Cox Responds to DMCA 'Three Strikes' Report

I think this is a perfectly acceptable solution. If you STILL don't get it after 3 warnings ... you need to be removed from the internet to protect you from yourself because you are an idiot.

A common sense attitude. The ISP has every right to police their network, even if they are not required to do so by law.

They do not have the right to police themselves. They provide a service they are not police.

I used to run the night shift of a convenience store. We provided a "service". Does that mean I did not have the right to eject a certain person? Acting very suspicious in the vicinity of my liquor display.

If you suspected or caught me doing something to harm your store - yes.

Your analogy is so flawed, it's laughable.

If you saw me buying a screw driver, rope and tape, and thought I was going to go rob someone - absolutely not.

YOU ARE NOT THE POLICE.

It is not an "analogy", it is a fact of law. And I did order a suspicious fellow out of my store. (Twice, actually; once under the circumstances I outlined, and once for making threats to a women who came onto the premises in a distraught state. Had to call 9-1-1 in the last case).If I had solid reason to believe that selling you certain merchandise would facilitate a crime, I certainly could refuse to make the sale. I have refused to sell certain merchandise to certain individuals; and not been reprimanded for it.So what. Do an Internet search on "citizen's arrest".

Been there, done that.

Sad thing is, if you do throw someone out, they call Corporate and complain (and lie their asses off) and you find out OH, you didn't have the right to do jack squat

You're responsible for the inventory loss, but you're also not allowed to "inconvenience" a thief. Gotta love suits.

As have I. However, I had the support of my "suits" in my case.

Agreed, it certainly has the responsibility to respond to an outside complaint. That's been part of being an ISP since day one.

As far as copyright cop, the DMCA has forced some duties upon ISPs. We have Cox's side of the story (which sounds pretty reasonable), but we've only heard from one person who was on the receiving end of this. He didn't mention whether Cox made numerous tries to resolve the matter. I'd like to hear more information from people like this.

A user HAS EVERY RIGHT to ignore the letters and risk being sued. These letters might be generated falsely, considering many tactics the AA's use. Second, even if legit, who is to say a user can't take the risk on their own accord. Should the state take your license after 3 tickets? Most states require a substantial amount of points before a license is revoked. On your basis, if a person has three tickets in their life, the state has cause to kick them from driving. Do you ever hear yourself speak, or just pretend to talk and act like you know a lot? It must be a hard job being chastised constantly and being TK JUNK MAIL.

"A user HAS EVERY RIGHT to ignore the letters and risk being sued."

Very true. Cox also has every right to do what they are doing. If you don't like their policy then take your business else where.

Agreed. Users get ample warning before getting booted. I'm not too keen on the walled garden though (especially if you have viruses and need to download an AV). I think a warning letter (3) should be enough to inform users about the activity going on.

A walled garden may be the only way to get people to act. Many users would just ignore letters, especially where a virus/spam problem is concerned and not a DMCA problem. When internet access is cut off, people will then act.

If they get 3 letters and ignore them all, that is there prerogative. When there connection is cut off due to the fact they ignored the letters, then they will react. I have nothing against the walled garden, just a speculation. It is in COX's best interest to do so to keep customers rather than booting them all I suppose.

Then write it into law. I don't want pseudo-laws being established between corporations based on what they want/don't want.

Or would you prefer to be regulated by a corporation in which you have no representation?

Then don't do business with them.

Except that these companies enjoy the benefit of limited monopolies via the agreements they have put together with the various local governments.

If they had no franchise agreements, or were not protected from competition I would agree with you. However by accepting that protection they have also assumed the responsibility of providing the service to the community.

Because they have limited the rights of the users to seek out a competing service (another cable company), they have assumed implied responsibilities even if those were not codified explicitly into the agreement.

Franchises became non-exclusive by law years ago. So no cable company is protected from competition.

