After suing tens of thousands of customers to no avail, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has decided to change tactics. Instead of dragging music downloaders and file-sharers into court, it has somehow convinced ISPs to take on the role of digital policeman (and jury and judge). The WSJ reports:
The decision represents an abrupt shift of strategy for the industry, which has opened legal proceedings against about 35,000 people since 2003. Critics say the legal offensive ultimately did little to stem the tide of illegally downloaded music. And it created a public-relations disaster for the industry, whose lawsuits targeted, among others, several single mothers, a dead person and a 13-year-old girl.
The RIAA will now work with ISPs behind the scenes in what is being described as a three-strikes policy. It will provide the ISPs with information (IP addresses, presumably) identifying accounts suspected of sharing music illegally. The ISPs wil then ask the owners of those accounts to stop. After the third request, the suspected infringer might lose his or her Internet connection.
This approach is certainly better than threatening jail time, but it raises a whole host of new issues. For one thing, what happens when someone is wrongly accused? At least before they had recourse to a court of law. ISPs are not equipped to set up quasi-legal proceedings or hear appeals. It will be much easier for them to simply send out notices and turn off service, and that is what will happen.
As for the recording industry’s bigger underlying problem (the death of the CD business) ,turning the ISPs into a music police does nothing to address it. Let’s just hope they don’t bring back the idea of making everyone pay a music tax through their ISPs.
And while the RIAA may not sue as many consumers in the future, startups trying to forge new paths for music distribution still need to fear its lawyers.
(Image via Marxchivist).
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If you were an Artist would you not be concerned about your revenues?
Imagine only having a few big hits years ago and using those royalties to help you survive and/or support a family.
Some artists are one-hit-wonders, or some older ones got bad deals from their early record companies before current protections and awareness.
Then they need to get a real job and go to work just like everybody else. I did some work at my job in the 90s, but I don’t expect it to keep paying me now. I go to work like a man.
Agreed ^
How many other occupations are there where you can be great for 2 years and then retire when you reach mediocrity? Get a real job.
If you want to live the life of an entertainer…entertain us! What would happen if football players got paid royalties every time someone else copied their end zone dance?
You want to be great for a long time? Sell concert tickets and merchandise. Bands like The Eagles are still selling out concerts… they don’t need the money… true entertainers.
Your exactly right Zoop. Art is for pansies. Get a real job.
Who cares about creativity and all that jazz.
Honestly what do you need $37.5 million for ? http://tinyurl.com/4rdhmc
I agree 100% with Zoop and Josh and especially charbarred - royalties are still being paid.
File sharing has nothing to do with royalties. It has to do with declining record sales. If someone plays you on the radio you’d still get your royalties even if you haven’t sold a record in 20 years.
And yeah, as an artist myself I wouldn’t expect to retire after one hit or at the age of 40. You gotta work for your money.
@Charbarred - took the words out of my mouth. Downloading has nothing to do with what the record industry cares about. The distribution model is changing, their competition is “free distribution”, which is just slightly less then they get now ;), and they aren’t adapting (maybe because as everything is digitized there really is no need for them - a reality they can’t face).
The reality is that bands need to get up and go out on tour to make money. Yes they can circumvent the labels and set up their own distro or give away their records for free. But they will always make more money on the road, playing shows and selling merch.
From a bands point of view, i don’t know that downloading matters all that much. If they are willing to tour and people like their music enough to see their show.
It’s never a good idea to try to solve something in the courts when there are other ways. In this case the piracy issue is better off solved by technology or business models.
what about the death of the recording business as a whole? how much time do they have left? i would guess less than 3 years.
ArtistLocator - find talent
I went to ArtistLocator and found no talent.
funniest. comment. ever.
I read TechCrunch every day, and for whatever reason (lazy I guess) I never checked out locator.com dude’s site. Out of curiosity, I just did. A friggin’ Ning site?? craplocator!!
