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."
What's a strike? (Score:5, Insightful)
Is a strike an accusation of copyright infringement? Or does it need to be proven?
So. Proxies and VPN's - will they get around this? (Score:5, Insightful)
Deep packet inspection, volume of data, targets and returned IP addresses... will a securely tunneled and encrypted connection to a proxy service thwart this monitoring - or will they simply use such as indirect evidence of torrenting, since the standards of such evidence are set by the MPAA/RIAA?
As for commercial proxies - how probable is it that such services are more-or-less instantly compromised - as in a visit from FBI agents conscripted to work for movie companies ? Whom do you trust to manage connections?
How does one pay for such connections, if the act of using a credit card automatically locks down your identity? Does the use of pre-paid money cards such as Vanilla work (if you buy them from someone who doesn't care much about taking your real name down)? I understand that many say they do not, but other posters have mentioned that one merely has to provide Vanilla a zip code on the registration page to make them usable to pay online services.
I'd do all the above just to watch Netflix. I'm that much of a bastard. We managed to use the postal system and phones for over a hundred years without a spy system reading our every word and listening to every call, and I don't see why we need to start now. Especially now that ATT is about to shut off the old phone system and go completely IP, which means the old laws mean nothing.
And for the generation who never knew privacy, I preemptively say: yes, it matters. It is sad you may never care or even understand why it does. Your are happy goldfish, exhibits in a zoo. Think about who is outside your bowl, watching. You've spent your lives being told to be afraid of strange adults and white vans - yet you let actual, secret versions of those kinds of people follow your every move and listen to your lives? Think about it. The creeps you've been told to fear your entire lives aren't really real, for the most part. The creeps who are locking down human existence, building the last and only secret police the world will ever need - they are real and they are here and you need to fight them.
Re:Problem solved quickly.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Why would that be the case? I read in an european country (Germany?) customers are responsible for the traffic on their network. You have to secure your network to have any hope of a "it wasn't me" defense working.
Better option (Score:0, Insightful)
Wow. And to think we still have people that don't think Net Neutrality legislation is necessary. When carriers link up with trade industry groups to unilaterally dictate what you can and can't send over public networks, we have a problem. If you don't think this (and systems like it) will be be abused to stifle competition and censor speech.. Well, let's just say I have a bridge to sell you.
Libertarians/shills about post some angry screen about the govt picking winners:
Stop. Just stop. The adults are talking now.
Re:can someone please explain to me (Score:5, Insightful)
... Having a Samsung phone is like having a nametag that says "hello, i'm a cheap fucker" on it.
Or maybe it says "I want a phone with a bigger screen than 3.5". Maybe is says "I want a phone with features I want rather than what Steve Jobs thinks I want"...
Re:can someone please explain to me (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry, but ads and drm are showstoppers. I much prefer pirated content, as it is packaged nicely with attention to the details I care about: good file size and codec, no extraneous content, easily archivable, and no buffering delays.
Re:I live a few hundred feet from a coffee shop (Score:5, Insightful)
My experience is that it's damn hard to find an open Wi-Fi router these days. That tells me that in fact, most people DO know how to do it (or at least get someone else who knows how to)
Re:can someone please explain to me (Score:5, Insightful)
If I pay for it, I expect it to be DRM-free. If the pirates can figure out how to publish a quality product, I'm sure the real distributors can do so as well.
My home media distribution injects weather/sports/gcal alert tickers into video streams that get sent all over the house. I've put quite a bit of time and effort and money into building a nifty system. I'm perfectly willing to pay for my content, but if you demand I use HDCP and disable useful features that my family has enjoyed for years, then you can go fuck yourself.
Re:So. Proxies and VPN's - will they get around th (Score:5, Insightful)
The current one. And the next one.
Schools are basically jails, and train kids to accept prison conditions - look at it objectively. Tracking devices in the phones. Recorded calls, recorded messages, emails. Soon, tracking built into the computers in cars, unkillable. Ebooks recorded, times, dates. Anything that flows in packets, recorded. Your movements, recorded, even if you ditch a phone and a car, 'cause cameras will watch you - and listen, too. The cameras and trackers and mics are shrinking, and with zero societal will to stop it, will be everywhere.
