How Verizon's 'Six Strikes' Plan Works 505
An anonymous reader writes "With the 'six-strikes' anti-piracy plan set to begin in the U.S. soon, TorrentFreak has gotten its hands on a document showing how Verizon in particular will be dealing with copyright-infringing users. For your first and second strike, Verizon will email you and leave you a voicemail informing you that your account is involved in copyright infringement. For your third and fourth strikes, the ISP will automatically redirect your browser to a page that requires you to acknowledge receiving the alerts. They'll also play a video about the dangers of infringement. For your fifth and sixth strikes, they give you three options: massively throttle your connection for a few days, wait two weeks and then throttle your connection, or file an appeal with an arbitration service for $35. TorrentFreak points out that the MPAA and RIAA can obtain the connection information of repeat infringers, with which they can then take legal action."
Problem solved quickly.... (Score:5, Interesting)
If everyone runs their WIFI AP's open.
Does it go both ways? (Score:5, Interesting)
Can I place copyright infringements with Verizon to get people blocked? We all know that the MPAA and RIAA use their internet connections for infringement, so it should be no problem for us to throttle their access.
Somehow I bet that only a select anointed few will be allowed to make these evidence-free complaints against the rest of us.
Re:Problem solved quickly.... (Score:3, Interesting)
So, everyone has to sit outside, start naked, their hands in front of them where the police can see them, and speak clearly into the cameras forever... or they are guilty.
No.
Little weasels... (Score:5, Interesting)
Little weasels...
I noticed that there is no mention of a complete disconnection--leaving the door open for continued billing even though you have an almost useless connection for two weeks. Me thinks Verizon is afraid they will start losing customers permanently if they disconnect them, even for a short time. There is no discussion of a 7th strike, or an 8th...what happens then? You get another two weeks of shit connection. Will they charge you less? Doubtful.
Make their fears a reality.
The solution is to drop them the moment they throttle you...and never come back...and NEVER COME BACK. Trust me--when they start seeing ANY loss of revenue, they will rethink this. Verizon is obligated, by law, to act in the best interest of their shareholders--how long do you think shareholders will put up with lost revenue?
Re:Getting off easy (Score:5, Interesting)
I agree. Because this would require them to provide evidence and a sworn statement under penalty of perjury.
As it stands, any unsubstantiated claim by anybody or any automated process seems to convict you in Verizon's eyes, and even to contest the claim costs you money.
Question: Do those making such claims have to put up money up-front?
Re:can someone please explain to me (Score:5, Interesting)
Because the world should not be a police state run for the express purpose of making sure someone isn't reading a book or watching a movie or listening to a song without permission. We did not build this world for that. The "copyright" crimes hurt no one. The police state... that is the ultimate evil, the last evil, the evil that eats all the freedoms we could ever have, because without the right, the ability to read, or think, or speak without Secret Father, Yahweh of the Internet, taking down your name and activity in the Great Book for use in any sort of case anyone might want to build against you, at any time, for any reason... without privacy, you are a fool and a prisoner and a joke of a human being, a toy for the tyrants that are here now and their successors, who will not be looking for your records of watching movies, but for seditious or anti-corporate, anti-authoritarian thought of any sort. Without that, no government, no corrupt cop, no black-hearted corporation or combination of all three will ever face a threat that they won't have warning of. Programs will monitor everything Johnny reads, watches, says, or hell, someday even thinks, and they will at their earliest ability set flags for those who watch so they can nip rebellion in the blood. Ask Occupy. They were monitored before they even existed.
With total awareness comes the total police state. The last one.
Re:I live a few hundred feet from a coffee shop (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah, because Verizon would never setup their FIOS routers with an easy to crack password [dylanmtaylor.com] by default that many people may leave in place. Never.
Re:can someone please explain to me (Score:5, Interesting)
why you would use torrent freak when there is Amazon, Netflix, Youtube, Hulu, and dozens of other ways to get video online.
Torrent freak is a news website. I expect you meant bittorrent - or more generally piracy in any form.
I've got two problems with all those "legitimate" sources:
1) Privacy - I believe it is fundamentally unfair to require that a person's viewing habits be tracked in a profile in a database somewhere that he has no control over or even the right to see the contents of -- especially when combined with all of the other cyber-stalking that corporations do nowadays. Bittorrent at least only identifies you down to an IP address and other forms of piracy are even less trackable.
