The Copyright Alert System, a program of escalating warnings and prods against people suspected of online copyright infringement, is finally going into effect this week, more than a year and a half after the plan was announced as part of an agreement between the entertainment industry and five major Internet service providers.

The Center for Copyright Information, the organization created to administer the system, announced on Monday that the Internet providers would begin putting it in place “over the course of the next several days,” though it gave no specifics. The Internet companies are AT&T, Cablevision, Comcast, Verizon and Time Warner Cable.

In the alert system, media companies monitor online traffic through a third party and can complain to Internet providers if a file is downloaded illegally. The suspected violator is then given up to six warnings, some of which carry “educational” messages and must be acknowledged. After the fifth and sixth warnings, the customer’s Internet speed can be slowed to a crawl.



The Center for Copyright Information says it will not ask for repeat offenders’ Internet access to be blocked, but most service providers have the right to do that if a customer violates its terms of service. The findings can be contested for a $35 fee, to be refunded if an appeal is successful.

The introduction of the alert system has been notably slow. Nearly a year passed before the group had a leader in place, and its own prediction failed when it said in October that the system would be coming in two months. Part of the reason for that might be the relationships between media companies and Internet service providers, which in the past have often been adversarial over issues of piracy and control.

So-called graduated response programs like the Copyright Alert System have been tried in other countries, with mixed results. France’s Hadopi law, passed in 2009, set up a system of three “strikes,” culminating in a fine. More than a million warnings have been issued through that plan, but a recent government report said that its effects were “hard to evaluate precisely.”