Major U.S. ISPs Launch Anti-Piracy System: ‘6 Strikes And We’ll Throttle You’

A long promised U.S. Copyright Alert System (CAS) finally went live earlier today. Starting with Comcast and followed by AT&T, Cablevision,Time Warner, and Verizon later this week, major ISP's will issue escalating punishments to suspected P2P infringers, reducing their connection speeds after 5 or 6 offenses.

While agreeing to educate, send notices and throttle bandwidth, the ISPs have not agreed to shut off offending consumers. Content partners can begin sending notices of alleged P2P copyright infringement to ISPs today.

Depending on the service provider, the ISP’s range of actions may include:

A temporary reduction in Internet speed;

A temporary downgrade in Internet service tier or

Redirection to a landing page for a set period of time, until a subscriber contacts the ISP or until the subscriber completes an online copyright education program.

Though not functional for today's launch, a process is being put in place for consumers to rebut charges of infringement. This video explains how CAS works:

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