Aye Mateys, ISP's to crack down on piracy

Mr. Nice

Mr. Nice

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To Slow Piracy, Internet Providers Ready Penalties

Americans who illegally download songs and movies may soon be in for a surprise: They will be warned to stop, and if they don?t, they could find their Internet access slowing to a crawl.

After years of negotiations with Hollywood and the music industry, the nation?s top Internet providers have agreed to a systematic approach to identifying customers suspected of digital copyright infringement and then alerting them via e-mail or other means.

Under the new process, which was announced Thursday, several warnings would be issued, with progressively harsher consequences if the initial cautions were ignored.

The companies took pains to say that the agreement did not oblige Internet providers to shut down a repeat offender?s account, and that the system of alerts was meant to be ?educational.? But they noted that carriers would retain their right to cut off any user who violated their terms of service.

In bringing together the media companies and Internet carriers, the deal demonstrates how the once-clear line separating those two businesses has been blurred. Eight years ago, the Recording Industry Association of America had to sue Verizon to try to uncover the identity of a customer who was sharing music online. This year, Comcast completed its merger with NBC, bringing an owner of digital content and a conduit for it under the same roof.

Now the Internet providers are hoping to profit as they pipe music and video of the nonpirated variety to their customers.

?The I.S.P.?s want to cooperate with Hollywood because the carriers recognize that their own growth depends in part on bundled content strategies,? said Eric Garland of BigChampagne, which tracks online media traffic. ?They don?t want to be just utilities providing Internet access, but premium content distributors as well.?

The system announced on Thursday involves a series of six warnings that an Internet provider can send to a customer whom the media companies have identified as a possible copyright infringer.

The warnings escalate from simple e-mail notifications to, at levels 5 and 6, a set of ?mitigation measures,? like reduced connection speeds or a block on Web browsing. As the alerts progress, a customer must acknowledge that he understands the notice. Customers will also have the opportunity to contest the complaint.

The effect on consumers, the companies hope, will be more of a deterrent-by-annoyance ? rather than the random lightning bolt of litigation that was once the preferred method of enforcement by the recording industry association, one of the parties to the agreement.

The media companies were also represented by the Motion Picture Association of America and groups acting on behalf of independent record companies and filmmakers. The Internet carriers involved in the deal include AT&T, Cablevision, Comcast, Verizon and Time Warner Cable.

The music and movie companies, which estimate that digital piracy costs the United States economy $16 billion in lost revenue each year, have been eager for an efficient way to deal with the problem.

As illegal downloading has become ingrained as a cultural habit, especially among young people, expensive litigation has become less effective, and the lawsuits against individuals were something of a public relations disaster for the music companies. The new deal, the companies say, offers plenty of chances for even the most recalcitrant pirates to reform.

?This is a sensible approach to the problem of online content theft and, importantly, one that respects the privacy and rights of our subscribers,? Randal S. Milch, executive vice president and general counsel for Verizon, said in a statement.

The agreement has an unlikely origin: it came about as a result of an effort to crack down on child pornography that was led by Andrew M. Cuomo while he was the New York attorney general.
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Aaaannnddd my ISP back home is Comcrap. Excellent news.
 
The music and movie companies, which estimate that digital piracy costs the United States economy $16 billion in lost revenue each year, have been eager for an efficient way to deal with the problem.
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Turn on the TV or radio and you'll see that piracy isn't the only problem they have. Much of the content the entertainment industry is investing in isn't worth consumers spending money on. Even when something is good they ruin it with their marketing (unskippable DVD previews I'm looking at you...).
 
KaJuN said:
Turn on the TV or radio and you'll see that piracy isn't the only problem they have. Much of the content the entertainment industry is investing in isn't worth consumers spending money on. Even when something is good they ruin it with their marketing (unskippable DVD previews I'm looking at you...).
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Oh it gets worse, much much worse.

I PAY for Hulu+, it costs me as much as NFLX does but it has ads, OK fine ads are short enough and allow me to get up and get a drink w/o having to pause also gives me access to the shows I like next day while NFLX usually doesn't get them until after DVD's are released (cept for Starz stuff). So I'm paying AND dealing with ads but at least I can watch stuff on my TV using the 360, so I get the nice HD picture, good sound and can cuddle up on the couch with my fiancee while watching Neil Caffrey con some criminal into jail. Oh wait no I cannot, because White Collar (just as an example) is a WEB ONLY show so despite the fact that I am paying specifically so that I can watch shows on my TV I have to go to the website? Or I could obtain the episode in a different manner and watch it on my TV. Alternatively I could set up a Play-On server at home and watch it that way. Though for some reason White Collar episodes haven't been showing up on Hulu for a few weeks now.

Now lets get into the premium content. I like True Blood its a good show but I don't have TV service, why would I bother? I have NFXL and Hulu and every single show I want to watch is available through either one of them. Except ofc True Blood, well no biggie HBO has HBO GO service, a service that specifically allows you to watch their shows on their site. Oh wait you have to be an HBO subscriber to do that... So am I going to pay close to a $100/mo just so I can watch True Blood or am I going to obtain the show some other way? Of course I will do the latter, even going the legal route I can wait for the show to be available for rent on DVD on NFLX and watch it that way. That is of course assuming that I am patient... Since HBO already has a web based (and App based) content distribution system why do they cling to the old way of doing things? I would have no problem paying $10-15/mo so that I can watch my show the next day, this is real money that they would see that they do not right now. Hell they could make a deal with NFLX and be offered as part of a "premium" streaming service and have NFLX deal with the streaming.

As DanRoM pointed out all it's going to do is prompt people to use encrypted file sharing more so than it is used now. There are basic issues with content and its distribution that will not be fixed by any kind of anti-piracy measures.
 
https://pic.armedcats.net/k/ka/kajun/2011/07/08/t231478_my_20head_20is_20full_20of_20fuck.jpg

I know how you feel with the streaming services. While I was stationed in Japan with the US military and living on a US military installation, I couldn't use streaming services (Netflix, Hulu, etc.) because I was out of the US. :confused: This particularly irritated me with the Xbox Live update. Before it came out I was excited about the new features and being able to stream TV shows and sporting events through my Xbox. I was even happy to pay the extra $10 a month for that. Yet I installed it to once again find out that "this content is not available in your country". So then I was paying an extra $10 each month for services I wasn't allowed to use. Nice. Call of Duty: Black Ops was a real winner too. I still haven't bought the game but I knew many people who purchased it on that same US military installation and later found out they couldn't install the new map pack because they weren't in the US. I'm sorry but if you're that unaccommodating to your paying customers then every last cent you lose to piracy is well-deserved.

Formula One created another bad situation for me to deal with. The American channels offered there didn't show any of the races, streaming was out of the question for both legal reasons mentioned above and lack of decent Internet speed (I only had one choice of ISP), and the local Japanese broadcasts featured commentary in Japanese. Therefore the only way I could reasonably watch the races was by downloading them illegally.
 
There is no incentive for people to download legally really.

Before iTunes took off DRM I bought about 50pounds worth of music, tried to play them on my laptop, which is logged into my Mum's iTunes account and behold they wouldn't play! Not to mention trying to put them on my N82!

Pirated stuff is uploaded by people who know what they are doing, know what file types people want and torrenting half the time is quicker than iTunes, netflix download, steam download etc.
 
Thomas93 said:
There is no incentive for people to download legally really.

Before iTunes took off DRM I bought about 50pounds worth of music, tried to play them on my laptop, which is logged into my Mum's iTunes account and behold they wouldn't play! Not to mention trying to put them on my N82!

Pirated stuff is uploaded by people who know what they are doing, know what file types people want and torrenting half the time is quicker than iTunes, netflix download, steam download etc.
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Don't forget that it usually either works out of the box on a multitude of devices or can be easily converted.
 
I haven't actually downloaded music for ages. What I listen to these days either comes from a radio stream, or my own recordings of radio streams.
 
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Thomas93 said:
There is no incentive for people to download legally really.

Before iTunes took off DRM I bought about 50pounds worth of music, tried to play them on my laptop, which is logged into my Mum's iTunes account and behold they wouldn't play! Not to mention trying to put them on my N82!

Pirated stuff is uploaded by people who know what they are doing, know what file types people want and torrenting half the time is quicker than iTunes, netflix download, steam download etc.
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This. I had to PIRATE MUSIC I PAID FOR because of that. Fuck you itunes.

Also, I would buy significantly more movies if you could buy a digital copy for less than the physical one. There should not be a 1-2$ difference between the physical copy and the electronic one. I would buy cds but then I would have to go through something like itunes because there are no CD stores anymore, which is a shame as I liked the lyric booklets.
 
katwalk said:
This. I had to PIRATE MUSIC I PAID FOR because of that. Fuck you itunes.

Also, I would buy significantly more movies if you could buy a digital copy for less than the physical one. There should not be a 1-2$ difference between the physical copy and the electronic one. I would buy cds but then I would have to go through something like itunes because there are no CD stores anymore, which is a shame as I liked the lyric booklets.
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There are plenty, hell by my old job they had RECORD stores and they had signs saying "records only".

I wouldn't buy movies though, I rarely rewatch my movies, I'd much rather have something like NFLX so I can access stuff on-demand.
 
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All the nearby one are gone. Fye? gone. Newbury comics? gone. Tower records? gone. I don't feel like driving way out of the way for a cd, I will use up the price difference from not shipping in gas.
 
katwalk said:
All the nearby one are gone. Fye? gone. Newbury comics? gone. Tower records? gone. I don't feel like driving way out of the way for a cd, I will use up the price difference from not shipping in gas.
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Boo
 
Movies are the one thing I still buy. Although I usually buy used. I've never done the whole netflix thing before, but I want to now that I have a PS3 with wifi. How does it work with streaming? Are there limits on what you can stream and how much you can watch?
 
I think it is a monthly fee like cable, and iirc my friend pays something like 10$ a month for it.
 
There's certainly limits to whats available. If you're into watching TV shows and there's some long shows on there you haven't seen, than its certainly worth it. The instant watch movies are a bit hit or miss. Movie selection is a lot more limited.

Instant Watch is 8 bucks, getting the discs is 10.

You can browse the catalog before you sign up.
 
the nation?s top Internet providers have agreed to a systematic approach to identifying customers suspected of digital copyright infringement and then alerting them via e-mail or other means.
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Haha suckers, I'm not using one of the top Internet providers! :p
 
Question is how will they determin whats illeagle? With out saying anything incriminating I normally move 1TB in and out a month on Verizon but I use encrytion and send everything though proxys also dont use any torrents or news groups crap.
 
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