" Cox was among the first ISPs to use malware walled gardens to cordon infected users off from the Internet at large until they've cleaned their PC." .....is a scary premise. Who provides the list of malware?...and why wasn't AOL on that list?...and why didn't they protect users from downloading malware in the first place?

This is bad precedent!

I will accept that for new builds. But you still run into the problem that since no one is ever dealing with a clean slate (Brand new commmunity, no infrastructure currently built) Due to the protections that existed, buildouts have been stopped. Even though the protections have been repealed, the effects remain.

However, I'll ignore that and cut directly to the issue.

I'll even assume that there are two identical internet providers in the area. Company A, and Company B. If Company A, and Company B both decide to implement a policy that would remove a person's ability to communicate on the internet for any reason that is not mandated by law, then it is in effect a direct infringement on the person's freedom of expression.

Because these companies can effectively enact policies that go beyond what is required by legislation in an effort to serve as a policing body, they are attempting to expand their jurisdiction in a manner that is hostile to the People of that community.

The basis by which policy must be evaluated is not 'what is this policy intended to do', but 'what would this policy do if abused'.

it is not a freedom of expression to steal. If you steal you should be punished. COX is doing that by kicking them off their network which they have every right not to do business with anyone just like you have the right not to do business with them.

And as always; if you don't like the way these companies do business you are free to call DSLExtreme's parent company and pay them $200 and become a DSL Reseller nationwide and you can compete and not have these polices but i'll give you 3 months if that long and you'd be putting those same policies into affect on your own network; especially if the RIAA or the MPAA come knocking on your door.

I do run my own network, and I do not enforce such policies. I pass on DMCA notices as required by law, if I try to do more, then I tread into areas which may violate my status as a common carrier.

Should people who violate copyrights be punished? Yes.

Is COX an investigative body? No
Is COX a police force? No
Is COX the entity initiating the DMCA takedown request? No

Is COX altering their use policy to apply non legislated punishments and expanding the scope of copyright law?
Yes.

Good luck with your business, as long as it lasts. If you don't get eaten up by the xxAA, or the burden of legal fees, I don't know what will.

Not sure what kind of "network" you run, but I can guarantee you that you're not above being responsible for illegal practices taking place on your network and that when pointed out to you and you do nothing.. well.. that's your right to take that risk.

And, unless you are THE top of the food chain on this "network" you run, you still have to answer to the ones up the ladder from you.

-good luck!

The legal fees are minimal, and were limited to guidance and a policy by which I will comply with local and federal laws. I comply with court orders, and the associated legal reporting requirements.

You seem to think that I'm encouraging any sort of illegal behavior. I am not. What I do is comply with the laws as written, and I act as a transparant middle man.

As for quoting 'network', though it isn't large, it is profitable enough to cover the costs for my post-graduate studies, which, unfortunately, are not inexpensive.

if you weren't encouraging illegal behavior you would be doing the same thing as COX. you'd be shutting these people off. Instead you keep giving them service and allow them to do it.

I sincerely hope that you are being sarcastic with that comment.

So do I.

A private organization alleging something to another private organization about my online behavior, is absurd.

If there is anything illegal going on, the ***a should get a subpoena for my usage records, and file suit with me.

The way I see it, COX doesn't like
1) hassle
2) bandwidth usage

It is so much easier to send a couple letters, and flip a switch.

It is not. It is the basis for spam complaints, and other abuse complaint; and the reason why Abuse Departments exist.Indeed. If there is an allegation of illegal activity, the matter should be brought to the attention of legal authorities.

In the case that my ISP cut off my Internet over the allegation of committing an illegal act, I'd have my attorney in touch with their legal department: Assuming that I actually have "clean hands".

Assuming your ISP is also clean...

Permitting infringement on copyright through your network is not illegal. But you should at least treat others as you would have them treat you. Would you like it if others were facilitating infringement on your own copyrighted materials? How would you feel if someone diminished your network profits and livelihood? I believe network admins have an ethical duty to prevent such activity on their networks. Permitting infringement violates the spirit of anti-infringement laws.

