It's Back... Internet regulations that just wount die

New anti-piracy system will hit U.S. Internet users next week
By Kevin Collier on February 22, 2013

Starting next week, most U.S. Internet users will be subject to a new copyright enforcement system that could slow the Internet to a crawl and force violators to take educational courses.

A source with direct knowledge of the Copyright Alert System (CAS), who asked not to be named, has told the Daily Dot that the five participating Internet service providers (ISPs) will start the controversial program Monday.

The ISPs—industry giants AT&T, Cablevision, Comcast, Time Warner, and Verizon—will launch their versions of the CAS on different days throughout the week. Comcast is expected to be the first, on Monday.

The CAS, designed as an "educational" service to combat casual piracy in the U.S., has been criticized as designed purely for corporate interests, at the expense of the average Internet user. While it doesn't require ISPs to cut off Internet access to repeat pirates—as is the case in France and New Zealand—it will issue escalating punishments to suspected pirates, severely reducing their connection speeds after five or six offenses.

Though the system's executive director promised to hire an independent consultant to vet the software that will flag copyright violators, that hasn't happened yet.

The date of the launch isn't yet official—the source expressed surprise that the news has been kept so tightly under wraps—but it's been rumored for several weeks to be at the end of February.

Apparently to mark the launch, the CAS has created a shiny new website. It replaces a drab earlier version, one that would go months without an update and seemed a metaphor for the the system's repeated delays and internal conflicts: Most recently, it was pushed from November to late February, "due to unexpected factors largely stemming from Hurricane Sandy."

The CAS also has a sleek new promotional video, wherein a woman explains the process over smooth jazz.

melodiccolor wrote:This is not unexpected. People who are pirating will find ways to circumvent this easily while innocent users who are caught up will find it much harder. The battle goes on...

Zen wrote:lol can you imagine trying to mod all the flagged content on the internet every time someone says pirate or something? Who is going to pay for that mod army, RIAA?

Samt03 wrote:

Zen wrote:lol can you imagine trying to mod all the flagged content on the internet every time someone says pirate or something? Who is going to pay for that mod army, RIAA?

Who's gonna be able to build that army? How do you find that many skilled, trained mods?

Zen wrote:

Samt03 wrote:

Zen wrote:lol can you imagine trying to mod all the flagged content on the internet every time someone says pirate or something? Who is going to pay for that mod army, RIAA?

Who's gonna be able to build that army? How do you find that many skilled, trained mods?

It'd be like herding rats
I still say we should make the people writing these laws read all the content on the internet or every single one of their emails looking for copyrighted content before they can pass these things.

Samt03 wrote:

Zen wrote:

Samt03 wrote:

Zen wrote:lol can you imagine trying to mod all the flagged content on the internet every time someone says pirate or something? Who is going to pay for that mod army, RIAA?

Who's gonna be able to build that army? How do you find that many skilled, trained mods?

It'd be like herding rats
I still say we should make the people writing these laws read all the content on the internet or every single one of their emails looking for copyrighted content before they can pass these things.

Here's a good question, does my avi picture thingy violate the law? It's a square of fabric I drew a symbol from the Legacy of Kain video game series on... on top of my cat... The symbol is owned by SquareEnix or some such thing (game series was sold recently.) So technically the image is a rip off, and not my own, am I pirating my cat?

Samt03 wrote:

Zen wrote:

Samt03 wrote:

Zen wrote:lol can you imagine trying to mod all the flagged content on the internet every time someone says pirate or something? Who is going to pay for that mod army, RIAA?

Who's gonna be able to build that army? How do you find that many skilled, trained mods?

It'd be like herding rats
I still say we should make the people writing these laws read all the content on the internet or every single one of their emails looking for copyrighted content before they can pass these things.

Here's a good question, does my avi picture thingy violate the law? It's a square of fabric I drew a symbol from the Legacy of Kain video game series on... on top of my cat... The symbol is owned by SquareEnix or some such thing (game series was sold recently.) So technically the image is a rip off, and not my own, am I pirating my cat?

Nucky wrote:
That's cool, I never had any idea that thing was covering your cat lol.

Will The New 'Copyright Alert System' Actually Stop People From Downloading Music and Movies Illegally?

