The Recording Industry Association of America could be getting a hand from the country’s two largest Internet service providers in combating piracy.
Citing three anonymous sources "close to the companies," CNet said roughly six ISPs are involved including Comcast and AT&T, but none have signed agreements. Not among them, if an earlier report by Wired holds true, is Verizon, which said it won’t be working with the RIAA on this issue.
In lieu of its recently abandoned strategy of suing individual file sharers, the RIAA is looking to ISPs to cooperate on a "graduated response" program. Some call it a "three strikes" rule, but the RIAA avoids that term as it implies hard and fast terms for disconnection after repeat offenses. The anti-piracy measures would start with take-down notices and work towards more severe consequences, such as suspension of service or disconnection.
Possible bad press surrounding this concept has made ISPs "skittish," one source told CNet, and it’s always possible they could back out. Neither the RIAA nor the two service providers confirmed or denied the story. CDFreaks e-mailed an RIAA spokeswoman as recently as Monday and was told that there are no official announcements.
Earlier this week, the British goverment said it won’t force ISPs to ban illicit file sharers. The music trade group BPI wanted to work out a "three-steps" policy with service providers in Britain, and is currently trying to find an anti-piracy solution that satisfies all parties. France implements a three strikes rule, and one is being considered in Italy.
News of a possible deal raises more questions than it answers, mostly pertaining to who’s responsible for enforcement and whether disconnected users could then take their business to another provider.
As for questions of privacy, the sources tell CNet that the RIAA hasn’t asked ISPs to "peer into packets," but civil liberties groups are still waiting to weigh in. Short of a thorough leaking of details, getting complete answers will probably be a matter of patience.
6 Comments
Not to mention its not the government that is enforcing these rules, and there's no way to dispute. Meaning the RIAA doesn't need real evidence. And no dispute mechanism for the wrongly accused. Allthough I suppose there's nothing from stopping an ISP from discontinuing your service. I know ISP's are trying to use this to lower peoples bandwidth consumption, I hope people hit the isp's in the pocket and find alternative isps.
it is clever as it skirts the legal system completely and is efficient and cheap. I bet the contracts for new subscribers has plenty of warnings and also they have the right to drop your service if they feel you are doing something unlawful.
I always thought it was funny, thhat the people were getting busted for downloading Brittany Spears or Jacksons Thriller. While at the same time Comcast was HOSTING terabytes of warez on their news server!! Not once did I hear a threat from the RIAA or the MPAA for Comcast to quit hosting movies and music and warez- never.
Then, all of a sudden, they started backing away from usenet and finally dumped it all together. Now, they are wearing the white hat i guess.
If you start DL'ing gigabytes of encrypted files they will simply flag you as a pirate or worse yet- a terrorist or a child pornogrpher LOL. They don't have to prove a darn thing. It is their right to kick you off the node for whatever reason they want. All they have to do is look at the traffic, where it originates etc. it doesn't take a brain surgeon to know when someone is pirating. It also is not necessary to prove it. Just scare a few and get it in the media.
Also, programs like Utorrent, use encryption to circumvent ISP throttling. Whether that hides what you are downloading from the ISP, I don't know for sure though.
They can't touch them because the servers only "relay" and "share" the information with other servers around the world and don't monitor it or something like that. I think they fall under the same category as the phone companies. Also, there would be no way to police it since the servers share information with each other.
Anyways, doesn't matter nowadays. Most the of the major ISP's, in the US, have dropped the binary groups from their news server services. If you want to download binaries from Usenet, you have to pay for a premium server now. This is how the RIAA and MPAA got rid of some of the illegal downloading from Usenet. But it only slowed it down just a little. Most people pay for Usenet so they can get good retention and completion rates, SSL encrytion, and access to vast groups.
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