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Piracy The Internet Verizon Your Rights Online

US ISPs Become 'Copyright Cops' July 12th 409

An anonymous reader writes "Comcast, Time Warner and Verizon are among the ISPs preparing to implement a graduated response to piracy by July, says the music industry's chief lobbyist. ISPs, including Comcast, Cablevision, Verizon, and Time Warner Cable, have officially agreed to step up efforts to protect the rights of copyright owners. From the article: 'Supporters say this could become the most effective antipiracy program ever. Since ISPs are the Internet's gatekeepers, the theory is that network providers are in the best position to fight illegal file sharing. CNET broke the news last June that the RIAA and counterparts at the trade group for the big film studios had managed to get the deal through — with the help of the White House.'"
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US ISPs Become 'Copyright Cops' July 12th

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  • by Midnight_Falcon ( 2432802 ) on Thursday March 15, 2012 @06:34PM (#39371775)
    To finally drop Comcast and replace them with Sonic.Net DSL! I hope others follow suit and migrate to more ethical ISPs.
    • by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 15, 2012 @06:35PM (#39371795)

      The excuse I need to drop Verizon and... wait, my only other option is Comcast? Damnit...

      • by cpu6502 ( 1960974 ) on Thursday March 15, 2012 @06:53PM (#39371979)

        Same here. Verizon DSL has sent me 3 emails (about 2 years ago) where they caught me downloading movies or tv shows. I'm curious what they will do to me next time I'm caught. One thing's for sure:

        I'm not going to go out and buy Hollywood's crap, unless it's something I've already seen and liked -- such as Battlestar Galactica. This past year I downloaded about 200 movies and liked almost none of them. TV shows were a little better percentage but not by much.

        Instead I'll just read science fiction in books and magazines. Or watch free TV (the 45 channels I get over the antenna). Or free hulu. Or cheap games ($20 for 40+ hours is a good bargain). It makes no sense to buy movie/show DVDs when they have no return policy for the crap, and there are so many other options.

        • by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 15, 2012 @07:01PM (#39372089)

          Same here. Verizon DSL has sent me 3 emails (about 2 years ago) where they caught me downloading movies or tv shows. I'm curious what they will do to me next time I'm caught.

          How about using a P2P friendly VPN such as BTGuard [btguard.com] or Mullvad [mullvad.net]? (Mullvad accepts payment in Bitcoins, btw)

          • by Skal Tura ( 595728 ) on Thursday March 15, 2012 @08:19PM (#39372869) Homepage

            or if it's bittorrent you must, maybe a seedbox :)

            • by EdIII ( 1114411 ) on Thursday March 15, 2012 @08:34PM (#39372961)

              There you go :)

              Seedbox with SFTP. Unless they are good enough to crack the encryption per connection and obtain "evidence" to discontinue service or forward that information for the MAFIAA lawyerpults it will just result in a lot of expensive DPI with no results.

              I say bring it on. Anything that pushes people to Darknets, Onion networks (let it reach critical mass), and more encrypted connections, all the better.

              Besides, public torrent sites and crap like MegaUpload are beyond ridiculous and a you will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. Moving people off those sites to private encrypted trackers and ditching DHT and peer exchange will make it nearly impossible for the MAFIAA to get any headway, even with ISP support.

          • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

            by Anonymous Coward
            I actually just signed up at "HideMyAss" for their VPN service last night because I wanted to download a couple episodes of "Smash" and "Grimm." Today I got an email from HMA about a "File sharing complaint" that had been registered with them by someone. They stressed that they weren't handing over information about me to the people who filed the DMCA complaint and that there was nothing specific to prove that I was guilty, but said that sharing files was against their TOS and if I got more complaints they
          • Isn't if funny how places are profiting off of the business model that the **AA should be using? There is a demand for a pay service to get unencumbered content at high speed. All of those profits could be going to them, but they continue on their path.

            Just set up your own trackers with client side certificates. Charge a monthly fee for the cert. Done. OHhhhh, but people might share their certs! So what. You still profit off of something where you already realized your the intended profits in the the

        • by QuasiSteve ( 2042606 ) on Thursday March 15, 2012 @07:21PM (#39372293)

          This past year I downloaded about 200 movies and liked almost none of them.

          Wait... somewhere after movie #150 that you didn't like you kept thinking "maybe the next one will be awesome!"?