Starting this week, those downloading movies, TV shows and music illegally in the U.S. are going to start getting called out for committing Internet fouls. Copyright holders RIAA and MPAA in partnership with five major Internet service providers are launching the “Copyright Alert System” a.k.a. “Six Strikes” a.k.a. “The Copyright Surveillance Machine.” What does it mean?

If you get your Internet through AT&T, Cablevision, Comcast, Time Warner Cable or Verizon and you’re one of the millions who prefer downloading Game of Thrones, Dexter, and the Big Bang Theory for free through illicit channels, you may get a letter from your ISP letting you know that your copyright transgression has been spotted by the copyright holders’ ref. The “ref” is Reuters-owned firm Mark Monitor, which has 100 employees and a suite of automated tools for watching Torrent sites to catch the IP addresses sharing and downloading content.

“We see 20-30 million infringements every day,” said Thomas Sehested, who is in charge of antipiracy services and technology at Mark Monitor. “Most people are unaware of how public everything they do online is. Whether they download illegal software or post to their Twitter page, a lot of people are unaware of how public it is, if you’re looking for it.”

The RIAA and MPAA’s members tell Mark Monitor which shows, movies and songs to look for, and it then performs its monitoring magic and sends along shame lists to the ISPs. (Interestingly, the porn industry which has long complained of the toll of illegal downloading on its profits was left out of the Six Strikes deal.) Each ISP comes up with its own system for “gotcha” emails to their customers but they’ll generally go like this: Copyright scofflaws will get up to six warnings, that grow more and more dire — first offering educational opportunities (“Do you know what IP ownership is, little boy?”), then mandatory education (You must acknowledge that you know what copyright infringement is before you can access the Internet.), and finally punishment in the form of slowed Internet speed for two to three days. After six warnings, do the MPAA and RIAA storm troopers raid your house and smash your computer to bits? Nope, at that point they just assume that you’re not capable of reform and you stop getting warnings. Is this actually going to stop pirates from going after their entertaining digital booty?

The system was negotiated by industry group the Center for Copyright Information, which became the RIAA and MPAA’s only hope after the dramatic demise of SOPA/PIPA — legislation that would have forcibly enlisted advertisers, merchants and search providers in the fight against piracy. CCI, which has an unofficial but approving nod from the Obama administration, has an annual budget of up to $2 million jointly funded by the RIAA, MPAA and the participating ISPs. Its role, beyond working out the logistics of the system, is the creation of the educational materials for those slapped with a copyright dunce hat. The Center already helps six-year-olds in understanding copyright, says the center’s executive director Jill Lesser, providing educational materials that are distributed in schools.

“We’ll also collect and analyze the data to see whether the alerts are working,” says Lesser. “We’re hoping the vast majority of people who are not intent on being pirates will respond to this. Undergirding the process is taking the large percentage of casual infringers and educating them about where they can find legal content.”

In other words, CCI is hoping to teach people not to search for “free download of Walking Dead” and click on the first site that turns up, and instead turn to Amazon or iTunes.

Will it work? We often incorrectly think that what we’re doing on the Internet is seen by no one. Simply getting notified that your illegal downloading has caught someone’s eye could be a deterrent. Many academic studies have found that the act of being watched makes us better citizens, so much so that just putting “eye” stickers on a tip jar makes us more likely to fork over some cash. Perhaps the warning system will work not because of fear of having slow Internet for a couple of days but because of the sensation of surveillance that the system will create. And if nothing else, it might notify people with open Wi-Fi that other people are jumping on their network for questionable downloading purposes.

“I think it’s going to be reasonably effective,” says Ernesto (who goes by that name alone), editor in chief of TorrentFreak, a website that covers pirate news and has been covering Six Strikes since talk of it first surfaced in 2011. “For consumers, it’s not a bad thing. I think there are a lot of casual downloaders who do it because it’s easy. A big group of those will be scared if they get these messages and will stop. They won’t know how to prevent these messages or not get caught.”

Those who profess to be innocent can challenge their warnings in hopes of not having their Internet slowed down. There’s an arbitration process to challenge a warning — say if you in fact had the right to distribute the file or if the file falls under fair use — that costs $35; if you win the case, that fee gets reimbursed.

