American ISPs to launch massive copyright spying scheme on July 12

[Amerigo Vespucci]

Source: The Raw Story

If you download potentially copyrighted software, videos or music, your Internet service provider (ISP) has been watching, and they’re coming for you.

That’s the date when the nation’s largest ISPs will all voluntarily implement a new anti-piracy plan that will engage network operators in the largest digital spying scheme in history, and see some users’ bandwidth completely cut off until they sign an agreement saying they will not download copyrighted materials.

The content industries calls this scheme a “graduated response” plan, which will see Time Warner Cable, Cablevision, Comcast, Verizon, AT&T and others spying on users’ Internet activities and watching for potential copyright infringement. Users who are “caught” infringing on a creator’s protected work can then be interrupted with a notice that piracy is forbidden by law and carries penalties of up to $150,000 per infringement, requiring the user to click through saying they understand the consequences before bandwidth is restored, and they could still be subject to copyright infringement lawsuits.

Participating ISPs have a range of options for dealing with customers who continue to pirate media, at that point: They can require that an alleged repeat offender undergo an educational course before their service is restored. They can utilize multiple warnings, restrict access to only certain major websites like Google, Facebook or a list of the top 200 sites going, reduce someone’s bandwidth to practically nothing and even share information on repeat offenders with competing ISPs, effectively creating a sort of Internet blacklist — although publicly, none of the network operators have agreed to “terminate” a customer’s service.

Read more: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/03/15/american-isps-to-launch-massive-copyright-spying-scheme-on-july-12/

[KG]

1. i got some dynamite and peanut butter, i can hold out for a week or so..

[leveymg]

2. That's a copyright violation, right there, bud. Prepare to be assimilated . . oops, I did it, too!

Big Brother is watching . . . three strikes on one thread, now, we're all really f-cked.

[arcane1]

3. I suppose that will include home videos of people singing Happy Birthday?

Alas.

[AverageJoe90]

4. This is fucking insane! We need another effort like what got SOPA canceled, and fast!

I also can't help but point out that DINO Chris Dodd seems to be involved in all this crap as well.
Copyright? My views are becoming more and more jaded as this develops and quite frankly I'm beginning to question if maybe we should just put a moratorium on all media-related copyright law(with some exceptions as necessary). I also wonder if this is also part of a plan to make the Obama admin. look bad so the Rethugs can actually have a chance at winning the elections this year. Honestly, I'd be surprised if there WASN'T a conspiracy of some kind occurring here.

[JoeyT]

5. Oh good.

"Users who are “caught” infringing on a creator’s protected work"

And I'm sure there won't be any false positives, because there never have been when idiots rolled out programs like this.

"They can require that an alleged repeat offender undergo an educational course"

Well, at least they offer you "reeducation".

[christx30]

20. Will the "reeducation"

include a camp with helicopters, dogs, and slides that says "Hollywood is your friend"?
This is really getting weird.

[saras]

23. Yep, it worked great for Mao and Pol Pot, didn't it?

[alfredo]

27. While the teaparty was railing against big government, corporate America was tightening the noose

around their flabby necks.

[Newest Reality]

6. Another effort to

appease and empower big business interests.

I'm curious as to what kind of response will come from the techies out there and those for whom downloads are a large part of being online.

If you download media and software, but don't really have the money to pay for it in the first place, the prohibition will not necessarily increase sales.

The far-reaching implications of this heavy-handed approach are part of the Fascist package. The potential abuse is built-in.

I wonder if the ISPs will get some blow-back and even lose customers after this is implemented.

[Soylent Brice]

7. ruh roh

[thesquanderer]

8. "none of the network operators have agreed to 'terminate' a customer’s service."

IOW, "we'll do anything you want, as long as it doesn't decrease our revenues, that's where we draw the line."

[drm604]

9. Would this include viewing videos on YouTube?

Are we supposed to somehow determine what is and isn't copyrighted before we access it?

And how exactly are they going to do this? Do they have checksums for everything that is copyrighted? (No, they do not. That's not even possible.)

Tech savvy people will just use encryption and proxies.

I do not download copyrighted material and I don't advocate doing so. But I can't see how this scheme can work without putting a huge burden on the honest along with the dishonest.

[Amerigo Vespucci]

11. No...YouTube would have the issue, not you. This is strictly for downloading.

If you don;t download copyrighted material, you have nothing to worry about. You're in the clear.

