A tougher stance on piracy from all the friendly neighbourhood ISPs in the US has been a long time coming. Wisps and shadows of a policy involving throttled internet speed and blocked pages have been around for over a year, and have gradually solidified into a six-strikes plan aimed to make a pirate’s life a hassle. And mounting evidence says it all starts tomorrow.
The whole thing started in the summer of 2011 when the MPAA, RIAA, and five major ISPs teamed up to form the centre for Copyright Information (CCI) and started pounding out a system of “educating infringers.” Now the CCI has finally launched its website, and sources near the organisation have told TorrentFreak and The Daily Dot the system is rolling out this week, though the specifics of its implimentation on any given ISP are a bit hazy.
“Alerts” could very well differ from provider to provider, but documents that leaked from AT&T a few months ago suggest the mostly likely application: a few warnings, then a few louder warnings, then some throttling and page-blocking. But never, ever, disconnection of service. They want you to keep paying them, after all. There are still plenty of ways to avoid detection, like using cyber-lockers or utilising a VPN, but the system is bound to catch plenty of casual (or unwitting) pirates. And that’s the point; hardcore pirates aren’t the CCI’s target.
This isn’t the first time there’s been talk of an imminent roll-out, and we probably won’t know for sure until the alerts start rolling in. But the implimentation of such a system has been inevitable for a while now, and the recent web-push from the CCI is a decent indication that it’s coming soon. So don’t be surprised if you get an email about your torrenting and find yourself having to sit through a little free movie about copyright. [TorrentFreak]