8 ms·

The Music Industry Shouldn't Be Able to Cut Off Your Internet Access

280 points by z0a 10y ago

xupybd 10y ago
Yet in New Zealand they can :( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_(Infringing_File_Sharing)_Amendment_Act_2011 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_(Infringing_File_Sha...
- Nition 10y ago
  This law is sort of interesting. I don't think anyone came out particularly happy with it. If I remember correctly it was sort of pushed upon us by US pressure so the legislators didn't really like it, it added extra work so the ISPs didn't like it, as a result of that the law has a $25 fee for administering a "strike" to someone, which the copyright holders don't like because they can't so blindly send out mass strikes. The strikes also expire after 9 months. And obviously the people don't like it either. The maximum fine is capped at $15,000NZD (~$11,000USD) and the average fine in practice has apparently been around $500NZD (~$350USD). As of 22 November 2013 17 people had got their three strikes and received their fines[1]. I wonder what the total is now. Re actually cutting off your Internet access though, I'm not sure. Thing is, that was temporarily in there and was later removed, as Section 92A in the Copyright Act. You can see it marked as [Repealed][2]. But then section 122B seems to say your Internet can still get cut off. Maybe someone can shed some light on that one. [1] https://www.lawsociety.org.nz/lawtalk/lawtalk-archives/issue-832/infringing-file-sharing-two-years-on https://www.lawsociety.org.nz/lawtalk/lawtalk-archives/issue... [2] http://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1994/0143/latest/DLM345634.html http://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1994/0143/latest/D...
  - xupybd 10y ago
    It would seem that the ISPs had a significant compliance cost as well. "On 23 July 2012, despite the policy intent of making the issuance of copyright infringement notices under the legislation inexpensive, Telecom New Zealand revealed that under the new regime, it had cost them $534,416 to issue only 1,238 notices - or approximately $438 per notice, although this cost figure is not evidenced by any audited breakdown. The copyright holders are required to pay a fee of $25 to have the notices issued"[1] [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_(Infringing_File_Sharing)_Amendment_Act_2011#Criticism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_(Infringing_File_Sha...
    - Nition 10y ago
      I feel like Telecom may have been boosting the numbers a bit there to try and make the law seem extra bad for them; all they should really have to do is forward a letter.
      - MichaelGG 10y ago
        If they didn't already have a database in place of which IPs assigned to which customers during which times, they'd need to set that up. Software dev isn't cheap. Maintenance isn't cheap. They need to write up a procedure on how to handle these notices. They have to verify they're valid (i.e. not just a prank or malicious action). Compliance costs can add up.
        xupybd 10y ago
        Also never underestimate the costs incurred by sufficiently bloated bureaucracy.
        lostlogin 10y ago
        You've worked for a university too?
        vacri 10y ago
        Well said. These things, especially at the government/enterprise level, aren't just a quick and dirty forwarding rule on your mailserver. It's got to be written up, vetted by legal, documented so knowledge transfers through staff transfer, so on and so forth. The action is simple, but implementation is not.
mortenjorck 10y ago
I thought this "cut off your internet" thing had died circa 2007 with the draconian, yet endearingly-condescending "three-strikes-you're-out" push from the record industry. In a world where internet access has long since become a basic requirement to function in civil society, how is this still a conversation?
- wmf 10y ago
  You can just switch to another ISP!
  - ahoy 10y ago
    I literally can't switch. I live in one of the biggest cities in the world, and the ISP's here have carved it up into neighborhood level monopolies. I have one option.
    - mi100hael 10y ago
      That's the joke. The vast majority of the US has either 0 or 1 option for 5+ Mbps internet, and 1-5 options for dial-up/DSL.
      - seanp2k2 10y ago
        Exactly. I can get Comcast up to I think 200mbit now (I have 100) or ATT DSL which would require paying for a phone line + the service which would cost the same as Comcast and run at 768k. This is in Silicon Valley. My apartment building doesn't give me any other options (and Comcast is the only "official" one, but ATT claims they can offer me service...never tried).
        dublinben 10y ago
        The FCC defines a broadband connection as at least 25/3. [0] That AT&T DSL doesn't even qualify as broadband any more, not that it should. [0] http://arstechnica.com/business/2015/01/fcc-chairman-mocks-industry-claims-that-customers-dont-need-faster-internet/ http://arstechnica.com/business/2015/01/fcc-chairman-mocks-i...
yuhong 10y ago
