Anti-Piracy Fight Gets a New Interpretation

June 28, 2012 by
Filed under: Announcements & Events, Entertainment Industry, Legal P2P News & Issues 

In their struggle to fight digital piracy the entertainment industry have learned a lot about their “enemy”. As such, the industry plans on adopting a rather different approach to deal with copyright infringement.

The Center for Copyright Information is the fruit of the collaboration between the MPAA and the RIAA along with five of America’s most established internet providers – AT&T, Cablevision, Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Verizon. Its goal is to construct a system that handles digital copyright infringement.

The system will work as such: once the copyright holder pin-points a pirate, it will send his ISP a notice explaining that illegal activity is happening that address. The internet provider will then send an e-mail, warning the pirate about the alleged copyright infringement while also directing him or her towards legal alternatives of procuring movies or music.

“It’s sort of a new model of cooperation enabling the movie and music companies to be able to identify allegedly infringed files and pass those notices on to subscribers to their ISPs,” said Jill Lesser – Executive Director of the CCI.
“If it works right, it’s not going to be seen as punitive but as helpful.”

This alert system is called the “six-strikes rule”.

After receiving two strikes, you’ll get a warning e-mail. The next two strikes will force you to confirm your receipt of the notice via a landing page or pop-up window.

After the fifth strike mitigation measures will kick start. This means that the internet provider can tamper with your download and upload speeds for a couple of days, while also forcing you to watch educational videos or make you call their office to explain your activity.

The sixth and final strike will send you directly in the wolf’s arms, read content providers.

Furthermore, if you are to receive copyright infringement notices but know that you haven’t downloaded anything illegal, an independent board will take interest into your claims for a filling fee of $35 – which will be refunded if you win.

“We’re moving away from simply rapping people on the hands to try to giving them the info they need to get to various kinds of media content in a way that is both legal, accessible, and cost-effective,” Lesser said.

E. Michael Harrington – music business professor and member of the Future of Music Coalition Advisory Board – said the initiative looks similar to past approaches, claiming that will not make much of a difference.

“When you try education, that can be a complicated subject,” he said.

“You’d have to try to educate someone on every aspect of copyright. I think it’s just late. People can get music any way they want…Those who want to be clever can stay clever.”

According to the NDP Group, digital piracy is on the fall in the US, going down from 16% in 2007 to 9% in 2010. However, it is yet unclear if this is due to RIAA’s efforts or thanks to the legal alternatives such as iTunes, Spotify, or Rhapsody.

“We need to have access to everything, everywhere, at any time and in any format,” Harrington said.

“Record labels just have to get more creative and offer things to people the way they want them at reasonable prices. That’s actually a really old-fashioned idea.”

“They’re not saying illegal as much. The tag has gotten a little better,” he concluded.

More on how to deal with the Six-Strikes system can be read here.

(via Business Time)

Tags: , , , , , ,