Stop spamming with your locator bullshit.
NoTalentLocator said it best.
This “three strikes” business would seem to conflict with Net Neutrality.
I think its going to become harder and harder to justify cutting of someones internet access. I wouldn’t go as far as to say its a basic necessity, but some people have their livelihoods based on their access to the internet.
And its only becoming more important to people. I don’t think its correct to mess with that.
Finally, they have realized that poking a hand that feeds is too dangerous for the entire industry.
Someone once said that the RIAA is crippling music startups http://www.nichea.info they could have been right.
Or they’ve realized it’s the Christmas shopping season.
The record exec’s are so far behind the times, it’s almost hilarious, considering at one point music was at the forefront of technology.
I wish these same exec’s would read blogs like this one and stay up to date on world technologies, they certainly missed the train numerous times.
Merry Ho Ho everyone!
Ad Pr Ny, your comment demonstrates either a wholecloth acceptance of the record companies’ misdirectional propaganda or a lack of understanding of where the economics of the “record” industry actually go. The RIAA’s efforts have nothing to do with the “Artist.” Never have. They are about preserving the monopoly of a legacy manufacturing and distribution system using the legal system, in lieu of actually innovating.
*BINGO*
Exactly.
But at least with this movements they will learn how to play the snake game.
1- They might catch you & Inform your ISP on one server
2- You get informed & Move your files to another server (therefore diff. ISP) overnight
3- They “WON”!!!
4- They keep looking & Catch you again
Then, it’s simple you just start from the beginning again!
In between you profit enough
This crap isn’t so easy to track like the RIAA thinks. Machines can be compromised and used to distribute music or other copyrighted material illegally without the PC owners knowledge. So then this IP address gets reported to the ISP and his service is discontinued. Now what? Also IP address can be spoofed as well. This scheme is so stupid and impractical I don’t even know where to begin.
great comment, in my opinion.
if music distribution channels and companies started charging a small monthly fee to access all of their music database people, like myself, would likely pay it to have free and uncoditional access to music. paying per song or per album makes it incredibly tempting to steal.
i do not agree with music theft, supporting the artists is key, but coming to a middle ground would be best.
also, i think the artists have caught on that their music is being stolen, thats why every artist now adays has ringtones, t shirts, shoe deals, etc etc, everyone is trying to be the next jay z, and its getting downright cheesy in my opinion.
we need some industry wide collaboration.
maybe they will make that their news years resolution, i guess we will see wont we…
The average user doesn’t have your wizard-like ability to spoof their IP.
I hope you werent meaning me, I never steal music, nor hide my IP, Im in Vancouver if you really want to know. LOL.
Oops, I missed who you were replying too, I thought you meant me, I will stop commenting on this post now. Sorry.
Steve your right the average user doesn’t understand IP spoofing but it *doesn’t matter* as long as someone else like me understands how to do it. The point is the information being used to implicate users for service discontinuation can be easily forged by those with proper know how. This is the reason why this is a failed policy from the start.
The average user doesn’t understand IP spoofing, which is why this whole thing is very dangerous for the average user.
If Joe User gets a notice from their ISP that they have been sharing music illegally, and Joe User doesn’t use his PC for anything other than email or basic web surfing, then it’s safe to say Joe User may end up getting screwed.
I would like to know what keeps the RIAA from arbitratily picking an IP address and telling the ISP to send them a warning. How do we know that they know what they are doing? We don’t. And they don’t either.
I don’t get it.
What’s in it for the ISP?
They have to allocate staff to do this enforcement, only to threaten to cut off a customer’s service (& lose revenue)?
They’re not set up to be the internet police.
To the contrary Comcast was just this year ordered by the Supreme Court to stop with their packet whacking BS they were pulling to stop people using P2P tech such as bit torrent, simply to save bandwidth. They haven’t really stopped this, they must see something in it.