It’ll be interesting to see if it works — or if it just results in a flood of users to services like Kim Dotcom’s Mega, where private cyberlockers make for less transparent media consumption. Regardless, it’s an interesting voluntary partnership between rights holders and Internet service providers, given the failure of enacting legislation around this, and gives copyright holders a way to communicate — if indirectly — with the people consuming their content for free online.

The RIAA and MPAA’s members tell Mark Monitor which shows, movies and songs to look for, and it then performs its monitoring magic and sends along shame lists to the ISPs. (Interestingly, the porn industry which has long complained of the toll of illegal downloading on its profits was left out of the Six Strikes deal.) Each ISP comes up with its own system for “gotcha” emails to their customers but they’ll generally go like this: Copyright scofflaws will get up to six warnings, that grow more and more dire — first offering educational opportunities (“Do you know what IP ownership is, little boy?”), then mandatory education (You must acknowledge that you know what copyright infringement is before you can access the Internet.), and finally punishment in the form of slowed Internet speed for two to three days. After six warnings, do the MPAA and RIAA storm troopers raid your house and smash your computer to bits? Nope, at that point they just assume that you’re not capable of reform and you stop getting warnings. Is this actually going to stop pirates from going after their entertaining digital booty?

HTG Explains: What is the New Copyright Alert System and How Does it Affect You?

copyright-alert-system-header

The new Copyright Alert System, also known as the “Six Strikes” system, marks the beginning of ISPs in the USA attempting to police their subscribers’ Internet usage. The “punishments” include increasingly harsh alerts, bandwidth throttling, and restricting browsing activity.

Now that the dust has begun to settle, let’s take a look at exactly what ISPs are doing and what this means for you.
What is the New Copyright Alert System?

The Copyright Alert System has been three years in the making. After several delays, Internet service providers began rolling it out to their customers in February 2013.

The Copyright Alert System is not a government-mandated program. It’s a private project organized by the “Center for Copyright Information,” whose members include the MPAA, RIAA, Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Cablevision, AT&T, and Verizon.

The Center for Copyright Information explains the new Copyright Alert System as an “educational” program targeted at casual downloaders. The goal is ostensibly to educate Americans about legal, approved ways of accessing content and discourage pirating it. The CCI explains their system in a YouTube video:

Monitoring Infringing BitTorrent Swarms

BitTorrent itself doesn’t provide any privacy. As a result of the way BitTorrent works, everyone downloading a file from BitTorrent is also uploading pieces of the same file to other downloaders. An organization named MarkMonitor monitors people downloading infringing content from public BitTorrent trackers.

More specifically, MarkMonitor connects to torrents containing known-infringing content located on public BitTorrent trackers, such as the ever-popular Pirate Bay. MarkMonitor attempts to download the infringing content from other peers in the swarm and, if it manages to download pieces of the content successfully, it passes along the IP address to the user’s Internet service provider. The ISP is then responsible for notifying the subscriber.

At the moment, it appears that ISPs are not employing deep packet inspection or other technologies to find pirated content. The Copyright Alert System, as it stands, is targeted solely against people downloading infringing content located on public BitTorrent trackers.
Copyright Alerts

When a participating ISP receives information about an infringement from MarkMonitor, they will pass on a warning to their customer. Warning messages may be in the form of emails to a registered email address and pop-up alerts embedded in websites. In other words, participating ISPs will modify HTTP traffic, modifying web pages you request and inserting notification alerts.

This system has been branded “Six Strikes” because subscribers will receive up to six alerts, each with escalating seriousness and consequences.

First and Second Alerts: Subscribers will receive an alert with information on how to prevent further infringing activity.
Third and Fourth Alerts: Subscribers will receive an alert, but will have to click a confirmation button to acknowledge they received the alert.
Fifth Alert: ISPs may use “mitigation measures” against the subscriber. A subscriber’s Internet speeds may be temporarily reduced or they may be redirected to a special informational page, preventing them from accessing other websites until they contact their ISP to discuss the matter. The exact mitigation measures depend on the ISP. Different ISPs will have different policies.
Sixth Alert: ISPs must enact “mitigation measures” if they have not already done so.

Should you disagree with an alert you receive, you can appeal an alert within 14 days of receiving it. There is a fee of $35 for each appeal, but you will receive the money back if you win your appeal.

Unlike other systems, such as the similarly named “Three Strikes” law in France, infringers will not be disconnected from the Internet after the last strike. Users will not receive any further alerts after the sixth.
Consequences, What Consequences?

