Three Years In, The 'Six Strikes' Anti-Piracy Plan is a Dud A little more than three years ago most of the large ISPs joined a new anti-piracy initiative crafted by the entertainment industry dubbed the Copyright Alert System. In CAS, users are given warning letters for copyright infringement as has long been industry practice, but ISPs will also give users a slap on the wrist for the behavior, ranging from brief filtering of websites to temporary throttling of their connections -- until targets acknowledge receipt of "educational" anti-piracy material.

The warnings escalate ("strikes") in the hopes of scaring pirates straight until the system effectively deems users are beyond hope -- at which point -- nothing happens. There's no mechanism to track targeted pirates between ISPs, and no political will to create such a system. Originally it was feared that the entertainment industry would continually revise the program until it became more and more draconian. That obviously hasn't happened in large part thanks to ISP resistance to anything beyond what's currently in place. By and large most ISP executives I've spoken to privately to about the initiative have acknowledged that scaring tots into not downloading pirated material doesn't work for long, most realizing such systems can be easily bypassed via VPN and proxy anyway. As such, they're not keen on spending more money on the issue. And while the CCI (the Center for Copyright Information, tasked with overseeing the program) has suggested the existing six strikes program has been a smashing success, few if any stats have emerged indicating that all the money spent has actually accomplished much of anything. BitTorrent traffic has declined, but most analysts believe that's due more to the emergence of legitimate streaming services than anything done by the RIAA, MPAA and its ilk. And the folks behind the program don't appear to be doing much of anything. Torrent Freak points out that the system's Twitter account has laid dormant for more than a year, and the CCI has issued just three press releases since the program went live. Still, CCI Executive Director Jim Kohlenberger tells TorrentFreak that the system continues to be a success. “The system continues to work smoothly, effectively, and as intended,” he says. “We’ve seen that consumers are interested in the activity happening on their network, that they respond to educationally focused efforts, and are thirsty for more information on the amazing new ways to ethically access content where, when, and how they want," he added. As it stands the current system is operational until October, at which point the entertainment industry's partner ISPs on the initiative (AT&T, Verizon, Comcast and Time Warner Cable) need to agree on another expansion of or modification to the program. But expanding the program further is a tough proposition, given many countries have abandoned similar efforts after realizing such programs cause more problems than they "fix." With such systems now out of vogue and politically-powerful ISPs still strongly opposed to footing the bill anyway, it should prove interesting to see just what the entertainment industry's next-generation of ISP-side copyright enforcement will look like. With such systems now out of vogue and politically-powerful ISPs still strongly opposed to footing the bill anyway, it should prove interesting to see just what the entertainment industry's next-generation of ISP-side copyright enforcement will look like.







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Most recommended from 31 comments

Nanaki (banned)

aka novaflare. pull punches? Na

join:2002-01-24

Akron, OH 10 recommendations Nanaki (banned) Member Times change and content creators need to change with them Instead of targeting pirates how about making piracy pointless?



Take tv episodes as a example likely the most "pirated" media next to music or tied with music. Most all if not all tv episodes are released after they air the first time. The first airing of a tv episode is when the company and broadcasters make the majority of their money from the show. For a couple years most of the major broadcasters were releasing their series tv eps a week after air date on their websites to view for free. I watched probably 99% of my tv shows i watch on the networks web site or used some tricks to just download it and watch it on my comp later on. With a vast majority of the money they make well in to likely the mid to high 90% mark what broadcasters and production houses should do is simply put them on line them selves for download on torrent. Include the first air commercials in the dl and let the down loader do the skipping. Pirated copies will cease to exist. Some will download and nuke the commercials and reupload but honestly who really cares?



After that first run the show is bought and paid for and made every one involved plenty of money any how. Movies are a bit different they have various stages of money making one is obviously release week end and the first couple weeks post first week end then blueray then special features. But again most money is made release week then blueray release. Release the digital copy a month or 2 after first week run then the blueray disk version say 6 months after bd is released etc. This would do much to put a big dent in piracy.



Threats wont work even if backed up with legal action to many ways as stated to hide your self online. ISPs are not looking to become internet cops enforcing laws and rules set up by the gov or by the media industry and why should they? mmay149q

Premium Member

join:2009-03-05

Dallas, TX 2 recommendations mmay149q Premium Member When I read this all I could think was Why would the ISP's want to expand this when they're expanding usage caps? Why would I care if you're downloading 1TB of data a month if you're paying me extra for that data anyway? See I think it's currently in the best interests of the ISP's to do away with this because people are going to be more likely to not download torrents if it means paying an extra $10 just to download the cracked Doom 4 game or paying $20 to download a 100GB techno/dubstep/EDM mix for the best of 2014. A lot of Bluray rips are around 20 - 30GB's for the good ones so who is willing going to pay an extra $10 just to download 1 movie and then have to pay an additional $10 for the next one you want if instead you can go to the store and pick them up for the same price or close to it? I know this doesn't STOP piracy, but it will definitely slow it down, and I wouldn't be surprised if that's the other reason caps are in place, makes sense for an ISP, profiting off illegal activity while saying that you're just "managing your network" seems like the perfect BS scheme most ISP's would do anyway...