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Verizon’s “Six Strikes” Anti-Piracy Measures Unveiled

During the coming weeks the controversial “six-strikes” anti-piracy system will kick off in the U.S. While none of the participating ISPs have officially announced how they will handle repeat infringers, TorrentFreak has obtained a copy of Verizon’s full policy. Among other things, offenders will have to watch a video about the consequences of online piracy, before their speeds are reduced to 256kbps. Also worth mentioning is that the copyright alert system will also apply to business customers.

verizonIn 2011 the MPAA and RIAA teamed up with five major Internet providers in the United States to launch the Center for Copyright Information (CCI).

The parties agreed to implement a system through which subscribers are warned that their copyright infringements have been monitored by rightsholders. After several warnings ISPs may then take a variety of repressive measures against alleged infringers.

After more than a year of delays the plan will officially roll out in the first weeks of this year.

One of the ISPs taking part is Verizon. Previously, the ISP made some remarks about the various punishments it would hand out to subscribers but in common with other participating providers the company has not yet announced the full details. Today, we can do this for them.

TorrentFreak has obtained a complete overview of how Verizon’s alert scheme will work and details of the mitigation measures they intend to put in place. The document is stored on Verizon’s web server but due to its placement is currently unfindable using Google.

6-verizon

When the IP-address of a Verizon customer is caught sharing copyrighted works on BitTorrent, the responsible account holder will first get two notification alerts. These inform the customer about the alleged copyright infringements and also explain how file-sharing software can be removed from their computer.

Alert 1 and 2

“Are delivered by email and automatic voicemail to the telephone number we have on file for you. Notify you that one or more copyright owners have reported that they believe your account has been involved in possible copyright infringement activity.”

“Provide a link to information on how to check to see if file sharing software is operating on your computer (and how to remove it) and tell you where to find information on obtaining content legally.”

If more infringements are found after the first two alerts then the account holder is moved on to the acknowledgment phase where “popups” appear on-screen. Customers will have to acknowledge that they received the new alert and will be instructed to watch a video about the consequences of online piracy.

Alert 3 and 4

“Redirect your browser to a special web page where you can review and acknowledge receiving the alerts. Provide a short video about copyright law and the consequences of copyright infringement.”

“Require you to click on an “acknowledgement” button before you will be able to freely browse the Internet. Clicking the acknowledgement button does not require you to admit that you or anyone else actually engaged in any infringing activity, only that you have received the alert.”

If the infringements continue after the fourth alert the subscriber will move on to the mitigation phase. Here, the customer can either ask for a review by the American Arbitration Association or undergo a temporary speed reduction to 256kbps.

Alert 5 and 6

“Redirect your browser to a special web page where you will be given several options. You can: Agree to an immediate temporary (2 or 3 day) reduction in the speed of your Internet access service to 256kbps (a little faster than typical dial-up speed); Agree to the same temporary (2 or 3 day) speed reduction but delay it for a period of 14 days; or Ask for a review of the validity of your alerts by the American Arbitration Association.”

If more infringements are found after the sixth alert “nothing” will happen. The user will receive no more alerts and can continue using his or her Internet connection at full speed.

However – and this is not mentioned by Verizon – the MPAA and RIAA may obtain the IP-addresses of such repeat infringers in order to take legal action against them. While the ISPs will not voluntarily share the name and address linked to the IP-address, they can obtain a subpoena to demand this information from the provider.

The potential for copyright holders to use the alert system as solid evidence gathering for lawsuits remains one of the most problematic aspects of the six-strikes scheme.

Finally, TorrentFreak also confirmed that the alerts outlined above will also apply to business customers. This means that coffee shops and other small businesses will have to be very careful over who they allow on their company networks. It could mean the end of free WiFi in many places.

Aside from Verizon we previously received some details on the measures AT&T and Time Warner Cable will take.

Leaked AT&T documents showed that they will block users’ access to some of the most frequently-visited websites on the Internet, until they complete a copyright course. Time Warner Cable will temporarily interrupt people’s ability to browse the Internet.

It’s expected that the two remaining providers, Cablevison and Comcast, will take similar measures. None of the ISPs will permanently disconnect repeat infringers as part of the plan.

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  • Al_Knowing

    First lawsuit within 1 month, this policy gone within 3.

    • Hiphop

      So I take it if you argue the claim and it is found that you were NOT sharing infringing material, the companies who made the fradulent claims against you will be billed 35$ for each false claim, right? I mean, you are guilty until proven innocent in America after all! Wait a minute…

      • Bring it

        Then I will turn around and sue for wrongfully accused, libel, slander, and defimation of character.

        • Anonymous

          We need to know as soon as the first warning letter goes out.

          Who is the copyright holder ?
          What file/files are they being accused of downloadin ?

          Then we can………

        • Harry Assenbach

          … share the information publicly among other things.

        • Ophelia Millais

          But they don’t make public accusations. The accusation is made by the copyright owner to the ISP, in reference to your IP address. Even when the ISP contacts you to notify you of the accusation, they don’t actually accuse you of anything (at least, they chose their words carefully in the info posted in this article)…they just say the copyright owner has accused you of “possible” copyright infringement.

          Besides, as I’ve pointed out in my other comments, the ISP makes you sign a contract saying that all disputes in relation to Six Strikes are to be resolved via arbitration. So you don’t get to use the court system, ever. You can’t sue the ISP at all. I doubt you can sue the copyright owner, either, since you agreed to participate in the Six Strikes system via your contract with the ISP.

        • http://profile.yahoo.com/RRAPX3W2QRAVI7PAZ2H2SMUSPI No Chance Without Derp

          Just cancel the service after the 1st warning.

        • purplkoala

          and if you have a 2 year contract, that will not work or you pay a fortune for breaking your contract

        • 2011PaperReader2

          You can not sue for libel, slander or defamation of character if the accuser says something wrongfully about you in private. Now, if they publicly say or post false claims about you and it effects your livelihood, then you can sue.

        • xBallsx

          @ No Chance. You’re assuming that everyone has an alternative. I’d guess most don’t

        • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=508892933 Günnhildör Dürön

          don’t forget emotional distress for thinking that your ISP thinks you are breaking the law.

        • Sjsjs

          Slander and libel merely requires publication to a third party. In law this simply means anyone who is not the person defamed and does not necessarily mean “public” in the usual way. For example if I told your employer you smoke pot, and this is untrue, I would have defamed you. It doesn’t matter that such a conversation may be considered “private” in some sense. Such communication would give rise to a cause of action.

          So in this case one might accuse the record companies of defamation by falsely accusing you to your ISP. The record company might have a defense though if they could show that the accusation were true. Also given the very limited consequences of these policies it would be difficult to show any damages arising from the defamatory speech if it were held to be so.

        • ARBITRATION RULES

          Arbitration is a great tool for fighting debt collectors. The consumer is limited to half of the starting cost and none of the other fees, but AAA is not the best to go after debt collectors. JAMS is the way to go. As a consumer you are limited to $250 to start and no other fees. On the commercial side (if you have a business account) you share ALL the fees equally.

        • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_7D6OFVGWI45YMM22FZXSPNCBWY J Oberman

          SLANDER defamation; words falsely spoken that tend to damage the reputation of another. Under modern legal & constitutional concepts, slander is LIMITED to false remarks inasmuch as truth is an absolute DEFENSE to an ACTION for slander.

          Unlike LIBEL, slanderous utterances may not be actionable without proof of actual temporal DAMAGES. Only where the words impute crime, loathsome disease or unchasity, or when they relate to an individual’s business or profession is requirement of proving “special damages” dispensed with. Slander may take the form or either SLANDER PER SE or SLANDER PER QUOD. If the defamatory meaning is apparent on the face of the statement, then the statement is slanderous per se. If the defamatory meaning arises only from extrinsic facts, not apparent upon the face of the statement, then the statement is slanderous per quod.

          LIBEL a tort consisting of a false and MALICIOUS publication printed for the purpose of defaming one who is living; (spoken defamation is called slander). “libel” includes “any unprivileged, false and MALICIOUS publication which by printing, writings, signs or pictures tends to expose a person to public scorn, hatred, contempt or ridicule . . . and also embraced therein is any such publication that relates to a person’s office, trade, business or employment, if the publication imputes to him some incapacity or lack of due qualifications to fill the position, or some positive past misconduct which will injuriously affect him in it.” The truth of the publicated statement creates a valid DEFENSE to an ACTION for libel.