[drm604]

14. Viewing a video requires downloading.

Your browser has to download a video in order for you to view it, you just don't realize it.

There's no way for an ISP to tell the difference. A download is a download.

[Amerigo Vespucci]

15. It downloads it to your cache. If you clear your cache, it's gone.

I hear what you're saying.

But the burden on them is to understand the difference. Otherwise, they are going to have to be prepared to screw with MILLIONS of people.

[drm604]

16. In any case,

I can't see how every ISP can have fingerprints for every copyrighted video or song, and I can't see how they can scan every packet for all of those fingerprints. The whole thing makes no sense.

[Volaris]

10. DMCA NEVER stood for Digital Millennium Copyright Act....

It stands for Don't Mess (with) Corporate America.

I always did think that if you want a Copyright issued for a work, part of the paperwork you sign should say that the FIRST life-cycle of the Copyright is one year long; you have to submit a copy of the original work to a publicly accessible database, and that work is considered belonging to the Public Domain and free use (with the caveat that no one else but YOU can PROFIT from it directly, and if they do, you can sue them). AFTER that, the next 7 years are yours. And there is NOTHING in the paperwork that says you have to tell the world that it has been published yet. If you can manage to keep a publicly available thing a secret for that first year, well, more power to ya I guess. Something like this would go a LONG way, (I think) to solving this kind of problem where the internet is concerned.

Replies, opinions, and alternative ideas are welcome,

[Amerigo Vespucci]

12. RECENTLY...and I am too damned lazy to go find the link...

...Neil Young said that he didn't have an issue with any of this, that radio really "doesn't exist" anymore, that downloading is the NEW radio...and he's right. It's where people discover new music. And if they like it, they go out and buy the CD / DVD. I do. A lot of others do as well.

[Volaris]

13. Yes, yes, and yes.

And Neil Young isn't the only artist who thinks that way. Trent Reznor got so pissed at his record label over their uncompromising position on this issue that he quit, self-produced the album he was making for them, and then put it up online for free; if you like it, you should HAVE it, so that when TICKETS go on sale, you'll probably buy some of THOSE (...but more on that below).

The internet ALSO makes it possible to buy just ONE song (that you like), instead of NOT buying the entire album (which you don't).
I never did figure out how commercial music producers STILL have not really got on board with the concept that free sampling of music leads to more (if done correctly) revenue from more people.

(From Above...)It also wouldn't hurt their business model if the production value of their signed concert performers actually were worth the ticket price they charge. My sister is CONVINCED that the only top rock and pop performers that would be worth seeing live are a VERY select few, because they have vocal talents far ABOVE the music they actually produce for the radio mass-market.

[Amerigo Vespucci]

17. Dave Grohl feels that way and "some" on DU slammed him for it.

I posted a thread with him saying pretty much what Neil said and some folks replied with "he's a millionaire now..."I've got mine"..."

I don't agree with that.

[alfredo]

29. NPR's "First Listen" really helps me decide on buying.

I recently listened to this:

The first song of the CD sounds very Steely Dan.
http://www.npr.org/2012/03/11/147979893/first-listen-esperanza-spalding-radio-music-society

[Odin2005]

18. Does downloading YouTube videos count???

[joshcryer]

21. That's my question as well. I used to be a major pirate but 90% of my stuff these days is YouTube.

How the fuck are they going to police this? It's bizarre as all get out.

There's a program called jdownloader that lets you download YouTube videos, it's quite good, and you can get full quality videos. If I were to watch those videos, stopping, pausing, rewinding, etc, I would use more bandwidth, because the YouTube streamer doesn't seem to cache data anymore (evident on really popular videos which fall back to bad quality when hammered).

There's a lot of good content on YouTube these days and it only gets better. I watch Blender 3D tutorials, several of the YouTube celebrities (those I don't download), music, it's fantastic.

[garrettxr]

39. technical

yes will have to wait and see if we get letters in the mail i suggest not replying to them i doubt the would hurt there own profits

[saras]

22. Encrpytion.

[Amerigo Vespucci]

24. Yes indeed.

http://www.giganews.com/vyprvpn/

[tabasco]

25. Activate the Home Guard Brigades to protect the "homeland!!"

Disgusting Bush-era, nazi-wannabe verbiage.