The US ISPs think rich content is the root of all their bandwidth issues. If they can cut people off (quasi legally), all the better. Comcast doesn’t want you using the bandwidth you paid for to watch multimedia (legal or not), they want you using a few MB/day to read your email and use their VoIP service.
Fortunately, in the US, if you have DSL service, you have alternatives. (AT&T has to open their DSL lines so 3rd parties can also offer you DSL service, which is how I consume my home bandwidth.) Not everyone has a viable DSL solution, so looks like Cable Monopoly wins all around with this one, and the customer gets screwed.
It wouldn’t surprise me if we saw a lot of high-bandwidth consuming customers in areas without competitive DSL service getting dropped.
The EFF should have a field day with this one.
Oh, and special shout out to France, the only EU country willing to consider legislation around this abhorrent concept, giving it legitimacy it doesn’t deserve.
Ugh. I don’t like ISPs monitoring peoples’ connections. That seems like a waste of their resources too.
Actually, this is what was passed into law in New Zealand. It’s called section 92A and 92C. They say that ISPs must disconnect repeat offenders upon a complaint from a legitimate copyright holder.
More here
http://computerworld.co.nz/new.....ection,92a
Most large ISPs already announced they will disconnect mercilessly and ask questions later.
RIAA’s lawyers must be very happy and can’t wait to start auto-generate takedown notices.
This affects websites, as well as end users. E.g. if you published an exert from an AP release longer than what they think is appropriate they would take you down.
If you publish a document exposing some crap of your local Scientology Branch or leak anything online, you’ll be taken down faster than Google can index it.
First ISP to contact me will get dropped like a bad habbit on the spot. I’ve already got my escape plan.
Armageddon bag?
This is what is currently discussed in France !
This is bound to die anyway, the technical problems are impossible to solve unless you kick everyone out !
Also The Pirate Bay will inject fake ip adresses in its trackers so automatic collection is useless !
I can’t believe that this is still an on going battle. If all the heads put their heads together and put their ego’s aside they could come up with a central online location for music downloads and find a way to make it profitable.
Isn’t that called iTunes? Minus the profitable part..
It’s true though, there’s really no point in the ISP’s doing this. I wonder what they’ll do on university campuses…ban the student from being allowed to access his grades when on campus?
Whats going to happen when comcast disconnects 80000 of its users in the first year… the ISPs have a massive conflict of interest here.. doing the right thing is going to hurt their bottom line in a big way.
What a mess. The trend is ultimately that more musicians will realize the benefits of giving away their music for free on sites like ours (http://www.youbeats.com).
This will fail, just like suing customers did. ISP’s will not be unpaid police for recording companies, when many are already struggling to hold onto their own customers.
So what happens when the ISP’s start to realize “Uhhh, hang on now, we just lost $109,446.31 last month cuz we cut off a bunch of our paying customers.”
They find a way to deal with that conflict of interest: have an independant administrative organisation that is in charge of the collection of IP and “sentencing” then order the ISP to shut down the connection or send a letter/mail…..
The customer on the other hand is blacklisted in case he want to switch ISP (that mean anyway paying cancellation fees for the previous ISP… ) and if you do not quit you still have to pay the current FAI !!
the other problem is the monopolies areas give isp providers. Its all bs.
Perhaps the ISP only plan to listen to the RIAA reports selectively.
Example…
ISP gets a bad wrap for trying to put a cap on bandwidth. The people who go nuts with bandwidth each month are most likely downloading some tunes.
ISP use this “partnership” with RIAA to have a license to kick out the abusive customer without getting flack from the public.
If you only pay $50/month for service, but are using 5TB of bandwidth, you are *not a profitable customer* and the ISP now has a more valid excuse to boot you. And they will not miss you.
Austinite said:
“ISP gets a bad wrap for trying to put a cap on bandwidth. The people who go nuts with bandwidth each month are most likely downloading some tunes.”