          The 1st Amendment protects the press against certain libel actions unless actual malice is shown. The constitutional limitation does not apply to DEFAMATION by a newspaper of private persons, where only some degree of fault on the part of the newspaper is required.

        • http://profile.yahoo.com/RRAPX3W2QRAVI7PAZ2H2SMUSPI No Chance Without Derp

          There’s always an alternative.

        • Tactical Nuclear Penguin

          Warning, Julia’s link is to spam, Flagged.

    • tonyj123

      What laws are broken exactly, is it just a U.S. law, are these laws similar in different countries, or are these laws exactly the same and do these laws change in meaning when they cross International boundaries?

      • Who

        laws vary around the world. like JUST recently the UK copyright law just changed. not sure when it will be implemented but…according to this

        http://www.engadget.com/2011/08/02/uk-set-to-legalize-cd-and-dvd-copying-for-personal-use/

        it WILL be LEGAL in the “UK” @ some point to COPY CD’s = Compact Disk’s = music on cd, dvd’s are ALSO on a CD. same with bluray’s and software and games.

        wander what the MPAA/RIAA/software and game developers had to say about this.

        in case you were wandering Y this change…..it was contradicting property rights law by not allowing YOU to copy and make a back up of YOUR personal property or allowing you to change the format.

      • Guest

        I should point out that the “six strikes” thing is completely outside the law. That’s only way they could do it.

        • IDIOCRACY

          In The Netherlands this would be impossible, a free wifi network is being rolled out as we speak, euh… type :P
          The providers are the ISP themselves, a lot of IP addresses cannot be linked to an account anymore and the amount is growing. And in The Netherlands Downloading is legal even from supposedly illegal source. I guess it sucks to live in U.S. and I wonder how long it will take until major businesses get speed reduction and get damaged by that, just waiting for the multi-million dollar lawsuits hehe (oh and I copied some behavior from Trolling Anon, I got a bag of popcorn and waiting for the show to start).

        • Qua Couron

          Lucky bastards. I hate living here. Everything about it, every company and all the damn people. Wish I could leave, but I can’t. I think internet should have always been free…it seems utterly ridiculous that it isn’t.

        • Who

          YEP that’s EXACTLY right.

        • Guest

          Now the US government can spy on all americans… more easily.

          Divided States of America

        • Guest

          I think its a test to see if they can get away with it. If their customers take it on the chin, then we can expect this with other ISP’s around the world.

          If they lose 1 million customers in a month this will send a message not to fuck with the people. The Tyranny is being seeding in the US, (MPAA/RIAA among others) so I beg Americans to kill it before it destroys the internet.

    • OneEyedWillie

      You accused me of STEALING! How dare you! Since you really can’t prove I personally stole anything. Defamation Lawsuit!

      • Carlton

        From the article: “Notify you that one or more copyright owners have reported that they believe your account has been involved in possible copyright infringement activity….Provide a link to information on how to check to see if file sharing software is operating on your computer (and how to remove it)…”

        Dear ISP,

        Following your instructions turns up no sign of any file sharing software on this computer. Therefore it appears the copyright owners are incorrect about infringement through this account. On the other hand, it could be that an unauthorized pirate is using my Wi-Fi from another location, which the courts have ruled is not my responsibility. Please advise the copyright holders to do their homework before causing any more trouble in this matter. Thanks.

        • EricPost

          What if I run utorrent but only use it for public domain stuff. I certainly have file sharing software. Doesn’t mean the files I’m sharing are illegal.

        • Trespass

          @EricPost

          The company harnessing the IP addresses for the RIAA/MPAA are looking for specific titles of movies and music. They will be watching select bit-torrent sites so the likelihood of your public domain movies being on that list is nil.

        • mike

          Tell that to HBO.

          The morons who developed this system sent Google a C&D letter because they linked to HBO content ON HBO websites and claimed infringement.

          Yes you read that right, they were accusing HBO of pirating their own copyrighted files!

          Never mind that this company has no copyright claim to HBO’s stuff and therefore had no standing to issue a takedown notice.

        • Smekken

          @Trespass

          Thats what people like you said about DMCA notices too….

        • icec0ld

          More concerning is what sort of access you are providing to your ISP by running such a scan.

        • Guest

          Would uninstalling any such software and deleting certain files before running the scan have any effects on its results?

        • lejf123

          just have a spare computer or a virtual computer and install some apps, itunes, spotify ect.

    • Yewey

      You are DAM* right! I will personally sue my ISP for any such monitoring of WHO I COMMUNICATE WITH OVER LEASED LINES – none of their business is who! All the RIAA and MPAA had to do 15 years ago was embrace the new technology instead of try to sue everyone. Now, they have smaller digitial libraries of their own content than the eventual owners (ahem yes all this stuff will eventually become public domain!) because they would rather fight progress than be progress. That and all the price fixing, unsustainable media like records/tapes/CDs and show cancelling karma – they deserve every iota of what is happening to them!

    • JordanKratz

      Hoping we see MAFIAA Boot Lickers get Sued for making Fradulent Claims against Consumers.Also would be great to see many quit their ISP for one who will not Sign onto 6 Strikes BS.
      And lastly one hopes to see many more who join up with the Boycott all MAFIAA Crew.

      Fuck the MAFIAA Hard !

    • http://twitter.com/ErikNyquist Erik Nyquist

      I’m sure they have a gazillion lawyers handling this BS; but there is an argument to be made about discrimination.

  • Trespass

    Good luck with THAT, Verizon! Doubtful this will be of any consequence… ISP’s are only placating the entertainment industries because none of them will stand up and say, “This isn’t out job!!”

    We will see just how effective this is…. Only the clueless will be affected!

    • Anon

      “Only the clueless will be affected!”

      True.
      About 99.8% of all customers. True.

      • Trespass

        Then we need an education program of our own. Call it “Anonymous Browsing 101″.

        • 44

          Exactly. This crap will further brainwash clueless idiots and children. There needs to be something to counter it.

        • Xult

          ixquick

      • Scary_Devil_Monastery

        This was true about filesharing clients as well.

        However, since it’s a given that punks with tudes will want to ramp up wardriving now that it can have a real effect, the ordinary joe will soon become far more savvy.

        In Sweden, for instance, with an estimated 20% filesharer rate among the online population, the number of people using a VPN surged from 20,000 in 2006 to 400,000 in 2009 according to Cybernorms research. And apparently keeps on growing.

        The six strikes regime is like the first virus/malware attacks. It teaches EVERYONE you now needed an antivirus. Or a VPN as the case might be.

        • Smekken

          Only in this case VPN providers in the US are gonna have a hard time too.

        • Scary_Devil_Monastery

          @Smekken

          There is that. Meaning that those of them who have smarts will simply ensure the exit channels for their servers is in canada or Mexico.

      • Corrupted

        That’s may be so but as soon as they start being annoyed with fucking Email and stuff they are going to become “cluefull” really fast. Them many more of them will joint our cyber army of boycotters, Ddosers and hakers until these corporate asshole crash and burn out of business and out of our net.

      • Michael

        18 votes
        Not bad for a MAFIAA Troll,congratulations.

      • Yo’ mama

        Can you say “VPN”?

        • WTF

          Can you say sock5?

    • Pelham123

      “Only the clueless will be affected!”

      It’s the “clueless” that are going to make the most noise, because they’ll be getting strikes for what they consider to be lawful behavior … and they just might be right.

      What if the allegation is for a file that’s fair use? Obviously a sharer of a fair use file wouldn’t hide that sharing … why would they?

      • Trespass

        It seems to me that there IS no fair use anymore. At least the industry seems to pick and choose how it is applied. They say now it is illegal to rip music you own to another format suitable for an iPod, for example.

        Fair use is a very “muddy” issue and no one should take the chance of sharing any file without protection.

        • http://twitter.com/ethicalfan EthicalFan

          Distributing copyrighted music and movies in their entirety is never fair use. Using short clips of music and movies for educational or parody purposes is fair use.