I wonder how Hollywood was taken over by lawyers in the first place. The plaintiffs in the Betamax suit are Disney and Universal.
- blackflame7000 10y ago
  Content production and content storage have always had a intertwined relationship because they are co-dependent. Hollywood can't produce content with out means to distribute and media platform creators have nothing to distribute without content.
  - lostlogin 10y ago
    It's not exactly the same but has similarities - news. Things gets particularly interesting with AI writing content. All the blurring of lines etc. This seems to be limited to things like stock market news and earnings reports at this time, though someone may correct me on this. www.google.co.nz/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/media/2016/apr/03/artificla-intelligence-robot-reporter-pulitzer-prize?client=safari
    - blackflame7000 10y ago
      It will be interesting to see the impact of AI on news. I would love it if bots could parse out all the fluff and spin and just relay facts. That's all I need from the news. I'm smart enough to draw my own conclusions once I have all the information but nowadays that requires trips to websites all over the political spectrum to figure out what really happened. That being said, algorithmic based AI news could potentially end up being worse than human created fake news. (Imagine Amazon Suggestions applied to news. One obscure google search and suddenly that's all the news you hear about for the next week)
- tedunangst 10y ago
  Actors and directors used to be owned by the studios. Contract lawyers are not a new thing.
  - 10y ago
nabanics 10y ago
As long as you don't use your internet access to commit illegal actions, they won't cut anything off.
- virmundi 10y ago
  Um...no. If RIAA thinks you did something wrong, even with flimsy evidence, they can still come after you. Should be easier to convince Comcrap to shut off your Internet than get a judge to agree. http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/117419/judge-rules-that-riaa-had-right-to-sue-woman-wrong.html http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/117419/judge-r...
- norea-armozel 10y ago
  That's not how the real world of this sort of thing works. Often the firms hired to do this sort of thing are just catching any/all IPs on a tracker without any analysis. Meaning that said IPs can be spoofed, part of a botnet, and so on which makes the accusations based purely on those IPs as purely speculative. It's why certain federal circuits throw them out since the firms are sometimes found to be outright fabricating the logs in question. And more obviously, that an IP address itself isn't evidence that the user was at the device in question or that the device in question was assigned that IP address at the time recorded. Simply put, it's 99% bullshit hearsay worse than that of your office gossiper.
pixelbill 10y ago
This happened to myself and my housemate recently, this draconian practice is still alive and well in the USA. We have Service Electric, who uses PenTeleData as their provider, and I can honestly say they are the worst service imaginable.. I'd rather have Comcast. Neither of us use torrents, we prefer streaming services that have everything we need. Regardless, our internet was turned off without notice two months ago. The most frustrating part was that they didn't tell us, it just went off.. so it took us nearly a day to figure out what was even going on. This included a dozen calls to the ISP trying to figure out what was going on, and the surprising part is that they didn't know! There's more to the story including absolutely most incompetent tech support I've ever seen, but a little over a day later we had it turned back on. We asked what we could do to avoid this in the future, and were told not to torrent. Fast forward to a few weeks back, our internet turns off again. I call and find out that our internet has been cut off for 72 hours due to torrenting, which turned out to be a TV show. A TV show neither of us watches, so the circumstances are suspect. When I questioned the operator about this, she flat out called me a liar, with no evidence to support her argument. When I suggested that we might cancel our service because of the poor treatment, she said go ahead. Of course, she knew that there are no other ISPs where we live (out in the woods). So here we are again, our internet may get turned off permanently and without warning for no wrongdoing on our part. Rather strange times we're living in where scumbag companies can get away with this, ruining peoples lives so they can increase their own profits by 3.2% Burn in hell, PenTeleData, I'm sure you're monitoring this as well.
- pixelbill 10y ago
  Oh I'd forgot to mention that were were charged a $10 re-connection fee each time, in addition to being charged for the days when service was not available. Basically any time they want they can take extra money from you and you have no recourse.
Pica_soO 10y ago
Some routertrojan, erecting a local, for mortals invisible, town-wide tor-net should be enough to end this madness.

