suddenly dropped out and said "Fuck it, we'll let people get away with piracy with token gestures that we're fighting it, and then throttle bandwidth on people who are downloading crazy amounts." Then the only recourse would be for a suit against Verizon on shaky ground saying that they are encouraging piracy, and Verizon is big enough to where they could defend themselves just fine against such a suit. Meanwhile Verizons executives are too busy not listening because they are swimming in pools full of money generated by all the new subscriptions. This money could give way to even more infrastructure to tap markets they don't have good areas of coverage in, it would catapult them into being the microsoft of ISP's.
There are a lot of risks to this plan, when there's a no risk alternative that offers more profit.
edited 18th Mar '12 9:50:35 PM by Barkey
Face Time
Huh, that is a good thought. One ISP drops out and takes advantage of customers' desperation for freedom from restrictions placed on them by other providers and then said ISP rises to business prominence.
edited 18th Mar '12 9:51:52 PM by RocketDude
"Hipsters: the most dangerous gang in the US." - Pacific Mackerel
NOT THE BEES
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
Of course they could, but that would require sweeping policy changes to properly staff things and put out a quality product that may or may not pay off based on consumer whims.
Compare to teaming up to grease the hands of a few ISP's with flax, and then everyone can just litigate at will whenever the hell they feel like.
On a related note, I can't find a second source to corroborate this, so I'll keep my eyes open.
edited 18th Mar '12 9:53:36 PM by Pykrete
^
More work, more cost, less profit, lots of risk. This isn't greasing the palms of a few ISP's, this is greasing the palms of what must be 90 percent of the American ISP business. I can't think of any decent sized ISP that wasn't mentioned as agreeing to the deal.
edited 18th Mar '12 9:53:31 PM by Barkey
Face Time
@Pykrete:
It's the honest thing to do, and some people in the game industry have made a living off of it, and other industries probably make more money than the game industry.
"Hipsters: the most dangerous gang in the US." - Pacific Mackerel
Shit yeah, Valve has profited off of piracy in a way no other company has even gotten close to. Indie developers have also prospered, because now they can host their games for purchase on Steam and get first rate copy protection without having to worry about building it themselves.
Let's take Atom Zombie Smasher for instance, it's a little Indie game that I absolutely love. Dropped a few bucks on it, got it on Steam. It's copy protected via being a Steam game, more people buy it because the price is reasonable as you aren't paying for the shipping and packaging contingencies of a publisher, and creative freedom is ensured because there is no publisher.(Looking at you EA, suck it.)
In a world without Steam, you would have either had to somehow buy a copy of this indie game a guy made in his garage in a box at a store, which means it's a minimum of 15 to 20 bucks because of shipping and packaging. The alternative when you decide not to shell out that 20 bucks on a gamble for some indie game that may or may not even be good is that you either don't get it, or you pirate it easily on a website since one guy in his garage isn't going to make effective DRM.
edited 18th Mar '12 10:00:05 PM by Barkey
NOT THE BEES
There is no way a backroom deal like this counts as "more work" or "less risk" than sweeping quality control changes that will dramatically raise the cost of every project you will ever put out and offer uncertain payoff.
I mean yeah, I love Gabe's business policies as much as anyone here, but unfortunately he's a minority opinion in the entertainment field.
edited 18th Mar '12 10:00:46 PM by Pykrete
What sort of quality control do you need to do for what are already hollywood movies? You get, at minimum, the best quality you can get via piracy, meaning HD quality with good sound and great video. It doesn't take effort and there isn't any quality control necessary. A good quality DVD rip is ideal quality for a steam-like medium.
Lets say for instance The Grey, I downloaded a high definition DVD Rip with great audio. It was DVD quality with the exception of the fact that it was a critic copy(Meaning it had the text on the bottom of the publishing studio on the bottom, as it was made for critic viewing)
If I wanted to, I could have got a copy of the same or better quality without that text, and it still would have been free. If one random dude can sneak a high quality copy of a brand new movie onto the net the day(or days before) release, then the entertainment industry doesn't exactly have the quality bar set very high, it isn't difficult to do the same damn thing those pirates do, but for a profit.