Since when is copyright infringement a crime?

Since the Congress made it so and when the President signed the bill.

Wrong...

It's always at least a civil matter (a tort). 17 U.S.C. 501(b) details
the mechanisms by which an owner of a copyright may file a civil suit,
and 28 U.S.C. 1338 expressly refers to civil actions arising under the
copyright act.

However, under certain circumstances, it may also be a federal crime. A
copyright infringement is subject to criminal prosecution if infringement
is willful and for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial
gain. 17 U.S.C. 506(a). If the offense consists of the reproduction or
distribution, during any 180-day period, of 10 or more copies having a
retail value of more than $2,500, the offense is a felony; otherwise, the
offense is a misdemeanor. 18 U.S.C. 2319.

www.stason.org

Thats a bad example. Look at another way, millions of people ride buses/trains everyday. Almost every bus/train has rules that seek to reduce rowdy behavior. Customers that are really loud and cause problems for other riders will be kicked off the bus/train. There is certainly no law against being rowdy, however the rider agrees to abide by certain rules when he/she gets on the bus/train. The situation at hand is no different, by using their (Cox) service you agree to abide by their rules.

Next we have machine gun on each corner every one want to be the police. Another four years of another want to be Bush and this country will be police state.

Even if Franchises are no longer exclusive, there is the problem that the cost of wiring an area that already has coverage makes the attempt not cost effective. The old company has the benefit of their having wired the area when they were exclusive and thus has a major advantage. The only possible solution is to make the "Last Mile" a separate company who sells access to ANY Cable Company who wants to service the area.

If my computer is spewing spam and virii, then disconnecting it is completely expected. This practice goes back decades and its the right thing to do.

That is an issue which is distinct from an issue where a company decides to assign additional penalties under the guise of legal requirements.

I don't want real laws being established just to prevent pseudo-laws. The real problem is the DMCA provisions that make Cox think it needs to take these steps. Less laws, not more, please.

That is why the attempt to make this a law, if such a law is necessary (Which I do not believe that it is), should be done.

In my opinion the laws that protect copyright in the US are sufficient, and excess penalties are not necessary. Nor are they compatable with the concept of copyright in the first place.

Copyright is a privledge that we the people, grant to the authors of creative works. It is not some default state that creative content innately exists in without it being granted by the public. These laws should be aimed at encouraging new creative works, and still allowing deriviative creative works to be inspired. A major issue here is that people have forgotten that copyright is a temporary limitation that we place on ourselves.

A pseudo-law enforced by a corporation is anaethma to the concepts of the Constitution of the United States.

My only question for Cox would be: Do they consider any DMCA request as counting towards the "Three Strikes" regardless of the DMCA request's validity.

Suppose I had uploaded a music file entitled "Oops Brittney.mp3" to a P2P network. Now let's suppose that this file wasn't the Brittney Spears song "Oops, I did it again!", but audio of me talking about the downfall of popular music. (In other words, something I own the rights to.) Now Brittney's record label might that file, assume it's a copyrighted song, and send my provider a DMCA notice. Would that notice count as "Strike 1" even though there's no validity to it? If that audio was Part 1 of a 5 part series, could the record label send in 5 separate DMCA notices and knock me offline?

Personally, I'm glad that COX (Should be COCKS, dealt with them in Cleveland, Oh and would never do THAT again!) is not available in my area. This type of "proactive" approach to piracy is nothing more than a company "bending over" to the wishes of corporations clinging to failed business models.

The only way to get through the heads of the fat-cats in these situations is to change your providers, and that's it. Nothing else will make a difference, and that's the only language they understand. Until someone stands up against it, and changes providers, it'll be looked at as acceptable.

These bandwidth caps, policing of your internet activities, and whatever else draconian policies they decide to put into place are just meager attempts to avoid building the infrastructure necessary to provide adequate service to their customers. It's the reason that I switched to DSL because of the policies that Comcast implemented. I don't care if I don't use the 250gb cap per month, but I'm not taking a chance, because things change, games come out, services get started, and that eats up bandwidth.

