Copyright Alert System (CAS) goes into effect in the US with several ISP's today.

StratDragon

http://www.majorgeeks.com/story.php?id=37785

Yes, it's real, it went into effect today 02/25/13 across the United States
So without inviting an argument that violates the TOS of this site I simply state this can affect you even if you are not doing anything wrong, it has a provision for what to do if you feel you are falsely charged (pay the courts $35.00 and plead your innocence.)

riftwitch

Still, it seems that before you get to the going to court stage, your ISP may throttle back your connection speed. Can they tell, for example, that a particular download is unlawfully obtained, or are they only concerned with large downloads?

I am a musician who collaborates with people scattered around the country, and we are constantly sending files (from the songs we are working on) to each other. I also purchase music software that involves several gigabytes of data per product; I would hate to have issues with my ISP over data I am legally purchasing.

FSMCDesigns

so users overseas can still go to illegal sites, which Google promotes on their search engine and still obtain illegal files, but U.S users get penalized, just wow. Oh well, maybe if Google sees that traffic to the places they promote drops off dramatically from U.S. ISPs maybe something good will come out of it.

i am all for something being done to curb piracy instead of just saying there is nothing we can do and stick my head in the sand, but I seriously doubt this is it. Go after the big companies that allow thieves to go to the places that it's d/led/uploaded in the first place and then we can talk. It's blatantly obvious we can't rely on users ethical and moral senses to keep it from happening. How hard would it be for the ones that came up with this system to have the ISPs involved to just block access to the big torrent sites?

StratDragon

that's a big question: Legitimate use of transferring files throwing up a red flag. This response is aimed at the consumer, but does it protect the consumer or the independent developer, or independent artist? Am I going to get in the crosshairs for trying to download LibreOffice from a torrent (Which is the distribution model for this software) and punish me for going to an open source solution because it doesn't know any better? Then I'm stuck with:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Office_2013#Licensing_change

it's still kinda vague.

DaWaterRat

My interpretation of the information we're given is that it's up to the Copyright holder to find the product in question and notify the ISP of the uploader.

So things like LibreOffice shouldn't be an issue

But I haven't been following this that closely, so I may not have all the info.

cwichura

EFF has written a bunch about how bad this system is, since there's no real judicial process and no incentive for the copyright holders to make sure you actually did pirate something. They just send a complaint to your ISP and it's taken for granted that you are guilty, and we all know that the MPAA and RIAA doesn't give a rats arse about proving you actually pirated something. This will also cause all kinds of trouble for any public WiFi hotspots (think your corner coffee shop with free WiFi).

Unfortunately, instead of adapting their business models to deal with current reality, the record and movie industry keep insisting on getting their lobbiests to pass laws like this to try and protect their old, failing business models. Combine that with the fact that pretty much everything they produce these days is absolute garbage, I don't buy any music or movies any more. The drek they are producing isn't even worth pirating it, never mind paying for it...

mjc1016

cwichura said:

Combine that with the fact that pretty much everything they produce these days is absolute garbage, I don't buy any music or movies any more. The drek they are producing isn't even worth pirating it, never mind paying for it...

Yeah, well, that's one way to curb piracy...

Now, here's a little known fact...way back, many moons ago...when things like Limewire, Napster and Kaza got started, one of the biggest promoters of said software was...C'net. Who owns C'net?

Well...CBS owns Cnet...and who owns CBS?

Doesn't take much to find out that those now screaming the loudest about it helped create the problem in the first place...

Stormlyght

Wired.com has a brief article on it for anyone interested in reading more on it.

ISPs Now Monitoring for Copyright Infringement - http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/02/copyright-scofflaws-beware/

kyoto kid

cwichura said:

EFF has written a bunch about how bad this system is, since there's no real judicial process and no incentive for the copyright holders to make sure you actually did pirate something. They just send a complaint to your ISP and it's taken for granted that you are guilty, and we all know that the MPAA and RIAA doesn't give a rats arse about proving you actually pirated something. This will also cause all kinds of trouble for any public WiFi hotspots (think your corner coffee shop with free WiFi)

...wonderful. My corner hotspot is the only place I can actually get clean downloads of my (legal) purchases of 3D content/app upgrades as well as freebies at, as connectivity using my 3G plan from home is so poor. For example as when I attempted to download the Genesis Essentials from home as a test, the remaining time was listed as around Two and a Half Days! (and that doesn't take into account the risk of disconnects, timeouts or resets which would kill the whole download process). From the hotspot it took about forty minutes (and that was with a number of other people online all sharing the available bandwidth).

Killing public wi-fi access would only benefit the big telecom and cable providers.

agent unawares

If internet providers start actually breaking contract over this without getting proof, I foresee a massive backlash and many lawsuits in the future.

DAZ_ann0314

This thread may be skating the TOS as the discussion goes back and forth about P2P services, legal matters, and discussion of warez etc. For the moment, I am going to lock this thread until it can be reviewed. I'm sorry for this, just it seems this may be crossing the line but rather then remove the thread, I rather have the team review it. So this is the option I've chosen. If they review and it's fine they will unlock it and if not I am sure someone will let you know. The main post as it is is fine since it is just pointing out the the information but the discussion I fear may be crossing into violating TOS and may have little hope not to keep doing so given the topic in general.

UPDATE: The team has reviewed the thread and agrees that the topic is one that will lead to issues in regards to the TOS (and has all ready gone that way) We are leaving the topic locked but not removing the thread so the link and general details are still here for anyone who wishes to look up more information.

Thanks for your understanding :)