You cannot judge one’s guilt by how much they download.
Agreed.
But if you soak up a lot of bandwidth AND the RIAA finds your IP address somewhere it shouldn’t be, it starts to look an awful lot like a bloody glove.
My point was only to show a business case for the ISPs to bother with this.
Good — but they should keep up the lawsuits *and* the ISP policing for maximum effectiveness. I think they’ll be back with the lawsuits before long as the ISPs will be overwhelmed administratively and fearful of cutting off customers.
This isn’t just about RIAA but about the fate of all digital content and about getting content creators paid so that it isn’t just computer programmers and IT hacks who are paid while they rip everybody else’s content.
Yes, uh, musicians who continue to get paid for a song they wrote years ago — hey, they should knock that off and get a real job! Software programmers shouldn’t keep getting paid for software they wrote ages ago, either, eh? Rip it all open, I say. And Google, they made it once, why should they keep getting paid? Let them go out and get a job like real men.
This is a great plan for reducing net congestion (ill-named as a demand for “net neutrality”), too.
I hereby nominate the creation of the “TechCrunch Fail Stamp” … to be used on the logo and images of stories, people, actions, industries and startups that clearly fail or don’t get it. I hereby nominate this move by the RIAA to be stamped with the TechCrunch Stamp of Failure.
It is very difficult to prove what kind of content is traveling through an ISP’s network. There are certain signatures that look like file sharing, but it’s another thing to prove that the bytes are illegal. This is going to be a nightmare.
Encoding… encryption… encryption… and more encryption
:D 
They must be totally illiterate of the nowadays technologies.
This is plane of French president mr. Sarkozy, but currently not accepted because of human rights international threats. In EU legislative it is now or it will be in near future acceptable (i was reading about lobbying mr. Sarkozy and Music industry lobbyist)
Well, I guess there is no need to monetize the method of music distribution.
They can always keep to heart that:people can’t use wrong/cloaked IP addresses.
…right.
So the RIAA is threatening the ISPs so much that it is actually in their interest to drastically reduce revenues by eliminating service for MILLIONS of people? Sounds like a great idea… No conflict of interests there. I’m sure the ISPs can’t wait to work hand in hand with the RIAA.
Hopefully the deep-pocketed ISPs will be better able to combat the sinking ship that is the RIAA.
I can’t wait to see the RIAA’s next move once this plan backfires.
How about 15 cent DRM free songs. Case closed.
So the RIAA is threatening the ISPs so much that it is actually in their interest to drastically reduce revenues by eliminating service for MILLIONS of people? Sounds like a great idea. No conflict of interests there. I’m sure the ISPs can’t wait to work hand in hand with the RIAA.
Hopefully the deep-pocketed ISPs will be better able to combat the sinking ship that is the RIAA.
I can’t wait to see the RIAA’s next move once this plan backfires.
Hmm I suppose this is good news for some people but certainly not anyone involved with ISPs for a living.
cut my internet access? Fine. I’ll just steal my neighbor’s unsecured wifi and do it again there.
This is a win for the RIAA because relegating it to the back room means it will get less press than their more high-profile lawsuits.
Artists don’t make most of their money from royalties, they make it from performances. The Internet will evolve into a distribution medium, like radio, that will drive more traffic to smaller artists and force all artists to improvise more (both in their art and in their business models).
For more: http://www.saudiobamania.com/?p=108
This doesn’t represent a change in strategy. The big media conglomerates have been making strategic acquisitions to get control over your internet connection for years.
In the US the ISP sector has been consolidated to the point there are only a handful of major providers. ISPs are no longer independent of the big media conglomerates, they are one and the same. Do you have cable internet? It’s a good bet your ISP is partly owned by Time Warner or some other media company. Comcast together with Sony Pictures actually owns stakes in MGM and United Artists.
Why would the ISPs bother tracking your illegal download of the Dark Knight, you ask? Because they are part of huge media conglomerate that also produced the film.