Sat-TV and DSL FTW (until FiOS is available).

I recieved one of these letters about 1yr ago.. and they made me fill out a "never do this again" letter.. it was quite fun.. but i lived in Vegas at the time.. and went to a public torrent site.. never again will i get a movie from a public torrent site..

My monitor isn't the best, but I think there is a copyright on the picture of the DMCA letter. Can anybody tell me what it is? It must be quite old, as nobody uses Kazaa, Morpheus, or Grokster. Time to update it, methinks.

Yeah, it's old. © dates are 1998-2004

To MattE, okay, if you had Cox, I would send a DMCA violation notification to Cox reporting you as a violator of my copyright. My copyright you might ask? Nah, doesn't exist, but they don't know that and they don't have the necessary resources to validate the claim that you are violating my copyright. Now, hypothetically, you're really annoying me on one of the boards or I know you personally, I decide to send two more notices. Whoops, you're Internet is now cut-off. Okay, you can live without Internet for whatever period they decide - wait, you telecommute for a living...

AT&T and Cox, who are now crossing the threshold from a service provider to a content provider / manager by making judgments as to what or what does not go through their network should loose their DCMA protection status, period. The purpose of the DCMA violation notification mechanism was to allow for an ISP to cooperate with a copyright holder in good faith and a possible copyright violation by notifying the end customer early on in the process that a possible violation may exist prior to official legal action. If the copyright holder believes they copyright is still infringed upon after the notification, they have plenty of recourse, its called the legal system.

No matter how much corporate fellatio the fanbois -both paid and volunteers on this site- perform, the fact that Cocks voluntarily terminates people based on shoddy allegations of copyright infringment is BS. Cox rightfully belongs in the same stink pile as Comcrap for this kind of nonsense.

Plz don't allow the big baddies like Cox to stop me! I should be allowed to steal from everyone like the people above are crying to do!

BTW, this is highly sarcastic.

Any of you pirates read your acceptable use policy lately? Any ISP has the RIGHT to terminate you for piracy.

A better question in all of this.. Are the DMCA notices being forwarded to the user (as required by law) so that a user can counter-notice/dispute/respond to them? Nothing I saw in that letter or the reports seen online has mentioned that..

ive always been a good boy so this will never effect me

Maybe they don't like you going to NBC.com and ESPN.com when you could be bundling cable service with your internet, instead. If everyone thought like that, things would be worse for you.

That avatar of yours. Did you draw it yourself? Or should I notify your ISP?

COX should loose their common carrier status if this continues. If they switch to playing police then by definition they loose their common carrier status. This then opens them to civil lawsuits for damages. All it will take if for one person with who likes to sue (And an attorney who likes to make money) to make it real painful for COX.

Cox should be a middle man and no more. The "management" of their network is limited solely to the bits flowing over it and not to the content. The post office is not allowed to cut off your mail becuase some company does not like that your mailing out copyrighted content. It is up to the copyright holder to use the legal system to enforce it's copyright. The only way your mail can be cut off is if the court tells them to.

Many people forget that in order to be protected from lawsuits COX needs to be an independant common carrier. This means they need to be blind to the content. The phone company cannot shut off your phone service because you sing happy birthday to your family too many times (The tune is copyrighted). If they were to do this they would loose their common carrier status as a neutral third party.

This is not a matter of COX responding to overuse of their network, but a matter of them taking action based on the alleged complaint of third party. By doing this they are no longer a neutral third party. This is grounds for nullifaction of their status as a common carrier. Once that is gone, the first person to be wrongly cut off can sue COX for damages that arrise from the loss of their service.

Filtering will only result in more encrypted data. Decrypting data is a violation of privacy laws. You can't open someone's mail to check to make sure the letter is legal. All the xxAA's of the world will do is push seeding sites offshore to sites that do not respond to copyright violations. These sites will then host fully encrypted content to select users. The xxAA's cannot violate the law (i.e. decrypt content) to prove their side. Only the cops with a suponea can do this in the civilian market. (Military, NSA, CIA, etc. could care less what tv show you are watching).

