Will ISP Six Strikes Include BitTorrent Lawsuits? MPAA, RIAA Language Leaves Door Open to Legal Action Last summer major ISPs including Comcast, AT&T, Verizon and Cablevision signed off on a new plan by the RIAA and MPAA taking aim at copyright infringers on their networks. According to the plan, after four warnings ISPs are to begin taking "mitigation measures," which range from throttling a user connection to filtering access to websites until users acknowledge receipt of "educational material." As you might expect, that educational material's chapter on fair use rights likely won't exist. The plan, as with most plans of this type, was hashed out privately with the government's help -- but with no consumer or independent expert insight. As a result the plan has numerous problems, like relying on the IP address as proof of guilt, placing the burden of proof on the consumer, while forcing users to pay a $35 fee if they'd like to protest their innocence. While it has taken some time, the plan is finally set to take off into the murky legal blue yonder starting this summer or fall. One interesting thing picked up on by Torrent Freak is that the language of the agreement rather unsurprisingly leaves the door open for the entertainment industry to sue a user after they've received their sixth warning: The Participating ISP will, however, continue to track and report the number of ISP Notices the Participating ISP receives for that Subscriber’s account, so that information is available to a Content Owner Representative if it elects to initiate a copyright infringement action against that Subscriber." The warning wouldn't be much of a warning if it didn't have some teeth -- and it appears that in addition to having your connection throttled and/or disconnected, you could enjoy a lawsuit as well should you repeatedly trade in copyrighted files. Granted none of this works if users are using VPNs or proxies, which is something that will likely be attacked in part two of the MPAA/RIAA's latest plan.
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  SpikePremium
join:2008-05-16
Toronto, ON
3 edits | Surprised? Anyone who thought that the industry never had a hidden agenda is stupid.
Big content would never go through all the effort if there wasn't something very meaty and one-sided in it for them.
Then they wonder why the tech industry avoids most forms of 'cooperation' that goes beyond what the law requires when it comes to copyright infringement....
Why would you "help" legacy industries that refuse to adapt when its at your expense? The industry loves to pass off the costs to others when enforcing their copyrights.
And yes, circumvention of enforcement methods (and all education thereof) will itself be committing a crime someday if they have their way. Its no more ridiculous as the DMCA anti-circumvention clauses, infact it would make the DMCA more complete. | |
|  | | | Re: Surprised? Even if the "litigation" went to a true court- the EU would still have to pay to file anything to help their case. | |
| | | | I have a simple solution everyone, STOP DOWNLOADING ILLEGALLY. End of issue. No six strike plan, no throttling, no lawsuits, no debate.
Losers. | |
| | |  runnoftPremium
join:2003-10-14
Deerfield, IL
kudos:1 | Re: Surprised? Yeah, I have no problem with NOT DOWNLOADING ILLEGALLY, personally. But if you're naïve enough to think that nobody's going to get caught up in enforcement actions on this who did absolutely nothing wrong, say somebody's 86 year old grandmother who will be falsely accused of sharing all the episodes of Pimp My Ride, I've got a bridge for sale. You absolutely should not trust these bozos to run this thing fairly and objectively because that is not always going to happen. They're going to be looking for publicity, not fairness. And they may just come after you. | |
| | | | | | Re: Surprised? They arent coming after me bud, WPA2 + mac filtering + 2000 legit DVD's and CD's in my collection. | |
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| |  joakoPremium
join:2000-09-07
/dev/null
kudos:5 | LET US BUY THE MUSIC.
There is music on amazon.de I want to buy. I can't buy it on Amazon.com.
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PRescott7-2097 | |
| | | | | No thanks. You might want to examine whether your perverse enjoyment in limiting freedom is blinding you to the thousands of dollars you will pay in taxes and fees on enforcement, but if that's what you're into, good luck. | |
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|  BIGMIKEPremium
join:2002-06-07
Westminster, CA | tip: don't be a greedy pirate | |
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| | VPN's and proxies They may have a hard time attacking those, at least VPN's, since they're used so much in business. Of course, they could always get the ISP's to block VPN access unless the customer upgraded to an expensive "business" plan. The ISP's would love this, since it would mean increased revenue. Honestly, I'm surprised this hasn't happened already for that very reason. | |
| | Rekrul
join:2007-04-21
Milford, CT Reviews:
 ·AT&T U-Verse
| Re: VPN's and proxies said by ISurfTooMuch:They may have a hard time attacking those, at least VPN's, since they're used so much in business. They'll just pass a law saying that it's illegal to use a VPN without a government license. This not only cuts off regular people from VPN use, the government gets to charge businesses for the privilege of using one. | |
| | Reviews:
 ·Frontier Communi..
| said by ISurfTooMuch:Of course, they could always get the ISP's to block VPN access unless the customer upgraded to an expensive "business" plan. The ISP's would love this, since it would mean increased revenue.
So if I want to use a femtocell (e.g., Verizon's Network Extender) I have to have a business account?
It'll never happen and wouldn't be enforceable even if it did. You're missing the point anyway; the goal isn't to make piracy impossible, it is to place it out of the reach of the average user. | |
| | | | | Re: VPN's and proxies No, I get the point; I'm just responding to the assertion at the end of the article that VPN's and proxies could be next in the crosshairs. I can't imagine it'd be very hard to write a program to make connecting to a foreign VPN quite easy, and, for a small fee, I imagine there would be plenty of folks willing to lend their connections, especially in countries with lax piracy laws. It'll happen. The question is how the entertainment industry will respond. The one thing I can guarantee is that they won't just throw up their hands and admit defeat. | |
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 LinklistPremium
join:2002-03-03
Longport, NJ
kudos:5 | Using IP address legal & practical quote:
the plan has numerous problems, like relying on the IP address as proof of guilt
I always laugh when I see this lame argument trotted out as a reason to not punish someone for piracy. The IP addr can be traced back to the lessee of the internet connection. And it is settled law in many cases(especially civil law cases) that the owner/lessee can be liable for and punished for actions taken by others using the property for which they are responsible.
Of course, those favorable to piracy love to roll out the fact that in a household of more than 1 person, it can't be 100% provable as to which person committed the offense. But this isn't a criminal law case where the burden of proof is to identify the perpetrator. All that has to be proved is that the person responsible for the connection didn't do due diligence in preventing the connection from being used illegally. Those who love piracy don't like that and try to apply criminal law principles to a civil law process. Good luck with that defense - it will never fly. | |
| | SpikePremium
join:2008-05-16
Toronto, ON | Re: Using IP address legal & practical You mean like how the US government is applying criminal law principles to a civil law process?
Oh, right.... I guess Megaupload doesn't exist. | |
| | | | Yes, but define due diligence. Suppose I share an apartment with a roommate, and I pay for the Internet connection. So, what should I do to prevent him or her from downloading? I can certainly password-protect my computer, but what am I supposed to do about theirs? I really can't do anything about it, in fact.
And there have been cases where someone simply erred with the IP address. Back when the RIAA lawsuits started, a buddy of mine told me about an elderly couple (I think they were in his church) who got a threatening letter demanding they settle or face a lawsuit. They had never downloaded anything, nor did they have anyone else coming into their house who would have downloaded anything. Basically, someone somewhere screwed up. It was either the RIAA sending the ISP an incorrect IP, or someone at the ISP pulled the wrong customer record. These people were terrified, and they ended up getting a lawyer to fire back a nasty response. Luckily for them, the RIAA didn't pursue it, but what if they had? Let's suppose that someone at the RIAA entered the wrong IP early on in the process. The ISP would confirm that, yes, that's the IP that they were asked for info about, so that was the correct customer info. And what if the RIAA or the company who they contracted with said that, yes, that was the IP they were interested in, since they wouldn't necessarily be aware that a keystroke error had been made? How do you defend yourself against that? You can't say that you never downloaded the file, offering up your computer as proof, since the RIAA will simply say that you deleted the file. You'd have to have forensic analysis done on your drive to show that the file was never there in the first place, and God help you if it looks like you reformatted after the date the file was allegedly downloaded, since the lawyers would then say you probably did it to destroy evidence. In short, you're screwed. | |
| | | LinklistPremium
join:2002-03-03
Longport, NJ
kudos:5 | Re: Using IP address legal & practical said by ISurfTooMuch:Yes, but define due diligence. Suppose I share an apartment with a roommate, and I pay for the Internet connection. So, what should I do to prevent him or her from downloading? I can certainly password-protect my computer, but what am I supposed to do about theirs? I really can't do anything about it, in fact. Sure you can. The connection is in your name. If the roommate won't stop pirating material, you disconnect his/her computer and if they won't follow the rules, you turn them in to the RIAA and stop being their roommate. | |
| | | | | | Re: Using IP address legal & practical That's fine if you know they're doing it, but what if you don't know? I have no reason to believe my wife is pirating music or movies, but I don't check her computer to make sure she isn't. So, unless your roommate tells you what they're doing, how would you know? Remember, there is no requirement that the RIAA, MPAA, or any other organization give you a heads-up before they sue you. At that point, it's a little late to do anything about it. | |
| | | | | | said by Linklist:Sure you can. The connection is in your name.
If that were the case every library, starbucks, and university across the country would have to close their wifi.
Simply providing someone access to the internet is not a crime. If someone drives your car and wrecks it, do you get the ticket? No. | |
| | | | | LinklistPremium
join:2002-03-03
Longport, NJ
kudos:5 | Re: Using IP address legal & practical said by DataRiker:said by Linklist:Sure you can. The connection is in your name.
If that were the case every library, starbucks, and university across the country would have to close their wifi. No they wouldn't. Those you just listed(except maybe a coffee shop) have filters that prevent most infringing activities. | |
| | | | | | | | Re: Using IP address legal & practical said by Linklist:No they wouldn't. Those you just listed(except maybe a coffee shop) have filters that prevent most infringing activities.
Not a single one listed has ever blocked me from using Bit torrent.
In fact they are my places of choice to pirate anonymously. | |
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| Rekrul
join:2007-04-21
Milford, CT Reviews:
·AT&T U-Verse
| said by Linklist:I always laugh when I see this lame argument trotted out as a reason to not punish someone for piracy. The IP addr can be traced back to the lessee of the internet connection. And it is settled law in many cases(especially civil law cases) that the owner/lessee can be liable for and punished for actions taken by others using the property for which they are responsible. So if someone hacks your WiFi and downloads music and movies, you're responsible?
Plus, when did it become against the rules to share your WiFi connection? I guess all those times my parents told me to share something with other children, they should have been telling me to push them away and scream "MINE!". After all, by sharing my toys, the toy companies were losing out on sales from the other parents, right?
Also, where is the independent review of the information collection methods to ensure that they're accurate? Give me an IP address and I can create a fake screenshot, which will be 100% indistinguishable from the real thing, showing that address downloading anything you can name. | |
| | | | So if somebody takes their laptop to Starbucks and uses the wifi there to download a movie, are you saying that Starbucks should be held liable for copyright infringement and can be sued, because they didn't do their "due diligence" to prevent such infringement?
And what exactly is due diligence? Putting a password on the access point? Is WEP okay, or does it have to be WPA, or WPA2? What if Starbucks is using WEP and somebody cracks it and downloads a movie, was that not due diligence? What else is required? A router capable of DPI to ensure that there are no infringement sessions taking place? Do they have to block known pirate sites? | |
| | | | | Re: Using IP address legal & practical Or maybe they have to get your laptop's MAC address and a photo ID from you, then link that record with a record of your session so that, if anyone downloads copyrighted material, they can check the IP against the MAC, then look to see whose ID is on file with that MAC attached.
And all that effort can be undone by someone with a fake ID or an employee who accidentally or deliberately enters the information incorrectly. | |
| | | | | | Re: Using IP address legal & practical Mac addresses can and do get repeated.
Furthermore, changing your mac address is trivial. | |
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| | | but there has been time where the got the IP linked to wrong person | |
| | | LinklistPremium
join:2002-03-03
Longport, NJ
kudos:5
1 edit | Re: Using IP address legal & practical said by Joe12345678:but there has been time where the got the IP linked to wrong person
Some very small %. So life isn't fair. Deal with it. | |
| | | | | | Re: Using IP address legal & practical Easy to say until you're the one affected by such a mistake. And remember, we aren't talking about pocket change here; people are getting sued for hundreds of thousands of dollars, which doesn't even include the bill for the lawyers hired to defend you. And I've worked for an organization that got sued (a case not related to file sharing). I wasn't involved in the process, but I knew that it was totally frivolous and had no chance of success, but the organization ultimately settled, not because they thought they'd lose but because the lawyers' fees would have been more costly than a settlement. It had nothing to do with who was right; it was a decision based on what would ultimately cost less money.
So, if you're willing to accept the possibility of these mistakes, then let me know how you feel about it if you should ever get sued. Then you can decide if you want to spend several thousand dollars to defend yourself, with the chance of losing much more, or if you decide to simply settle, even though you know you didn't do anything wrong. | |
| | | | | LinklistPremium
join:2002-03-03
Longport, NJ
kudos:5 | Re: Using IP address legal & practical said by ISurfTooMuch:Easy to say until you're the one affected by such a mistake. And remember, we aren't talking about pocket change here; people are getting sued for hundreds of thousands of dollars,
The 6 strikes process this whole thread is about isn't about lawsuits. It is about several warnings and possibly curtailed service and maybe at the end a disconnection. I don't think the IP ID process has to be like a capital murder trial, though that is what pirates want it to be. | |
| | | | | | | | Re: Using IP address legal & practical No it isn't like a capital murder trial, but you have to consider three things here. First, there is no requirement that an ISP participates in this program, so, even if the RIAA and MPAA say they won't sue anyone until their six strikes are up, such a promise wouldn't cover anyone using a non-participating ISP. Second, such a promise not to sue is just that: a promise. It carries no legal weight, so these organizations could sue at any time if they felt justified in doing so. Third, there are many, many individuals and companies that hold copyrights, and they aren't obligated in any way to participate in this program.