They dropped the lawsuits of 80 year old grandma’s and 13 year olds because it was just giving them bad press and anyways they don’t need to use the courts anymore to control and monitor what you are doing online because they control your connection. What power do you have? Will you switch to another ISP which is also owned by the big media conglomerates?
Go ahead. “All your base are belong to us!” Muhaahaaahaa!
>Ugh. I don’t like ISPs monitoring peoples’ connections. That seems like a waste of their resources too.
Then stop uploading all those pirated movies and huge WoW patches and stuff, congesting the net? Then no monitoring will be required.
No, JohnR.
>The US ISPs think rich content is the root of all their bandwidth issues. If they can cut people off (quasi legally), all the better. Comcast doesn’t want you using the bandwidth you paid for to watch multimedia (legal or not), they want you using a few MB/day to read your email and use their VoIP service.
And they’re absolutely right. Bandwidth is a scarce resource and needs to be paid for — you don’t keep getting to demand a free ride. They should cut off those who overuse resources, and they should figure out how to meter. You didn’t pay ENOUGH for your “multimedia bandwidth” — that’s absurd. The fees for ISPs are woefully inadequate and ungranulated. They will have to come up with a metered system giving the overuses of the system. It’s no different than electricity. Why would you think you have unlimited access at some flat rate for electricity just because you’re a geek?
>Fortunately, in the US, if you have DSL service, you have alternatives. (AT&T has to open their DSL lines so 3rd parties can also offer you DSL service, which is how I consume my home bandwidth.) Not everyone has a viable DSL solution, so looks like Cable Monopoly wins all around with this one, and the customer gets screwed.
Er, no, that won’t be lasting for long. It’s geekily fashionable to dump on Comcast and demonize them for this, but they are merely the first to be pragmatic about this obvious problem, and others will follow suit. We *will* be seeing pay-to-play and metering just like other forms of media and energy. There’s nothing “special” about the Internet, which is merely a combined form of media and energy. Tripod.com and other sites used to have tiered levels of membership based on the bandwidth consumed by your visitors to your site. That was normal. That is the future.
And you will simply have to restrain your consumption if you don’t have these temporarily gullible other alternatives in your region.
>It wouldn’t surprise me if we saw a lot of high-bandwidth consuming customers in areas without competitive DSL service getting dropped.
Good! They don’t get to force everybody else to a slowdown due to their Bittorent habits. Cut ‘em off, concentrate their little minds wonderfully.
>The EFF should have a field day with this one.
If they do, they’d be terribly copyleftist and ideologically suspect. This issue of net congestion — propagandistically re-named by Lessig and other darlings of the left as “net neutrality” — has nothing to do with freedom of speech. Don’t mistake your sense of entitlement to endless “freedom of consumption” with free speech.
>Oh, and special shout out to France, the only EU country willing to consider legislation around this abhorrent concept, giving it legitimacy it doesn’t deserve.
Well, France has a socialist system. Not every country wants a socialist system. See how France really does with this when the bill comes to pay ultimately.
“darlings of the left as “net neutrality” — has nothing to do with freedom of speech. Don’t mistake your sense of entitlement to endless “freedom of consumption” with free speech.”
Wow, Prokofy Neva has solved the age-old dilemma. (sigh..)
>The big media conglomerates have been making strategic acquisitions to get control over your internet connection for years.
You mean like that big Internet ad agency called Google?
–The US ISPs think rich content is the root of all their bandwidth issues. If they can cut people off (quasi legally), all the better. Comcast doesn’t want you using the bandwidth you paid for to watch multimedia (legal or not), they want you using a few MB/day to read your email and use their VoIP service.
