All of the ISPs involved also provide cable TV service. That's to say, they have a vested interest in seeing the business model of "copyright holders" continue so that they can receive their affiliate fees. It's little wonder that this deal was "voluntarily" agreed upon.
Given that these ISPs often have exclusive markets, in which they have no direct competitors, this would effectively deny internet access to anyone who had the misfortune of getting a few of these notices.
Lack of judicial oversight is obviously a problem. But furthermore, this really overstates the seriousness of copyright infringement, and understates the importance of internet access for all.
Some European countries [1] and even the UN [2] have recently begun to recognize internet access as a Constitutional right. If similar decisions were made here, one might be able to sue one's ISP for breaching that right... but maybe not, as long as there's free internet at public libraries. I'm also very pessimistic that SCOTUS will recognize internet access as a Constitutional right any time soon, what with the MAFIAA still at large.
In the case of individual countries, it's often construed as a constitutional right. But in the case of the EU, you're right, it's a human right. Thanks for the correction.
It hasn't prevented the advancement of internet three strike laws in Europe. In fact they are way ahead of the US on that lousy path. Ireland, UK, France, etc...
If you read the article, you'd know that ISPs seem unwilling to cut off access entirely, even after 6 strikes.
Agreed on the judicial issues. While the ISP is legally free to make any decision it wants as to who is allowed to use its network, and in what capacity, they're essentially making these determinations based on hearsay.
That last point is my primary complaint about these systems. While yes, this is actually a quite reasonable series of warnings (the first four carry no penalties at all), it still bothers me that there is no real proof behind any of this. As far as I know, all the content owners have to say to the ISP is that such-and-such IP was uploading our content X, and then the warnings begin. There's no first- or third-party fact-checking (which, I admit, would be quite difficult with torrents anyway), it is, as you say, "hearsay." I'm not quite sure why, but the RIAA and other organizations now carry as much weight as our government regarding our internet access (can the state even shut down a customer's access at all? I have no idea, but if it can't, that's even worse).
Apart from this, and quoting the Ars Technica article, it's a prime example of "guilty until proven innocent" and a really sneaky tactic by the government to go around the political / democratic process and form "voluntary agreements" with ISP's and media companies.
Nothing stops anyone claiming to have a copyright to send a notice for any IP. Frankly, if I don't like your haircut, and know your IP, I can send a notice to your ISP claiming that you "infringe on my intellectual property."
Without judicial oversight, the potential for abuse or error is just too great.
Or you weren't sharing in the first place. I can see 'using more bandwidth than we would like you to' soon being used as prime evidence of illegal activity.
I don't think there's any penalty for false accusations of copyright infringement. Likewise, nobody needs to pay for falsely accusing you of anything unless you sue them for defamation.
If your ISP actually cuts off your internet after 6 false accusations, you might want to take them to the courts. EFF will probably love to take on such a suit. Unfortunately, very few people have the financial means or guts to sue the RIAA/MPAA and follow through with it.
This is a very sad state of affairs. We already have a system for judging evidence, determining guilt and for assigning punishment, it's called the courts. This seems to be yet another advancement in abandoning all of the institutions of civil society and rule of law in the online world, frequently to the detriment of individual liberty. We can only hope that eventually these assaults against our freedoms will eventually be rolled back.
These courts have already been very effectively used... as a threat by copyright holders in an attempt to shake people down for out-of-court settlements.
The tide seems to be turning against the RIAA/MPAA, damages 100s of times the cost of legitimately downloading the song are being questioned, the ruling that an IP address != a person and other stuff that is making it less likely that the copyright groups will be able to mass litigate going forward so they are starting to look for extrajudicial means.
The scariest thing to me about this article is this: This is basically a system of penalty, based on enforcing the government's laws (even though lobbied for by the RIAA et al), that is not dealt with in courts. In the US at least we have the idea that our judges/juries are either our peers or are elected by our peers. There is a sense that they act on behalf of the collective will in transparent ways and are always accountable in some sort of way. It's a way for the community to enforce its norms on its members (for better or worse).
In the system propsed in this article there are consequences to the file sharers. And there is no accountable system for doling out these consequences. These are not our peers judging us. These are corporations who have very vested interests, which are not the interests of the populous it is enforcing them upon. I'm worried that this will become something of a precedent.
I think another really good example of this in action is the Visa/Mastercard embargo on Wikileaks. Operating outside of any judicial framework they barred funds to Wikileaks and its host for months. Then as soon as they get sued, and there is the prospect of having to account for their actions based on real laws they cave in, implicitly acknowledging the illegality of their stance. It seems that however powerful this government/corporation blanket of control thinks it is it still fears having to account for itself in the courts. An independent judiciary is a great check to power. The RIAA/MPAA are attacking one of the few checks on power that still give me hope that the idea of government the USA stands for can be salvaged.