          I guess at least you watched every single one of them yourself to form your own opinion, but surely it can't hurt to start with some reviews?
          Figure out what reviewers you usually agree with and weigh their reviews more heavily, before you download 200 movies the majority of which you could probably have guessed you wouldn't like.

          It would have saved you from bad entertainment, and freed your time for the books and magazines (presuming you don't just download the ebook versions of those, too, of course).

        • by TaoPhoenix ( 980487 ) <TaoPhoenix@yahoo.com> on Thursday March 15, 2012 @08:11PM (#39372811) Journal

          You are, in their eyes, The Problem.

          "Who said we get to download first and decide at our whim only that we like it?"

        • by CohibaVancouver ( 864662 ) on Thursday March 15, 2012 @09:26PM (#39373323)

          This past year I downloaded about 200 movies and liked almost none of them

          If you're obviously this difficult to please, why on earth would you keep downloading movies? Once you're on to movie #47 and it's still not to your tastes I think it's time to do something else. Like go for a walk.

        • by Jah-Wren Ryel ( 80510 ) on Thursday March 15, 2012 @10:59PM (#39373831)

          Go for foreign films. The MAFIAA doesn't give a damn about piracy of non-MAFIAA products. So get used to reading subtitles and get the added benefit of a brand new perspective on cinema. South Korea, Hong Kong and Japan all have some great filmmakers - and Europe is full of them too. Plus you will get to see the really good stuff years before Hollywood can figure out how to remake it.

      • by cpu6502 ( 1960974 ) on Thursday March 15, 2012 @07:02PM (#39372105)

        Another alternative is dialup. Folks like napisypl distribute nice small 70 or 150 megabyte rips. You can download 6 episodes per day (like I'm doing right now in my hotel) (Tudors season 1). AOL/Netscape's never sent me any warnings.

    • by IB4Student ( 1885914 ) on Thursday March 15, 2012 @06:48PM (#39371923)
      Which ISP's are ethical? Is there a list of ISP's doing the bad stuff?
    • by reve_etrange ( 2377702 ) on Thursday March 15, 2012 @07:24PM (#39372335)

      Sonic.net is probably the only ISP where first responses to technical questions commonly come from the CEO.

      If you live in Northern California, look them up. They are already providing 1 Gbps / $70 in Sonoma; let's encourage them to roll out to the Bay and see what actual competition does to the market place.

    • Sonic.net is awesome, get fusion if you can. I just wonder what everyone who doesn't live in the bay area will do...
  • by alendit ( 1454311 ) on Thursday March 15, 2012 @06:35PM (#39371787)

    The home of the brave.

  • by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 15, 2012 @06:36PM (#39371805)

    Stop buying music and movies. Very simple!

    • by surgen ( 1145449 )

      Stop buying music and movies. Very simple!

      But Congressman, my revenues are down! It must be piracy, people don't take principled stands!

  • If the ISP can detect that I am accessing stuff I should not they can just slam the door shut so I don't get it.
    If the ISP detects I am getting stuff I should not and does not slam the door they are complicit in the action since they are sending it to me knowing that I should not have it.

    Anyone fingered by an ISP should sue them entrapment.

    • by gknoy ( 899301 ) <gknoy@anasazisys ... inus threevowels> on Thursday March 15, 2012 @06:43PM (#39371885)

      I believe only agents of the government can be guilty of entrapment.

    • by mark-t ( 151149 ) <{moc.talfdren} {ta} {tkram}> on Thursday March 15, 2012 @06:54PM (#39372001) Journal
      Can you also sue a bar for entrapment, when you get nailed for driving drunk, when the bar could have simply stopped serving you after one drink?

      Be an adult, and take responsibility for yourself.

      • by NoKaOi ( 1415755 ) on Thursday March 15, 2012 @07:08PM (#39372171)

        Can you also sue a bar for entrapment, when you get nailed for driving drunk, when the bar could have simply stopped serving you after one drink?

        Under normal circumstances, of course not. But if the bar has worked out a deal with law enforcement to call them if you have more than one drink, then they might be acting as an agent for said law enforcement agency. If the bartender encourages you to drink more, knowing that you're gonna be driving home, then calls the cops, while acting as an agent for those cops, then that could be entrapment. I'm not saying it's an exact analogy...but just pointing that out.

