(MintPress) — With the growing crackdown on large-scale Internet piracy and copyright protections, recent reports suggest the oft-delayed Copyright Alert System will be implemented by Internet Service Providers (ISPs) by the end of the year. The “six strike” program, as it is commonly referred to as, would make ISPs send alerts to its users if it finds the account is being misused for actions such as piracy. The foundation of the program, however, is in question as France begins quantifying the effectiveness of its three-strike program implemented in 2009.
Under the system to be implemented in the United States, a third party such as the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), Walt Disney Studios, Sony Pictures and other entertainment corporations would monitor file-sharing networks and collect IP addresses of those suspected of pirating and copyright infringement. The IP addresses would then be reported to their respective ISPs, which would trigger a copyright alert and begin the alert system between the ISP and user.
Jill Lesser, head of the Center for Copyright Information (CCI), told Ars Technica that the project was slated to be unrolled before the end of the year after being delayed last December and this past June. She noted that the program was created with the intention of explaining to the Internet user that what they are doing is illegal.
“It is not a six strikes program,” Lesser said. “This is an educational program; there are a series of educational alerts that will be sent out to subscribers.”
The system in action
The Copyright Alert System’s primary focus is peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing, describing a network of computers where individuals can download, upload and share files found on the users’ respective machines.
The Center for Copyright Information (CCI) has posed a hypothetical scenario of what each of the six alerts of the system could look like. While each alert is largely the same in its content, ISPs are allowed to word each measure as they see fit. The first alert would likely be an email notifying the user of potential misuse from their account. A second alert would simply act as a reminder to the previous message.
A third alert becomes more invasive, as an online component such as a pop-up notice or landing page would require the user to acknowledge they received the letter in order to further use the Internet. A fourth alert would rehash the language in the third while the fifth alert allows the ISP to become more hands on. The ISP would then have the jurisdiction to reduce the user’s Internet speed or other measures determined by the ISP. The sixth and final alert would act as a final warning and give the ISP full authority on how to handle the situation as the user would no longer be under the Copyright Alert System.
“This Copyright Alert System protects a consumer’s essential services and does not, under any circumstance, require the ISP to terminate an Internet subscriber’s account,” CCI said. “ISPs are not required to impose any mitigation measure that could disable a subscriber’s essential Internet or other services, such as telephone service (to call 911), email or security or health service.”
Once a user is out of the system, however, the ISP may alter services as it sees fit, or turn the user over to authorities. CCI acknowledges that those instances would likely be rare and would only be triggered by a large-scale number of downloads or participation in pirating.
“At that point, all of the tools that the content owners and the ISPs have at their disposal are there,” Lesser said. “ISPs can, and have, taken action based on that. Content owners we know have taken action against large-scale pirates.”
Unproven methods
As the Internet became the ubiquitous tool of this day and age, access to movies, music and television shows were mere clicks away. And the growing number of these Internet measures are attempting to quell the piracy of already savvy Web users, as a 2011 report found that 15 percent of P2P file-sharers have hidden their IP addresses via Virtual Private Networks (VPN) and other tactics such as proxies. In 2008, the National Cable and Telecommunications Association targeted the “theft” of online content by building the framework for a tiered system of educating about copyrighted material and reducing the influence of torrents on the entertainment industry.
The White House called the agreement between the entertainment industry and ISPs a “positive step” toward halting piracy, but that’s not to say it didn’t come with a little coaxing. Between 2000 and 2010, the RIAA spent more than $90 million to cover government lobbying costs and more than $50 million in legal fees challenging file sharing. Then, in August, it was reported that a former RIAA lobbyist Beryl Howell was named a district judge in Washington D.C. and has handled numerous cases that pertain to copyright and ISPs.
What is equally disconcerting about Copyright Alert System is the lack of transparency and outside input into its creation, says the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). While the costs of the program have not been disclosed, Parker Higgins, an activist with the EFF, said there will be a cost burden on ISPs that will eventually be felt by consumers.
“The delays are another indication that this is an expensive program that is getting passed to ISPs, and then on to the public,” Higgins said. “It’s a cost that we’re skeptical that the American people should bear.”
In France, a three strikes rule, dubbed the “HADOPI Law,” was introduced in 2009 to stop Internet piracy. One of the reliable figures to study when quantifying its effect is music album sales, as music consumes a large amount of pirate activity. At the height of the Internet boom and introduction of Internet piracy, the RIAA reported a loss of album sales of 8.9 percent. RIAA contends that piracy hurts the bottom line of record companies and can shut down independent labels.
But since the implementation of HADOPI, music sales in France have not significantly increased, raising speculation of whether the three strikes law is deterring Internet users away from torrent sites. In fact, since the law’s implementation, new music revenues in France are still down 3.9 percent since 2009.