2) Copyright Business Model - I belive people do deserve to get creative works for free (both cost-free and freedom to tinker-free). That doesn't mean I think the creators need to work for free, I just think that a policy of digital scarcity neuters the potential of the internet to benefit humanity as a whole. We need to be working towards methods of compensation that do not rely on distribution fees, but as long as digital scarcity is a money-maker for the entrenched interests there is little incentive to explore alternatives. I don't think any individual pirate is going to make a difference in that regard, but in aggregate it can.
Re:Little weasels... (Score:4, Interesting)
"It's a fairly safe bet that there won't be enough people doing what you describe to really make a significant difference."
Nice to see some optimism.
A lot of people said that about SOPA and PIPA, as well. I am willing to bet your opinion on the matter might change if you were to try streaming Netflix over a 256k connection...and knowing that it isn't getting better for two weeks (also realizing that you are still paying full price to Netflix, but not able to access it for two weeks). And then realizing that they are essentially increasing your cost of internet access anywhere from 1000% to 20000% (depending on your previous connection speed). How long do you think you could sit through that before you'd had enough?
Common carrier (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:can someone please explain to me (Score:5, Interesting)
No, my phone says "hey, I'm cheap". It's an old LG dumbphone on a very low-cost plan.
Sooner or later you'll hopefully grow up and realize that some people use a phone as a phone, and some people are willing to pay for a high tech phone with all the bells and whistles. Neither are necessarily bad, but if you're running around judging people on a phone, you're pretty dumb. It's like judging people based on the computer they have or the car they drive or where they live.
One day you may have the maturity to realize items you purchase should serve you, and not the other way around. That includes the cost of obtaining and maintaining those items. I've splurged before and I'll splurge again when it comes to buying stuff that's important to me. But I'm not going to sink money into a phone just to raise myself a notch or two on the public coolness meter.
For some people, they find a high-tech smartphone useful enough or desirable enough to justify the cost. More power to them. I'd rather spend my money on something else, or save it in a bank.
Re:Getting off easy (Score:4, Interesting)
Question: Do those making such claims have to put up money up-front?
Almost certainly not, and that's where the trouble is.
If, say, anyone claiming a video I uploaded to YouTube had to deposit $10 which gets sent to, say, me as a "sorry for the trouble" if it turns out that his claim is bullshit, I'm very sure the number of copyright notices on YouTube would drop dramatically - but the serious claims would still be made.
Re:So. Proxies and VPN's - will they get around th (Score:3, Interesting)
Jails for some, yes - but they were designed to prepare people for working in factories.
But factory work isn't that much in demand any more - creative work is [sethgodin.com].
Re:can someone please explain to me (Score:2, Interesting)
The bits are out there. In the aether. You just have to reach out and grab them. Downloading a file doesn't stop you from buying the film/game/software as well. It doesn't harm anyone. So I don't see the problem. It's as natural as breathing.
Baking a cake is actually quite difficult. Someone has to spend time mixing flour and eggs and sugar, fill a pan, and place it in a decent quality oven. And after you eat the cake it is gone. No one else can ever eat that particular cake, but lots of people can download the blueprint for doing so and make a copy for themselves.
It's not really about rights. No one 'gave' me the right to download data from the internet. It is something that is within my power to do and I do it. We each have our own sense of right and wrong. Some people think saying "fuck" is wrong. Usually religious people who think an all powerful being will be offended by it. I think murder, rape, theft, and fraud are wrong. I don't think copyright infringement is wrong unless you are making a profit from it. So that's why I download games/software/movies whenever I want.
Re:Problem solved quickly.... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:What's a strike? (Score:3, Interesting)
People on Slashdot seem to see oversubscription as some kind of evil - it's really not. It keeps your costs down in the name of accommodating real-world demands rather than peak demands.
I don't think so, people on Slashdot see oversubscription as an excuse to not expand your network as evil. To use your car analogy: It's perfectly fine to build a 4-lane highway instead of a 15-lane highway as the latter would be hopelessly oversized almost all day, except for peak hours. The problem is when you build a 2-lane highway and tell people "You can't take your car to work more than twice a week, or you are using an unreasonable amount of highway space".
Re:Problem solved quickly.... (Score:5, Interesting)
In another European country - Denmark - the courts have rules that you're NOT responsible for traffic that cannot be proved to originate within the household if you run an open Wifi AP,