Yes, this generation. It starts in the schools, the acceptance of strip searches, phone tracking, drug searches, notebooks with cameras that watch the student... come on, the new crop of adults have been in jail since they were born, figuratively, and have been trained to accept it.
The next generation? Just keep exponentially increasing the surveillance, and the acceptance. Police states are not, historically speaking, unwelcome. People trade freedom for safety all the time, always have, if they are scared properly. The few who become bullied and targeted by the people behind the cameras and trackers are not interesting to people. "They" are by definition criminals, anyway.
I ain't afraid of evil bastards half as much as I am afraid of a population that doesn't understand what freedom actually means, and what they give up to be "safe". They has been zero effective backpush against this era, and it will get worse.
Seems relevant, Kim Dotcom's tweet (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:What's a strike? (Score:4, Insightful)
I dont think we know that, which is why the question was asked.
I mean I know its slashdot and its super hip to make wild assumptions and go off on a rant based on them, but lets humor the guy.
Re:can someone please explain to me (Score:5, Insightful)
I want to watch my local NHL team, the Vancouver Canucks, online through the NHL's own streaming service, NHL GameCenter, as I don't have cable. I am perfectly willing and able to pay the approximately $20 per month to do this. I want to pay the NHL to consume their content.
However, the NHL has imposed geo-IP lockouts for local games, meaning I can't watch my local team play on the service I'm paying for. There's two ways around this - use a VPN/proxy (which is expressly forbidden in the GC ToC [nhl.com]) or watch an illegal stream.
Re:What's a strike? (Score:5, Insightful)
No proof. No evidence. No names, just you gone. No penalties for lying - and who would you penalize? Some third party security company that won't name themselves?
What they've always wanted.
Re:can someone please explain to me (Score:5, Insightful)
Because 5 dollars for every movie or episode of a show id like to watch will break me.
In other words, based on some undisclosed justification, you are entitled to all-you-can-eat entertainment.
Care to share what that reason is? Are you also entitled to free internet, free Office software, free MS SQL CALs, free vSphere enterprise licenses?
Re:can someone please explain to me (Score:5, Insightful)
Is your collective Puritan hatred of freeloaders really worth turning the entire internet into a police state?
Yup.
Re:can someone please explain to me (Score:5, Insightful)
Well then sorry, you deserve to have your Internet shut off.
God forbid we pay money for things which have value
If it has ads and/or drm, it doesn't have value. The value was added by the pirates, who went to the trouble of removing those things. I'd be willing to pay them.
Re: can someone please explain to me (Score:4, Insightful)
What about people like me, who pay for a cable subscription to all the major networks who air the shows we're downloading?
I just want to be able to access the content I've already paid for, commercial free, at my leisure. In a way that works well with my home network, and makes everything portable.
Re:Problem solved quickly.... (Score:5, Insightful)
And you have to pay $35 to defend yourself, which pirates are too cheap to do.
And I am absolutely certain that if you should be accused falsely/by accident, then someone will refund your money and compensate your time spent defending yourself.
Otherwise, there is no reason for Verizon to send warnings only to infringers. Occasional random $35 extra payment with no downsides/costs is a great revenue source!
Real Time (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:What's a strike? (Score:4, Insightful)
No proof. No evidence. No names, just you gone. No penalties for lying
The latter is the biggest concern
I don't know if Verizon would even want you "gone". $35 fee every so often is nice extra revenue (maybe higher fines for repeat offenders?). I don't think that any of that money will be going to the copyright owner, even in the legitimate infringement cases.
Re:Better option (Score:5, Insightful)
Where did you get the idea that one would have to do something illegal to be abused by this policy? One need only be accused, and that without any objective, public standard of evidence or significant opportunity to rebut, and no penalty for reckless or even deliberately false accusations.
Re:Problem solved quickly.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:can someone please explain to me (Score:2, Insightful)
If it has ads and/or drm, it doesn't have value.
If the original content doesn't have any value to you, why do you want it in the first place?
The value was added by the pirates, who went to the trouble of removing those things.
The pirates did not add anything to the content. Thus if the entire value to you is in the additions the pirates made, then we're back at the original content having no value.
