Copyright alert system (aka the six strikes program)

Naas_Human

http://www.theverge.com/2013/2/23/4021600/isp-six-strikes-piracy-rules-reportedly-set-for-monday-rollout

http://www.dailydot.com/news/copyright-alerts-system-launch-six-strikes/?utm_medium=referral

Basically, ISPs will monitor your bittorrent activity to let media companies know that you're pirating. If the files are suspicious like having a movie title for the filename, you might be forced to watch some anti-piracy video, and perhaps get your speed slowed down. The demo video claims that personal information won't be shared, but what I got was that the media company will be able to see which ip address is downloading what, so I dunno...

Sounds like this will mostly annoy people. And I hear there are ways to bittorrent while hiding what's going on from your ISP anyway. And what if somebody pirates from a public ip, like a cyber cafe? Wouldn't that lead to the operator/owner being punished for the customer(s)? Not to mention inconvenience anyone else using the computers there.

I wasn't sure where to put this, since this seemed more of a ISP thing than a government thing, but it does sorta feel like a political issue.

Also, since I don't live in the U.S., I'm not sure how I'll be affected.

InsanityAddict

Tech-savvy peeps will find ways around it, we'll get sob stories of average Joes being prosecuted, those who push the legislation will be haxxed and doxxed, and protests with too many Reddit meme signs will take place. Rinse, repeat with every new piece of legislation.

delta534

Not much is know about the details but I've heard that it will only be focused on home internet services and will only affect the 5 participating ISP's in the US. This will also only affect bit-torrent so the other piracy methods will still be unaffected. 

ClockworkUniverse

^^It isn't legislation. It's a voluntary watchdog program.

Which is somehow more disturbing, to me.

Alkthash

I'm still baffled by why media companies think this will help them. I mean sure it might cut down on piracy but chances are if somebody is pirating something they either couldn't get it legally or wouldn't buy it in the first place. 

I wonder if they filter out what kinds of stuff is torrented as worth flagging. Like if I just get a torrent of some anime that is just airing, would they bother with it since none of the media companies in support of this would care either way?

DYRE

What happens to those who ignore all warnings?

This is an interesting question. Public information provides no answer but the CCI told TorrentFreak the following:

“The program is intended to educate consumers, taking them through a system that we believe will be successful for most consumers. If a subscriber were to receive 6 alerts, that user would be considered a subscriber the program is unable to reach.”

“If ISPs receive additional allegations of copyright infringement for that user, those notices will not generate alerts under the program,” a CCI spokesperson told us.

In other words, nothing will happen under the program. People who receive more than 6 warnings are removed from the system. They wont receive any further warnings or punishments and are allowed to continue using their Internet service as usual.

(source: TorrentFreak)

Though of course I'm somewhat skeptical of that.

delta534

All detection is being done the media companies so things like anime, games and programs would not be affected. 

DYRE

Actually, (supposedly...)

Who will be monitoring these copyright infringements?

While ISPs take part in the scheme, they are not the ones who will monitor subscribers’ behaviors. The tracking will be done by a third party company such as DtecNet or PeerMedia. These companies collect IP-addresses from BitTorrent swarms and send their findings directly to the Internet providers.

That said yeah I imagine it'll only apply to Hollywood films and major music releases and such.

ClockworkUniverse

things like anime, games and programs would not be affected

Non-localized anime, you're probably right about. Localized, maybe not.

Games...well, I can't honestly picture the games industry getting its shit together enough to work with this program.

Programs? Really, seems like companies like Adobe would be all over this.

DYRE

Localized, maybe not.

Companies like Sentai Filmworks and Media Blasters and Crunchyroll don't even bother sending C&D's.  The only US anime company that I can see getting involved in this is Funimation (and I guess Disney, if they still own the rights to any Ghibli movies), and even then I dunno if they actually will.

ClockworkUniverse

I said maybe. As in "it isn't impossible."

Naas_Human

^^It isn't legislation. It's a voluntary watchdog program.

Which is somehow more disturbing, to me.

Yeah, this does sound like something a little different, although I don't really know how different this would be.

Also, someone on another forum I go to suggested that this might slow down everyone's speed, since ISPs will have to compare every single download to an enormous list of movie titles (and such).