        Now..a better analogy might be a BYOB bar, where they take a sip of everything you drink to determine alcohol content, then report you to the cops if the alcohol content is too high. It's the sampling of my drink, whether or not it was alcoholic, that I would have a problem with. The difference is that if a bar did that, I simply wouldn't go to that bar, and I doubt many other people would either. With Internet access, most of us don't have the luxury of options.

        One thing I want to know is: What methods are they going use to determine if somebody is pirating?

    • by Anonymous Coward

      A third party interfering with a business deal made by two others is tortious interference [wikipedia.org]. You would have to have pretty deep pockets to prove it, and it would have to be a pretty clear-cut case where there was no harm being done, say, a Bittorrent stream of a Linux distribution.

    • But it's not actually about ISPs detecting whether or not you're doing something that some group or another believes you should not be doing.

      I know it's out of fashion to actually RTFA, but:

      The program, commonly referred to as "graduated response," requires that ISPs send out one or two educational notices to those customers who are accused of downloading copyrighted content illegally.

      That's not about the ISP accusing them - but those groups that are involved with the program.

      It may make it easier for tho

    • No, its not entrapment, but they are an enabler.

  • by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 15, 2012 @06:38PM (#39371827)

    The internet was once thought of as a digital library and commons. Now it is little more than an interactive television.

    • by SuperTechnoNerd ( 964528 ) on Thursday March 15, 2012 @07:55PM (#39372671)
      When I was a young computer geek - the very first month I used and understood the internet sooo many years ago, I knew this GREAT THING - this great concept - would be a threat to a lot of people and would never survive in it's current form. I'm just surprised it lasted this long.
      • You think the content cartels have finally won, eh? You really think so?

        Well, fear not. They haven't. It's an unwinnable war. They're stubborn old men who are incapable of understanding that piracy is unstoppable, and that sharing is good. Tell me how you think they can stop sneakernet? Several movies can be traded in an instant with the hand off of a flash drive. Or encryption, how will they stop that? The most tragic part of all this is that they've wasted millions on this "problem", on trying t

      • I'm just surprised it lasted this long.

        The fight is far from over. All this move will do is spur further innovation in darknet technology.

        The copyfight battles will ebb and flow, but in the long run the MAFIAA can't win - they can only get old and die. It is in our genes to share, without an innate desire to share cool stuff with other people our species would never have developed civilisation. You can fight human nature, but you can't win.

  • by guanxi ( 216397 )

    Assuming people use SSL or something similar, how will ISPs know when someone is violating copyrights?

    • Assuming people use SSL or something similar, how will ISPs know when someone is violating copyrights?

      All they need for suspicion of violation is your DNS lookup records, routing table history, and protocol volume history.

      There's a LOT of data that gets passed through your ISP that's below/beside the TLS layer.

      They'll look for things like: Spewing torrent connections but not connected to an OSS or MMORPG server? You're getting investigated.

    • by Hatta ( 162192 )

      RIAA, MPAA, etc, will connect to bittorrent trackers that share files they have copyright on. They will see who is seeding, note their IP, contact their ISP, and begin this process.

      • That's not particularly useful since all of the modern trackers inject random fake IP addresses as seeds. They are going to at least try to connect before sending a warning and any good blocklist will stop that.

  • And they will be begging you to come back. Without filtering.
  • Liability? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 15, 2012 @06:41PM (#39371861)

    Aren't the ISPs signing themselves up for a great deal of liability here? If they have the equipment and manpower to monitor for someone downloading Metallica songs, that also gives them the capability to scan for a great deal of other legally questionable content. Doesn't this make them responsible when someone, say, transmits illegal imagery over the ISP's service? They could have stopped it, so they should be considered accessories to it. Am I missing some legal loophole here, or is it simply a matter of "wink wink, nod nod, the people in charge only care about MP3s"?

    • by mark-t ( 151149 )

      There is a whole lot of difference between having the ability to detect it, and *ALWAYS* being able to detect it.

      Basically, you'd be rolling the dice, and hoping you don't get caught if you are going to break the law in this way. All this means is that your chances of getting caught may be slightly higher... but by no means certain.

  • by mhh91 ( 1784516 ) on Thursday March 15, 2012 @06:42PM (#39371875)

    Just don't [youtu.be]

  • ISPs, including Comcast, Cablevision, Verizon, and Time Warner Cable, have officially agreed to step up efforts to protect the rights of copyright owners. From the article: 'Supporters say this could become the most effective antipiracy program ever. Since ISPs are the Internet's gatekeepers, the theory is that network providers are in the best position to fight illegal file sharing.

