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AT&T to cut off some customers' service in piracy crackdown
- bitxbitxbitcoin 8y agoSome of you might be wondering why "a little over a dozen" people being booted from their ISP is newsworthy. This is figuratively the beginning of a very, very slippery slope.
- downrightmike 8y agoEspecially considering that there is more than likely no other option for service in the area because of the ISP totally not being a monopoly, totally not.
- NeedMoreTea 8y agoAssuming I'm parsing the sarcasm correctly, they can't sign on for any other ISP? So you get a choice of one depending on where you happen to live? I'm used to what's called local loop unbundling in the UK and Europe - which is the removal of the last mile monopoly, and all ISPs simply putting a DSLAM in exchanges. Initially this was localised, and there were smaller local players, but they're now effectively all nationwide.
- sbov 8y agoDoesn't work that way in the US. I have a choice of two ISPs where I live. AT&T and Comcast. Some have more. Some have less. I've never lived somewhere that had only one choice though, so I'm not sure how common it is.
- reaperducer 8y agoThere are large swaths of the United States where people have just one choice for internet service.
- lotsofpulp 8y agoIn the US, most homes only have 1 option for wired broadband internet with decent latency. And even then, the upload sucks. Phone line DSL is not decent internet, so unless the phone provider offers fiber, which they very rarely do, you’re at the whim of the company that provides cable television.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- standerman 8y ago50 million US homes have only one 25Mbps Internet provider or none at all https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/06/50-million-us-homes-have-only-one-25mbps-internet-provider-or-none-at-all/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/06/50-mi...
- nfriedly 8y agoYep. I'm in the 'none' category. On a good day I can get 22Mbps down / 1.5 up. On a bad day it doesn't work at all. DSL (with a single provider) is my only option for wired internet at home. Satellite and cellular are both available, but with higher prices and sever data caps. I have an office 1.5 miles away that also has a cable line that can do ~120Mbps down and ~5 up, but the cable lines end about a mile from my house.
- kup0 8y agoYeah the US does not have local loop unbundling. We need to have it, as it's maybe a good way to start fixing the problem. It did exist in some form after the 1996 Telecommunications Act so it happened somewhat with DSL providers, but the laws were narrow, didn't address other issues that arise as a result of the law, and didn't include cable/fiber/etc
- NeedMoreTea 8y agoInteresting, thanks. Despite much complaint at the state of UK broadband, particularly speed variance from distance to exchange or cabinet, LLU has always included whatever came next from ADSL+ through to the current fibre (mostly FTTC) that's almost complete apart from some rural areas. FTTH is still pretty rare sadly. So any speed differences between ISPs are mostly down to the quality or not of the ISP's network. Which means roughly Talktalk bad, A&A good, but the sync speed should be the same. :)
- zipwitch 8y agoFor much of the US the situation is something like this: You have ISP #1, who have relatively modern infrastructure and bandwidth. You may or may not have ISP #2, who have antiquated infrastructure they don't maintain that delivers bandwidth circa 2005. You probably also have ISP #3, who use alternate delivery technologies (wimax, satellite, etc) to deliver low bandwidth at exorbitant prices.
- rootusrootus 8y agoThat's my current experience. Comcast is very fast and low latency. The next best is DSL that maxes out at 2 Mbps. After that my only choice would be some form of wireless. So if Comcast decides not to sell me service, I'm screwed. They could charge as much as they want and to a point I'd just have to suck it up and pay. I assume the reason it isn't multiple times more expensive is because there is some regulation from the PUC capping what they can charge.
- threatofrain 8y agoAlso awkward is that this ISP is competing on content. > Last week, HBO went dark for the first time ever after a carriage dispute with Dish. Critics of the merger, include the DOJ, alleged that AT&T may have intentionally failed to come to an agreement with Dish, in an effort to steal Dish's Pay-TV subscribers.
- spaceribs 8y agoit's a feature, not a bug.
- dawnerd 8y agoand I bet those "over a dozen" people are also their highest in terms of bandwidth use. Smart pirates use vpns anyways.
- Spivak 8y agoISP sees high amounts of traffic over a public VPN and kicks you off their network for suspicious activity. You go to appeal it in one of their 'courts' and since there aren't really any rules the burden of proof is on you. You really were pirating so such positive proof doesn't really exist and you're off the internet for good.
- craftyguy 8y agoThere are perfectly legitimate reasons for 'consuming' a large amount of bandwidth. For example, I help seed a number of Linux distro ISOs over bittorrent, and once got a letter from my absolute shit of an ISP (Frontier, if you are reading this, it's you).
- RankingMember 8y agoReminds me of when Comcast throttled bittorrent across the board.
- Spivak 8y agoPlenty of legitimate usage, I'm talking about the fact that masking your traffic with a VPN isn't really protection when these 'courts' can demand you prove you weren't pirating content in order to restore your service. So getting away with piracy by way of plausible deniability is much harder.
