The Center for Copyright Information. Sounds good doesn’t it? A place where you can get information about Copyright. But it isn’t. This unholy alliance between the copyright cartels and ISPs, is trying to create laws they control.

The plan

A third party company is going to monitor torrents of popular files, record IP addresses, and submit those matching member ISPs to the ISP. The ISP then sends a Copyright Alert System notice to the person who pays the bill. They want you to think of them as helpful notices, like when the bank alerts you to possible fraud on your account. When you get your 4th, 5th or 6th notice… things change. The ISPs each get to pick their own methods of “Mitigation Methods”, while there is no common system of these in place, they can include:

throttling down your speed;

sending you a scary message that the cartels can sue you and they will gleefully hand over your details if a court orders it;

blocking popular websites until you complete an educational program about copyright.

They claim disconnection is not a possible option.

Now if you think you got one of these notices in error, you can challenge the notice. You have to pay $35 to them, and pick one of a few limited responses they allowed you. This is then reviewed by an Arbitrator, who decided if the notice is legit or not.

Lets go over some of the problems here

The company gathering the information is MarkMonitor who acquired DtecNet. Lets then look at their amazing history:

If this is such a wonderful system, why all the secrecy? Given the RIAA’s wonderful history with this sort of tech… One would think they would be much more open about it to remove any doubts as to how the system works and how accurate it is. But instead we have a secret system, pushing different punishments on consumers on mere allegations, and it costs you money to challenge their findings with an arbitrator who I have severe reservations about being able to crawl through code to verify the veracity of statements being made.

But then these are the same people who wanted to break the Internet to protect an outdated business model, have ICE running raids of websites, went after a $10 Million government handout to make sure they could get ICE to do more, wanted police to have the right to search mp3 players and make sure all of the music was licensed, and a bunch of other really stupid stuff.

Here is the really sick thing…

The IP gathering here is the same as what the trolls are doing now. Except the cartels don’t have to pay $350 to file a case.

They don’t have to even prove any uploading or downloading happened. (Not that they could as IP spoofings been around since the first time the RIAA sued everyone on the Internet.)

They don’t have to send out a DMCA notice affirming the facts.

They just have to say your subscriber did it… and you get a black mark against your name.

Doesn’t matter if your Wi-Fi was open or hacked, you are at fault.

Doesn’t matter if it was the neighbors’ kid visiting, you are at fault.

Doesn’t matter… you are always at fault because the ISP’s Terms of Service and Acceptable Use Policies are the “law.”

This also allows them to avoid having to prove who did it, and get bogged down in justice and fairness.

But wait, TAC, where is the Government stopping this obvious antitrust case?

“The joining of Internet service providers and entertainment companies in a cooperative effort to combat online infringement can further this goal and we commend them for reaching this agreement. We believe it will have a significant impact on reducing online piracy,” said U.S. Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator Victoria Espinel.

They picked a “board” to help them deal with privacy issues and such, and they are very clear that the cartels never know the names… except they are ignoring some of what the board is saying and the board is rubber stamping this monstrosity.

But wait, TAC, they had experts look over their system and prove it was accurate!

Yeah.. about that “expert”… Ernesto at TorrentFreak.com followed a tip I submitted about them formerly being lobbyists for the RIAA. And he uncovered something I had missed…

Stroz Friedberg is indeed a technology expert, but the group was also the RIAA’s lobbying firm for half a decade. Between 2004 and 2009 Stroz Friedberg lobbied extensively in Washington on behalf of the RIAA. This consulting job earned the company more than half a million dollars ($637,000). One of the leading lobbyists on record was Executive Managing Director Beryl Howell, who lobbied U.S. Congress and Senate for copyright laws regarding digital music.

Now if you follow copyright trolls you know the name Beryl Howell and curse it like the rest of us do. She believes that an IP address is a proof of infringement, that ISPs aren’t doing enough to stop “piracy,” and that people don’t have the right to fight against copyright trolls getting their names to try and extort money.

So the promised review of the tech… done by a company who the RIAA pays well… Not the guys who tore apart IP monitoring at the University, but people who stand to lose a client.

Yep… seems legit to me.

What can we do?

So it might be time to reach out to those morons you voted for, and ask them why corporations get to make their own laws now.

Copyright law and the overreach with it has gotten stupid… but this one this takes the cake.

Why are we letting them slip SOPA into being the law of the internet?

Why are we allowing accusations to be taken as fact?

Why are we paying billions to fund companies who are supposed to be supplying the digital super highway, who instead are going to become the private enforcer of the copyright cartels?

They call the program “6 strikes,” because Americans would riot if they tried 3 strikes here. They quickly claimed disconnection was off the table, yet the words still exist in the memorandum of understanding they signed to form this.

Take a look at 3 strikes around the globe, and see the abject failure it has become.

The French are going to abandon their vaunted program after taking one customer to court… who had to pay for his wife downloading music… because it was his connection. He didn’t know, wasn’t involved, but he was punished as if he had done it.

In New Zealand they just dropped their first case after turning it into a giant clusterfuck. The young lady who’s name is on the bill and claims innocence is left hanging after wasting time, effort and money to defend her good name against a claim that suddenly wasn’t 100% perfect. But they did manage to compute damages she should pay… except those were nowhere in the law allowing their 3 strikes program and it was an arbitrary inflated number… sort of like a copyright trolls “win” where they talk about the huge amount they won on paper to scare other people into settling the case for less.

A copyright troll can capture an IP address, but then they have to go to court, file a lawsuit and have the case tried on the merits. (Well, in a perfect world.)

Why are we allowing the cartels to make allegations, based on secret methods, and get the ISPs to do anything all? Corporations do not get to make laws and force them on people, they have to do it the old fashioned way… they have to bribe the Congress. Remind your congresscritter today that the elections are coming and if they don’t act to stop this… maybe their replacement will.

I’m TAC… I think this is fucking horrible, and if you agree you will tell friends, family, and your congresscritter this is wrong and needs to be stopped. Some of these ISPs are the only game in town in many areas, so we can’t vote with our wallets.

End the cartels reign of terror, or learn to accept only what the cartels decide your allowed to access on the net.