280 points by z0a 10y ago

Yet in New Zealand they can :( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_(Infringing_File_Sharing)_Amendment_Act_2011 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_(Infringing_File_Sha...

Nition 10y ago
This law is sort of interesting. I don't think anyone came out particularly happy with it. If I remember correctly it was sort of pushed upon us by US pressure so the legislators didn't really like it, it added extra work so the ISPs didn't like it, as a result of that the law has a $25 fee for administering a "strike" to someone, which the copyright holders don't like because they can't so blindly send out mass strikes. The strikes also expire after 9 months. And obviously the people don't like it either. The maximum fine is capped at $15,000NZD (~$11,000USD) and the average fine in practice has apparently been around $500NZD (~$350USD). As of 22 November 2013 17 people had got their three strikes and received their fines[1]. I wonder what the total is now. Re actually cutting off your Internet access though, I'm not sure. Thing is, that was temporarily in there and was later removed, as Section 92A in the Copyright Act. You can see it marked as [Repealed][2]. But then section 122B seems to say your Internet can still get cut off. Maybe someone can shed some light on that one. [1] https://www.lawsociety.org.nz/lawtalk/lawtalk-archives/issue-832/infringing-file-sharing-two-years-on https://www.lawsociety.org.nz/lawtalk/lawtalk-archives/issue... [2] http://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1994/0143/latest/DLM345634.html http://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1994/0143/latest/D...
- xupybd 10y ago
  It would seem that the ISPs had a significant compliance cost as well. "On 23 July 2012, despite the policy intent of making the issuance of copyright infringement notices under the legislation inexpensive, Telecom New Zealand revealed that under the new regime, it had cost them $534,416 to issue only 1,238 notices - or approximately $438 per notice, although this cost figure is not evidenced by any audited breakdown. The copyright holders are required to pay a fee of $25 to have the notices issued"[1] [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_(Infringing_File_Sharing)_Amendment_Act_2011#Criticism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_(Infringing_File_Sha...
  - Nition 10y ago
    I feel like Telecom may have been boosting the numbers a bit there to try and make the law seem extra bad for them; all they should really have to do is forward a letter.
    - MichaelGG 10y ago
      If they didn't already have a database in place of which IPs assigned to which customers during which times, they'd need to set that up. Software dev isn't cheap. Maintenance isn't cheap. They need to write up a procedure on how to handle these notices. They have to verify they're valid (i.e. not just a prank or malicious action). Compliance costs can add up.
      - xupybd 10y ago
        Also never underestimate the costs incurred by sufficiently bloated bureaucracy.
        lostlogin 10y ago
        You've worked for a university too?
      - vacri 10y ago
        Well said. These things, especially at the government/enterprise level, aren't just a quick and dirty forwarding rule on your mailserver. It's got to be written up, vetted by legal, documented so knowledge transfers through staff transfer, so on and so forth. The action is simple, but implementation is not.

mortenjorck 10y ago

I thought this "cut off your internet" thing had died circa 2007 with the draconian, yet endearingly-condescending "three-strikes-you're-out" push from the record industry. In a world where internet access has long since become a basic requirement to function in civil society, how is this still a conversation?

wmf 10y ago
You can just switch to another ISP!
- ahoy 10y ago
  I literally can't switch. I live in one of the biggest cities in the world, and the ISP's here have carved it up into neighborhood level monopolies. I have one option.
  - mi100hael 10y ago
    That's the joke. The vast majority of the US has either 0 or 1 option for 5+ Mbps internet, and 1-5 options for dial-up/DSL.
    - seanp2k2 10y ago
      Exactly. I can get Comcast up to I think 200mbit now (I have 100) or ATT DSL which would require paying for a phone line + the service which would cost the same as Comcast and run at 768k. This is in Silicon Valley. My apartment building doesn't give me any other options (and Comcast is the only "official" one, but ATT claims they can offer me service...never tried).
      - dublinben 10y ago
        The FCC defines a broadband connection as at least 25/3. [0] That AT&T DSL doesn't even qualify as broadband any more, not that it should. [0] http://arstechnica.com/business/2015/01/fcc-chairman-mocks-industry-claims-that-customers-dont-need-faster-internet/ http://arstechnica.com/business/2015/01/fcc-chairman-mocks-i...