[Ron Obvious]

26. Bloody hell...

Bloody Hell, and Comcast is already the only option we have here unless I want to go back to dialup.

[Pangolino]

28. This needs to stop somehow.

http://ritzin.deviantart.com/art/Spread-Boycott-RIAA-and-MPAA-in-Op-Black-March-284307285

The boycott seems like a good idea, but it's probably better to extend it indefinitely. It's taken a while for me to reach this point, but I've had it with these motherfuckers. I don't even pirate music, but I'm REALLY not a fan of this anti-democratic spying and information-control shit. Not sure what's going on with http://riaaradar.com/ but there is a list of member labels at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_RIAA_member_labels .

[Boojatta]

30. A better idea?

1. Prevent uploading of content by people who don't own the copyright to the content.
2. Prevent ISP customers from accessing websites that allow copyrighted content to be illegally downloaded.

[ChromeFoundry]

31. There's a few major problems with this...

First, how can the ISP dictate what is copyrighted material?
How can the ISP prove that it was not malware or someone hacking into your WiFi?
How can you be charged with a crime without due process?
ISPs sharing a blacklist, effectively denying Internet access to an individual, without proven guilt - could be sued for libel.
If they are performing any form of deep packet inspection of encrypted data, and I look at my medical records online... isn't that a violation of HIPPA laws?
If someone uses a secure torrent proxy or VPN, are they then automatically assumed to be downloading copyrighted material, because they are unable to decrypt the content of the traffic?
If copyright holders seed their copyrighted material in order to determine who is attempting to download it, isn't that effectively entrapment?

But if I put a spike strip in my driveway because I don't like the idiot across the street turns around in my driveway everyday and runs over my grass, i'm breaking the law?

[Amerigo Vespucci]

32. There's no shortage of unanswered questions...

For instance, Giganews offers a VPN service, but if you read the fine print, they tell you that if they are served with a subpoena for a certain customer's records, they immediately turn over the records, without notifying the customer. So people who think they can "fly under the radar" need to read the fine print.

Here's another example. Today I did a Google search for "Nightwish Imaginaerum 2CD Limited Edition." I own it...I wanted to read some reviews. At the bottom of the first page of search results I saw this:

In response to a complaint we received under the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act, we have removed 2 result(s) from this page. If you wish, you may read the DMCA complaint that caused the removal(s) at ChillingEffects.org.

In response to a complaint we received under the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act, we have removed 1 result(s) from this page. If you wish, you may read the DMCA complaint that caused the removal(s) at ChillingEffects.org.

In response to a complaint we received under the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act, we have removed 2 result(s) from this page. If you wish, you may read the DMCA complaint that caused the removal(s) at ChillingEffects.org.

I've never seen that before today.

[ChromeFoundry]

33. So if they are looking for patterns to determine who is an offender...

couldn't you simply take the binary byte array of the content and reverse it prior to the download, effectively making the pattern of the file different? Of course, ZIP or RAR-ing the file would do the same thing.

The fact is, if the RIAA is paying ISPs to be the internet cops, the end users will just create better methods to bypass detection. I think you will see things like subscription-based Torrents using a third party, rotating subscription PGP key systems become very popular.

This will just create new markets for others to build more secure methods to keep the prying eyes off data. In the end, everyone wins and everyone loses. Everything, over time, eventually descends into chaos.

[emibean]

34. Well, this is terrifying.

What I don't understand about the wording of this article that's going around is if you'll be in trouble if you've downloaded things before July 12th. If I've downloaded some videos or music in the past but am stopping now and don't download anything once this thing is launched, will I still be in trouble? And streaming videos counts as downloading, right? But what about if i clear my cache? Hmm.

I'm hoping there will be a lot of outrage over this. Seems like the world is turning into a dystopian novel more and more, lately.

[Ian David]

35. This is the free market at work. n/t

[emibean]

37. What do you mean?

[Ian David]

38. Corporations allowed to enact their own policies free of government restraint. n/t

[Ian David]

36. Make sure you save a copy of Star Wars: The Musical BEFORE July 12th.

And here's the best part:

&feature=related

A segment from the legendary 1996 full-length high school production, (featured in the documentary "Star Woids&quot . SWTM was written, produced, and directed by passionate and dorky drama students who later went on to make the cult cinematic masterpiece, Starslyderz.

http://www.starwarsthemusical.com