    How delightfully efficient of our corporate overlords. Those 'people' are so clever! Personal anonymity is so 20th Century

  • by Jane Q. Public ( 1010737 ) on Thursday March 15, 2012 @06:43PM (#39371883)
    ... this means they will be MONITORING your traffic. Possibly including deep packet inspection and worse.

    Pardon me, but even if I'm not doing a damned thing wrong, I don't want or need my ISP to be monitoring my activity, any more than I would want a phone company listening to my telephone calls.

    I find the idea ethically and morally repugnant, and, for that matter, on thin ice legally.

    I should also point out that my cable contract contains none of these provisions. Maybe it's fine for new accounts, but I will hold them to my existing contract.
    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      They probably have a clause buried in said existing contract that gives them the right to change it whenever they damn well feel like it, so I doubt you'll have much luck trying that.

    • by Hatta ( 162192 ) on Thursday March 15, 2012 @07:03PM (#39372121) Journal

      Nothing in this article indicates any sort of traffic monitoring on the part of the ISPs. It only sounds like a standardized way to keep track of the C&D letters they've been sending out for years.

      Don't get me wrong, this is bad too as there's no accountability for sending faulty C&D letters, and I doubt there's going to be much of an appeals process. But it's bad in a different way than deep packet inspection is.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Look closely at your contract and you will find you are SOL.

      Even if it doesn't explicitly say they can monitor and take actions to "protect the integrity of their network" like most all do, they left a clause in where they can change the terms at any time. Your only recourse is to be able to cancel without penalty.

      • Re:Contracts (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Jane Q. Public ( 1010737 ) on Thursday March 15, 2012 @08:18PM (#39372865)

        "Even if it doesn't explicitly say they can monitor and take actions to "protect the integrity of their network" like most all do, they left a clause in where they can change the terms at any time."

        To the extent that they have such a clause, it's not a contract!

        Let me clarify that: generally speaking, especially in my area, where we have one of the major cable companies but no real competition, the contract in the first place is very one-sides, with the big powerful cable company on one side, and the consumer (who has few choices) on the other. Combine that with the fact that it's a "boiler-plate" contract -- that is to say, there is no real opportunity for negotiation -- and what you end up with is what the courts call a "contract of adhesion". Contracts of adhesions are WEAK contracts, and sometimes courts will not honor them at all.

        The reason for this is really the whole historic foundation of contract law, which goes back to common law beginning far earlier than this country even existed. Some things about contract law must be kept in mind. First, a contract is a VOLUNTARY agreement between 2 or more parties. Voluntary means without coercion, and it implies that you can negotiate your terms. After all, if the other party is stipulating all of the terms then it's not really very voluntary on your part, is it? It's "take it or leave it". Which is somewhat coercive, especially if you don't have other choices.

        The second big issue to keep in mind is that in order to have an agreement at all, you have to know what you are agreeing to IN ADVANCE. Otherwise you can't really be agreeing to it, can you? Informed consent is an essential part of a contract.

        So pardon all the theory. We know that in recent years many courts have tended to be corporate ass-kissers. Nevertheless, technically at least, a contract can't really say "we reserve the right to change the terms of this contract". Because then there is no informed consent, and to the extent there is no informed consent, there is no contract.

        I am well aware that as a practical matter, some judges might honor such a contract (the assholes!). On the other hand, some would not. But if they tried to do it to me in this case, they'd have a fight on their hands.

  • Better when it was a law, at least then you'll notice when they silence dissidents and have it on record.

  • Really folks. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Cosgrach ( 1737088 ) on Thursday March 15, 2012 @06:50PM (#39371951) Homepage

    Why doesn't someone simply go up to the guys who propose this crap and simply SHOOT THEM IN THE FUCKING HEAD!?

  • by Charliemopps ( 1157495 ) on Thursday March 15, 2012 @06:51PM (#39371953)
    It's a token effort that only large ISPs are making. My guess is that they are doing this in exchange for something... cheap deals on digital content, or something of the sort. In reality they will do very little to enforce this. The second this starts costing them customers they'll drop it like a hot potato. Remember, they have absolutely no incentive to help the dieing media industry police their content.
    • by nitzmahone ( 164842 ) on Thursday March 15, 2012 @07:01PM (#39372079)

      Except for those that are *part* of the "dying media industry" (think Comcast/NBC Universal and TimeWarner). Same kinds of internal conflict that Sony has for being a provider of devices that can infringe on copyright and a producer of copyrighted content. Guess which side wins (have a look at Sony's crippled devices)?

    • by NoKaOi ( 1415755 )

      It's a token effort that only large ISPs are making. My guess is that they are doing this in exchange for something... cheap deals on digital content, or something of the sort. In reality they will do very little to enforce this. The second this starts costing them customers they'll drop it like a hot potato. Remember, they have absolutely no incentive to help the dieing media industry police their content.

      Dunno about where you live, but where I live I think they'd love excuses to reduce bandwidth usage. TFA mentions they'll be issuing various levels of warnings. I'm sure they'd love to stop customers using P2P to download and serve movies, since they're already over-promising speeds. I can download a big file fast or stream a Netflix movie at good quality at 1am, but god forbid I would want to watch a Netflix movie (which I'm paying a subscription fee for) at 8pm when everyone else is trying to do the sam

    • >>>they have absolutely no incentive to help the dieing media industry police their content

      The ones like Comcast and Verizon that profit by selling a separate TV service have incentive to make sure you buy their 100+ channels at ~$60 a month, rather than simply download the shows directly and save money.

    • by Adrian Lopez ( 2615 ) on Thursday March 15, 2012 @07:48PM (#39372619) Homepage

      My guess is that they are doing this in exchange for something

      Given the Obama Administration's involvement [wired.com], I suspect they're doing it under some kind of threat. It's part of a growing trend: regulation without legislation and enforcement completely divorced from the process of law,

  • by hawguy ( 1600213 ) on Thursday March 15, 2012 @06:52PM (#39371969)

    All of my content at home is purchased and legal. What kind of suspicious behavior can I do to make Comcast flag me as a pirate (without having to actually download pirated content)?

    • All of my content at home is purchased and legal. What kind of suspicious behavior can I do to make Comcast flag me as a pirate (without having to actually download pirated content)?

      Torrent stuff, I'd wager. Linux ISOs is the obvious one, though there is free & legal music out there.

  • I can't wait to learn what they consider to be "copyright infringement." Watch a video on YouTube that wasn't legally licensed? Have someone post a picture on your Facebook wall that wasn't licensed from the photographer? (That's more likely than it might seem at first - think "wedding pictures.") Read a forum that has links to pirated material? Want to jailbreak your phone?

    Say goodbye to Internet access.

    • by mark-t ( 151149 )

      Well, they are talking about infringing torrent content only, so youtube, et al, would be entirely unaffected.

      I think that the only potential problem that might arise is if you happened to be using bittorrent legtimately at the same time that somebody fingers your IP address as accessing infringing content via bittorrent.

  • I'm glad I have TDS Metrocom's sweet wireless service at the office.

    Goodbye Time Warner at home, though!

  • Participating ISPs can choose from a list of penalties, or what the RIAA calls "mitigation measures," which include throttling down the customer's connection speed and suspending Web access until the subscriber agrees to stop pirating.

    The only reason why I could see them doing something like that is because they may be held liable. Oh wait, DMCA gives them Safe Harbor. So what exactly gives them the power to stop the service that I pay for because I may be using it for something illegal. It's like my phone getting shut off by T-Mobile because I may have used it to call a dealer to buy some pot. I see class action lawsuits in the future for these companies.

    • by mark-t ( 151149 )

      So what exactly gives them the power to stop the service that I pay for because I may be using it for something illegal.

      They own it. I'm pretty sure that they have no legal obligation to offer their services to everyone unconditionally.

      Your recourse, of course, if their terms are unsatisfying to you, is to take your business elsewhere. This creates a system of checks and balances that keeps it from spiraling hopelessly out of control.

  • by Jackie_Chan_Fan ( 730745 ) on Thursday March 15, 2012 @07:01PM (#39372095)

    The best part about this is, they will not increase the sale of any of these products at all.

    If you cant afford it in the first place, you wont be buying it.

    All this does, is actually hurt our entire civilization, especially those who cant afford these things. Things that are so easily copied and hurt no one by allowing poorer people access to them. There is no loss of sale and it only benefits the poor. Especially those burdened by health issues who pay 15k a year for insurance plans, who barely scrape by in todays world with min wage jobs, people who dont have a say at all in this country... people who try to just better their lives through knowledge using free programs, and perhaps building a future they can one day afford buy these "THINGS".

    The benefits of piracy have outweighed the negative.

    Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2, made 2 billion dollars in 2 months. Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 made a billion dollars in 1 week. Avatar made over a billion dollars world wide in ticket sales alone, not to mention blu-ray sales, netflix etc on top of that. These 3 items were ALL readily available through piracy. They were also pirated heavily. Did it actually negatively impact the sales? Perhaps a tiny bit, but c'mon. The amount of money those 3 items generated, prove that no matter how much something is pirated, it makes a FUCKLOAD of cash regardless.

    Without piracy, ITUNES would never have existed. iTunes is a very profitable buisness for music, and apps. ALL of which are still pirated today.

    Trying to end piracy, is basically denying the poor of things they otherwise could never afford. How will that ever benefit humanity?

  • Awesome. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Zuriel ( 1760072 ) on Thursday March 15, 2012 @07:02PM (#39372101)

    With US ISPs playing copyright cop, darknets and other anonymizing techniques will be active by default in all P2P clients by the time my country rolls out similar laws.

    Being a step behind the US means workarounds will be mature and widespread by the time I have to deal with this...

  • by kawabago ( 551139 ) on Thursday March 15, 2012 @07:04PM (#39372135)
    Sales will start falling off immediately after July 12th but they won't feel the hit until into the fall. I'll take a guess that it will take less than a year for the total collapse of the music industry due to sales falling to near zero. If they choke off file trading, people won't be able to find new music so they will stop buying.
    • I'll take a guess that it will take less than a year for the total collapse of the music industry due to sales falling to near zero

      In other news, VPS and VPN providers located outside of the US have a record year. Low End Box [lowendbox.com] is a good place to start.

  • Bound to happen (Score:5, Insightful)

    by SuperTechnoNerd ( 964528 ) on Thursday March 15, 2012 @07:07PM (#39372161)
    What took them so long? I guess since they could not get laws passed they wanted, they are going to do an end run and get the ISP's to do their dirty work.

    The free, unmonitored, unfiltered, open internet we know today will be unrecognizable ten years from now, mark my words.. Bottom line: the internet as we know it is incompatible with controlling, big money corporations. Period. They fear it like the plague, and will never stop at trying to break it, or control it. And they have the resources to do it.

    In places like china and the middle east your internet access is filtered and monitored due to fear of upsetting the government's rule.
    In this - supposedly free country- your internet access is filtered and monitored due to fear of upsetting corporate profits.
    I just can't see the difference.
    • This is correct.

      Sadly it is the corporations that run the internet as well. They have had the power all along to crush the public and oppress the masses.

  • Small fines are better than strange random law suits, right? The big law suits were full of silly numbers. At least these numbers do a better job of fitting the crime-- and I do think that downloading is a crime.
  • After all, right off the bat. Comcast and Time Warner -are- two of the big media companies and copyright holders now. Of course they're more than willing to police their ISP networks looking for copies of their content.

  • Where is the due process? Just who (MPAA,RIAA vs Comcast,Verizon,etc) is making the determination that there is a violation to be acted on? We already know MPAA and RIAA have been getting it wrong in a lot of cases. Would Comcast, Verizon, and other ISPs be in any better position to get it right?

    I hope they are not so stupid as to ass-u-me that torrent protocol connections automatically mean copyright infringement. What I download is GPL and other free license software.

    I suspect there will be more use o

    • by nurb432 ( 527695 )

      We are talking a corporate entity and their contracts for service to the private sector, not the legal system. Due process doesn't apply here.

  • No, its the most effective bandwidth reclamation program, as it will drive people away from these carriers, and for those that stay the ISPs will use the program to get rid of their heaviest users by falsely claiming they are violating.. and cut them off.

  • by Nyder ( 754090 ) on Thursday March 15, 2012 @07:25PM (#39372351) Journal

    my internet provider isn't a big media player.

    Fuck them and the lobbiest sluts the senators fucked to get us to this point.

  • Common Carrier (Score:5, Interesting)

    by hilather ( 1079603 ) on Thursday March 15, 2012 @08:14PM (#39372841)
    If the ISPs start policing copyright policy, would that not cost them their common carrier status and make them liable for all activity on their networks? Any subject matter experts on common carriers present?

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