While that's well and good, it still doesn't explain why Cox has to mislead consumers. Their warning to customers insists that under the DMCA, "we have the responsibility to temporarily disable your Internet access." Again, the DMCA only requires that ISPs forward DMCA warnings on to customers -- Cox's decision to inundate their support staff with the task of P2P policing is voluntary.

Someone's misleading someone, and I don't think it's Cox. In order to avoid financial damages from the copyright holder, a service provider has to (amongst other things):

(c) Information Residing on Systems or Networks At Direction of Users.—
(1) In general.— A service provider shall not be liable for monetary relief, or, except as provided in subsection (j), for injunctive or other equitable relief, for infringement of copyright by reason of the storage at the direction of a user of material that resides on a system or network controlled or operated by or for the service provider, if the service provider—
(A)
(i) does not have actual knowledge that the material or an activity using the material on the system or network is infringing;
(ii) in the absence of such actual knowledge, is not aware of facts or circumstances from which infringing activity is apparent; or
(iii) upon obtaining such knowledge or awareness, acts expeditiously to remove, or disable access to, the material;
(B) does not receive a financial benefit directly attributable to the infringing activity, in a case in which the service provider has the right and ability to control such activity; and
(C) upon notification of claimed infringement as described in paragraph (3), responds expeditiously to remove, or disable access to, the material that is claimed to be infringing or to be the subject of infringing activity.

If the offending material "resides" on a service providers network, they have to remove access to it. If that material is on your PC, access to your PC has to be removed.

If the offending material "resides" on a service providers network, they have to remove access to it. If that material is on your PC, access to your PC has to be removed.

This is a basic misunderstanding of the DMCA. Information on your very own PC in your own home does not reside on your ISPs network, it resides on your network. Your ISP is providing services covered under 17 USC 512(a), not 17 USC 512(c). 17 USC 512(a) does not have a takedown provision.

See also the Verizon v. RIAA case, where the RIAA attempted to force ISPs to disclose P2P users identities under another provision which only applies to 512(c) service providers and not 512(a) service providers.

"...any notice to an ISP concerning its activity as a mere conduit does not satisfy the condition of Section 512(c)(3)(A)(iii) and is therefore ineffective."

Three 'strikes', and you're out.

What constitutes a 'strike'? Just being accused of violating the DMCA? Anyone can accuse anyone of doing that.
In many cases, the RIAA doesn't have anything more than an IP address and some screenshots as 'evidence' against filesharers.
Since Cox doesn't say how much 'evidence' is required to constitute a 'strike' against someone, I'm wondering if they require any 'evidence' at all.

That brings me to my next point. It doesn't appear that Cox even asks to hear the customer's response to the accusation.
The DMCA takedown notices are like subpoenaes; they don't make someone guilty, it just accuses them of being guilty and require the person to defend themselves against the charge.
It seems that Cox counts any accusation as a 'strike' against the user.

If I am incorrectly accused of violating someone's copyright, Cox counts that as a strike against me. Is Cox going to spend the resources to find out if this accusation has any merit?

There is such a thing as 'fair use' in this country, and it doesn't sound like Cox is taking that into account at all.
We also have an 'innocent until proven guilty' policy in this country. Cox's stance seems to be 'innocent until accused'.

Now, if the three 'strike' policy was reworded to read "Three 'convictions and you're out"... Then at least they'd be terminating the user's access based upon a ruling that might carry some weight.

Well if they want to work with and help customers then why do they need to lie and pretend it was the "AA" and not them that are the enforcer of the disconnect?

This whole debacle reminds me of the guy that used to buy up old copies of AutoCad with their licenses and then auction them on eBay. It seems that AutoDesk (copyright holders of AutoCad) filed complaint after complaint with eBay claiming that this guy was selling pirated software, when in fact he was able to prove that it was not. After a month or so of eBay receiving these complaints from AutoDesk, the guy's eBay account was permanently terminated with no opportunity for appeal. He had previously provided proof that the software was not pirated and on numerous occasions, that proof was demonstrated to eBay's satisfaction, yet ultimately, his account was still terminated. There is no doubt that AutoDesk didn't like the fact that this guy was selling older versions of AutoCad at a steep discount with respect to the newest version, but should that give them the right to bully eBay into terminating his account? There is legal recourse in the cited case, but what recourse does a Cox customer that's been falsely accused 3 times of copyright infringement have?

There are many among us that think that it's ok for a few innocent people to suffer, as long as the bulk of those punished, are guilty. This idea is an affront to the ideas that spawned the founding of this country. The founding fathers considered that the injustice of punishing one innocent man, outweighed the injustice of letting 1000 guilty men walk free.

O.O.

LEGAL PERSPECTIVE:

Cox has no obligation or liability whatsoever regarding their user's use of their internet service for alleged copyright infringement. This was already litigated and decided in the RIAA v Verizon case. ISPs cannot be held liable for their users, and therefore are not forced to police those users.

What Cox is doing here is completely voluntary. They are lying to their customers, and to BBR.

How is it that they have terminated only 0.1% of users when we all know that hundreds of times that number of users are actively using p2p software to download copyrighted material? The likely answer: because Cox is selectively targeting only certain kinds of downloading for its own selfish gain. Cox is using its effective monopoly on high speed internet to leverage its cable tv business.

PERSONAL EXPERIENCE:

I have Cox cable service and internet. The cable tv jack in my room does not work, so I simply download the shows I want to watch. I have had my internet cut off twice in a row for downloading the last 2 episodes of Entourage. I have been downloading for years, including Entourage, without anything happening from Cox. When I called them to get my service turned back on, I was told that this policy has existed and been enforced for years: a blatant lie. It didn't happen for years, but now twice in a row? Also, it does not happen when downloading music, movies, or non-cable tv shows, only Entourage.

We should take advantage of the community here at BBR to establish WHICH shows/movies/music and WHICH p2p software is triggering Cox's policy. I think if and when we do so, you will find that this is NOT a widespread policy, because if it was, MOST of Cox's users would get cut off. Instead, I think what is going on here is that Cox, which knows FULL WELL that it cannot be held liable, is using supposed DMCA claims as a scalpel to target only particular p2p activity that it deems is hurting its CABLE business.

My cable internet service is in my own name, and the Cable TV service is in someone else's name, so to Cox, I appear to have only internet and no TV service, when in fact I pay for both. This might be an additional criteria they use in selecting who gets cut off, as a means to coerce people into paying for cable TV service. Note the download that got me in trouble: a television episode of a CABLE channel I would ordinarily be paying COX to watch on tv.

Therefore, I believe that:

1. COX is selectively targeting users only for certain kinds of downloading that it believes is impacting it's own profits, and

2. COX is blatantly lying about it's selfish motives by trying to pass the blame for its actions on to the copyright holders.

3. COX has a monopoly on cable service in a large area here, so I cannot simply switch to another provider. DSL internet is extremely inconsistent and grossly inferior in this area, albeit cheaper.

An ISP does have the right to monitor the amount of traffic going on their network, I fully agree with that. The thing I don't see anybody having an issue with is that not only are they checking what you send but they seem to be checking your PC. So all e-mails, pictures, home movies, and what ever else you may send is being checked by this ISP. Besides that they seem to be able to monitor your personal PC (that you bought), and not one person in this string seems to have an issue with having big brother looking into everything you do. This in turns breeds current mind set that the world protects the stupid people. Personal I don't think the IPS has a right to look at what data you send just the amount. I think the government needs to stay out of people homes and worry more about fixing all the other things that are wrong currently, I mean there is more important things then what I keep on my personal PC.