AT&T Ignores Numerous Pitfalls, Begins Kicking Pirates Off Of The Internet

from the raging-over-reaction dept

We've noted for years how kicking users offline for copyright infringement is a terrible idea for a myriad of reasons. Severing access to what many deem an essential utility is not only an over-reaction to copyright infringement, but a potential violation of free speech. As France quickly learned it's also a technical nightmare to implement. Most pirates hide their traffic behind proxies and VPNs, and even if you kick repeat offenders offline, you then need systems to somehow track them between ISPs. There's also the fact that entertainment industry accusations of guilt are often based on flimsy to nonexistent evidence.

None of this is stopping AT&T, which this week quietly indicated they were going to start kicking some users off the internet for copyright infringement for the first time in the company's history.

Axios was the first to break the story with a comically one-sided report that failed to raise a single concern about the practice of booting users offline for copyright infringement, nor cite any of the countless examples where such efforts haven't worked or have gone poorly. I talked a little to AT&T about its new plan, who confirmed to me that while they'd still been sending "graduated warnings" to users after the collapse of the "six strikes" initiative, this policy of actively kicking users offline is entirely new (coming right on the heels of the company's $89 billion acquisition of Time Warner).

Though this doesn't make the idea any better, it's arguably difficult to get on AT&T's bad side under this new program. According to the company, users will need to ignore nine different warnings about copyright infringement before they lose access. AT&T repeatedly tried to make it clear that the actual users getting kicked offline (around a dozen to start) will be relatively minor.

“Based on the notices we received, we identified the customer on the account and shared with them the information we received” from copyright holders, AT&T said. “We also reached out to the customer to educate them about copyright infringement and offer assistance to help prevent the activity from continuing.” According to AT&T, a “small number of customers” who keep receiving warnings “despite our efforts to educate them” could suddenly find themselves without an internet connection.

While the actual number of users who lose their connections will be minor to start, it's the precedent that remains the problem.

Back in 2013 you'll recall that the entertainment and broadband industries joined forces to create the copyright alert system, or "six strikes." Under that program, users were hit with an escalating number of warnings, and in some instances had their connections throttled or temporarily suspended until users acknowledged receipt of arguably one-sided entertainment industry "education" materials. The program was also widely criticized because users had to pay a $35 fee just to contest potentially-false accusations.

While the argument was that this program would scare users straight and dramatically reduce piracy, the data suggests it didn't accomplish much of anything, and by early 2017 the program had died a relatively quiet death. The entertainment industry's lesson from this adventure should have been that these efforts are a waste of time and that that this time and money should be spent on building better, cheaper alternatives to piracy. Instead, they've concluded the solution is to take this same system and make it even heavier-handed, a goal they've been steadily working toward in the years since.

The result has been numerous lawsuits against smaller ISPs like Cox and Grande Communications, insisting they should lose their safe harbor liability protections under Section 512(i) of the DMCA if they don't follow through on threats to kick users offline. And while the entertainment industry may have had some legal success on this front thanks to several legal screw ups by Cox and a particularly confused judge who believes (in stark contrast to everyone else) that 512(i) applies to ISPs, that doesn't magically mean kicking users off of the internet for copyright infringement actually helps anything or is a good idea.

And while larger ISPs that similarly have an eye on being broadcasters (like Verizon and Comcast) have actually occasionally stood up for users and recognized the perils of ISPs becoming speech and copyright nannies, AT&T, ever the pinacle of anti-consumer sentiment and bad behavior in telecom, clearly has no such reservations.

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Filed Under: account termination, copyright, kicked off the internet, piracy, repeat infringer

Companies: at&t