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AT&T Piracy Businesses Communications

AT&T To Cut Off Some Customers' Service in Piracy Crackdown (axios.com) 85

Posted by msmash from the extreme-measures dept.
AT&T will alert a little more than a dozen customers within the next week or so that their service will be terminated due to copyright infringement, news outlet Axios reported, citing sources familiar with its plans. From the report: It's the first time AT&T has discontinued customer service over piracy allegations since having shaped its own piracy policies last year, which is significant given it just became one of America's major media companies. AT&T owns a content network after its purchase of Time Warner earlier this year, an entity now called WarnerMedia. Content networks are typically responsible for issuing these types of allegations to internet service providers (ISPs) for them to address with their customers.
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AT&T To Cut Off Some Customers' Service in Piracy Crackdown More

AT&T To Cut Off Some Customers' Service in Piracy Crackdown

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  • Alleged Copyright Infringement = Loss of Essential (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 06, 2018 @04:48PM (#57602742)

    What a shithole country!

  • corporate plaintiff, judge, and executioner (Score:5, Interesting)

    by sittingnut ( 88521 ) <sittingnut.gmail@com> on Tuesday November 06, 2018 @04:52PM (#57602782) Homepage

    " discontinued customer service over piracy allegations"

    allegations!

    a tech/media corporate decides who allegedly committed alleged crimes (alleged "piracy", alleged "hate speech", alleged "election interference", etc are just the beginning) against related or fellow tech/media corporates or supporters, and deal out de-platforming punishment too.
    welcome to rule by big corporates, according to their rules and their courts.

    • As engaging in media piracy isn't a protected class this is just doing business.

      • Alleged. You missed the point that we should all be presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Anonymous Coward

          And you missed the point that any two parties can stop doing business with each other any time they want. This company has decided it's not going to do business with people it suspects steal from it. Stop the freakin' presses, oh lord, end of the world.

          • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

            by Anonymous Coward

            Sure, especially since the 12 can all just get service from the competing provider in the area...

            Capcha text "inequity"

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by rtb61 ( 674572 )

        Prove you have never ever enganged in media privacy, prove it, go right fucking ahead, prove you never copied once or get cut off, you can always spend a few years in court trying to get reconnected. The wrong political speech will be equal to copyright infringement, prove elsewise in court for a couple of hundred thousand dollar of a couple of years and then whoops get caught again and be required to prove your innocence.

    • Re: (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      It's their terms of service, if you violate them (or give them reasonable cause to believe you violated them) then of course they are going to not offer their service to you.

      If you invited me to your house and then suspected I had stolen stuff from you would you kick me out? Or would you continue inviting me in until you had obtained proof enough that you could satisfy a court of law?

      • Re:corporate plaintiff, judge, and executioner (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 06, 2018 @05:34PM (#57603082)

        Wrong analogy.
        This is not about invitation to a private house, it is about a publicly offered service, usually provided by a monopoly or an oligopoly. A service sometimes tightly tied to taxpayer funded government services to the point of no being easily available elsewhere.

        As such, mere allegations of violations should not be the cause of banishment.

             

        • You know, these ISPs have the ability to see encrypted data, right? I mean, legal or not, they CAN do it. Maybe they do it sometimes, if they feel suspicious about certain traffic, dunno. And so, maybe, rather than go through the whole legal system, they just include a bit in their terms of service that says that if you pirate stuff, they kick you. Then later, all they have to do is say, "We think you're pirating stuff, you're banned." and then it's up to you to bring it to court if you feel the need.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        If they terminate service early, do I get to charge *them* the early termination fee?!

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by mark-t ( 151149 )
          That probably depends.... did they sign a contract with you agreeing to pay such a fee if they terminated service before a certain date?
      • It's their terms of service, if you violate them (or give them reasonable cause to believe you violated them) then of course they are going to not offer their service to you.

        Unless they are in a regulated industry, or are a government-regulated monopoly, in which case, offering their service to you is part of their terms of service with the regulators.

