The New 6 Strikes Rule of Internet Piracy
The major internet service providers have recently adopted a new 6 strikes policy to curb online piracy. Tech Talker explains the changes and how you can stay clear of legal action.
Recently anti-piracy has made its way into the news. In this week’s episode I’ll be covering the changes to anti-piracy rules and the new “6 strikes” policy being implemented by many internet service providers.
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As of February 25th, 2013 a new 6 strikes policy has been implemented by the nation’s top internet service providers (Comcast, AT&T, Verizon, Cablevision, and Time Warner). This 6 strikes policy is a set of guidelines about how piracy is to be dealt with in the future. It has both positives and negatives to it, but first let’s go over just what piracy is and how internet service providers (ISPs) go about catching you pirating files.
What is Online Piracy?
First off, internet piracy generally deals with the distribution of intellectual property across the internet without the permission of its creator. The internet has always been a hotbed for piracy because of how easy it is to copy and distribute information. If you download pirated materials such as television shows, music or movies, you are hurting the profits of the companies and individuals who created them.
Ever since the dawn of the internet, two main organizations have been trying to combat internet piracy. You may have heard of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). These organizations, as well as the Center for Copyright Information (CCI), have been the main muscle behind this anti-piracy movement.
So how does /tech/computers/go-daddy-web-outage-what-happened? When you connect your computer to the internet, it must go through your ISP (your internet service provider). Think of your ISP as the mail delivery person, if you want to send a letter to anyone it must first be picked up by your mailman. When you download a file or surf the web, your ISP acts as a mailman by delivering all of your digital information to you. In order to catch you downloading illegal files, the ISP (or mailman) would have to read each of your letters and make sure there isn’t anything illegal contained within.
The other method would be for someone posing as a pirate to tell the ISP that you had exchanged copyrighted content with them. They would essentially inform your ISP that your address was sharing or downloading illegal material, which would then get flagged. This is the more likely scenario because it means less work for the ISP. This type of posing would take place by a company hired by the RIAA or MPAA and it’s pretty simple to enforce because all you have to do is pose as a pirate and log all of the IP addresses that download the file. From here they submit these IP addresses to your ISP who will then send out notices and give up your information. Many people are concerned about internet service providers snooping on your information. This worry isn’t completely unfounded. However, it would take a lot of resources for ISPs to do this for no real benefit. After all, they do not own the music or movies you are pirating!
The 6 Strikes Rule of Web Piracy
We’ve summed up pirating and the basic methods of how you can be identified as a pirate. Now, let’s talk about what will happen if you get caught sharing copyrighted materials! You get 6 strikes:
The first two times you are caught downloading pirated content you’ll receive an email stating that someone has used your internet connection to download illegal content. The next two offenses will force your ISP to redirect web traffic to a site informing you on internet piracy. You will have to read the material and acknowledge your understanding of it before you will be allowed to browse the internet. Upon the 5th offense your internet will be purposefully slowed down for two weeks, and on the 6th strike you will be held liable for the offense and the owner of the copyrighted material can choose how to escalate the situation from there.
This 6 strikes method is a huge step away from the older days of the internet in which there were many lawsuits that demanded users pay as an average of $3,000 per song in damages for distributing copyrighted material. Sometimes this number was even higher and the point of it was to deter many people by making examples of a few.
Personally, I think the 6 strikes policy is pretty tame compared to the huge lawsuits and settlements of the past. But one positive about it is that if you accidentally downloaded something illegal, or were unsure if you were using copyrighted material, you could be made aware of it without any punitive actions.
Another important fact to mention about this new policy is that it only covers P2P file sharing, such as what happens with BitTorrent. (For more in BitTorrent file sharing, check out my series /tech/computers/introduction-to-bittorrent-part-2). This means that ISPs, the RIAA, MPAA, and CCI are not combing through email, personal file services, or any other private data. This is a pretty narrow set of users as there are many different ways to download files other than BitTorrent and it focuses on teaching people the damages of pirating rather than simply accusing or threatening the offenders.
Here are the 4 main points you should be aware of with the new 6 strikes policy of web piracy:
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The major ISPs have now adopted this 6 strikes policy.
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Copyright owners will often notify the ISP of an offense rather than the ISP snooping through all of your traffic.
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This policy is designed for P2P file sharing such as BitTorrent.
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The CCI is hoping that education of the effects of online piracy will be more effective than punitive actions in preventing illegal activity.
What do you think of this new 6 strikes rule? I’d to hear your opinions! Post your thoughts in the comments section of the Tech talker web site, or post your comments on the https://www.facebook.com/qdttechtalker page.
Well, that’s it for today! Be sure to check out all my earlier episodes at https://techtalker.quickanddirtytips.com/. And if you have further questions about this podcast or want to make a suggestion for a future episode, post them on https://www.facebook.com/qdttechtalker.
Until next time, I’m the https://techtalker.quickanddirtytips.com/, keeping technology simple!
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Tech Talker demystifies technology and cutting edge devices so that even the most tech illiterate can understand what’s going on with their computer or gadget — and what to do when something goes wrong.
