American ISPs to launch massive copyright spying scheme on July 12

Not to mention the sheer amount of stuff being downloaded means lots of stuff gets past the radar.

Okay. I actually read the docs for this agreement, and here's what goes down:

• A committee is formed for the sake of maintaining communication between content creators and ISPs. Each content owner is expected to go over their method of identifying copyrighted material. If it's deemed ineffective by the board, they can't use it. Unfortunately this is so mind-numbingly *vague*.
• Content owners monitor P2P networks, scouring them for pirated content. When they find what they're looking for, they send a notice to the ISP of the offending IP address. The document also explicitly says that they should try to ignore files that only contain clips of copyrighted material (such as say, a review show), but I don't really expect this to be heeded.
• Content owners cannot identify infringing content by methods deemed invalid by the committee.
• Content owners or their reps should try to submit notices to ISPs within 24 hours of finding the offending material.
• Each notice submitted by a copyright owner should include:
  • The name of the infringed work and who owns it
  • Description of the grounds of accusation
  • Statement of good faith
  • Technical info needed to identify who is infringing: the date and time it occurred, as well as the time zone and IP address of the account.
  • Basically, most of these you would see on your typical DMCA takedown request.
• ISPs are expected to inform subscribers about this policy in their Acceptable Use Policies and Terms of Service.
• Each ISP is expected to implement its own alert program, with the alerts triggered by these types of notices.
• Each ISP is required to have six alerts, as well as four phases of the program: Initial Education (where they just tell you Digital Piracy Is Evil), Acknowledgement (where you are forced to click through shit to acknowledge you received an alert) Mitigation (where they can implement various penalties on you for not listening) and Post-Mitigation (where the company does what they want according to their own individual policy, but must warn you you can face legal action)
• If you are a subscriber and get an alert, you are allotted a one-week grace period before you get any more alerts.
• If, after receiving any number of alerts, you don't receive any for one full year, you start the new year with a clean slate.
• Alerts should preferably be sent electronically (through email or popups) but can also be sent through snail mail.
• If you're a subscriber at the mitigation measures step, and you disagree with this for whatever reason, you can request an independent review by that shiny new committee they made.
• When requesting a review, you have the option to remain anonymous, except in cases that require your identity to be disclosed (what). The decision of the committee is the final say.
• Grounds for independent review:
  • Fair use
  • Someone stealing from or leeching your account
  • Misidentification of your account
  • You actually had permission to download/distribute the file
  • The file was misidentified
  • The work is in the public domain
  • As an interesting note, the Roman numerals in this list skipped over 5 and just go 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7.
• You must provide credible proof that you have grounds to not need that alert.
• Here's how the independent review works:
  • The committee has to choose a single reviewer from a panel of independents. The reviewer must be a lawyer.
  • Lawyer checks to see if you've done all your paperwork, which includes your testimony and grounds for review.
  • If you were leeched, you can't use that as your defense the second time this happens as the assumption is that you made efforts to secure your network. If you can by some grace of god prove that despite your best efforts the network was breached, you might still be able to use the defense.
  • Participating ISP and copyright owners submit their testimonies.
  • Within five business days, the reviewer must review the case and then decide whether to go on with the verdict or if they need more information.
  • If the reviewer needs more information, whoever they ask has ten business days to respond.
  • During this time, a copyright owner can withdraw their notice if they want.
  • Except in the context of the review, the reviewer is not allowed to communicate between the participating ISP, the copyright owner, OR the subscriber.
• The Shiny New Committee is to implement an automated system to process independent review cases, and keep records of all independent reviews.
• Every month, ISPs send monthly reports of subscriber trends to content owners.

I'm actually surprised that it's that detailed. My main beef, however, is that the review process has the potential to be really one-sided.

edited 19th Mar '12 5:05:50 PM by JuiceBoxHero

Not only that, but it also assumes guilt before innocence, and makes you pay a fee in order to say you're innocent, among many other problems.

That is really the biggest problem here.

And its not like someone is going to come up with a torrent program with an auto proxy connected to it so....

Yeah, which fucking sucks. Basically, I was just sort of mildly annoyed before we got to the review part.

Then I was super annoyed.

