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Major US ISPs joining RIAA, MPAA to punish pirates
Several top US Internet service providers are collaborating with the entertainment industry to clamp down on piracy, according to a CNET report. After years of being hounded by groups such as the MPAA and RIAA, Internet gatekeepers including AT&T, Comcast and Verizon are reportedly on the verge of introducing a graduated response system to punish pirates. CNET's sources claim that a final agreement hasn't been inked yet, but the plan is "on track" to be unveiled next month.
Although "graduated response" probably evokes memories of France's three-strike policy, the American adaptation won't be quite as strict -- initially, anyway. France's HADOPI law requires ISPs to warn alleged copyright infringers of their conduct two times. The third time someone is caught transferring unapproved content, they can be suspended from the Internet (the offender is blacklisted from all Web providers), fined hundreds of thousands of dollars and face up to two years in prison.
Conversely, the arrangement between American ISPs and the recording industry is voluntary, and suspected infringers won't necessarily face three strikes. According to CNET's unnamed insiders, ISPs will be able to choose how many warnings they want to issue before terminating a customer's service. If a rightsholder logs your IP address downloading or sharing unsavory material, they can notify your ISP, who will bombard you with so-called "Copyright Alerts."
If you fail to comply with those warnings, the recording industry will expect your ISP to escalate matters by selecting from a list of sanctions. Depending on the severity of the case, you might have your connection throttled or you could even be limited to the top 200 websites. Although it's not necessarily required, ISPs may also disconnect you from their service entirely, but this already occurs in select areas where ISPs have agreed to cooperate with antipiracy groups.
It's unclear what the framework will cost to implement and oversee, but both sides are reportedly splitting the expenses. Representatives for the RIAA, MPAA, and NCTA (National Cable and Telecommunications Association, which includes Time Warner Cable, CableVision, Charter, Comcast and Qwest), declined CNET's request for a comment. Unfortunately, it seems most ISPs are involved in the discussions, so you probably won't be able to escape the arrangement.
User Comments: 55
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No problem. Things like this just inspire the rest of the intelligent world to distribute those 'copyrighted products' on hard copies to everyone they know; that way they won't be downloading anything illegally. Disc media is cheap. Downloading capture programs are free. Watch the video & capture the stream as it goes to computer or even the tv/monitor; encode it to play in a standard player. Copy to 100 discs. Give it away. Encourage others to share the same way. Done. The only people that these new regulations will affect would be the poor folks who wouldn't buy the product anyway. Software? Please. There's a hacked version of everything out there. All you have to do is look. Go to one lan party and you can probably get whatever you want without buying a thing.
That said, I don't mind paying for quality products; but the vast majority of the time, what is sold is defective and causes as many problems as it solves. CD's are still sold with 90% filler material instead of hit songs. DVD's are usually watched once; yet how many times will Disney for example release the same movie on new special editions of classic movies? Software (especially Windows) is so bloated and defective that it requires reinstallation every couple years or it slows to a crawl and makes the average person think they need a new computer. And it's not like they can't fix their products; they have all the programmers in the world working for them. But it's that they won't. They want to sell you another version of the same damn thing instead.
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What happened to privacy? How they can monitor and spy our activities? Also ISP's should not give any informations of they costumers. When that changed and do they really care about RIAA or MPAA. I dont think so. They just care about they business and how to force you to not use they bandwidth at all.
This world is going completely crazy. It is so important to pay for every junk movie or today crap music but from other side no one care about why our kids can not be on the sun anymore or why we can afford to have real quality life. Why is car industry still based on fuel, tires, streets when we can do mush better then that right now. There is so many "why" but all they care is business, money, illusion we live.
We really need something to wipe all of this from the Earth and then fresh start from begin. This is not making any sanse anymore...
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No problem. Things like this just inspire the rest of the intelligent world to distribute those 'copyrighted products' on hard copies to everyone they know; that way they won't be downloading anything illegally. Disc media is cheap. Downloading capture programs are free. Watch the video & capture the stream as it goes to computer or even the tv/monitor; encode it to play in a standard player. Copy to 100 discs. Give it away. Encourage others to share the same way. Done. The only people that these new regulations will affect would be the poor folks who wouldn't buy the product anyway. Software? Please. There's a hacked version of everything out there. All you have to do is look. Go to one lan party and you can probably get whatever you want without buying a thing.The guest after you was on a rant / roll also, so I'm curious as to whether you're the same person.
That said, I don't mind paying for quality products; but the vast majority of the time, what is sold is defective and causes as many problems as it solves. CD's are still sold with 90% filler material instead of hit songs. DVD's are usually watched once; yet how many times will Disney for example release the same movie on new special editions of classic movies? Software (especially Windows) is so bloated and defective that it requires reinstallation every couple years or it slows to a crawl and makes the average person think they need a new computer. And it's not like they can't fix their products; they have all the programmers in the world working for them. But it's that they won't. They want to sell you another version of the same damn thing instead.
To answer both of you, the modern capitalist business model is this, each special interest group firmly believes that they are solely entitled to your "disposable income" in its entirety. Very sadly, that extends to health care as well. So, consider the MBA as a qualifying course for elite parasites. That said, we march right into the trap, by stupidly becoming addicted to the toys, gadgets, ans s*** entertainment that they ram down our throats. They don't have to bother with the, "be the first kid on your block to have one of theses" pitch any more, we've been conditioned to be that person anyway. In fact, it's probably genetic by now.
Anyway, country music usually has a fairly high percentage of listenable material per album. This is partly because Nashville still adheres to a bit of the old "Tin Pan Alley" business template, whereas, the hottest singers get offered the best songs Since the writers will get the most in royalties from them. Many country performers aren't, at least wholly, "singer songwriters", which extends the explanation. (But if you don't like country music, you're SOL on this one
That said, the exception is Taylor Swift, God bless her, who writes all her own material, but has proven in public that she can't sing something by anybody else. Oh well, she's young, give her time.
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This could create potential for hackers to impersonate a user downloading pirated content just to get him/her fined a large sum. It's a bad law because it's difficult to prove who exactly downloaded pirated content--a houseguest could download pirated content without the account holder's knowledge and the account holder is made responsible for something he/she had little control over, short of disallowing anyone else from using a connection, which is an unrealistic expectation.
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This could create potential for hackers to impersonate a user downloading pirated content just to get him/her fined a large sum. It's a bad law because it's difficult to prove who exactly downloaded pirated content--a houseguest could download pirated content without the account holder's knowledge and the account holder is made responsible for something he/she had little control over, short of disallowing anyone else from using a connection, which is an unrealistic expectation.Well,since contemporary fantasy holds to the belief that internet access is a God given right, it would make sense to tell any house guests to bring their own wireless, since they have the same right, and the host isn't really responsible for supplying it, God is. Much in the same way that someone might throw a "BYOB" party.
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