Regardless of whether you break the law on a regular basis, having a personal VPS is a very good idea these days.
I still regularly run into problems with websites and applications related to geolocation, blacklisting, or routing, and being able to proxy stuff through my VPS enables me to keep getting things done.
In particular, if you're a Comcast user a VPS is pretty essential since their routing and peering are awful.
Being able to run sensitive traffic through an SSH tunnel when you're on public Wi-fi is also a nice perk.
I'm considering purchasing Comcast internet for businesses (not the residential stuff), and am interested in your comments about bad routing and peering. Can you expand on that, please?
EDIT: I'm talking about Chicagoland region. Didn't know it was geographic.
An example: if you are in Salt Lake City, your traffic to the west coast (i.e. California and Washington) is first routed to Dallas, TX, then across New Mexico and Arizona on a saturated link that limits you to a few mbits/s.
I am in Seattle. To get to my work VPN, also in Seattle, my traffic is routed through San Jose because Comcast refuse to peer with my employer's provider.
I have had fine service with Comcast. The thing to remember is that Comcast is basically an umbrella over many companies generally separated by state. To further complicate things one area within a state may have better equipment than another area.
Comcast customer service has a resemblance to retail shopping in the old Soviet Union. Ohh... you think it can't possibly be that bad. You get stuck having to take your cable box to a Comcast customer service center. You'll see.
They have a friendly management interface, which keeps getting more impressive over time. They scale very well based on what you need, and I've found their support quite helpful as well.
I also recommend their domain name registration; in addition to having much better policies than most registrars, they also provide email for their domains, which saves you the trouble of maintaining a mail server yourself.
I have a couple of very small VPS's which cost $15-20 per year. That's less than the cost of a cup of coffee per month. There are plenty of similar offers on sites like LowEndBox.com. A few SSH tunnels on a minimal Debian install shouldn't take up more than 64MB of RAM, so you don't really need an expensive Linode for that.
Caveat: These low-cost "companies" go out of business all the time, so you'd better read the reviews. But since I consider them disposable anyway, I don't really care if the uptime isn't 99.9% or the company goes bankrupt after 9 months. If you plan to do anything other than tunneling with your VPS, I'd suggest that you pay at least $10 per month.
At some point, someone will probably sue -- after getting cutoff by this new policy or receive significant fines -- on the grounds this does constitute a conflict of interest on the part of the internet provider.
In the ideal world, we'd allow for competition across the board and remove the monopolies through the introduction of new options. Those options could make a major dent by positioning themselves solely as pipe providers. In turn, this would put market pressure on the conglomerates to either compete or die, in the ideal world.
In the realistic world, the options would be to force the companies to split into wholly owned subsidiaries of a parent corporation. IE: Comcast Internet, Comcast TV / Comcast Content and they would not receive preferential treatment from one another. Also, remove the monopolies and change the current regulatory structure to create incentives for new ISPs to spring up and challenge the conglomerates.
Ideally, we would be able to solve this without having to involve the government bureaucracy which will end up creating more new rules and probably hurting as much as helping. Realistically, the only way people will go for is if there's a regulatory change.
This is why we should get rid of the copyright system completely and keep it that way or start from scratch and build a new system (I prefer the former...).
Time to move over to some kind of fully encrypted Internet or something :/
I suspect the content owners are going to get a big load of IP addresses from the ISPs and file a big huge pile of criminal charges or civil lawsuits against the people who the ISPs finger. The ISPs will then pretend to act hurt when the content owners violate this agreement.
Give your internet account to a fine business establishment who doesn't do something as ridiculous as trusting Time Warner or Comcast with confidential customer information.
So who will guard the guards? I fail to see any oversight whatsoever. Ohh and look who these 6 major ISPs are. TimeWarner Cable sounds like they may have a few copyrights laying around... Major conflicts of interest? You bet.
And what does this mean for the thousands of coffee shops, book stores, and other wi-fi hotspots which dynamically assign ip addresses? Most likely: nothing pleasant.
Its a fine day when not only do corporations wield ridiculous power of lawmakers, but can form agreements tantamount to monopoly power. Net neutrality? Good luck with that.
Case in point: In some European countries (e.g. Germany), a wifi provider is liable for all the stuff that happens on his network. Which means that there are next to no public wifis. A shame, really.
Another step from democracy towards corporate dictatorship. Sometimes I wonder if we are currently experiencing a fatal flaw in commercialism that will ultimately subvert democracy.
