Piracy is a problem that needs to be dealt with. I don’t think
anybody is going to refute that. Where people are divided is how we
actually deal with this problem. After years of reputation destroying
legal battles against
dead people and
little girls, copyright owners think they have an answer.
On Monday, the
Copyright Alert System,
or “Six Strikes”, went into affect across the five biggest ISPs in the
U.S. The system hopes to catch those pirating content over P2P networks,
and send them a notice detailing their infringement. The hope is that
those who are caught will start using legal alternatives.
Do you think the Copyright Alert System will work? Will people truly stop pirating content after receiving an alert? Let us know in the comments.
To better understand the CAS, we have to look at what the Center for Copyright Information is doing with it. First, there are
three tiers to the CAS
that consumers should be aware of with each tier having two levels
within it. The three tiers are as follows – educational alerts,
acknowledgement alerts and mitigation measures.
The first two warnings – “educational alerts” – tell consumers
they’ve been caught. The email will then direct them to legitimate
sources of content with the hopes that the early warnings are enough to
scare people into buying content.
The next two warnings step it up a notch with what’s called
“acknowledgement alerts.” The first two alerts were simply emails, but
these next two will actually hijack your browser. You will be hit with a
message telling you that you’ve been caught yet again, and must
acknowledge that you’ve been caught before you can start browsing.
The next two tiers, and presumably every alert afterwards, will be
“mitigation measures.” In essence, the ISPs will begin throttling your
bandwidth or blocking Web sites you frequently visit. The ISPs will not
be able to cut off your Internet connection under the plan.
For a visual explanation, here’s the CCI’s soothing jazz version:
The actual specifics of these tiers will be different across the five
ISPs participating in the CAS. We don’t know what every alert will look
like, but
Ars Technica did manage to get a hold of
what Comcast’s alerts would look like.
As you would expect, the CAS hasn’t exactly garnered many fans.
New Jersey Gubernatorial candidate Carl Bergmanson recently spoke out against it by saying ISPs have no right to monitor what you download:
“The internet has become an essential part of living
in the 21st century, it uses public infrastructure and it is time we
treat it as a public utility. The electric company has no say over what
you power with their service, the ISPs have no right to decide what you
can and can not download”.
The EFF
has also come out swinging against CAS. The group says the system
presents a number of troubling statements that don’t just hurt Internet
users but the Internet for itself. For instance, the group points out
that the CCI Web site tells people to lock down their Wi-Fi connections
so others don’t pirate on your connection. The EFF sees this as an
attack on the open Wi-Fi movement and it would be especially troublesome
for those who do share their Internet connections with others, like
small businesses.
Small businesses are where we run into the biggest problems. The CCI
says that rights holders won’t target open Wi-Fi networks run by
businesses. Your local Starbucks or Panera Bread are safe as they run
off of a business network. The problem comes in the form of small
businesses like a local coffee shop or bakery that runs free Wi-Fi off
of a residential network. These businesses will be held liable for the
actions of its consumers.
The CCI argues that it won’t hurt small businesses running
residential networks because the CAS will never terminate an Internet
connection. That’s entirely true, and it’s good that copyright owners
didn’t go as far to request that ISPs terminate connections. The
problem, however, lies in the fact that the fifth warning and afterwards
will either block popular Web sites or throttle connections. For a
small business that has multiple customers all on the same network,
that’s just as good as shutting off the connection. People who want to
use the Internet at these places will find it too much of a pain and
take their business elsewhere.
Do you think the CAS will hurt small businesses? Or do you think the EFF and other groups are just exaggerating? Let us know in the comments.
This all brings us to the question of whether or not the CAS will
even stop piracy. That’s obviously the goal, but it doesn’t look like an
attainable one at the moment. In fact, the CAS is its own biggest enemy
in the war on piracy.
The alerts obtained from Comcast all have one troubling thing in
common. They don’t list any of the alternative, legal sources for
content. The main point of the program is to educate consumers on legal
alternatives, and it can’t even do that. Consumers receiving the alert
with no prior knowledge of the system will most likely see it as a scam
email and won’t act upon it. Later tiers require consumers to watch an
educational video on copyright, but it doesn’t say whether these videos
will present legal alternatives.
Fortunately, legal alternatives are doing a good enough job stopping piracy themselves. A recent report from the NPD found that
legal alternatives like Spotify were driving music piracy down.
It proves once again that easy access at a fair price can beat out
piracy any day. Heck, the proliferation of streaming services even gave
the music industry its first raise in revenue since 1999.
So why do copyright owners think the CAS will work? Do they really
expect piracy rates to magically drop once the alerts start flying out?
Past examples would suggest that no such thing would happen. In fact,
previous efforts on the part of copyright owners to curtail piracy have
had the opposite effect. Just look at the
shutdown of Megaupload or the
blocking of The Pirate Bay in the UK. Both cases actually saw an increase in piracy.
At this point, it’s still too early to tell how much the CAS will
actually accomplish. At best, copyright owners will be able to proclaim
that piracy rates are down as more people either use VPNs or move off of
P2P and onto Usenet or
Mega.
At worst, consumers revolt and ISPs drop it after seeing that it’s
costing them customers. Either way, piracy isn’t going anywhere.
About Zach Walton
Zach Walton is a Writer for
WebProNews. He specializes in gaming and technology. Follow him on
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+Zach Walton
Resource: http://www.webpronews.com/will-the-six-strikes-copyright-alert-system-actually-stop-piracy-2013-03