        • Who

          @EthicalFan: “Distributing copyrighted music and movies in their entirety is never fair use. Using short clips of music and movies for educational or parody purposes is fair use”

          yes it is..107 . Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair use…Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is NOT an infringement of copyright

          http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html

        • Scary_Devil_Monastery

          @EthicalFan

          “Fair Use” in Sweden means you can make as many copies as you like of whatever media you own and distribute it freely to anyone even casually aquainted. Legally.

          “Fair Use” in Spain means you can fileshare as much as you like. Legally.

          “Fair Use” in the US seems to be restricted to “first sale”.

          So basically you don’t know what the hell you are talking about unless you tack on a belated “…in the US” on your bold statement.

        • Guest

          EthicalFan, let’s make this clear so you get it through that vapid void you call a skull.

          You wouldn’t know ethical if it smacked you in the face.

        • Derp

          @EthicalFan:

          How am i supposed to get my hand on a clip of a movie quote? Buy the movie? Kind of defeats the fair use doesn’t it? As making a statement entirely from quotes would make it too expensive to consider. Same goes for any and all remixes. It’s just putting a price on this kind of speech or art. And that is exactly what we need, more speech and art only rich people can make.

      • MadAsASnake

        Not true. IP is so unreliable that anyone could get these. These terms (throttling and additional charges) based on totally unsubstantiated allegations won’t meet any test of fairness, and you can gaurantee that the Audit trail for the allegations (if they have one!) won’t ever be provided. Forget fair use, how about some evidence first.

        • Grant

          I’m a little surprised at how little many of you know in regard to your ISP.

          The best way to think about it is this: they can see everything you do.

          And that includes initiating attempts at anonymity.

          Just a heads up.

        • Trespass

          @ Grant

          The ISP can “see” that I’ve connected to a VPN, but cannot see what I am doing with it. They cannot see the TOR proxy I use within the VPN and have no idea if I am streaming a Netflix movie or downloading a movie from bittorrent. They know I am using bandwidth, but not how or where I am using it.

          So, I disagree. They do not know what I am doing. They would have to cover three continents to figure that out.

        • Scary_Devil_Monastery

          @Grant

          The ISP can see that user A has initiated contact with another host and that there is a data flow.

          Even DPI won’t tell them much more than that. Though if they DID do DPI for an extended period of time – essentially monitoring the user’s traffic entirely – they could guess that the user was working through an encrypted tunnel.

          That’s it.

          If you want to claim differently, present the proof and cash in your new nobel prize in math. Cryptographers will be carving your name in stone on the base of mount Rushmore for coming up with that holy grail of computer science.

  • Anon402853

    How come nobody ever disclosed any of France’s ISP’s 3 Strikes documentation/procedures??? Is it just me, or is this “USA” strike/slaps on the wrist project getting more attention than the French/New Zealand “strike projects”??? Is it because the USA has more ISPs involved in this venture?? Or is it because I live in the USA which cause me to not be “as attentive” to the French strike processes???

    • albie

      Here in,France,it’s dead

    • MadAsASnake

      The scam is being pushed as far as it can until someone actually gets this idiocy in front of a judge. As we have seen they will only allow that in either highly prejudicial forums (like HADOPI), or not at all (like in NZ).

    • icec0ld

      In New Zealand half of the 9 cases have been totally dismissed for failing follow procedure with the other half soon to go.

      • MadAsASnake

        4.5 – wow.

  • guest

    And enter encrypted seeding and leeching…

    • johnnymonster

      Does encrypted seeding/leeching on the client end keep them from seeing whats going on?

      • Anyone

        no
        you need to encrypt it through a VPN

        • Bambino

          would a bittorrent proxy work

        • http://profile.yahoo.com/3WK3JNCWUEZMPMP3YVNK4XZDHY Harpreet

          retroshare here i come

        • Nice

          How about something like PeerGaurdian? Does that protect?

        • Anyone

          no, PeerGuardian does nothing to protect you

        • Ghost In The Wire

          PeerGuardian is shite, because it checks for “known” industry IPs. It won’t protect you if they change it – and they have been shifting to _dynamic_ IPs, so it’s essentially worthless.

          If you’re in the market for a good VPN, Pirate Party of Canada has a great one – for ten bucks a month. Or had – they’ve removed mention from their home page. Still active here: https://www.pirateparty.ca/store/product/vpn-subscription

        • http://profile.yahoo.com/3WK3JNCWUEZMPMP3YVNK4XZDHY Harpreet

          Does peerblock still work good for blocking?
          can someone provide me a list of ips? THANKS IN ADVANCE FOR ANYONE WHO DOES.
          happysingh9292@gmail.com

        • Ment0r

          The effectivness of these blocking applications are dependent on the accuracy of the block list that you load into them.

        • Shenmueryu

          All that does is keep the flack off of verizon in the end and these other companies so that “the industry” will stop trying to sue them. It’s still a stupid move on any provider to give a reduction of service when the customer is paying for the service as some sort of justifiable punishment because all they will do is go somewhere else when it is all said and done. The last thing any company wants is to lose face and customers at the same time.

      • IHaveNoBalls

        How about we set up the torrent client to disallow tracker connections. then the only people you would connect to would be though DHT.. Wouldn’t that at least make the chances of being logged go down? Or is DHT just as easily traceable as using a tracker?

        • Anyone

          DHT is a bit slower, but you aren’t any less visible

        • EricPost

          Private trackers disallow DHT.

        • Guest321

          I doubt the MAFIAA will be tracking private torrents anyway. So I suppose one can get away without using VPN when downloading from private trackers.

      • Guest

        If the traffic is encrypted the ISP can’t see what you download, unless they break the encryption which would be illegal.

        But if you want to download without encryption I recommend you to pay for a VPN.

    • The Merovingian

      There seem to be quite a lot of people here asking about how to set up a proxy/vpn service.

      Try it this way (this is the easy way to do it, not necessarily the best or fastest – something to get your feet off the ground).

      - The site is btguard – dot – com. They offer two methods for proxy usage: (1) Downloading a pre-configured u-torrent program offered on their website (easiest method) or (2) Configuring your torrent client per instructions on the website.
      – There are two products – one for safe web browsing, and one for safe torrenting. The safe torrenting product is the one you’ll be looking for.

      - Go to site checkmytorrentip – dot – com and follow instructions to set up new torrent. This torrent will constantly monitor and report what your torrent ip is.

      The entire process of setting this up will take you well under 10 minutes.

      • The Merovingian

        Also, pls don’t forget to set your torrent client settings to “forced” encryption.

        VPN/Proxy service hides your real ip (which shows up on torrent peer lists).

        Encryption settings will hide the traffic stream from your ISP.

        • yuchmich

          VPNs hide the traffic stream from your ISP as well.

          Encrypting the bittorrent traffic within the VPN tunnel is redundant, not necessarily a bad idea, and will hide the traffic from the VPN provider.

  • Anyone

    strikes for business accounts
    that will end well…

    • MadAsASnake

      … and quickly … in most of these schemes, the scammers leave businesses alone because they will get legal proceedings pretty much instantly.

      • EricPost

        So basically if you hate your boss, you set up a torrent client and purposely download files known to attract attention, then your boss gets in trouble?

        • Guest

          sudden urge to illegally download porn in the office computer has arisen..

        • Guest321

          P2P is already blocked in most company offices. Your boss isn’t that stupid.

        • Somebody

          @Guest321 You’d be surprised. My old boss set up unsecured wifi at work with a home modem/router combo…

        • Sir Helpful

          You can get around blockages with proxys or a Tor Browser

  • Scary_Devil_Monastery

    Let alone that this will be useless, did you also realize the impact of “including business customers”?

    Have you any idea of with which ease you can spoof six strikes on any network with more than, say, a dozen end adresses? My guess is, lawsuits are going to be falling on Verizon like gentle summer rain.

    Especially given that no business owner will any longer be able to provide free wifi. Period.

    Meanwhile the system is dead-easy to circumvent, and so it will be.

    • Guest

      I am glad to see ‘bobmail’ and ‘Nej’ were right.
      The monopoly, political pressure, application of lawsuits and fines;
      none of these things will impact on startups, innovation or the public.
      Thank God. Life will go on as normal. Phew.

      [mega Sarcasm]

    • Anon

      I think that’s great idea Scary, start spoofing business connections as a declaration of your rights. We love this. Good thinking.

      • Pelham123

        “we love this.”

        Voices in your head now, too?

        People who are declaring their rights wont be the ones spoofing the connections. Vandals and doofuses will be doing the spoofing. Same end result, though.

      • Scary_Devil_Monastery

        Oh, I’m not.

        However, it’s a given that the punk with a tude will. Or the 15 year old angry that he didn’t get the service he wanted. etc. Given how easy it is, can you imagine anyone at all who’d be willing to drop people into hot water just for kicks? Like half of the teens hanging out around the local 7-11?

        I’m sure you didn’t miss the way the Swedish Film Institute managed to launch a huge investigation against itself because someone apparently didn’t like them? Oh. You did.

        And as for the rest, “Anon”, as ever you can be relied upon to drop the bar on what constitutes “civil discourse” even further. Hell, there are confused neo-nazis on flashback who can argue with better coherence.

        Perhaps the saddest part of all is that here comes your much-crowed-for six-strikes regime – and it’s already dying as we speak.

        If you had any love at all for the MPAA you should be running to them right now screaming “Abort”, “Abort” at the top of your little lungs. You won’t though. I think you are quite aware, just like anyone else who even checked the filesharing scene, that this is one big whopping shot to the foot as far as you are concerned. Once the letters start hitting consumers, rest assured, that “why do we need copyright, again” debate starts up once more.

        And you know from history that’s NEVER gone down well for you.

        Meanwhile, from a pirate point of view, I would like to thank the lovely gents and ladies behind the six-strikes for all the new pirates we will harvest from this mess.

        • Tactical Nuclear Penguin

          I think you understate the the big whopping shot to the foot. No, the MAFFIA are aiming much higher, such as shooting themselves in the head, which could prove rather fatal for them and not the filesharers they are going after.
          Going after business customers as well could be Verizon’s way of completely destroying this scheme for good without looking like they are trying to destroy it from within.

    • Guess

      Actualy I dont think verizon or any of the other ISPs will get sued by any of their business customers, it will be more a case of asking them who sent the notification and then going after them in the courts for false allegations, simply for the fact which end of the day this all boils down to, MONEY ie copy right holders are likely to have more money and especialy the business customers will be able to get a bigger damages award likely to be collectable, ie go after the ones making the liabolus slander instead of the intermediary.

      • Pelham123

        I find it hard to see how a court will find fault with the rightsholdler in this case. They made the allegation in good faith. They just had bad information.

        Rather, the business customers will come after the ISPs for deliberately establishing a system that exposes the customer to service interruptions that are out of their control.

        • MadAsASnake

          Basing allegations on IP evidence alone is not good faith.

      • Scary_Devil_Monastery

        That all relies on two things.

        1: Someone irascible gets his six strikes despite never having downloaded anything at all. (And this will happen as soon as he’s pissed off the wrong kid who’s happened to have heard of “Reaver”).

        2: Verizon will have to go through, in a court of law, just what their “evidence” for the strikes consisted of.

        3: Once precedence is set, the dam bursts.

        Anon’s and bobmails idols in this regard had done far better to just let the sleeping lions lie instead of kicking them. If court precedence is ever set in the US that ip can not be considered adequate evidence, any future copyright enforcement suit dies stillborn.

        Anon being an idiot, gloats about this, apparently confused about which side he’s on.

        • Anon1

          If court precedence is ever set in the US that ip can not be considered adequate evidence…

          Isn’t there precedence already?

        • rogerbix

          Unless of course Verizon inserts binding arbitration language into their new TOS, which makes the chance of any cases making it into an actual courtroom very remote.

        • mike

          A TOS does not supercede the law.

          I could put all sorts of junk like I own your bank accounts, first born, etc in a TOS and it is not binding.

          Any legal document that is in conflict with the law is invalid.

        • Calm Down

          But the binding arbitration language is not in conflict with US law; the Federal Arbitration Act makes that kind of language effective. All of the arguments about how these claims are defamation or that IP addresses are insufficient to support claims of copyright infringement are irrelevant. All of these 6 Strike issues will be contractual disputes between the parties to the contract (Verizon and their customer). The disputes have nothing to do with copyright law.

        • Techanon

          @Anon1: yes, but not on federal court, only on very specific state courts.

        • Scary_Devil_Monastery

          @Anon1

          True. there is. as Techanon says, on a state level.

          I’ll amend my statement – there will if this goes down be a federal level precedence that using ip adresses in a throttling regime may constitute bad faith of the ISP.

          And that provides enough angles to shoot any ip adressation – and thus copyright enforcement – right out of the water from any conceivable viewpoint.

          This was the best and last shot by the MPAA and RIAA in the US, after SOPA.

          And it’s stillborn.

          @rogerbix

          I want to see the ToS which can survive a horde of irate customers. We’re not going to talk about one or two once the wardriving trolls realize what a treasure trove of annoyance the’re sitting on. Verison, if they want to live, will quietly fold this up and go home, first opportunity they get.

    • Bev

      There you go again, bragging that you’ll be able to spoof your way out of it, assuming you’re knowledgable on how the monitors are going to be gathering IPs – which you are not.

      There’s a good chance you are going to have your illusions shattered once the truth reveals itself. But still, don’t let this thought distract you from impressing the clueless here who know no better than to fall for your bullshit, based on a want to believe that you’re right… that you must just be smart.

      Not long to go now…

      • Scary_Devil_Monastery

        “There you go again, bragging that you’ll be able to spoof your way out of it, assuming you’re knowledgable on how the monitors are going to be gathering IPs – which you are not.”

        Actually, I am. Far more than you. I do shit like this for a living. You obviously do not.

        No, there is no “spoofing” of the kind you seem to think. Why poison a swarm or go through all that trouble when any punk aged 13 can own your router in seconds using “reaver” or plain WEP hacks? After which your six strikes are as good as in the mail already.

        Now go read up on “wardriving” and stop trying to pass yourself off as an expert.

        Oh? Nice disguise there, “Anon”. Not working though.

        • Michael

          But you must agree,Anon does look cute in a dress.

        • Bev

          So, I see you’re conveniently attempting steer the subject away from address spoofing, to proxying. Allow me to remind you of your statement:

          Have you any idea of with which ease you can spoof six strikes on any network with more than, say, a dozen end adresses?

          Well, you go right ahead and explain to us just how you plan to do that. Report a false IP to tracker? Seed false IPs in DHT/PEX messages? You assume to know how addresses are to be gathered by the monitoring companies, when in reality you do not know how, but only hope and pray that they are foolish enough to use lazy methods.

          The truth is, about 99.8% of people out there are going to be vulnerable to getting pwned by this, where yours and their dreams of spoofing their way out of it are going to fall very flat indeed. If you really believe otherwise, then let’s hear your spoofing methods right here, right now, for the benefit of all.

          You attempt to dismiss the upcoming as trivial to overcome, where in truth, for many, it will not be so. Or is your grand, and obviously very practical plan, to be that everyone is to hack into their neighbours wireless routers to continue torrenting? Let’s hear your answer here as to what exactly you propose the average user do to protect themself (yawn, vpn/proxy – truly genius…). Let’s hear you grand spoofing plan. :)

        • Scary_Devil_Monastery

          @Bev


          “Caller ID spoofing
          E-mail spoofing
          IP address spoofing
          Protocol spoofing, a technique to increase performance in data communications
          Referrer spoofing, a type of spoofing attack
          SMS spoofing
          Spoofing attack, falsifying data on a telecommunications network
          Spoofing (anti-piracy measure), a technique to curb unlawful online downloading
          Website spoofing”

          “spoofing” means to fake an adress. nothing more. So no, I’m not “conveniently steering” anything away from that subject.

          “Well, you go right ahead and explain to us just how you plan to do that. Report a false IP to tracker? Seed false IPs in DHT/PEX messages? You assume to know how addresses are to be gathered…”

          No, If I were interested in spoofing an end user origin, All I’d do is park my ass anywhere in the vicinity of the router whose owner I wanted to set up. Then simply crack the router he was using. Assuming he’s among the unlucky 90% of the users whose models are susceptible to Reaver, that takes seconds.

          At that point anything I do will emerge from the ip adress of the customer whose wifi I just suborned.

          In any residential area, that is frighteningly easy.

          Now if all you can do is google your way through swarm poisoning with no real understanding of what’s involved, then stop right there.

          Because Markmonitor – or any other company or organization, all the way up to the level of the NSA – have no way in hell to discern whether the end user of the router whose ip just showed up as an illegal downloader happens to be the registered user.

          Or any punk within 50 yards on a good day.

          “The truth is, about 99.8% of people out there are going to be vulnerable to getting pwned by this, where yours and their dreams of spoofing their way out of it are going to fall very flat indeed. If you really believe otherwise, then let’s hear your spoofing methods right here, right now, for the benefit of all.”

          See above. Yes, no one with the brains to use a VPN, a proxy, or the connection of some guy they really don’t like will get caught here. What will happen, just as it did in Sweden when IPRED was implemented, is that the use of VPN’s will surge by a factor of magnitudes.

          “You attempt to dismiss the upcoming as trivial to overcome, where in truth, for many, it will not be so.”

          All of Europe is, with the IPRED directive alone, under far more severe constraints than the six-strikes regime of the US has a prayer of matching.

          HADOPI in France is a thousand times worse than your little design.

          We actually have the cheat sheet in hand. We don’t have to “attempt” anything when we can simply point at Sweden, France and Germany, to name but a few.

          I’m dismissing it as trivial because far worse schemes have proven just that. At most you downloaders will receive their first notice, learn how to cirumvent the system, and that’ll be the end of it.

          Save for the poor fools who managed to piss of their tech-savvy neighbor and who’ll get those little notes sent to them each week.

          “Or is your grand, and obviously very practical plan, to be that everyone is to hack into their neighbours wireless routers to continue torrenting?”

          Nope. Everyone who wants to keep torrenting can either install a client which uses onion routing by default – such as Tribler.
          Or switch to a more robust – somewhat slower model, such as Stealthnet/RShare/FreeNet.
          Or, for that matter, use a VPN.

          Anyone who doesn’t really care to fileshare, but who has a bad attitude and the ability to watch a five-minute youtube video detailing how to hack a router in a way even a ten-year old could follow will, indeed, spoof ip adresses just for kicks and giggles.

          Now that wardriving, in addition to being a popular game for punks, can actually frame people effortlessly and without risk you think this will not be done? Never look for a job in security, Bev.

          Nor should you ever look for a job in IT in general.

          Let me remind you of this phrase of yours –
          “…assuming you’re knowledgable on how the monitors are going to be gathering IPs – which you are not.”

          If the monitors are using neither black magic or Star Trek technology they will have no chance in the world at all to know who was behind the ip adress which they collected as having downloaded six copies of copyrighted information. None.

          If the monitors did have such a way at their disposal, there is a nobel prize in math coming their way.

          So, kindly, stop it with the FUD. It’s hilariously lame in view of the fact that we already have facts in hand on how strikes such as these pan out, even given far more stricter regimes with actual judicial clout and police powers behind them have panned out so far in places where the accused customers have far less resort than they do in the US.

      • Michael

        Hi AnonBevTania,cross dressing again I see.

      • Guest321

        It ain’t rocket science dawg. IP addresses will be harvested the same way it has always been done and it will only be as reliable an evidence as it always has been.

      • Liam Jh

        It is common knowledge how they gather IP’s – dolt.

      • mike

        If the IP address in the torrent packets are spoofed, there is no other practical way to trace it to you. There is no magic way to track IP addresses.

        Of course if someone does hack into your wireless, MAC addresses don’t travel past the first router and are even easier to spoof than IP addresses. That means it is very hard to prove or disprove that someone hacked in, which means the accused is found not guilty.

        Traffic on the internet is very similar to the US mail system, you can put any address you want on it. You can say it is from the white house if you wanted to.

        Sure they might be able to track it back to the post office of origin, but that won’t do much. Drive 10 post offices away and good luck with that.

        Internet packets don’t carry your fingerprints.

        Get behind a few proxies, use encryption and your activities are as good as invisible, even to your ISP. I know you think this is all magic and that they can follow you back to your IP address, but no they can’t. IP is a connectionless protocol, it is not like a landline phone call.

  • 1hhh1

    At 256kbps return to Emule

    • Anon1337minus1

      LOL, exactly. eMule’s slow as f*. Anyway, this six-strike thingy is just LOL.

      • IHaveNoBalls

        I remember when it used to take me 5 hours to get an individual Simpsons episode (100mb RL copy haha). That was at 5.6kbs so 256kbs doesn’t seem to bad to me :D

    • Guest

      I remember asking “Friend connection” to random users so I could download faster on eMule!

      :D

  • cfuse

    I don’t see why anyone supplying free wifi can’t shunt it all through a VPN like any other ordinary person can.

    • KiRE

      are you gonna pay for the VPN?

      • Scary_Devil_Monastery

        Uh, at roughly 15$ a month or so, that’s not going to wreck the average starbucks.

        • MadAsASnake

          I’d expect these sort of customers to disregard the notices and simply sue if they put them to any bother. IP person. Certainly can’t tell you what customer (or other) possibly did (or did not) download / upload / torrent something.

        • Spin Dr

          New Advertising Trend …
          “Come to StarBucks NY and visit ROMANIA!”

        • Spin Dr
        • Dr Moldova

          ‘@Spin Dr’
          Actually Cactus has VPN IPs in USA, UK and NL.
          The owners live and work in Moldova.
          Nice guys. Fast Speed. Great Price.
          FREE TRIALS TOO!
          .

    • Scary_Devil_Monastery

      Oh, and anyone supplying free wifi will HAVE to. Or take a risk at catching flak due to random punks downloading heavily enforced copies of german goat porn.

      So the VPN market just boomed. Again. As if we pirates didn’t have a big enough sea to swim in, now everyone having a coffee at starbucks will be running around with us.

      • ScrewEwe2

        9 out of 10 German copyright trolls agreed “Ja, das German goat porn ist Wunderbar”.

        • I Love Goats

          Why goat porn has a bad rep I do not know.

      • ITakeAPotatoChipAndEatIt

        If it works.
        Having uniformed citizens in the same line of fire as informed citizens, will cause the mafiaa even more grief. ;]

        Unfortunately I’m sure businesses like starbucks will try to shutdown their open-wifi services at the first sign of trouble though.

    • Guest

      They want to ban free Wifi… It’s all about money.

      If you don’t download copyrighted material and want to appeal against false accusation first you must pay 35 dollars…

      Divided States of America!

  • TNSe

    So, uh, if nobody uses an internet browser on this connection, it will just suddenly seem to stop working?

  • Dontask

    Hope they deliver the message with that cartoon cop like the Chinese do!

  • http://techfleece.com/ Richard Gailey

    VPN usage will go through the roof. That said, VPN’s may very well be the next big target for the MAFIAA in 2013.

    • ST

      In the USA, First Amendment issues(the right to privacy, e.g.) will stop the MAFIAA from doing anything about VPN service.

      The EFF and others would be all over them immediately

      There are limits to what Hollywood and the recording industry can do(cf. SOPA).

      They are going to be mad, however. How sad.

      • Anon

        The First Amendment says absolutely nothing about privacy. There is no “right” to privacy anywhere in the American Constitution. (or show me where it is)

        The “peaceable enjoyment” of your own home is as close as it gets. Explain to the judge why you should have peaceable enjoyment while you rip off corporations of the digital products they have to sell.

        • ST

          There are many rights in the USA that the courts have determined follow from the US Constitution. This includes the right to privacy. Law is about precedent.

          No one here will do anything to hinder VPN service in civil matters…it’s not going to happen.

          Give me a public Bitcoin address and if I am wrong I will send you 5 satoshis

          :)

        • Guest

          So what do you call a false strike, then? Do we get to demand compensation? Let’s not forget, copyright holders have completely laughable accuracy when it comes to sending notices to the right infringers…

        • Guest

          >There is no “right” to privacy anywhere in the American Constitution. (or show me where it is)

          The ninth amendment.

        • http://profile.yahoo.com/3WK3JNCWUEZMPMP3YVNK4XZDHY Harpreet

          US Supreme Court has held that it is a fundamental liberty deserving protection because privacy is implied in the First, Third, Fourth, Fifth, Ninth, and Fourteenth Amendments.
          :P
          Amendment IX:

          The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

          Amendment X:

          The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
          yes copy and paste but it was for a learning purpose not a distributions purpose.