ClockworkUniverse

Also, someone on another forum I go to suggested that this might slow down everyone's speed, since ISPs will have to compare every single download to an enormous list of movie titles (and such).

Nah. They're only monitoring torrents.

Naas_Human

That's still gonna take a good deal of bandwidth, wouldn't it? Things would still have to be matched one-by-one to a massive list of titles, and when you consider the number of people with a computer...

DYRE

They absolutely do not have to check one-by-one.  If they're just matching filenames against a list of filenames for torrents or something, then they'd have to do like, fewer than 30 checks if they had a database of a billion filenames if they're using a binary search tree.  And actually I'm sure they could optimize it to be faster than that.

Naas_Human

By "one-by-one" I meant "every single torrent".

Eh, just seems too tricky. What if the filename matches a movie or album title, but is completely unrelated?

Alkthash

To say nothing of how pirates sometimes rename the files of stuff they are uploading so not to set off search engine hits for a DMCA takedown notice. 

DYRE

It's just one extra operation that takes a negligible amount of time every time someone starts torrenting something.

And if they're checking against a list of filenames as opposed to just movie titles (i.e. they're checking that you're downloading "The.Avengers.2012.1080p.BluRay.DTS-ES.x264-ESiR" as opposed to just anything containing "The Avengers") then it's pretty unlikely they'll get false positives, since most (popular) torrents have a fairly standard and unambiguous naming scheme.

ninjaclown

This operation sounds like too much work, even for them. They are aware how many people pirate things in the US alone, let alone the world?

Formaldehyde

" but chances are if somebody is pirating something they either couldn't get it legally or wouldn't buy it in the first place."



That's giving pirates a little too much credit, if you ask me.

ClockworkUniverse

That's giving pirates a little too much credit, if you ask me.

I think there are probably a lot of cases where someone's pirating because they couldn't get something legally (especially internationally), but the other excuses...don't really hold water to me. Especially with people who pirate high-end modern PC games. What, there are people who can afford a computer that can run the latest Crysis or whatever, but can't afford the game?

MillerCross

Well, access issues are a thing.

I couldn't buy games on steam until I left Colombia because my bank account was not sufficient, for instance. 

And it's not like you can always afford a hard copy. Maybe getting the computer you wanted was a job requirement and it may have caused your budget to become a lot more tight or something. 

ClockworkUniverse

And it's not like you can always afford a hard copy. Maybe getting the computer you wanted was a job requirement and it may have caused your budget to become a lot more tight or something. 

This is true, but I don't think it's the case for most people who say that's why they pirate, if that makes sense.

glennmagusharvey

Filing this thread under Tech.  If you think it should go under Webspace, let me know why.

MillerCross

Pretty sure it should be under webspace, consider it is regarding ISPs and internet downloads

glennmagusharvey

K moving.

DYRE

But it has nothing to do with the web at all other than that people usually locate torrents on websites and this system may possibly make you look at a web page if you're caught.  Otherwise, torrenting has nothing to do with the web.

MillerCross

I'd say that's good enough.

Nyktos

Seems more Tech to me. When I originally suggested Webspace the intent was for talking about other websites, not technology which is tangentially related.

Not that I'm the final arbiter of what belongs there or anything.

glennmagusharvey

^ See that's what I was thinking.  This is more of a technology issue.  But then again it is a web browsing issue.  Ehh, I'll leave it for now and maybe change it in a bit.

DYRE

Oh, actually:

CCI’s content partners – companies that own and develop music, movies and TV shows – join peer-to-peer networks and locate the music, movies or TV shows they have created and own. Once they see a title being made available on the peer-to-peer network, they confirm that it is, in fact, copyrighted content.

After confirming that a file appears to have been shared illegally, content owners identify the Internet Protocol (IP) address used by the computer making the file available. Each IP address belongs to an Internet Service Provider (ISP), so content owners notify the ISP to which the address is assigned and the ISP then passes a Copyright Alert on to its customer.

No personal information about consumers is shared between the content owners and ISPs, and ISPs are not involved in the process of identifying copyrighted content.

From the CCI's website

So basically they're actually doing this exactly the same way they always have been and just giving less harsh punishments if they catch anyone.

So... yeah.