Hollywood Privately Acknowledges Six Strikes Program Isn't Doing Much, Guaranteeing It Will Get Much Worse
from the bigger-and-better-is-bad dept
We're getting close to the two-year anniversary of the Center for Copyright Information's (CCI) "six strikes" anti-piracy regime. The program, with cooperation from the biggest ISPs, involves forwarding on copyright infringement notices to consumers and punishing users via a "graduated response" program. Said responses vary by ISP but can include a user being temporarily locked behind a walled garden filter until they acknowledge receipt of one-sided "educational" materials, or having your connection throttled temporarily until you admit you've been naughty. If innocent, you have to pay a $35 fine to defend yourself.While the program might seem effective in scaring little Billy straight once his parents notice their connection doesn't work, it clearly hasn't had much of a meaningful impact on piracy rates. Unsurprisingly, the entertainment industry argues this is because the measures don't go far enough; nobody tracks offenders between ISPs, absolutely nothing happens to a user that violates all six strikes (the program simply stops and no more notifications are sent) and most users can simply hide their behavior behind the use of BitTorrent proxy services.
That hasn't stopped CCI from frequently trumpeting six strikes as a smashing success, often using unreliable, contradictory evidence (when it can be bothered to show evidence at all) to support their argument that forcing ISPs into the role of content nannies is a great idea. Privately however, newly leaked MPAA documents suggest the entertainment industry isn't so sure six strikes is doing much of anything.
The leaked documents show the program isn't having quite the impact the MPAA would like, though again, unsurprisingly, the MPAA believes that's only because the program isn't big enough yet. While there's the occasional attempt to suggest that offenders change their ways after receiving notices, the document then proceeds to note the MPAA actually has no idea if people change their behavior, since it's possible they switched ISPs or are hiding their behavior via BitTorrent proxy services:
"The U.S. system is “not yet at scale” or operating with “enough education support” according to the MPAA. As a result the CAS has not made an “impact on the overall [piracy] landscape...“No current information as to the behavior of users who appear to stop P2P infringement – do not know whether [they are] migrating to other pirate systems or to lawful services,” the statement reads."The MPAA's solution to this problem? Make Six Strikes bigger, bolder and thereby worse:
"Attainability as to existing programs boils down to whether ISPs will agree (a) to expand scale to levels that might impact overall P2P piracy, and (b) to enhance remedial measures so as to improve efficacy,” the MPAA writes."I've spoken to execs at two large ISPs who have admitted privately they know most pirates have simply started using proxy services, but the ISPs are playing along begrudgingly. Already a bit put off by the added paperwork, few are going to be keen on an a voluntary expansion of the program. As such, look for the entertainment industry to lobby heavily to have this year's rewrite of the Communications Act include numerous new treasures aimed at ISP compliance of a plan expansion. Perhaps after that we can proceed to banning the use of VPNs and proxies entirely for the good of the nation?
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Filed Under: copyright, hollywood, piracy, six strikes
Companies: cci, mpaa
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Typo
'Cooperation' should almost certainly be put in quotes there, as they agreed primarily because of the threat of 'Do it on your own, or we'll pass laws to force you to do it'.
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Know one, that I know of, was limited in phone usage under Title II if it became known they were making crank calls or engaging in "unlawful" practices.
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Edumacation
Why do they always try to bring education into it? In general, college students are extremely well educated and extremely likely to pirate. In specific, the more I learn about the MPAAssholes, the more I want to pirate. I think they need whatever the opposite of education is.
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Buy and Support local and Indie Content only.
FUCK HOLLYWOOD !!! We no longer need them to have a great and meaningful life.
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Re: Edumacation
Also, they probably think it makes them sound more reasonable.
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Re:
The true fact is that we never needed them for that.
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Re: boycott
they steal from the public domain, I infringe, so who's the criminal again?
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Their buddies are still pushing ahead internationally
http://www.rte.ie/news/2015/0113/672265-file-sharing/
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Re: Edumacation
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Technically, switching ISPs, or moving to proxy services is the pirates changing their behavior. It's just not the change the MPAA desires.
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Let's fix a few other thngs first.
Let's get these fixed, use 3rd party accounting firms that make bonuses derived from 10% of any hidden / redirected profits they uncover.
MPAA - let's get this disbanded by filing Rico act violations against all the members and have their puling lawyers arrested for all of the illegal antics they've committed.
DMCA takedown notices - let's put some teeth into a law purposely written to prevent false takedown notices from being submitted. Penalty? All copyrights and patents owned by the person or persons or corporation that files the takedown notice. Any person acting as an agent for an entity will make that entity the target of the penalty.
The first time Sony or an agent thereof, files a DMCA takedown for something that isn't there's, all of Sony's Copyrights and patents become public domain, instantly, with absolutely no recourse for removal from public domain.
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Re: Re: Edumacation
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Re: Edumacation
This type of "education" occurs in college too, of course, but that isn't what they're talking about here.
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One thing we know it's not
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The whole of the mpaa should be locked into an early 20. century mental hospital.
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Re: Re: Edumacation
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Re: One thing we know it's not
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This would disappear if people cared
If the MPAA expands this and give it teeth, it'll fall apart very quickly.
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Venezuela Will Be There
During the cold war, the United States broadcast to various communist countries, and these countries electronically jammed the signals if they could. However, that was about all they could do. War is simply too costly to be a practical response to radio signals.
