After years of government planning, the anti-piracy Copyright Alert System (CAS) will go into effect Monday February 25th. This all in an effort to thwart and punish (without any prosecution) the online users who casually download films, music, and other media.
ISPs under the Six-Strikes policy will use a series of escalating messages first to warn, then throttle access, then revoke access to customers that have been tracked. Downloaders of the allegedly copyrighted material will be forced to acknowledge that they have received warnings or or watched the 'educational material' about 'sharing is crime'.
This entire program is hugely flawed and damaging in more ways then I or anyone else could possible think of. Firstly the ISPs will not be able to differentiate between legal torrents and illegal torrents.
So why is this an issue?
Well if you've ever heard of opensource or Linux you know that nearly the entirety of downloads are done through torrent. So lets say I wanted to install a new Linux Distro and downloaded it, I could be punished or prosecuted for simply upgrading or changing my own OS legally, even if the OS itself is free and community based.
Secondly, the entire process is based on IP addresses:
After confirming that a file appears to have been shared illegally, content owners identify the Internet Protocol (IP) address unique set of numbers associated with individual computers connected to the Internet. used by the computer making the file available. Each IP address belongs to an Internet Service Provider (ISP), so content owners notify the ISP to which the address is assigned and the ISP then passes a Copyright Alert on to its customer.
This is essentially pointless because IP addresses have already been proven legally to not hold any weight as to whom the guilty party is, for example:
Southern District of California Judge Barry Moskowitz has found that an IP address, alone, is insufficient to support a complaint for copyright infringement. The lawsuit is AF Holdings v. Rogers (CASD 12-cv-01519) brought by the infamous Prenda Law Firm http://fightcopyrighttrolls.com/category/clans/prenda/. The complaint alleges copyright infringement, contributory copyright infringement, and negligence...
The best part of all of this, is if you are using torrents, etc... as leigimate sources legally and you are hit with a "strike" you have to pay to contest it.
If I believe I received an Alert in error is there a process to challenge the Alert?
Yes. The Copyright Alert System includes an opportunity to challenge Alerts once you reach the Mitigation stage, after receiving three, four, or five Alerts depending on their ISP. If you believe you have received one or more Alerts in error you may request an Independent Review administered by the American Arbitration Association within fourteen (14) calendar days of receiving the Mitigation Alert. There is a $35 filing fee, which may be waived if you meet affordability criteria. The fee will be refunded if your challenge is successful.
So, while ISPs and incompetent music and movie industries want to bypass courts (or pay any fee in getting warrants), victims will have to pay to even contest that they are innocent.
Thirdly, how will this effect public WiFi? Well according to The Center for Copyright Information, it won't:
As CCI prepares for our launch, I want to address some inaccuracies that have recently been reported – specifically, the myth that public Wi-Fi hotspots will somehow be shut down by the CAS. This simply is not the case.
Public Wi-Fi is an important and oft-used way in which millions of people gain access to the Internet. Quite often this public Wi-Fi access is provided through a major coffee or restaurant chain, or at a public location like a park or transportation terminal, or even the public library. While copyright infringement using public Wi-Fi is no less permissible than over a residential connection, the accounts that will be included in the CAS are not the accounts that are used to provide public Wi-Fi and accusations that the CAS will end public Wi-Fi are false.
Depending on the type of Internet service they subscribe to, very small businesses like a home-office or a local real estate office may have an Internet connection that is similar from a network perspective to a residential connection. In those cases, customers are assigned Internet Protocol addresses from the same pool as residential customers.
This in itself brings up more concerns, for example let's say I make my WiFi public and pay the ISP to do so, now that I provide access to all those who live around me, does this now exclude me from punishment if I allow others to use my WiFi? There are not enough details to clarify here and big businesses should not be exempt from the law anymore than personal users.
One must also take into consideration how easy it is for one to mask their identity and location. If you have a decent proxy, VPN or even change the settings in your modem all of this can be usurped with ease. So, if your IP address can not be used to identify who was actually at fault how can the process exist at all? This means that actual search and seizure would be required to see if you had actually been the infringing party. All this calls into question the legality and responsibility of the ISP and this law. Not only is this law essentially useless and damaging, it also calls into question the true nature and motive of the law being that your IP address can not be held against you without corroborating evidence.
For that you have to look at the fine print. It says CCI has to monitor P2P sites and things of that nature. It also claims they do not track or hold data, however they also say:
CCI built the Copyright Alert System around a commitment to respect a Subscriber’s privacy rights. At no time will ISPs share personal information (name, address, etc.) with anyone else (including the Content Owners or other ISPs) except pursuant to a properly issued subpoena or court order.
Now, if they aren't logging and tracking how could they possibly have this info for a properly issued subpoena or court order? That being said "if" they are keeping and tracking our data is this law just another excuse for big brother like monitoring? To further that, who will monitor the ISP that logs and monitors your data? To what end can they use or view the data they have logged? The biggest question is at what liability does this put you as an individual since the ISP will hold vast amounts of data from you and on you. What if the ISP is hacked because of their lack of security?
There are only more questions and none of which can be answered with any legitimacy. So where does this leave us and what are we to do? Well start writing to your officials and take a stand for your internet rights before you no longer have the right to even do that!
ISPs, MPAA or RIAA are not above the law, here they are trying to become the law.
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