From today (July 1st), a number of US ISPs will start monitoring their customers' internet activity for copyright infringement, sending out warning notices when they detect it.
From my understanding (note that I'm not a USian), this is the first major move by ISPs themselves to monitor this activity?

Quote:Last July, Comcast, Cablevision, Verizon, Time Warner Cable and other bandwidth providers announced that they had agreed to adopt policies designed to discourage customers from illegally downloading music, movies and software. Since then, the ISPs have been very quiet about their antipiracy measures.

But during a panel discussion before a gathering of U.S. publishers here today, Cary Sherman, CEO of the Recording Industry Association of America, said most of the participating ISPs are on track to begin implementing the program by July 1.

[...]

The program, commonly referred to as "graduated response," requires that ISPs send out one or two educational notices to those customers who are accused of downloading copyrighted content illegally. If the customer doesn't stop, the ISP is then asked to send out "confirmation notices" asking that they confirm they have received notice.

At that time, the accused customers will also be informed of the risks they incur if they don't stop pirating material. If the customer is flagged for pirating again, the ISP can then ratchet up the pressure. Participating ISPs can choose from a list of penalties, or what the RIAA calls "mitigation measures," which include throttling down the customer's connection speed and suspending Web access until the subscriber agrees to stop pirating.

The ISPs can waive the mitigation measure if they choose and not one of the service providers has agreed to permanently terminate service.

- Source: [CNN]

I'm somewhat interested in how an ISP would monitor this sort of activity.  I believe there's been some US ISPs which have throttled torrent activity in the past, leading customers to use encryption.  ISPs could investigate unencrypted torrent streams, but I don't know whether they'd join swarms to grab IP address lists from trackers...

Wee've got a 3-strike policy here in NZ.  Only one person has been served with their 3rd since the scheme's been running, and they were let off because the ISP must terminate the connection or whatever it is the consequences are within 30 days (I think) of the final infringement being committed.  Internet traffic was reportedly down when the regulation was first passed, and I suspect the US will monitor it a bit better than wee do here, but 6 strikes sounds awesome compared to 3...

still sounds dumb to me.

and a bit communist

(01/07/2012 01:58 AM)cR@Zy!NgLi$h Wrote:  Wee've got a 3-strike policy here in NZ.  Only one person has been served with their 3rd since the scheme's been running, and they were let off because the ISP must terminate the connection or whatever it is the consequences are within 30 days (I think) of the final infringement being committed.  Internet traffic was reportedly down when the regulation was first passed, and I suspect the US will monitor it a bit better than wee do here, but 6 strikes sounds awesome compared to 3...

Interesting.  Though I do wonder about the traffic drop - it's not like you weren't targetable before the 3 strikes rule...

(01/07/2012 04:39 AM)Funky Buddah Wrote:  I wonder how will they detect whether you are downloading torrents or not. If that involves investigation of incoming data then fudge them, that's illegal. The person might be handling confidential information on the computer as well, such as agreements, medical records etc. Then ISP's can be sued.

I'm sure the agreements you signed when signing up for the service cover this in some way or another.

I'm gay.