The entertainment industry's plan to try and remove all pirates from the Internet seems like it will inevitably come to the United States -- whether it works or not. There's plenty of questions surrounding how such "three strikes" policies would work, including who pays (the taxpayer?) who tracks offenders across ISPs (the FCC?) and who verifies and oversees the appeal process (nobody?). There's a lot of indications that such plans are destined to be very expensive failures, and there's a lot of questions surrounding whether the U.S. should mirror the UK and France's approach on this front.

Interestingly, the entertainment industry doesn't appear interested in answering any of those questions. Or even talking publicly about their plans. The industry is of course pushing the International Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), which would make three strikes a global affair, but which is being kept so secret neither lawmakers nor the public are being allowed to see it.

That secrecy continued this week at the State of the Net Conference in DC, where three strikes laws were discussed at a panel. While the RIAA and MPAA sat in the audience listening, IFPI (the overseas RIAA equivalent) representative Shira Perlmutter was hit with question after question about the problems three strikes raises -- and couldn't successfully answer any of them.

How are ISPs supposed to boot one person off a multi-user household off the Internet but allow the other family members access? Permutter pretended it would be accomplished by magic. An ISP rep asked: what if the house only uses VoIP and the disconnect effectively terminates their only 911 connection? Perlmutter didn't have an answer. Perlmutter did know one thing: three strikes is being worked on in the United States without the pesky impact of open and transparent debate:Right now, the MPAA and RIAA are working with ISPs on a ramped up letter writing campaign that warns P2P users that they've traded a copyrighted file and may have their broadband account terminated (even if that threat is not supported by law). But as we saw last week, carriers like Verizon appear to be bluffing in the hopes that the threat alone stops piracy. Anybody who has studied piracy over the years knows it won't. Anybody that has watched the RIAA and MPAA knows the organizations won't be satisfied until three strikes arrives in the United States.

Interestingly however, neither the RIAA or MPAA want to engage in a public discussion about their goals. They'd rather push through back room deals with governments and ISPs, and then worry about the litany of problems three strikes raises after the concept has already been implemented globally.

Update: Canadian Law Professor Michael Geist has this report on three strikes laws in Canada, as well.