The White House likes the newly announced "six strikes" voluntary agreement announced today between major copyright holders and Internet access providers. That's no surprise—the US administration helped to broker the deal.

"The joining of Internet service providers and entertainment companies in a cooperative effort to combat online infringement can further this goal [of supporting jobs and exports] and we commend them for reaching this agreement," said Victoria Espinel, US Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator, in a statement today. "We believe it will have a significant impact on reducing online piracy."

Espinel is professionally interested in copyright online; Vice President Joe Biden is more of a copyright hobbyist ("piracy is flat, unadulterated theft") who has convened White House meetings to talk about infringement. It was therefore no real surprise to learn a few weeks ago that the White House had played a behind-the-scenes role (along with New York's Andrew Cuomo) in bringing together the content owners and ISPs to hash out a voluntary agreement.

While ISPs were for years seen more like the "common carriers" of yore, who ran a network and were generally not responsible for policing the uses of that network, government sentiment in key quarters is changing. And not just in the US—at the recent high level OECD Internet conference in Paris, the concluding document stressed ISPs' duty to halt bad behavior.

"Sound Internet policy should encompass norms of responsibility that enable private sector voluntary cooperation for the protection of intellectual property," said the text. "Appropriate measures include lawful steps to address and deter infringement, and accord full respect to user and stakeholder rights and fair process."

Can any such government-brokered agreement truly be "voluntary" when the implicit threat of legislation accompanies any failure to strike a deal? Whatever the pressure brought to bear on ISPs, in their press statements today several seemed pleased at heading off the prospect of possibly more onerous rules (see: France and the UK) from the government.

To "win the future," Espinel wants to marry the new plan with "increased law enforcement and educational awareness" on the government's part. She does make clear that the private deal will require "ongoing consultations with privacy and freedom of expression advocacy groups to assure that its practices are fully consistent with the democratic values that have helped the Internet to flourish."

This is a measure that will be watched internationally. As global music trade group IFPI put it today in a statement, "The agreement also sends an important signal internationally. It adds to the momentum already created by initiatives such as graduated response and blocking of infringing websites in other countries, and is the latest mark of recognition that ISP cooperation is the most effective way of addressing online piracy."

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What's the limit to ISP intermediaries doing private enforcement? It remains unclear. Both Espinel and the content industries favor schemes to deputize intermediaries to police behavior in ways that would have been anathema to the old telephone companies. Today, ISPs will take action against subscribers based on repeated allegations of copyright infringement; tomorrow, they might be approached to help with auction fraudsters, corporate hackers, those accused of repeated libel or defamation, or child pornographers.

ISPs already do this under court order, of course, and some also take these kinds of measures voluntarily upon request (such as blocking child porn links, spammers, etc.). Today's agreement matters not because it's necessarily new—ISPs have been forwarding notices and even disconnecting customers for years—but because it marks a public, coordinated, standardized national effort to get intermediaries involved in enforcement against actions taking place on their networks.

Such intermediary enforcement isn't necessarily bad in principle—ISPs are a natural Internet choke point where pressure can be applied to the 'Net, and sometimes pressure can address crime and bad behavior (see Tim Wu and Jack Goldsmith's book Who Controls the Internet? for much more on this theme).

And today's announcement has been greeted without instant denunciation by groups like Public Knowledge and the Center for Democracy & Technology—no mean feat. (Though CDT did note, "We believe that it would be wrong for any ISP to cut off subscribers' Internet access, even temporarily, based on allegations that have not been tested in court.")

But there's a huge, obvious risk to piling up the obligations on intermediaries, who begin taking action against people without court orders and in areas in which they may have no technical expertise. (While appeal mechanisms are available, the new infringement agreement is a "guilty until proven innocent" approach.) ISPs dealing with spam and viruses and DDoS attacks is one thing; ISPs dealing with copyright, speech, and fair use issues is another entirely.

Today's focus on "education" is therefore an encouraging one, but the "mitigation" measures ISPs will start taking raise key questions. How far we want ISPs to go in private enforcement actions that might target speech, communications, and even Internet access itself is a debate well worth revisiting in light of today's news—and the White House support for such approaches.