Everyone knows that “you’re out” after three strikes, but what happens after six strikes? The answer, which may surprise you, is nothing at all.

As Jill Lesser, executive directory of the CCI, explained in an interview:

“We hope that by the time people get to alerts number five or six, they will stop. Once they’ve been mitigated, they’ve received several alerts, we’re just not gonna send them any more alerts because they’re not the kind of customer that we’re going to reach with this program.”

After the sixth alert, subscribers will not receive any further alerts. However, they may still be sued by the copyright owners. This is the same risk that existed before the Copyright Alert System came into place.

The program is targeted at deterring “casual infringers” and leaves other types of infringers to be sued in the courts.
Only Some ISPs Are Participating

As we have already mentioned, “Six Strikes” is not a law like the “Three Strikes” law in France. It’s a private program that ISPs are voluntarily entering into with organizations such as the RIAA and MPAA. At this time, only five ISPs are participating: AT&T, Cablevision, Comcast, Time Warner Cable, and Verizon.

Cox, Charter, CenturyLink, Sonic.net, and many small and medium-size ISPs, are not participating. However, other ISPs may join the program in the future.
What The Program Doesn’t Target

While the system is branded as a “Copyright Alert System,” it actually only targets people downloading infringing content from public BitTorrent trackers. Both hardcore pirates and casual infringers will be able to avoid this system. The following types of copyright infringement are not targeted at the moment:

Watching TV shows and movies uploaded to YouTube and other video sites by unauthorized users.
Downloading copyrighted content directly from “file locker”-type websites, not peer-to-peer networks.
Using other types of peer-to-peer networks, not BitTorrent.
Downloading torrents from private BitTorrent trackers.
Using VPNs to access public, infringing torrents.

However, the program may target other types of unauthorized downloading in the future.

What About Businesses?

Businesses on business-grade Internet connections will not be targeted by the Copyright Alert System. A business offering public Wi-Fi will not see alerts because some of its customers downloaded unauthorized material.

However, small businesses on consumer-grade Internet connections will see alerts. If a business is offering public Wi-Fi using a residential connection, it may receive copyright alerts. ISPs would advise these businesses to upgrade to more expensive connections intended for businesses.

At the moment, the system’s bark is worse than its bite. It only targets one specific type of infringing traffic and doesn’t result in very harsh penalties. However, over time, the system could be adapted to monitor subscribers’ Internet traffic for other types of infringing downloads and hand out harsher penalties.

One thing’s for sure – for people in the USA, downloading unauthorized content from public BitTorrent trackers just became an even worse idea.

Samt03 wrote:My internet provider already takes some measures, against things other then bit torrents. When I set it up and signed the contract they made sure to stress that if they catch you downloading illegal things they'll cut your online speed to dial up speed for a probationary time.

The article sounds like a weaker version of what dish network already does...

RBM wrote:

Samt03 wrote:My internet provider already takes some measures, against things other then bit torrents. When I set it up and signed the contract they made sure to stress that if they catch you downloading illegal things they'll cut your online speed to dial up speed for a probationary time.

The article sounds like a weaker version of what dish network already does...

How did they define 'illegal' given the sometimes heated, ongoing argument on Fair Use ?

Samt03 wrote:

RBM wrote:

Samt03 wrote:My internet provider already takes some measures, against things other then bit torrents. When I set it up and signed the contract they made sure to stress that if they catch you downloading illegal things they'll cut your online speed to dial up speed for a probationary time.

The article sounds like a weaker version of what dish network already does...

How did they define 'illegal' given the sometimes heated, ongoing argument on Fair Use ?

As they said, anything copywrited that my household did not have authorization to download.

melodiccolor wrote:It gets worse: anyone can easily track everything you do now online or off via data correlation. So those in power can pretty much do anything they wish, get any information they wish easily to enforce things and doing anything about it to reverse the trend is an uphill battle.

http://edition.cnn.com/2013/03/16/opinion/schneier-internet-surveillance/index.html?eref=edition&utm_source=howtogeek&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter

melodiccolor wrote:http://www.ibtimes.com/computer-fraud-abuse-act-2013-new-cfaa-draft-aims-expand-not-reform-worst-law-technology-1158515#?utm_source=howtogeek&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter