Media Companies Create Copyright Enforcement Framework

An anonymous reader writes with an article in Ars Technica. From the article: "American Internet users, get ready for three strikes^W^W 'six strikes.' Major U.S. Internet providers — including AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, Cablevision, and Time Warner Cable — have just signed on to a voluntary agreement with the movie and music businesses to crack down on online copyright infringers. But they will protect subscriber privacy and they won't filter or monitor their own networks for infringement. And after the sixth 'strike,' you won't necessarily be 'out.'" It's not suspicious at all that most of the ISPs signing on for this are owned by or own media companies.

Corporate blacklists

[arisvega]

So are we looking at some sort of private blacklisting? Like the one banks employ- figure out who is the 'good' customer and who ain't? And how lawful will it be for them to deny service to you on the grounds that 'it is statistically confirmed that you may use our services to support piracy, therefore we are forced to turn down your application'?

Media Companies

[bws111]

It's not suspicious at all that most of the ISPs signing on for this are owned by or own media companies.

Since when does 2 out of 5 count as 'most'? Other than Comcast and Cablevision, which ones are owned by or own media companies?

Re:There's nothing terribly wrong with this

[EraserMouseMan]

...except for the fact that it amounts to incremental-ism. One baby step at a time.

How many customers

[Aladrin]

How many customers will they be forced to ban before they realize how much this hurts them and helps their competition?

A boycott like this doesn't work unless you get every ISP to join in because 1 service isn't significantly different than another. Nobody says, 'Oh man, I couldn't live if I had to switch to Sprint instead of Time Warner!'

Also, I wonder if there are any laws against this already? It seems to me that banding together to deny service to a certain list of people has got to have some anti-trust laws or something.

And, could this be a major nail in the IP coffin? Judges aren't going to have much respect for them if they do really crazy things in the name of protecting their IP. The tide is already turning on that front and this is pretty desperate.

Re:This is actually reasonable.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd rather have the government be involved than have private entities colluding to create their own extra-legal framework. With the government, I have recourse to contest or change the law. With private entities, I'm practically a powerless serf. As messed up as things are in our republic now, I'll still take it over neo-feudalism.

Re:"Those who cannot remember the past...

[Jane Q. Public]

The newspaper and (paper) book publishing industries are on hard times because for the first time in history they have actual competition. It has nothing to do with how many read.

Re:This is actually reasonable.

[Jane Q. Public]

No more than a telephone company is responsible for you using the telephone to plan and execute a robbery... or complaining that you're "using up their bandwidth" to do so.

Which is really a big part of the point here. If the FCC would get off its butt and lobby to regulate ISPs as common carriers (Title II), then a lot of these issues completely go away. Not downloading of copyrighted materials, necessarily, but a lot of the garbage that has built up around that.