      • Internet service is essential to modern life, AT&T has a monopoly or is half of a duopoly in most of its markets. It benefits from extensive government subsidies (that just pad its profits, but that's another issue). Under these circumstances, the "business can do whatever the fuck it wants" rule shouldn't apply, and terminating someones access should require proving they were pirating, not a one-sided allegation from the accuser.

    • a tech/media corporate decides who allegedly committed alleged crimes

      Those NAUGHTY, EVIL IP addresses -- they should remove them from the available DHCP range and make them go stand in the corner until they see the transmission errors of their ways.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • ...how many of them are AT&T employees.

  • just now noticing? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 06, 2018 @05:01PM (#57602860)

    "discontinued customer service "

    I think AT&T discontinued customer server many years ago.

    • Outsourced it to Lily Tomlin (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Now I wonder if they'll also start to check that their customers who play Music On Hold to their victims paid the requisite royalties OR ELSE disconnect them for "piracy". Sauce for the goose, etc.

      (Yes, the message is very much implied: ISPs playing copyright cops? Don't go there, idiot ISPs. But of course it's a telco that has to go and be just that stupid.)

  • And yet politicians (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    with trump in particular repeatedly violating copyright at rallies. I do not understand why these artists have not sent one giant sueball at these flagrant violations of copyright. I thought you got like 250K per infraction. Trump would be in the tens of millions at this point.

  • Considering the atrocious options in the USA .. (Score:5, Informative)

    by AbRASiON ( 589899 ) * on Tuesday November 06, 2018 @06:25PM (#57603326) Journal

    This is pretty bad. A lot of areas seem to be only serviced by one provider, it's kinda terrible.

    Time for more VPN use.

    • Americas internet services are10-15 years behind the UK (which is pretty average compared to the rest of the world). Data caps and high prices caused by a lack of competition are causing the US to slip further and further behind with no solution in sight.
    • How do you know you can trust your VPN provider though? And, if everyone started using VPN for downloading pirated content, you'd see a crackdown on VPN providers, compromising their own security, making them useless for not only pirating but for everything else too. If nothing else you might find ISPs blocking access to VPN providers because they're being pressured to crack down on piracy even when they can't prove 'illegal' content is traversing their network.

  • It begins.

    Giant Internet gateway providers begin filtering content (that isn't inherently illegal.)

  • These dozen-or-so people who are being cut off from AT&T access to the Internet are getting what they deserve; they clearly were sloppy in their piracy methods and therefore were detected as such. Hopefully they'll have learned their lesson, though, and when they get service from some other company, they'll be more careful to cover their tracks and remain undetected.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • This is a good use case for all those cheap VPN services out there. I wouldn't count on them to protect your privacy much, but it's another layer someone has to peel to figure out you're pirating stuff. Switch between services frequently perhaps. Certainly easier than switching ISPs. Hell run more than one at a time, just to really confuse the spooks.

    Piracy always finds a way, this is a meaningless futile gesture by AT&T.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Use of an unlicensed (i.e. not paid for, and without a back door for monitoring; possibly, simply one that's not work-related and not sold by the ISP) VPN will be considered evidence of piracy in the not too distant future.

  • Isn't this a beauty. Like someone else put it - judge jury, and executioner.

    I guess the best thing that could happen to someone is getting the contract terminated for them - something that would, at least in my country, is a terrible endeavour to do by the client, since we basically have to pay the full remainder of the contract. This way ATT is basically begging other customers to use another provider. That's probably the best thing ATT could do to all their clients! Why just a dozen though? Is this some s

  • So if I own a mazda and I go against the law (code rules mostly like getting too much tickets) can they make me stop using their "service" (their cars). I don't get the logic behind this.

  • Regulate (Score:3)

    by zedaroca ( 3630525 ) on Wednesday November 07, 2018 @10:11AM (#57605638)

    More reason to regulate them like an utility. Also, prohibit them from looking into traffic.

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