- dawnerd 8y agoThey’re not real courts so no they can’t demand you to prove anything. I don’t know where you’re coming from but it’s nothing but unsubstantiated fear.
- bdcravens 8y agoA slippery slope many have already considered acceptable, if it involves political (albeit hateful) speech.
- cronix 8y agoSoon we will probably have an Internet Citizen Rating, similar to Credit Ratings, or China's Social Credit system.
- ddingus 8y agoFacebook Trust Score
- drawkbox 8y agoIt is a very bad precedent to cut people off a needed service to live today, and it needs to be stopped immediately. The problem is ISPs and content providers, or both, are prioritizing their needs over other industries. Say someone does pirate something, and the cost of that is a few hundred or even thousands of dollars that they wouldn't have bought anyways in most cases or couldn't afford. Well they also use the internet to purchase products, pay bills, and the internet is part of daily life now. Cutting someone off from the network utility because of even large amounts of digital goods being pirated is the wrong approach as it has collateral damage to other products/industries, survival of the person and possibly their family and more. Should the person pay a fine? Yes. Should they lose their internet? No, unless ISPs and content providers, or if they are one in the same, are more important than every other industry. ISPs/content providers aren't more important than every other industry and ISPs are more of a utility that needs to be always available, other methods are needed, cutting someone off from a needed service to live is cruel and unusual punishment.
- obblekk 8y agoI’m sure many of us believe in following and enforcing laws (even flawed laws like 150yr copyright), but are still made uneasy by this development. I think the source of that discomfort is - what happens if your service is cut in error. Do you trust ATT to have a fair, easy appeals process? Competition in the form of space internet can’t come soon enough, not to enable pirates, but to ensure normal people have reasonable service levels and alternatives to unfair decisions.
- eiaoa 8y ago> what happens if your service is cut in error. Do you trust ATT to have a fair, easy appeals process? This is where many of the arguments against government regulation break down. If you take government out of the picture, you're still left dealing with massive institutions and bureaucratic regulations. The main difference is that those institutions are even less accountable to the average person than the government, and they have obvious interests in tilting every table to advantage themselves. Dealing with a corporate bureaucracy is dealing with a regulatory body that's been totally captured by that corporation.
- sbov 8y agoBut if AT&T unfairly cuts you off from the internet, you could just go to a competitor!
- msbarnett 8y ago> But if AT&T unfairly cuts you off from the internet, you could just go to a competitor! If we pretend geographic monopolies don't exist, maybe
- gbear605 8y agoNot in many areas
- jrnichols 8y agoI detect the sarcasm there. and you're right! you can totally bail and go to the competition... like HughesNet. They're just the same, right? (also more sarcasm)
- kevin_b_er 8y agoBut remember, it would impinge AT&T's corporate "free speech" to have their service be a dumb pipe like any other utility. Corporations should always be free to do whatever at the expense of flesh and blood humans.
- tantalor 8y agoThe podcast Reply-All had a good episode about why this is problematic earlier this year. https://www.gimletmedia.com/reply-all/118 https://www.gimletmedia.com/reply-all/118 Excerpt: ALEX: So finally, I find this website that is called the Center for Copyright information. PJ: And what’s that? ALEX: It’s a website that is run by both the entertainment industry and the ISPs, they’re working together. And the deal is, if you feel that you have wrongly received a DMCA notice, you can go to this website, pay $35, and you can appeal it. And if you’re successful, then they will tell your ISP they were wrong, and they retract it, and you shouldn’t have any strikes on your account. PJ: You found internet court. ALEX: Yeah, I found internet court. PJ: So are you taking this case to internet court? ALEX: I sent them an email and said, hey this person Cayden was wrongfully accused. PJ: And what did they say? ALEX: They didn’t say anything, they never got back to me! PJ: (laughs) Got it. ALEX: So basically what I found was a completely unaccountable system that was frustratingly opaque. It was maddening. So I decided to try something else.
- JumpCrisscross 8y ago> It’s a website that is run by both the entertainment industry and the ISPs, they’re working together The entertainment industry wants takedowns eagerly enforced. The ISPs don't want to do work. Ignoring complaints is the predictable outcome. (As is AT&T becoming stricter about copyright enforcement after buying a content company.)
- craftyguy 8y ago> pay $35 And make a quick buck on the side too!
- wmf 8y agoThat's a bargain compared to being on the wrong end of a federal copyright lawsuit.
- dsfyu404ed 8y agoIt's cheaper than most court fees (whether those fees should exist is a different story).
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- jrockway 8y agoI wonder when this will spread to other industries? Say someone doesn't pay their newspaper bill. Maybe contact their water company and ask them to shut off their water, to encourage them to pay. It's worth a try, right? I get why content rights owners go to the ISP to get at the ISP's customers who are doing things they don't like. I don't get why ISPs play along. It's extra work, and it makes the customer hate the ISP for being the bearer of bad news.