In the DVD realm, I don't see what any pirates could add to the value. I never see any ads, and I pick which codecs and how compressed I want my digital copy to be. I rip a lot of videos that really suck because I tend to rip the entire set ("50 Mystery Movie Pack") and then decide what to watch. I wouldn't consider that I've added any value to any of the suck movies I've ripped just because they are in my chosen codec format and file size and don't have the ads I wouldn't see anyway. Those movies still suck.
Re:can someone please explain to me (Score:4, Insightful)
Because i have adopted a very corporate attitude about it all. Which means i'm going to rip off everyone i can, in any way i can, until they stop me. Then i'm going to do the absolute minimum to get around it. And continue doing it anyway.
It's what i was taught to do. Fuck anyone who doesn't like it. They are free to vote with their wallet and not do business with me.
Maybe i need to take one more page from the corporate handbook. Create a shell corporation to buy my isp connection with. When i get that last strike, dissolve the company and create a new one doing the exact same thing.
Corporations are people. But my corporation is kind of a dickhead guy.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:can someone please explain to me (Score:4, Insightful)
How about this - Prices on old movies are INSANE. Want to rent Ghostbusters in HD for your kids? 4.99 to view it Once.
The new stuff, yes I agree with you. Something released this millenium - 4.99 for HD isn't bad. For an 80's movie, they're all on crack.
Re:Or stop being being a F-ing thief (Score:5, Insightful)
since when is sharing stealing
Everyone on Slashdot seems hung up on this idea that because it's not a physical good, redistribution means nothing. That's just not true.
Let me try a different analogy...let's say my job is doing really awesome SAT (or whatever) training courses. I have spent a long time developing the course so I can deliver you a two-hour course that will help you ace your upcoming exam, and as a benefit I record it so that you can watch it again after I leave. You think it's a great course. You turn around and, because you think other people will want it, you send the video I gave you to all your friends in high school.
Did I lose any physical goods as a result of your "sharing?" Nope. Can I still give my course? Yep. Were some of your friends never going to sign up for my course? Absolutely! But were there some of your friends who might have taken my course if you told them it was great, but didn't send it to them for free? Yeah, probably. And that's where "sharing" becomes "theft" - if I wanted my training to be free, I would have made it free. It's my training and I should be able to say what it costs, whether it's a physical good or not.
Re:Problem solved quickly.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Wow! What a pure example of a strawman argument. Disgraceful that it got modded interesting.
How does the requirement to be responsible for securing their own network brought about your fantasy of an extreme police state?
Re:Problem solved quickly.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Occasional random $35 extra payment with no downsides/costs is a great revenue source!
It's nice how our legal system has the concept of innocent until proven guilty, but when we abolished class action lawsuits we allowed corporations to reverse that. Now you have to pay for the priviledge of being found innocent in a secret court with arbitrary rules you will not be told about until it starts, for which you are entitled to no counsel, and which has no appeal process outside of itself (the appeals are done by the same people who took the case to begin with). Arbitration should be illegal between corporations and individuals: It's like two foxes and a chicken deciding who's for dinner.
No, you are trying to limit distribution of knowle (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is you are trying to limit the distribution of knowledge. It is the 21st century, and information is now free
No, people who create knowledge and entertainment are trying to create it and maximize distribution. Pirates limit it, by not doing their part. To seek out great talent, hire the best sound engineers, produce a hit song, and popularize it so you know about it costs about $3 million. Your share of that cost as a listener is $1. One measly dollar. By refusing to pay your $1 share, it's you breaking the system and reducing production.
I spent $80,000 creating some cool software. At least 34,000 people downloaded it. I wanted more people to download it, I want to increase distribution, not limit it. Problem is, exactly ONE person paid their share of the cost, $5. Software is NOT free in the 21st century, it cost me $80,000 to produce. Since you guys refuse to pay your $5 share of the cost, I can't create cool new software anymore. Now I have to create stuff for Homeland Security instead in order to eat. I'm just one more programmer no longer making cool shit for you because you won't do your part, pay the $1 or $5 or whatever your share is. Software isn't free, and I can't pay the $80,000 to make you more, so no new software for you leaches. Now DHS gets the software I write.
Ps - I'm also a Linux kernel contributor, and an Apache contributor. The private sector and OSS lost a pretty decent programer by refusing to pay the $3 and $5 share so I wouldn't have had to go work for the government.