So, in reality, you have no real protection here. The most you have is a promise that only the copyright holders signed on to this program won't sue the customer of a participating ISP; a promise that isn't worth a thing if it isn't honored. | |
| | | | | |  The LimitPremium
join:2007-09-25
Greensboro, NC
kudos:2 | Can you imagine the influx of calls that these ISPs are going to receive even if piracy was so rampant? This is not going to fix anything: it's only going to cause MORE problems like increased costs to ISPs, unless I'm missing something here.
And with all due respect, I thought you were against government intervention of any kind?
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"We will evaluate these integrals rigorously if we can, and non-rigorously if we must".
---Victor Moll, invited talk, Tom Osler Fest (April 17, 2010) | |
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | LinklistPremium
join:2002-03-03
Longport, NJ
kudos:5 | Re: Using IP address legal & practical said by The Limit:And with all due respect, I thought you were against government intervention of any kind?
Where did you get the mistaken idea? There is a place for laws. I am just against government handing out money to society's drones. | |
| | | | | | | | The LimitPremium
join:2007-09-25
Greensboro, NC
kudos:2 | Re: Using IP address legal & practical Ahem, isn't that what will be happening indirectly with the entertainment industry? Using government laws to make sure someone's business model doesn't fail seems to be the scenario here. Let the free market work it out.
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"We will evaluate these integrals rigorously if we can, and non-rigorously if we must".
---Victor Moll, invited talk, Tom Osler Fest (April 17, 2010) | |
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| | | | | | | | said by The Limit:And with all due respect, I thought you were against government intervention of any kind?
He's only against government intervention when it interferes with big business. | |
| | | | | | | | | | Re: Using IP address legal & practical Government intervention should be rare and occur primarily to combat fraud and abuse. Whether it benefits or interferes with big or small business should be irrelevant. I think a lot of current regulations are made specifically to target big business (sometimes correctly, sometimes not), and small businesses suffer greatly in the crossfire. | |
| | | | | | | | | The LimitPremium
join:2007-09-25
Greensboro, NC
kudos:2 | Re: Using IP address legal & practical Example? | |
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| | |  crazyk4952Premium
join:2002-02-04
united state
kudos:1 | said by Linklist:So life isn't fair. Deal with it.
Sounds like the republican mantra! | |
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See 8 replies to this post | |
 JakCrow
join:2001-12-06
Palo Alto, CA
1 edit | Thank God for Sonic.net... ...who are on the record stating they will NOT be participating in such a ridiculous program against their customers. | |
| | | | Re: Thank God for Sonic.net... I second that. If they were in my area I would do what ever I could to have them as my ISP. | |
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joakoPremium
join:2000-09-07
/dev/null
kudos:5 | So how do I get someone's internet shut off? All I need is their IP address and to send some notices, right?
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PRescott7-2097 | |
| KearnstdElf WizardPremium
join:2002-01-22
Mullica Hill, NJ | What stops reconnection? no ISP wants to lose a customer, so just watch as retention departments end up with the power to make strikes go away.
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[65 Arcanist]Filan(High Elf) Zone: Broadband Reports | |
| | | | Re: What stops reconnection? OR the riaa/mpaa with the $$ cash $$ lost from customer loss/downgrading service levels. Doubtful Verizon would want to lose that $205 a month for 300 megabit internet service too quickly.. | |
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| | | Tl:DR please Someone explain to me why getting 6 chances is worse than than having the RIAA/MPAA subpoena my name and threaten to sue me for like $3,000 a song. | |
| | iknowPremium
join:2012-03-25
3 edits | Re: Tl:DR please said by Prototype5:Someone explain to me why getting 6 chances is worse than than having the RIAA/MPAA subpoena my name and threaten to sue me for like $3,000 a song.
a proper and legal process is one, would you like to be accused of something based on an IP address, which has been proven in the past to be unreliable to identify an infringer? and you get those strikes NOT by a legal process, but by a company that specializes in making money for the RIAA/MPAA etc. both federal and state judges have ruled on this, if you read my links i posted carefully, one post up. you can be totally innocent, yet have your internet cut off, and possibly sued with no legal evidence whatsoever?. this is all over with these court decisions unless they can PROVE who did the copyright infringing!. they'd need a camera taking a picture of the infringer, unless the infringer admits guilt to prosecute!.
here's another good link for you. »Comcast Starts Standing Up to BitTorrent Lawsuits
and another. »Verizon Beats Back E-Book Settlement Troll | |
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There is a roaring fire under the constutition.