- usefulcat 8y agoIn this particular case, the answer is rather obvious--the ISP is a content rights owner. Vertical integration FTW!
- jedberg 8y agoThe ISPs are common carries, so they have to play along with the rights owners. A better analogy would be getting USPS to stop coming to your house when the content creators find out you've been mailing pressed DVDs from your house. The difference of course is that you could switch to UPS or FedEx. For 72% of the country, you can't switch ISPs.
- aerotwelve 8y agoI believe the obligation to play along with rights holders comes from the DMCA's safe harbor provision, (which limits an ISP's liability for copyright infringement that occurs over their network provided they cooperate with takedown notices), not from the property of being common carriers. Especially since FCC has ruled cable internet providers are no longer Title II services.
- sp332 8y agoIt's taken a while to sort out in the industry, but I think the finding against Cox last year has ISPs running scared. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/02/cox-must-pay-8m-in-fees-on-top-of-25m-jury-verdict-for-violating-dmca/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/02/cox-must-pay-8m-... Edit: I thought there was something more recent, and sure enough there's a new lawsuit from August this year. https://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2018/08/sensing-blood-in-water-major-labels-sue-isp-cox-for-ignoring-their-dmca-notices.html https://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2018/08/sensing-blood-in-wat...
- philipodonnell 8y ago> The bottom line: Very few copyright infringers ever get booted from their broadband provider, pointing to the severity of these cases and the number of steps at which the customer is told they are violating copyright before they are cut off from AT&T's service. Copyright infringers are often illegally pirating hundreds of hours of stolen content, not a song or two from their favorite band. Its far more likely AT&T cares now because they own content now instead of it somehow pointing to the "severity of these cases", a point the article itself makes several times before walking it back? Also nothing to back up the out-of-nowhere claim that infringers "often illegally pirate hundreds of hours"?
- ronnier 8y agoHow does this differ from the deplatforming we've recently seen with Twitter, Apple app store, Gab from hosting providers, facebook, youtube, etc?
- MysticFear 8y agoPeople actually are accused of doing something illegal by law.
- cft 8y agoSorry, "illegal" versus "legal" in America is determined by the courts, not by private corporations.
- crankylinuxuser 8y agoDidn't you get the memo (2016)? Corporations now write the law, and they don't even prevent for impartiality.
- wuliwong 8y agoWho are you saying is accused? AT&T or the customers? I don't believe there is any legal proceedings related to any of this? I think OP's point was that if this bothers you and the recent de-platforming of people and websites does not, maybe you should rethink your position. But maybe I misread OP?
- SimplePeople 8y agoAccused or convicted?
- myegorov 8y agoNot too long ago, homosexuality was criminalized.
- rootusrootus 8y agoThere are a lot of platforms to choose from, but my house is only physically connected by one high speed ISP.
- ocdtrekkie 8y ago"Don't violate the law over our network" is not an unreasonable expectation, and "we will shut off service to people that violate the law using our network" is not an unreasonable penalty. It's hard to imagine any business of any kind taking the position "feel free to violate the law over our network" or deciding that they just won't do anything about it if people do. Imagine a restaurant that could see you operating an illegal handgun market out of the corner booth and just decided that was fine as long as you tipped your server alright. This is the most softball approach possible, they're giving you nine warnings before they just stop doing business with you, which is quite a bit nicer than them handing out your info specifically to enable the entertainment industry to take you to court for hundreds of thousands of dollars or reporting you to the FBI.
- zzzcpan 8y ago> "Don't violate the law over our network" is not an unreasonable expectation, and "we will shut off service to people that violate the law using our network" is not an unreasonable penalty. Monopolies playing judges and prosecutors is very unreasonable. They shouldn't be able to cut off customers by themselves at all, even non-paying.
- cft 8y agoThe law in America is enforced by the courts, not by private corporations.
- ocdtrekkie 8y agoThey aren't enforcing the law. They're managing their risk as a business, by not doing business with people who could put them at legal risk. If they were "enforcing the law", they'd send you a fine for tens of thousands of dollars and throw you in jail if you didn't pay it. If a gun store owner knew a guy was buying a gun to shoot up a school, wouldn't you want him to refuse to sell it? Wouldn't you want to hold the gun store responsible for knowingly enabling illegal activity? (Note that I am using gun analogies in my comments because I feel the positions here are oddly tied to a specific issue, and hypocritical when applied to others. I'm aware these aren't really similar in severity by any means.)
- tlrobinson 8y agoIf you are fortunate enough to live somewhere with a choice of ISPs please vote with your dollars and choose an independent ISP. Or, start your own: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16160394 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16160394
- myegorov 8y agoThe irony is that AT&T's agents have to pirate the content in order to track down the pirates. Pirate Party is the answer, and VPN in the interim.