yuhong 10y ago

I wonder how Hollywood was taken over by lawyers in the first place. The plaintiffs in the Betamax suit are Disney and Universal.

blackflame7000 10y ago
Content production and content storage have always had a intertwined relationship because they are co-dependent. Hollywood can't produce content with out means to distribute and media platform creators have nothing to distribute without content.
- lostlogin 10y ago
  It's not exactly the same but has similarities - news. Things gets particularly interesting with AI writing content. All the blurring of lines etc. This seems to be limited to things like stock market news and earnings reports at this time, though someone may correct me on this. www.google.co.nz/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/media/2016/apr/03/artificla-intelligence-robot-reporter-pulitzer-prize?client=safari
  - blackflame7000 10y ago
    It will be interesting to see the impact of AI on news. I would love it if bots could parse out all the fluff and spin and just relay facts. That's all I need from the news. I'm smart enough to draw my own conclusions once I have all the information but nowadays that requires trips to websites all over the political spectrum to figure out what really happened. That being said, algorithmic based AI news could potentially end up being worse than human created fake news. (Imagine Amazon Suggestions applied to news. One obscure google search and suddenly that's all the news you hear about for the next week)
tedunangst 10y ago
Actors and directors used to be owned by the studios. Contract lawyers are not a new thing.
- 10y ago

nabanics 10y ago

As long as you don't use your internet access to commit illegal actions, they won't cut anything off.

virmundi 10y ago
Um...no. If RIAA thinks you did something wrong, even with flimsy evidence, they can still come after you. Should be easier to convince Comcrap to shut off your Internet than get a judge to agree. http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/117419/judge-rules-that-riaa-had-right-to-sue-woman-wrong.html http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/117419/judge-r...
norea-armozel 10y ago
That's not how the real world of this sort of thing works. Often the firms hired to do this sort of thing are just catching any/all IPs on a tracker without any analysis. Meaning that said IPs can be spoofed, part of a botnet, and so on which makes the accusations based purely on those IPs as purely speculative. It's why certain federal circuits throw them out since the firms are sometimes found to be outright fabricating the logs in question. And more obviously, that an IP address itself isn't evidence that the user was at the device in question or that the device in question was assigned that IP address at the time recorded. Simply put, it's 99% bullshit hearsay worse than that of your office gossiper.

pixelbill 10y ago

This happened to myself and my housemate recently, this draconian practice is still alive and well in the USA. We have Service Electric, who uses PenTeleData as their provider, and I can honestly say they are the worst service imaginable.. I'd rather have Comcast. Neither of us use torrents, we prefer streaming services that have everything we need. Regardless, our internet was turned off without notice two months ago. The most frustrating part was that they didn't tell us, it just went off.. so it took us nearly a day to figure out what was even going on. This included a dozen calls to the ISP trying to figure out what was going on, and the surprising part is that they didn't know! There's more to the story including absolutely most incompetent tech support I've ever seen, but a little over a day later we had it turned back on. We asked what we could do to avoid this in the future, and were told not to torrent. Fast forward to a few weeks back, our internet turns off again. I call and find out that our internet has been cut off for 72 hours due to torrenting, which turned out to be a TV show. A TV show neither of us watches, so the circumstances are suspect. When I questioned the operator about this, she flat out called me a liar, with no evidence to support her argument. When I suggested that we might cancel our service because of the poor treatment, she said go ahead. Of course, she knew that there are no other ISPs where we live (out in the woods). So here we are again, our internet may get turned off permanently and without warning for no wrongdoing on our part. Rather strange times we're living in where scumbag companies can get away with this, ruining peoples lives so they can increase their own profits by 3.2% Burn in hell, PenTeleData, I'm sure you're monitoring this as well.

pixelbill 10y ago
Oh I'd forgot to mention that were were charged a $10 re-connection fee each time, in addition to being charged for the days when service was not available. Basically any time they want they can take extra money from you and you have no recourse.

Pica_soO 10y ago

Some routertrojan, erecting a local, for mortals invisible, town-wide tor-net should be enough to end this madness.