The Unintended Consequences Of The Copyright Alerts System
from the creating-more-problems-then-you-solve dept
Since we've learned of the plan for so-called Six Strikes programs by ISPs, there has been protest and warnings from multiple sources about multiple issues. Accordingly, Daily Dot has a nice little piece about what sort of unintended consequences we can expect to come out of this plan. A couple of them are well-traveled ground here at Techdirt, including whether businesses will still offer WiFi when "pirates" naturally flock there to carry out their piratey actions. Likewise, we've discussed the importance of the Open Wireless movement, which will certainly take a massive hit if and when these ISP plans are spun up. All that being said, the third unintended consequence mentioned in the article is probably the most important, since it will render all of this an exercise in futility: greater adoption of privacy tools by the masses.According to comments Lesser made at an Internet Society meeting in November 2012, the definition of who the CAS is after is extremely narrow, at least for its planned first iteration. It only tracks those who upload the most-popular copyrighted content, like blockbuster movies and best-selling albums, via the peer-to-peer service BitTorrent, and it only identifies them by their Internet protocol (IP) addresses. That's it. So pirates who can avoid BitTorrent, or peer-to-peer altogether, or download without uploading (a major faux pas on some torrent sites), or hide their IP addresses, will avoid detection.
Learning to conceal one’s IP address is already a major point of Internet activism, for reasons that have nothing to do with piracy. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, for instance, suggests bloggers in dangerous parts of the world hide their IP addresses to ensure their anonymity from authoritarian governments.In other words, these plans will spark an interest in privacy tools designed to get around the "strikes". It's an arms race that essentially cannot be won, because every new tactic simply spurs the growth of interest in counter-tactics and probably leaves the average computer user even more prepared for the next attempt than they would have been otherwise. This type of thing likely creates tech-saavy people where there previously would have been none. Meanwhile, businesses and WiFi device owners will close off access out of fear.
Torrent Freak backs this key point up, noting how few bittorrent users are currently masking their IP addresses and making the case that that number is going to jump after Six Strikes begins.
BitTorrent proxies and VPN services are the preferred way for people to remain anonymous while downloading. These services replace a user’s home IP-address with one provided by the proxy service, making it impossible for tracking companies to identify who is doing the file-sharing. In the U.S. 16% of all file-sharers already hide their IP-address, and this is likely to increase when the copyright alert system goes live.What's missing from all of this is exactly how any of these plans are going to get previous "pirates" to turn into paying customers for media companies. History suggests they will not do so, will not curb piracy, and will in fact only annoy people who like open WiFi connections and prepare users for the next round of the race all the more. If there were a more perfect definition of a plan that achieves nothing except collateral damage than 6 strikes legislation, I cannot imagine what it'd be.
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Filed Under: copyright, copyright alerts, unintended consequences
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Not learning from past mistakes
The companies funding these groups (MPAA, RIAA, etc) should begin taking a results based funding approach. Or perhaps they should just look at the past 100 years of results, and determine if they should continue funding them.
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Re: Not learning from past mistakes
AAACK! Someone is using common sense! They must be a pirate and a pirate sympathizer! Burn them!
Seriously, though. Results based approach? Who needs that when you can ruin innocent people's lives just fine the old way?
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Re: Re: Not learning from past mistakes
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Not unintended
I don't think these are unintended at all. I think they're part of an intentional effort to reduce the usefulness of the internet.
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Re: Not unintended
And the fact that it's neutral means that the uppity masses can use it as well as the Old Guard.
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Re: Re: Not unintended
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Re: Re: Re: Not unintended
/sarc
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Re: Re: Re: Not unintended
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But anything is justified in the name of copyright law, right?
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EA Board of Directors
On second thought, I see that the EA Board chairman, Lawrence Probst is also Chairman of the Board of the US Olympic Committee - another organization that doesn't really care what their fans think.
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Re: EA Board of Directors
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I thought this was interesting. I've seen a few indie artist voice their support of this system, yet it won't prevent people from downloading their music.
Oh, Hollywood will you ever stop being so seedy?
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It's Already Begun
While still theory at this point, my bet is with some very clever developers. The Comcasts and Warner Bros. of the world have yet to out-manoeuvre them.
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It's Already Begun
While still theory at this point, my bet is with some very clever developers. The Comcasts and Warner Bros. of the world have yet to out-manoeuvre them.
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Re: It's Already Begun
All you need is one usb drive and a social life.
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Bad, but good...
It is really unfortunate that this has to be the impetus for introducing more secure measures, but these tribulations will lead to a stronger internet.
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Re: Bad, but good...
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Re: Re: Bad, but good...
It may be awhile, but it will happen.
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Fourth Unintended Consequence
So, how does this actually help the big entertainment industries again?
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http://dietrolldie.com/2013/01/28/lipscomb-fishing-co-or-exculpatory-evidence-request/
I call your attention to number 10 on the list of troll demands.
Funny how corporate law is going to be jumping into real law.
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Death to STarbucks
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