As I said before, several ISPs already do notices to subscribers when a copyright owner submits a complaint, and many terminate your account if you get more than one. The first six points I brought up are nothing new.

edited 19th Mar '12 5:14:34 PM by JuiceBoxHero

I still think it's major bullshit that they'll kick you off the internet for downloading something, especially with how important the internet has become in everyday life. Kicking someone off the internet for downloading copyrighted material is like starving someone to death for throwing food.

Here's why I disagree with it.

I don't want them to be successful. I don't want them to combat copyright infringement, because the next thing they'll be going after is the legal channels. Like iTunes? In a world without piracy, the record companies decide not to renew their contracts with Apple. Sorry. Not going to do it. We want to go back to C Ds. Movie Studios don't renew their contracts with Netflix and Redbox (They actually already did this once, I'm not sure if it's still going on). Game studios don't put their releases on Steam, and so on.

In their eyes, all these things lose them money. Because it's true. It creates more competitive pricing meaning their per-unit revenue goes down. Now, the problem where they're ALL wrong (Big Media and politicians alike) is that the pie isn't infinite. In the end we're restricting cultural content for zero economic gain. It simply makes no sense.

That's why I oppose these things.

At least it's only P 2 P services they're going after. Mediafire is safe and sound.

How do you figure that?

Because they already took down MU, didn't they.

Well, Mediafire isn't a P 2 P service, it's a file upload repository. And a damn good one. It's safe until they restart their assault on those services at least.

In regard to what was mentioned earlier about only taking one non-cooperating ISP to break the cycle, you have to realize that a huge, huge chunk of the country only has one high-speed provider in the first place, and it's usually one of the ones cooperating. Because of the immense barriers to entry in stringing high-speed cables around huge swaths of rural land, providers basically can't afford to compete with each other anywhere except very large cities under even normal circumstances.

Another, more professional article on the matter.

edited 19th Mar '12 6:54:44 PM by Pykrete

Here's an article on why Hollywood's six-strike plan should be investigated for antitrust violations.

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120319/03334418154/why-hollywoods-six-strike-plan-should-be-investigated-antitrust-violations.shtml

Also, we need to sign a petition to tell the ISPs to back down on the "six-strikes" plan, or it will be the end of the Internet as we know it... AGAIN!

http://act.demandprogress.org/sign/backdoor_sopa/?akid=1282.452568.6ohpAU&rd=1&t=2

If enough of us voice our discontent, it will be impossible for them to ignore us.

Only if there's an available alternative. If there's not, they can ignore you as much as they damn well please.

That's the entire point of this kind of cabal behavior.

edited 19th Mar '12 9:04:52 PM by Pykrete

Isn't the point in this case to make "let us download our damned content" a viable alternative?

That's why in my example I said Verizon. Verizon, ATT, Time Warner, any of those big companies could tell the media industry to fuck off, and they would make enough of a killing to expand that infrastructure.

Actually, wouldn't this be a violation of the DMCA's Safe Harbor provisions? By using a massive spying scheme for copyrighted material, they have to send takedown notices to all infringing content they discover to continue to have no liability on their user's own actions.

edited 20th Mar '12 12:17:47 AM by GameGuruGG

Safe Harbor prevents an IP holder going after the ISP for a user's offense, but there's nothing in those laws that specifically stops the ISP from voluntarily agreeing to extralegal policing on the IP holder's behalf.

edited 20th Mar '12 2:50:09 PM by Pykrete

Is this just on American users, or non-American users as well?

edited 22nd Mar '12 8:48:25 AM by HiddenFacedMatt

These are American companies, so it's Americans that would primarily affected, I guess. Whoever it is that uses these particular providers.

So hey, if you're a French guy who's currently living here and using AT&T because that's what's available to you, you're as screwed as your American neighbors, I guess.

edited 22nd Mar '12 11:04:25 AM by AceofSpades

This shit is why I really want to move to Europe...

Luckily I don't think my ISP is involved with this. They've been pretty cool actually.

Who's your ISP? *

My translation of this is basically "They're going HADOPI on you". You have our dear president to thank for this idea, from what I've read yours was inspired from ours.

Hmm... Part of me kind of want to see that happen just to see how Apple would react. They would not give up on iTunes without a fight. I can totally see them starting their own record company/movie studio to provide new content for themselves. In theory this could have the same impact on those industries that original cable TV shows had on television

edited 23rd Mar '12 6:49:34 AM by nnokwoodeye