And they’re absolutely right. Bandwidth is a scarce resource and needs to be paid for — you don’t keep getting to demand a free ride. They should cut off those who overuse resources, and they should figure out how to meter. You didn’t pay ENOUGH for your “multimedia bandwidth” — that’s absurd. The fees for ISPs are woefully inadequate and ungranulated. They will have to come up with a metered system giving the overuses of the system. It’s no different than electricity. Why would you think you have unlimited access at some flat rate for electricity just because you’re a geek?
–Fortunately, in the US, if you have DSL service, you have alternatives. (AT&T has to open their DSL lines so 3rd parties can also offer you DSL service, which is how I consume my home bandwidth.) Not everyone has a viable DSL solution, so looks like Cable Monopoly wins all around with this one, and the customer gets screwed.
Er, no, that won’t be lasting for long. It’s geekily fashionable to dump on Comcast and demonize them for this, but they are merely the first to be pragmatic about this obvious problem, and others will follow suit. We *will* be seeing pay-to-play and metering just like other forms of media and energy. There’s nothing “special” about the Internet, which is merely a combined form of media and energy. Tripod.com and other sites used to have tiered levels of membership based on the bandwidth consumed by your visitors to your site. That was normal. That is the future.
>It wouldn’t surprise me if we saw a lot of high-bandwidth consuming customers in areas without competitive DSL service getting dropped.
Good! They don’t get to force everybody else to a slowdown due to their Bittorent habits.
—The EFF should have a field day with this one.
If they do, they’d be terribly copyleftist and ideologically suspect. This issue of net congestion — propagandistically re-named by the left as “net neutrality” — has nothing to do with freedom of speech. Don’t mistake your sense of entitlement to endless “freedom of consumption” with free speech.
>Oh, and special shout out to France, the only EU country willing to consider legislation around this abhorrent concept, giving it legitimacy it doesn’t deserve.
Well, France has a socialist system. Not every country wants a socialist system. See how France really does with this when the bill comes to pay ultimately.
>The US ISPs think rich content is the root of all their bandwidth issues. If they can cut people off (quasi legally), all the better. Comcast doesn’t want you using the bandwidth you paid for to watch multimedia (legal or not), they want you using a few MB/day to read your email and use their VoIP service.
And they’re absolutely right. Bandwidth is a scarce resource and needs to be paid for — you don’t keep getting to demand a free ride. They should cut off those who overuse resources, and they should figure out how to meter. You didn’t pay ENOUGH for your “multimedia bandwidth” — that’s absurd. The fees for ISPs are woefully inadequate and ungranulated. They will have to come up with a metered system giving the overuses of the system. It’s no different than electricity. Why would you think you have unlimited access at some flat rate for electricity just because you’re a geek?
>Fortunately, in the US, if you have DSL service, you have alternatives. (AT&T has to open their DSL lines so 3rd parties can also offer you DSL service, which is how I consume my home bandwidth.) Not everyone has a viable DSL solution, so looks like Cable Monopoly wins all around with this one, and the customer gets screwed.
Er, no, that won’t be lasting for long. It’s geekily fashionable to dump on Comcast and demonize them for this, but they are merely the first to be pragmatic about this obvious problem, and others will follow suit. We *will* be seeing pay-to-play and metering just like other forms of media and energy. There’s nothing “special” about the Internet, which is merely a combined form of media and energy. Tripod.com and other sites used to have tiered levels of membership based on the bandwidth consumed by your visitors to your site. That was normal. That is the future.
>It wouldn’t surprise me if we saw a lot of high-bandwidth consuming customers in areas without competitive DSL service getting dropped.
Good! They don’t get to force everybody else to a slowdown due to their Bittorent habits.
The EFF should have a field day with this one.
If they do, they’d be terribly copyleftist and ideologically suspect. This issue of net congestion — propagandistically re-named by the left as “net neutrality” — has nothing to do with freedom of speech. Don’t mistake your sense of entitlement to endless “freedom of consumption” with free speech.
>Oh, and special shout out to France, the only EU country willing to consider legislation around this abhorrent concept, giving it legitimacy it doesn’t deserve.
