Piracy has been made into a huge issue thanks to cabals like the RIAA and MPAA. For many years, court was where the battles between pirates and copyright organizations were held. Thankfully, that is becoming more of a rarity. However, copyright enforcement is moving to the venue of ISPs, and that might be even worse.

The Center for Copyright Information (CCI), a euphemistically named collaboration between the RIAA, MPAA, Verizon, Comcast, Time Warner, and Cablevision, came up with a six-strike system that involves multiple warnings to users caught pirating content. TorrentFreak is reporting that Verizon will actually be throttling the download speed of repeat offenders for a limited period of time. As expected, users aren’t happy about this, and it’s easy to understand why. People following this news are not pleased that these ISPs are so willingly cooperating with these copyright enforcers instead of taking action only when a court demands it.

The first two strikes for piracy result in warning emails sent to the owner of the account. The third and fourth strikes lead to popups that the user must interact with in order to continue using their connection. The fifth and sixth strikes are when the hammer is brought down. For two to three days, download speeds will be throttled significantly. After that, the ISPs are likely to take stronger actions, for example, it’s a lot easier to just turn off your service than to deal with the MPAA or RIAA’s incessant complaints about problem downloaders.

Interestingly, the CCI leadership went out of their way to note that this doesn’t work with all avenues piracy. Using a VPN or other obfuscating methods will thwart their efforts, but they don’t seem to care. This is clearly going after casual pirates — the low-hanging fruit. While they’re undoubtedly still working on ways to defeat the more advanced methods, prioritizing average Joes downloading the latest Lady Gaga tunes is very smart. It’s a lot easier to scare away casual pirates than it is to take down people who consider piracy a lifestyle choice.

While the biggest ISPs are the only ones taking part in this mess right now, smaller ISPs are going to be invited to take part soon. Many people in the US only have one option for broadband, so they can’t switch away to a different ISP that doesn’t participate in the CCI. If smaller ISPs join up as well, even those with a selection of ISP choices will be left out in the cold. If this doesn’t sit right with you, your best bet is to write your ISP and local politicians. If you have the option to switch to a non-CCI ISP, you can do that as well. Don’t be surprised if that option disappears soon, though. The only way the ISPs are going to change their minds is if they’re forced to by the law or by the bottom line.

[Image credit: internets_dairy & timlewisnm]