        • Who

          http://constitutionus.com/

          1st line:We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

          “Liberty”: freedom from control, interference, obligation, restriction, hampering conditions, etc.; power or right of doing, thinking, speaking, etc., according to
          choice.

          http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/liberty

          this also applies to PRIVACY.

          http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gu5JdmsLWVk&list=FLZehVWSPOf0z-_wN9Wzr-IQ&index=3

        • Seriously?

          “Explain to the judge why you should have peaceable enjoyment while you rip off corporations of the digital products they have to sell.”

          Because “you” won’t be ripping off anything and you will still be getting strikes, genius.

          And you won’t be explaining it to a judge.

        • Anon

          “>There is no “right” to privacy anywhere in the American Constitution. (or show me where it is)

          The ninth amendment.”

          Do not trouble me with the truth. I am fantasizing that you are ripping off corporations of the digital products they have to sell. Furthermore, I am fantasizing that you shall receive their spanking machine.

        • Scary_Devil_Monastery

          That’s because it’s in the fourth amendment, not the first, strictly speaking.
          And it’s not only implied but set down outright in the actual adress, right after “We The People”.

          “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.[1]“

          I see you read the US constitution just as badly as you do the UN declaration of human rights…hell, I’m thinking there’s no way you can be an american.

          “Explain to the judge why you should have peaceable enjoyment while you rip off corporations of the digital products they have to sell.”

          I don’t have to. The very second someone who did not fileshare is subjected to a removal of privacy based on the fact that someone, somewhere, IS filesharing, any feverish dream you have on restricting VPN usage will fall.

          Now, you may believe as you wish that you can ban or restrict VPN’s. Keep dreaming. You aren’t going to get that one through. In fact, I welcome anyone tabling a law that tries to accomplish this. I’m quite secure about the eventual outcome which is that the law will be as useless as one ordering the tides to stop.

          And the only way you can sit there and spew that drivel on to these forums is because you don’t have the faintest fucking clue what you are even suggesting.

        • MadAsASnake

          … and explain where you think it’s OK to accuse people on something as innacurate as IP data alone.

        • ThumbsUpThumbsDown

          Don’t imagine You’ve seen that argument in front of the Supreme Court….. ever?

          While you’re at it, why don’t you tell them that they don’t have a right to Free Speech or Due Process, either.

          The record is full of Lawsuits for invasion of Privacy.

          Guess what? They won Millions!!

        • Tactical Nuclear Penguin

          Good to see that you don’t value the contributing artist in all of this. But then it never was about the artist was it Anon, it’s all about the Corporations.
          All hail the Corporation and bow down before the mighty one!!

        • http://thepiratebay.se/user/SCSA420 StoneCold420

          FUCK OFF MORON

        • ScrewEwe2

          Great post Scary. You saved me the trouble of posting the fourth amendment.

        • Guest

          Guest,
          sue them for wrong accusation and CASH IN ;)
          somewun have to make a video so typical John Doe can sit on his ass all day, downloading linux distros and getting false ‘strikes’ and just sue the hell out of these idiots at the end of the month

        • Guest

          If you don’t want/like privacy why are you posting as “Anon”? :D

      • Guest

        EFF is already “all over” and that didn’t stop MAFIAA from this illegal interception of internet traffic.

    • Guest

      VPNs will be needed by innocent people to protect themselves from spoofs and false accusations.

      In fact, that group will represent the vast majority of people signing up for them.

      Although the program will be shut down before people in general are forced to resort to that.

    • xpmule

      VPN’s will be the next big thing in 2013 ?
      Damn right !
      I guarantee they are furiously discussing ways to take out VPN methods and have been for quite a while now.. its totally possible that some of them have already been compromised too..

      Also notice how the usual copyright trolls that hand out here bend over backwards to avoid addressing the VPN issue ?

      Rights and laws etc mean nothing to “them” anything in their way will be steam rolled like it always has been.

      Using a VPN is giving up on your freedom and rights and hiding from the people oppressing you and paying money to boot !

      I could think of MANY ways VPN’s could be compromised for filesharing purposes. so why would anyone anywhere rely on this to protect them from lawsuits ?
      I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the providers were setup by USA agencies of some kind or anti-copyright contractors.

      They probably love the fact that vpn users are cocky and think their bullet proof while they stalk and plan their attack !

      ..there will be silence until you see TF post a flurry of stories about how a lot of people are in trouble even though they were using VPN’s.

      • TP

        So, you think 2048-bit OpenVPN can be compromised? By whom, exactly? At present, only God can break a properly constructed RSA key of this length.

        The ONLY serious Achilles heel here is the reliability of the VPN service, i.e., will they turn over information about you easily.

        There are some reputable providers out there that will release your information if and only if the laws of their countries require it. In Sweden, for example, this would only be in case of a serious criminal investigation.

        Most people are not criminals at all…they just don’t like being spied on.

        So, this is where homework needs to be done. The other little technical issue that needs careful attention has to do with handling things properly if your VPN connection drops. They do that sometimes.

        That aside, using currently available technology properly, a VPN connection works perfectly well.

        In short, I have no clue what you are talking about. At all.

        • King

          @TP

          The encrypted VPN link only encrypts traffic between you and the VPN provider, so how do you suppose “2048-bit OpenVPN” is going to protect you against the possibility that the provider is monitoring the decrypted output?

          The only encryption that would help you here would be any additional layer of encryption that you apply between yourself and the endpoint destination of the communication, such as through use of the BitTorrent protocol end-to-end (client-to-client) RC4 traffic encryption, or an HTTPS (SSL) client-to-webserver (client-to-tracker) connection. If a user were to fail to configure end-to-end encryption in the client, then they would remain vulnerable to observation by a hostile provider, regardless of VPN encryption.

        • Anyone

          @King
          the ISP only sees encrypted traffic from you to your VPN
          the monitoring company only sees traffic to and from the VPN

          there is no way to link the two

        • King

          @Anyone

          No, the issue here is that the VPN provider itself can be compromised, which has nothing to do with the ISP, or IP monitor. A VPN provider always retains the ability to observe outbound traffic flows as they are no longer “2048-bit OpenVPN” encrypted at this stage.

        • Anyone

          true, a compromised VPN provider can “connect the dots”

          so choose wisely and outside the US ;)

      • VPN

        Again xpmule with his “doom and gloom” bullshit.
        MarkMonitor is the key to six strikes.
        ANY VPN will defeat MarkMonitor.
        THIS IS FACT.
        Not fantasy bullshit spewed by failed hipster xpmule.

        Using a paid VPN to hack the FBI is stupid.
        Using a paid VPN to circumvent MarkMonitor is Smart.
        Listening to xpmule is ANNOYING!

      • Jon7272

        name one person sued for piracy and they used a vpn that dont log anything … thats right you cant lmfao

      • Grant

        VPNs will immediately be under the same pressure, if they’re shown to be being used to break anti-circumvention law.

        • Scary_Devil_Monastery

          At which point in time, every client in itself becomes the VPN. Meanwhile legal business will suffer the fallout of said pressure.

          Do you realize how much money and resources a company wastes in trying to be legally compliant already? Do you have a clue how much those costs will surge if either ISP’s or VPN’s come under pressure to “verify” data flows?

          Hell, China just recently tried blocking offshore VPN’s. Result? Apple Store stopped working for all of China. A state of affairs which keeps up for days – while the targeted traffic had a working workaround in hours.

          I’m sure US VPN’s will come under pressure. Doesn’t matter. While there is an internet at all, communication will be free and unsupervised for any individual willing to take the steps to make it so.

  • ST

    Gosh. Verizon forgot an option.

    Install OpenVPN software and get a reliable VPN service overseas.

    This stupid thing will just catch clueless people until the courts throw it out.

    • MadAsASnake

      These will never make it into a real contested case. The data is no better than that used by ACS, STeele, GEIL and so on.

      • Ophelia Millais

        It will never be contested in a real court. The ISP doesn’t provide you service at all unless you agree to opt out of the court system. All disputes regarding the program are handled through arbitration, which is a secret, privately-run court with no appeal or oversight.