Well, France has a socialist system. Not every country wants a socialist system. See how France really does with this when the bill comes to pay ultimately.
HAHA…looks like the recording industry wants to pull down the service provider industry too. If this seriously got initiated, the service providers would be bringing about their own death. So many people would lose their ISP’s (assuming they did this universally to all illegal downloaders), that the ISP’s would see enormous losses in revenue. I would guess they would pick on the biggest bandwidth users first, but then you get into another huge legal battle.
I agree with the second commenter in that they either need to evolve/innovate or get a new job…it’s like trying to save the calendar business at this point…it’s just not a necessary industry.
I’d like to throw in my three cents about this issue. First off, the ISPs tracking your online behavior is a breach of privacy, and in full affect breaches the constitutional right that says one may not have their home or property searched without WARRANT or DUE CAUSE. As everyone learns in high-school or college, the constitution is the law of the country with no one higher, despite what dip shits in congress and the RIAA think. This entire thing could be solved with a few not o nice letters or a good ol’ visit to the supreme court, as long as said person knows how to use the constitution to it’s potential.
I’d like to say I don’t agree with file sharing, but I also try to be very centre minded in my own thinkings with issues such as this. The RIAA is full of morons… From personal experience… all ISP providers have only morons working at them… I say, screw them, everyone has a right to choose to torrent or not. Even music ARTISTS hate the RIAA. Disturbed has said it themselves, and left a former record label due to it’s connection to the RIAA. If the musicians move away from something, there’s obviously something wrong.
Lastly, I would like to say that the RIAA is full of corrupt and greedy bastards. People that produce CDs make almost nothing, and the RIAA pockets most of the profit. I know the guys from Bloody Sunday, and they made little profit from CDs, maybe 10 cents each one (Yes, it is true.) though they sold thousands o copies. Meanwhile, I talked to my Hot Topic friend and, the same CD they got 10 cents for, comes into store for about 7-8 dollars. That um… 7.90 difference was NOT the shipping cost, gimme a frickin break. All of these people are corrupt and need to be shut down. If the world DOES need to turn to torrenting, let them. The RIAA is not a honest corporation, and neither are the movie industries. If I could find a youtube vid, I’d show you what I mean. I’ll find it later an put it here. In it a guy is selling the movies he produced, pirated for 5 bucks a copy. He makes more that way than through the company. Yeah, it’s a real video, nothing fake. I make sure to do my research before believing anything.
It’s the 21st century, people get their vital communication services through the internet, such as VOIP phone including 911 service. If an ISP just cuts my internet without court order or due process, and as a consequence I cannot make 911 calls, this is a serious problem and their fineprint will not protect them in court. There should be a place on the net to gather for people that have been cut off to file class action against the ISPs.
Well, this is just the same Europe is discussing all the time. We just fought off some new approach this summer to avoiding to get this into some EU guidelines recently (there was even more in there, like only running lawful applications. That basically would have killed off open source. Welcome back, trusted computing!)
The technical problems are of course clear: How can you differ between lawful and non-lawful content? Only a judge can do that. But judges have to much to decide on this topic so the industry thinks they can automate it.
What I found more alarming though is the fact that we talk about people cutting off the internet. Automatically. What can you do in the future without having internet? Nothing!
And just because the music industry is unwilling to adjust their business model?
ISPs tracking your onling uploading and downloading isn’t a breach of privacy, any more than your electric company tracking your consumption of electricity is a breech of privacy.
ISPs do not care about the content, they care about the type of content, it’s external packaging, i.e. a big file for a game or a movie. That’s all. No need to start invoking Christians needing to download Bibles and all the other underhanded tactics that the copyleftists use on this campaign for “net neutrality” which should be called “campaign for net congestion”.
