A Copyright Alert System four years in the making is about to go live. The objective is to warn people who are illegally downloading content that they are being watched. If they stop, fine. If they persist, action will be taken. The big media companies would like the punishment to be legal and financial. And maybe some day it will be. For the time being, ISPs will impose slower internet connections and other annoyances to get the point across that continued violations will come at a cost.
The perception is that piracy has declined, at least in the US and Europe, as prices have come down and the understanding has spread that it is artists and writers who are mostly likely to suffer from ripped off content. But that does not appear to be the case. Data are spotty but in the UK in 2010, one study estimated that as much as three-quarters of all content was pirated.
Whether this system will work is an open question. The content providers understand that they have to move incrementally even though their instincts - and budgets - suggest that harsher penalties more quickly imposed would be the more sensible course. The mindset that all content should be free will take a long time to overcome - if it ever is. JL
Heather Kelly reports in CNN/Money:
It is about to get a bit more difficult to illegally download TV shows, movies or music online.
new alert system, rolling out over the next two months, will repeatedly warn and possibly punish people violating digital copyrights. The Copyright Alert System was announced last July and has been four years in the making.
If you use AT&T, Cablevision, Comcast, Time Warner, or Verizon as your Internet service provider, you could receive the first of one of these notes starting in the next two months.
The Internet provider is delivering the message, but the legwork is being done by the copyright owners, which will monitor peer-to-peer networks such as BitTorrent.
They use a service called MarkMonitor, which uses a combination of people and automated systems to spot illegal downloading. It will collect the IP addresses of offenders, but no personal information. The IP addresses are turned over to the Internet providers, which will match up the address with the right customer and send the notification.
The warning system is described as a graduated response. First the Internet provider will let the customer know that their Internet connection is being used to download content illegally. The note will include information to steer them away from their life of crime, including tips on how they can download content legally.
There will also be tips on securing Internet connections, just in case you were unaware that your neighbor was downloading season three of "Dexter" using your unprotected wireless network.
"The progressive series of alerts is designed to make consumers aware of activity that has occurred using their Internet accounts, educate them on how they can prevent such activity from happening again," the CCI said in its announcement today.
After the educational phase, the customers will be asked to acknowledge that they received the warning. If they continue to download content illegally, the alerts will threaten mild punishments, such as forcing the copyright violator to read "educational materials," or throttling their Internet connection so that it is slow, making it harder to download large files.
Today's announcement claims that terminating the Internet service is not one of the options.
If a customer feels they are being wrongly accused, they can ask for a review, which will cost them $35 according to the Verge.
The entire system will be overseen by an organization called the Center for Copyright Information, which includes content owners, such as the Motion Picture Association of America and Recording Industry Association of America, as well as individual members including Disney, Sony Pictures, Fox, EMI and Universal.
Each ISP will have a slightly different version of the system.
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