        • MadAsASnake

          I’m in the UK. I’m waiting to see what they do to get the DEA going (some of it’s terms are impossible to implement), but in the meantime, if I was in the US faced with this, it’d be simple.

          I did not infringe … I will not pay to defend .. I will move to another provider if you do this if I can, and reduce payments to you proportionally if I can’t.

        • Who

          “The ISP doesn’t provide you service at all unless you agree to opt out of the court system”

          then that right there means that its UNLAWFUL to be providing me a service.

          the MUST be with in the LAW to EVEN provide a service.

  • http://www.thegraphicmac.com/ JimD

    This is gonna go over like a glass of steaming piss at a church social.

  • Anonymous

    considering the businesses include the labels and studios themselves plus employees at the various ISPs, what measures are they going to take then? what should happen here is a mass exodus from Verizone to a more user-orientated ISP. as for the government, they need to get thumb out of arse and start allowing and helping other ISPs to develop to get some competition running, doing away with the age old ISP monopoly. but then, having competition is what started this whole crap storm. the labels and entertainment industries just cant compete, finding the only way to maintain their control is to sue and imprison as many ‘competitors’ as possible! wankers!

  • DrDoom

    This will utterly fail. Only the ignorant sheep with 0 computer knowledge will get gigged up by this… Meanwhile piracy is alive and well in MANY circles that know what is going on around them.

    • Guest

      The unfortunate part is that not enough people are aware of the consequences of the actions taken by corporations around them. Nor are they concerned because 99% of people don’t know their arse from their elbow where computers are concerned. They have their lives and piracy and freedom of speech is not part of it. While they have Farcebook and Twatter they believe they have free speech, while all the time they are being monitored. Scary world. They don’t KNOW any other circles, they are good sheeple.

      • Scary_Devil_Monastery

        Programs such as this is a first step in making them aware.

        The MPAA/RIAA are playing a very dangerous game. In the US if the NRA realizes that encryption is the ultimate weapon of individual protection versus private or government interests, no politician will ever dare stand up for copyright enforcement again.

  • Monkeyman20012

    The first rule of ****** is “You don’t talk about ******… I know this, but with a ssl connection you can avoid all this BS. People don’t need to use torrents for sharing files, its leaves you open to the trolls. Just got 50 Mbps download speed from my ISP and using ******, my downloads are usually over 5.0MBps.

  • BobButtons

    How many people working in the industry itself will receive these notices? I’m guessing zero.

    • BobButtons

      Also, what’s to stop them from accusing anyone and everyone? Nothing that I can see. There’s no consequence for false accusations. IP address 1.2.3.4 may have infringed… maybe not… throw them on the list anyway. They’ll get punished, pay to appeal and hope this goes away while we laugh and turn out the next list of unsuspecting victims.

      • General Waste

        I guess your name was on the list too huh Bobby? Don’t forget to do your homework!

      • Who

        “There’s no consequence for false accusations”?

        Umm…ever heard of counter suing for wrongful prosecution? well that’s IF it goes that far.

        • Ophelia Millais

          No, the ISP’s TOS calls for all disputes to be resolved exclusively by arbitration, in an individual capacity. This means they are forcing you to opt out of the legal system. You cannot take the ISP to court, you cannot take the copyright owner to court. You cannot sue over it, and you can’t join a class action suit either.

          Let me tell you a little more about arbitration. The arbitrator, who’s probably a moonlighting lawyer or judge who’s “familiar with the industry”, is supposed to follow the law, where applicable, but is not required to, nor are they required to acknowledge common law (case law, i.e. precedent). The decisions also don’t contribute to common law. All the proceedings and case details are private, unlike the court system which is more-or-less transparent. The decisions (i.e., who prevailed) are private, too, except in California.

          So the arbitrator can make whatever wackadoodle decision they want. They can be completely inconsistent for otherwise identical cases. There’s no appeal, no review, no oversight.

          Discovery is also limited, which means the evidence against you and the methods they used to collect it will remain a trade secret. They really don’t want anyone poking holes in their methodology. They will just point to their redacted, so-called “Independent Expert Assessment of MarkMonitor AntiPiracy Methodologies” document (Google it), and the arbitrator will say “good enough”.

        • MadAsASnake

          @Ophelia

          And you can walk away from it. In the UK at least, arbitration can be required but cannot remove any right to legal action. Courts look unkindly on efforts to avoid arbitration of course…

        • Who

          Um….YES you CAN. IF you can’t then what is the FUCKING point of the US constitution?

    • MadAsASnake

      Absolutely. The strikes should be mandatory. Media companies will be the first to be throttle, along with various US government departments and so on. Once a few judges and court officials start getting these, well, …

      • Who

        “Media companies will be the first to be throttle, along with various US government departments and so on. Once a few judges and court officials start getting these, well, …”

        I was thinking that to. but problem is I bet there IP’s will be excluded from the monitoring.

        • MadAsASnake

          That would be pretty unethical wouldn’t it? Not abiding by the standards they are disingeuously trying to foist on others.

        • Who

          @MadAsASnake: yes of coarse.

  • money_waster_mike

    So how much money is the are all these companies shelling out to put all this monitoring in place, file lawsuits and collect money from offenders? Is it really worth it?

    • Guest

      Nothing. The cost is passed on to the customer.
      For more information: see your next years ISP bill.

    • General Waste

      In the long-run, no, it costs way more to actually push this shit, and drag an innocent person through court after he refuses to give in to extortion letters than to accept a working business model.

    • System

      The way it works is: The politicians get corporate funding, the monitoring companies get paid by the corporations, the corporations get favorable legislation from the politicians, the ISPs raise their prices to cover the costs, and you get to pay for it.

  • guess who

    i’m amazed that the interception of mail law hasn’t been used to stop compaines snooping at what we do online. there is also the invasion of privacy.

  • Liam Jh

    ” Also worth mentioning is that the copyright alert system will also apply to business customers.”
    This is hilarious – once they make the entire Hollywood Monopoly watch there “Anti Pirate” horror movie and throttle an entire companies b/w to 256k we will see how long this policy lasts.

  • nonA

    DNS poisoning, constant monitoring, and then obligatory brainwashing.
    Way to go, America, Land of the “free”…

    • Guest

      The Re-education is only just beginning…
      This year, home ISPs. Tomorrow, the World!

      • ScrewEwe2

        Eventually Re-education as done in “A Clockwork Orange” if the MAFIAA had their way.

  • http://gear-mentation.myopenid.com/ Gear Mentation

    Look, at this point a business customer will get the alerts… but then ignoring them could be taken to court. Then they say that perhaps the IP did violate a copyright… but who knows which person did. This, if I understand correctly, is a valid defense. Isn’t this correct? (and I kind of need to know as I supply free wifi)

    • Liam Jh

      Nope, the Company if it uses a properly secure network it will have a log in system identifying each and every user and the time of login/logout it will also have a ‘warning’ screen pointing out the companies policy to ‘improper use’.
      The company will also keep permenant log records of every ip/web address the user accessed or attempted to access. The company is liable for the activities of its employees whilst using its network. This is in parallel with the MPAA/RIAA actions of stating the person who pays the bill is responsible for what goes on on its connections.
      Multiple employees in a company of thousands could easily cause hundreds of notices a day. Speaking from experience – government networks are the easiest to torrent through.

      • http://gear-mentation.myopenid.com/ Gear Mentation

        Well some people provide wifi without that, and they have to prove which person violated.

        • Liam Jh

          No they don’t – the company is responsible for the connection, not the people the company lets use it. Verizon will punish you, its up too you to punish the person who used your internet.

        • Anyone

          that how it works in germany, and it is a disaster
          reversed burden of proof and being responsible for the actions of others that use your connection should both be abolished, that’s no way to run a legal system

        • MadAsASnake

          @Liam Jh

          Really? And what law is that peice of BS written in?

      • General Waste

        Issue is the USA does not have data-retention laws, and while a log.txt won’t consume a lot of space on the company’s servers, depending on the level of traffic on said network may require a dedicated server to watching traffic and logging connection, private IPs and MACs (keep in mind all can be spoofed).
        You say a company is responsible for that network. What about a home wifi network? An open-wifi is still a viable defense and I believe there is a prior precedent in which states that it is not the customer’s job to secure the wifi. (eg. poor old Grandma just wanted to use her iPad so had a router brought in so she can stream Netflix, she didn’t know she had to be a tech-head to use the internet!)
        So what would happen to Starbucks & McDonalds free wifi?