The RIAA isn’t going above the Constitution, any more than the police are going above the Constitution if they raid a shop off Broadway that has Gucci knock-offs. Crime is crime; theft is theft. It’s not about privacy and free speech, your right to those rights doesn’t extend into commiting crimes with them.
It’s customary for geeky copyleftists on blogs like this to say RIAA and ISPs are evil. But they aren’t in any demonstrable way, just because they protect private property which you technocommunists think you have a right to endlessly. They are merely protecting the interests
of creators. That’s ok. That’s how they make a living.
The people who produce CDs need to be paid, but they aren’t the ones paying for the advertising and the distribution. And that’s why CDs cost more, and that’s why RIAA protects *those* investments as well. And if you a musician can just go sell his CD on a Myspace page, well, uh, try that, and see if it works *for the majority*. The system may not be one you like, but it’s one that has worked. If in fact you could really access good artists without any PR middleman, CDs and the RIAA would have completely disappeared by now. But…they haven’t. Deal with it.
7.90 isn’t a “shipping cost” you moron, it’s the cost of everything involved in production, the plastic, the factor, the pressing of the CDs, the shipping, marketing, distribution, accounting, inventory, etc. etc. Have you ever worked in a real-life business with marketing and inventory, or do you just code and sit and download tunes all day?
You are laughable, with your fake research. The most popular YouTubes are often movies that people had to invest fantastic sums to make, with huge costs, and people steal them. So the companies are right to sue YouTube. Get a life.
Markus, you must not anticipate having any real serious emergency if you are leaving your option to call 911 to VOIP on the Internet. Um, you don’t have a land line or cell phone?
Yes I could very well decide for economical reasons to just have Vonage and nothing else to make phone calls. Or we have just one cel, and my wife took it shopping while I’m at home having an emergency. Or I can’t find my cel right when I need to call 911. Either way, we depend more and more on the internet these days, and just cutting it off at a mere suspicion is not a legally sound practice.
yes, I have Steve. I’ve said something that nobody, nobody, nobody ever says about this “net neutrality” idiocy. That it is NOT about free speech, even though the ACLU, EFF, and various copyleftists like Doctorow and Lessig claim it is.
Document that please?
Because what it’s demonstrably about is CONSUMPTION. Why do you believe that you are entitled to endless consumption?
Whether a Bible concordance, a WoW patch, a pirated movie, an instructional movie, or the software with which you will call 9/11, it doesn’t matter, the net IS ALREADY neutral to their CONTENT; what it is NOT neutral is to their CONSUMPTION. Consume a lot — pay a lot, or be blocked.
Christian, why can’t you adjust your thieving habits and over-consumption habits, instead of making companies that provide services “adjust their business model”.
And…that model for making opensource stone soup out of freebie music downloads is…what again? Um, selling some t-shirts?
Prokofy, nobody cares about what you have to say. Quit triple, quadruple posting to try and spread your stupidity. Who are you to say how people should spend their time on the internet? If I want to play online games or read my email and I pay to access it, I should be allowed to do that. None of this “bandwidth regulation” crap. You go about this like YOUR personal internet use is more important than everyone else.
Thanks for this comment LT. Prokofy is some kind of ISP rep and a douche. Also he has misconstrued the situation of evil bandwidth caps and throttling from the ISP’s as being a way to control consumption when the real goal is to create unequal access to the internet and control peoples ability to communicate and do business on the internet. The way it is now a small business can compete with Google if they create the right product but under Prokofy’s watch Google could just spend more money to have more favorable server bandwidth while the smaller business gets throttled.
“For one thing, what happens when someone is wrongly accused? At least before they had recourse to a court of law. ISPs are not equipped to set up quasi-legal proceedings or hear appeals. It will be much easier for them to simply send out notices and turn off service, and that is what will happen. ”
Im not a lawer but….
Surely if your Innocent and your ISP cut’s your connection this would be a DOS attack by the ISP against you? or at the very least, unless the ISP’s word there contracts well, a breach of contract?