Major Internet service providers to institute so-called six-strikes plan by year’s end

From Will at THE OTHER NEWS via Wired:

The nation’s major internet service providers by year’s end will institute a so-called six-strikes plan, the “Copyright Alert System” initiative backed by the Obama administration and pushed by Hollywood and the major record labels to disrupt and possibly terminate internet access for online copyright scofflaws.

The plan, now four years in the making, includes participation by AT&T, Cablevision Systems, Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Verizon. After four offenses, the historic plan calls for these residential internet providers to initiate so-called “mitigation measures” (.pdf) that might include reducing internet speeds and redirecting a subscriber’s service to an “educational” landing page about infringement.

The internet companies may eliminate service altogether for repeat file-sharing offenders, although the plan does not directly call for such drastic action.

“We are farily confident the program will launch by year’s end,” said Jill Lesser, the executive director of the Center for Copyright Information, the name of the group behind the program.
The program, which monitors peer-to-peer file-sharing services, was to have been deployed sooner, according to Gigi Sohn, president of digital rights group Public Knowledge, and an adviser to the center.

Sohn noted that the internet was aflame in January with federal anti-piracy proposals — the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act — both of which went down in flames amid a huge backlash and internet blackout.

Top-ranking Obama administration officials, including the U.S. copyright czar Victoria Espinel,played an active role in secret negotiations between Hollywood, the recording industry and ISPs to disrupt internet access for users suspected of violating copyright law, according to internal White House e-mails.

The e-mails, obtained via the Freedom of Information Act, show the administration’s cozy relationship with Hollywood and the music industry’s lobbying arms and its early support for the copyright-violation crackdown system publicly announced in July, 2011.

Under the six-strikes plan, internet subscribers may challenge their dings for a $35 filing fee paid to an arbitration service. They also get a free pass, one time, if they claim the infringement was based on having an open, unencrypted Wi-Fi network.
France has a much more stringent plan. Last month, the nation levied its first fine, $193, under its three-strikes plan.

Read the full story here.