After three years of negotiating it looks like major ISPs have struck a deal, back by both the RIAA and MPAA, to help manage the issue of sharing copyrighted material online. The deal will institute a sort of four strike policy before mitigation measures are put into effect.
The participants in this agreement include AT&T, Comcast, Verizon, Cablevision, and Time Warner in addition to the RIAA and MPAA. That group has been negotiating this deal for quite a while, and it seems like ISPs are taking the call to "policing the internet" seriously.
The so called "mitigation measures" discussed by the deal will only be put into effect after four offenses. The deal indicates that these measures will include,
"temporary reductions of internet speeds, redirection to a landing page until the subscriber contacts the ISP to discuss the matter or reviews and responds to some educational information about copyright, or other measures (as specified in published policies) that the ISP may deem necessary to help resolve the matter.”
The way that reads it leaves the door open for an ISP to completely cut off service to customers who have multiple copyright offenses. What's not clear is if a user has infractions with one ISP and switches their service provider, will the old ISP inform the new of the user's past infractions?
The first offense will generate an email alert to the user indicating that their account may have been used for illegal activity. The second infringement alert email may contain education information about how sharing copyrighted information (or downloading it) is in fact illegal. The third and fourth infractions are said to generate a pop up alert “asking the subscriber to acknowledge receipt of the alert.”
It seems like a pretty big leap to go from notices and emails directly to speed reductions, or more drastic matters. The first four strikes policy seems to be in place in case the user's connection was in fact misused by another party. One other interesting thing to note is that this plan does not require ISPs to filter copyrighted material that goes through peer-to-peer protocols.
A lot of these measures have already been implemented by many ISPs, so this isn't necessarily new ground. What is new is the direct partnership with the RIAA and MPAA. When this specific plan is to be implemented is unclear, but one can imagine it would be effective immediately.
Will these new policies help prevent the file sharing of copyrighted content or will the ISP's users simply switch to using encrypted transmissions or look for other methods to avoid detection?