Essentially just do everything you do for a DVD release, extra features and all, and rip it straight to digital and sell it for money. It's easy money and doesn't require any more quality control than is currently being used.
edited 18th Mar '12 10:05:19 PM by Barkey
Face Time
@Pykrete:
Forbes named the man a billionaire, so I think he's worth listening to.
"Hipsters: the most dangerous gang in the US." - Pacific Mackerel
NOT THE BEES
Honestly, the fact that people pirate movies at all kinda blows my mind. I mean, in most cases you can walk to a 7-11 and pay less than $2 at the Redbox to rent it for as long as it'll take to watch.
I'm not arguing that at all. But the point remains...they don't.
edited 18th Mar '12 10:06:56 PM by Pykrete
This has me worried, since this is basically SOPA as done by the free-market.
From RawStory
:
Specifically, they’re coming for you on Thursday, July 12.
That’s the date when the nation’s largest IS Ps will all voluntarily implement a new anti-piracy plan that will engage network operators in the largest digital spying scheme in history, and see some users’ bandwidth completely cut off until they sign an agreement saying they will not download copyrighted materials.
Word of the start date has been largely kept secret since IS Ps announced their plans last June. The deal was brokered by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), and coordinated by the Obama Administration. The same groups have weighed in heavily on controversial Internet policies around the world, with similar facilitation by the Obama’s Administration’s State Department.
The July 12 date was revealed by the RIAA’s CEO and top lobbyist, Cary Sherman, during a publishers’ conference on Wednesday in New York, according to technology publication C Net.
The content industries calls this scheme a “graduated response” plan, which will see Time Warner Cable, Cablevision, Comcast, Verizon, AT&T and others spying on users’ Internet activities and watching for potential copyright infringement. Users who are “caught” infringing on a creator’s protected work can then be interrupted with a notice that piracy is forbidden by law and carries penalties of up to $150,000 per infringement, requiring the user to click through saying they understand the consequences before bandwidth is restored, and they could still be subject to copyright infringement lawsuits.
Participating IS Ps have a range of options for dealing with customers who continue to pirate media, at that point: They can require that an alleged repeat offender undergo an educational course before their service is restored. They can utilize multiple warnings, restrict access to only certain major websites like Google, Facebook or a list of the top 200 sites going, reduce someone’s bandwidth to practically nothing and even share information on repeat offenders with competing IS Ps, effectively creating a sort of Internet blacklist — although publicly, none of the network operators have agreed to “terminate” a customer’s service.
It is because of those reasons that the content industries believe this program achieves much more than what might have been possible in the realm of public policy, and the IS Ps appear to agree. The voluntary scheme will be paid for mostly by the content industries, which will share some costs with the IS Ps.
Not everyone sees it as a positive: The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights advocacy group, argued that the “graduated response” scheme lacks transparency, and that copyright holders could wield the network operators like a blunt instrument in cases where their claims may not be entirely valid — which is the biggest problem with statutes codified by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. They also pressed for assurances that claim reviews will be conducted by a neutral party, and suggested that users should be given some form of due process before their bandwidth is turned down or cut off entirely.
The EFF also took issue with the system of protest the program puts in place, which only gives users six predetermined “defenses” against a copyright claim. “And even the six enumerated defenses are incomplete,” they complained. “For example, the ‘public domain’ defense applies only if the work was created before 1923 — even though works created after 1923 can enter the public domain in a variety of ways.”
A legislative effort that would have achieved some, but not all, of these ends was utterly destroyed by the Internet’s first ever mass work stoppage late last year, which saw thousands of popular websites go dark in protest. (Disclosure: The Raw Story participated in that protest.)
It’s not yet clear how the tech world will react to the IS Ps siding with the content industries to do what the government simply could not.
This really does have me worried. the fact that America collectively dodged the SOPA/PIPA bullets several months ago seems to be made a moot point. Is there anything that can be done about this, or will it be treated as the free-market taking care of itself? Could an anti-trust investigation be implemented, since this is a massive agreement between multiple companies to cause problems for the consumer while increasing profits?
Very big Daydream Believer. "That's not knowledge, that's a crapshoot!" -Al Murray "Welcome to QI" -Stephen Fry