With television, offshore pirate broadcasting became irrelevant, because the technical characteristics of television required a much shorter range. When satellites came along, they were initially an attribute of superpower status. However, the truth is that a space rocket is not particularly complicated or expensive by the standards of, say, an Airbus.
On available information, Venezuela has placed an order with the Chinese for three television broadcasting satellites.
See: Peter Wilson, "Falling Oil Prices Push Venezuela Deeper Into China's Orbit." Business Week, December 12, 2014
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-12-12/with-oil-prices-falling-venezuela-needs-china-mo re-than-ever#r=hpt-ls
The information is not very detailed, but, given that Venezuela already has excellent undersea cable connections (presumably including the new cable the Chinese are running around South America), it is a fair inference what the satellites are going to be used for.
Long ago, in my youth, I went to Prep School with a bunch of Venezuelan boys, and I think I have a certain understanding of the Venezuelan mind. I know a number of words which are not in the dictionary, and the proper gestures to use with them. There are two Spanish idioms, which are practically untranslatable in their larger sense, "pudoner" (point-of-honor) and "me vivo" (hurray for me). Hugo Chavez always seemed like a kind of projection of my old friends, the common ground that all Venezuelan men find when they let loose their inner twelve-year-old. If you give my old friends Ricardo and Alexandro a broadcasting satellite to play with, I have a fairly good idea of what they will do with it. I assure you they won't feel any compulsion to be bound by Norteamericano rules. There will be pirate signals coming down from the sky which no one can do anything about, which can be picked up by anyone inclined to turn his dish to the right angle.
Under those circumstances, "six strikes" will rapidly become irrelevant.
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Re: Edumacation
1. Inform people that their online activities are being intercepted, monitored, and fed to various private and public organizations without their knowledge or consent.
2. Motivate people to take corrective actions to avoid said surveillance, and provide feedback if the avoidance actions taken are ineffective. No doubt, these newfound skills are shared among groups of friends in direct proportion to the severity of the notifications and/or enforcement.
3. Help the public understand just how greedy and short-sighted the entertainment industry really is.
We should cheer on any group who can help accomplish these laudable goals. Maybe EFF should list CCI as a resource for educating the public about the importance of privacy and freedom?
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Re: Typo
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Re: This would disappear if people cared
I wonder what percentage of the population has more than 1 or 2 broadband ISPs available to them. I don't, I have 1, and lots of commenters here say that they're in the same position.
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Another vote
Wow, doesnt this say something about your ISP monitoring ALL your data?
But, can we charge the RIAA/MPAA for the people HIRED to monitor all the ISP data?
Anyone want a $40,000 job?
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“Intellectual Property” Is Like Communism
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Didn't work? Let's try more!
I'll bet the MPAA loves XML, if you know what I mean.
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Try Harder! And see what happens...
Either 1) The new expanded program doesn't work, and everyone is happy, or 2) It works great... and results in demand destruction.
Piracy or Doing Without - it's all up to the content owners which way they prefer to not make any money.
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Re: Re: Edumacation
I mean, NO ONE is going to go torrent a movie fully believing it's a legit activity. they know whoever paid to make that movie will be getting no money out of them. So how is it they seem to think that there's some combination of words that will "educate" people to stop getting everything they want for free?
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Re: Re: This would disappear if people cared
1 cable network - speed good;
1 telephone DSL network - speed OK;
1 wireless broadband - speed OK but service unreliable;
1 satellite network - speed unreliable and you have to watch zoning laws for the required satellite antenna;
3 cellular networks - speed OK but you have to watch pricing and bandwidth;
unknown number of 56k dial-up networks (they actually still exist?).
So I do have choices. It's just that most of them SUCK!
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Re: Re: Re: This would disappear if people cared
So by my reckoning, you have a choice of two broadband providers.
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Re: Try Harder! And see what happens...
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Re: One thing we know it's not
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http://insidetrade.com/index.php?option=com_user&view=login&return=aHR0cDovL2luc2lkZXR yYWRlLmNvbS8yMDE1MDExNDI0ODY3MjUvV1RPLURhaWx5LU5ld3MvRGFpbHktTmV3cy9jb25ncmVzc2lvbmFsLXJlcHVibGljYW5 zLWxpa2VseS10by1maXJtLXVwLXRwYS10aW1ldGFibGUtYXQtdXBjb21pbmctcmV0cmVhdHMvbWVudS1pZC05NDguaHRtbA==
the n
http://org.salsalabs.com/o/1439/content_item/freetpp
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Say good by to our freedom!
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As long as this keeps up I will continue to run a VPN. I happen to like my privacy.
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“enough education support”
Educational support. Like when I was a kid and they told us in school "Officer Vic" was our friend. Unless you live in New York or Chicago.
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Re: Re: Edumacation
But, we are dealing with companies beholden to stockholders, and they won't take kindly to "people are pirating because we're refusing to sell them the product they want" or "we need to fundamentally change the way we do business" or even "some people just prefer videogames", so the misdirection will continue for now.
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Then we can justify everyone's salary increases, because we are doing more to fix the "problem" rather than deal with the reality of we are to focused on keeping control forever over content we "sell" that we forgot we are supposed to give consumers what they want.
How many millions will keep being poured into the **AA's before someone dares ask why?
They can never deliver what they promise and those wasted millions could have developed digital marketplaces that would have beat Apple, Google, Amazon to the punch... but the technology is scary bad juju that we must fight to stop.
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Re: Re: Try Harder! And see what happens...
The interesting question is, how many of their customers (a.k.a. "the audience") can?
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Re: Re: Re: Try Harder! And see what happens...
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