Why Hollywood's Six Strike Plan Should Be Investigated For Antitrust Violations

from the good-points dept

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With there being renewed interest in the questionable deal between the RIAA/MPAA and the US's largest ISPs to set up a "six strikes" graduated response plan to cause trouble for those accused (not convicted) of file sharing, some are beginning to realize that the whole plan deserves serious antitrust scrutiny . After all, you have the representatives of two major industries getting together in a room to collude on a plan that will make internet accessfor users.On top of that, since it's based on mere accusations (not convictions) -- and those accusations will come from a company with a terrible track record for accuracy -- you'll have to pay to challenge a strike and (most ridiculous of all) if you do challenge it, you are limited to just six defenses -- significantly less than are allowed under copyright law. That is, if the work is in the public domain, but published after 1923,under the plan. In other words, not only does the plan involve collusion among multiple big industries, but at the outset it assumes guilt before innocence, makes you pay to claim you're innocent, and won't even let you use basic defenses afforded to you under existing copyright law.All of that seems of questionable legality. It also makes the White House's direct involvement in brokering this plan look even worse. And, once again, it makes us wonder why the real stakeholders, internet users, weren't given a seat at the table. If they were, perhaps this would have been avoided.Of course, given the White House's involvement in brokering the deal, there doesn't seem much likelihood that the Attorney General will bother to scrutinize the agreement, since it would effectively be challenging his own boss.That said, the article linked above suggesting that an antitrust inquiry seems necessary is written by Sean Flaim, and is based on his even more thorough research paper detailing why this program needs to be reviewed for antitrust violations. Unfortunately, the chances of that actually happening are still pretty slim.

Filed Under: antitrust, collusion, five strikes, graduated response, isps, six strikes

Companies: mpaa, riaa