        • guess who

          starbucks are uk tax avoiding whores, use and abuze the bitches. mcdonalds, shite food with ideas of grandeur above its station, heh, calling themselves a ‘restraunt’, if they are restraunt, the local greasy spoon is a 5 starer in comparison to the shite mcshite serve to the masses of morons.

      • MadAsASnake

        The MPAA / RIAA have determined that bill payers are responsible for anything on that connection? News for you, MPAA / RIAA aren’t the law. And no, if you think companies are going to waste their time logging and tracing this shit? Won’t get to court because the evidence is so flimsy in the first place.

        • Liam Jh

          I know and agree, but the point was made about business customers not personal home users. I said it (Verizons ToS) runs in parallel with the MPAA/RIAA reasoning that the bill payer is responsible for the connection – not law.
          Every company I worked for monitored its employees internet use – not for copyright reasons – but for there own monitoring – making sure employees are doing there jobs and not fucking about and torrenting (using there resources).
          I look forward to the day this stupid legislation is abolished.

        • MadAsASnake

          @Liam Jh

          Verizon ToS are subject to law and I suspect that you will find that 6 strikes breaches quite a few tenets, particularly but not limited to the area of fairness.

          Verizon ToS are also not there for the MPAA/RIAA, they have no standing whatsoever in that relationship.

          Yes, I am aware that companies monitor employees. Again, this is an employment issue, and nothing to do with MPAA / RIAA. No standing in that relationship either. While I’m sure most companies will be less than thrilled about employees torrenting, I wouldn’t expect they will throw their employees to this junk either…

        • Liam Jh

          “Verizon ToS are also not there for the MPAA/RIAA, they have no standing whatsoever in that relationship.”
          The new Verizon ToS is directly related to the Six Strikes Policy which is being implemented for the MPAA/RIAA – did you misread the article – they are there to protect Verizon as a result of this.
          “Yes, I am aware that companies monitor employees. Again, this is an employment issue, and nothing to do with MPAA / RIAA. No standing in that relationship either. While I’m sure most companies will be less than thrilled about employees torrenting, I wouldn’t expect they will throw their employees to this junk either”
          As they are already monitoring – it is perfectly acceptable and reasonable to assume they would throw there employees to this junk – one employee they can fire without benefits and pass liability to them. I suspect that corporate contracts that Verizon use will be negotiated with this in mind.

        • MadAsASnake

          @Liam

          I did. MPAA and RIAA are not parties to the contract. Period. They have no rights at all under it. I don’t know US law, but Verizon probably does not have the rights to pass your details on without just cause (IP is not…), regardless of what they write in their ToS. Commercial contracts cannot override statute.

          Actually, it would be funny if MPAA / RIAA were parties to the contract – the liability could be staggering.

        • Liam Jh

          “regardless of what they write in their ToS. Commercial contracts cannot override statute.” –
          We have to agree to agree o that one :) . Hopefully the general populace understand this.

  • Hiphop

    So I take it if you argue the claim and it is found that you were NOT sharing infringing material, the companies who made the fradulent claims against you will be billed 35$ for each false claim, right? I mean, you are guilty until proven innocent in America after all! Wait a minute…

  • Johnny Rotten

    Glad i live in Canada loll

    • xpmule

      same here but don’t you think they bs is coming our way too ?
      just a matter of when i think..

  • Mbc

    6 strikes for business? Wasn’t there an article a few weeks ago about users in government offices, and the film industry using bittorrent?

  • Pelham123

    The Verizon documents are extremely troubling.

    They’re trying to find excuses to drive customers off Bittorrent, pure and simple.

    Their recommended customer response to one unconfirmed allegation, regardless of what its for, is to uninstall the software!

    Given how this group of monitors and rightsholders treats the Youtube takedown system, we know how this will work in action.

    Imagine if ISPs gave people strikes for Youtube takedown requests and told them each time that their mistake was using Youtube. Imagine that in a perfect world where every infringement allegation was fair and justified.

    Now, imagine that knowing what we know about DMCA abuses.

    This is ugly.

    • MadAsASnake

      Why should anyone be told to look for or uninstall software that has plenty of valid uses? I would not even start down that road… don’t acknowledge that you have a client and don’t even look. This is part of the case building they will be trying to make. Notive the assumption that Torrent Client = Pirate.

      • Liam Jh

        “Why should anyone be told to look for or uninstall software that has plenty of valid uses?” – because torrents are the route of all evil (sarcasm)

        Seriously – because they assume the majority of there customers are idiots.

    • Anon

      “This is ugly.”

      It is. And we are all up against it because of years of piracy plain and simple. That’s pretty damn obvious by now.

      I think you are correct they are trying to reduce BitTorrent in general. For one thing, it is resource intensive for them. In their view those of us who buy their service but don’t torrent and thus use far fewer resources are just more desirable customers.

      But isn’t the larger point that the overwhelming use of BT is still to pirate? Overwhelmingly, no?

      Wouldn’t any protocol be viewed skeptically if it was hijacked like this for unlawful use? If the same percentage of automobiles in traffic were being used unlawfully as BT is in their network traffic, wouldn’t we reasonably expect auto’s to first come under real scrutiny and then serious search regulation after that? I think that’s just so obvious.

      Just like the methlab or counterfeiting operation in the basement of a house, you give up a lot of your rights when you use them to mask malfeasance, and BitTorrent is very well established as a means for pirating so “just cause” is prima facie. I wonder why this is even an issue for pirates, Pelham123. It has always been this way. Hasn’t it?

      • Scary_Devil_Monastery

        You mean like the common crowbar?

        Like math?

        “But isn’t the larger point that the overwhelming use of BT is still to pirate? Overwhelmingly, no?”

        Go talk to the companies that use bittorrent in order to redistribute downloadables. Honestly, Anon, how come every time you open your mouth, garbage comes out? A random number generator, given a multiple-choice test would stomp all over you in comparison.

        “Just like the methlab or counterfeiting operation in the basement of a house, you give up a lot of your rights when you use them to mask malfeasance…”

        I’m afraid you will find that the existence of methlabs STILL DO NOT CAUSE EVERYONE to give up their rights. The Police still abides by a great many restrictions.

        Bittorrent, by the way, is used by EVERY network tech on the planet. And EVERY IT company to boot. Congratulations, you are claiming we have “just cause” against anyone with an education and a job in the tech sector, genius. As well as any hobby computer geek. And YouTube. Let’s not forget Youtube and any other streaming site.

        Hell, you even added netflix and hulu to the guys who needs to be viewed as suspects by default.

        So “just cause”? Not so much.

        Baghdad Bob, I’m wondering – do you get paid to push such obvious and easily exposed drivel on these boards? Or do you do it just to stand exposed as a prize-winning idiot?

      • MadAsASnake

        Anon, you can get digital filing across networks using a variety of protocols:
        ftp
        http
        bittorrent
        … from a variety of sources
        lockers
        other users (via torrent or direct)
        websites
        streaming

        You can also get it by sharing through any of a number of media: memory sticks, CD’s, DVD’s, HDD’s, removeable drives, mobile phones, SD chips and so on.

        The reason BitTorrent gets a pounding because it’s the only one where there is even a shred of a trail to follow. All of these techs are used daily and most purposes are not infringement.

        No the overwhelming use of data sharing is not infringement.

      • Pelham123

        “Wouldn’t any protocol be viewed skeptically if it was hijacked like this for unlawful use?”

        Perhaps, but they still have to deal with my opinion on the subject, too, whether they like it or not. Their unwillingness to to do so is their failure here.

        “I think you are correct they are trying to reduce BitTorrent in general. For one thing, it is resource intensive for them. ”

        You and I agree here! For some reason this does not bother you.

        “Just like the methlab or counterfeiting operation in the basement of a house, you give up a lot of your rights when you use them to mask malfeasance”

        Do you get how you contradicted yourself there? You’re so close.

        Bittorrent is a lawful software. It is NOT used to “mask malfeasance” — as you yourself admit when you describe such malfeasance as hijacking.

        My entire post is about using it lawfully and STILL giving up your rights.

        “And we are all up against it because of years of piracy plain and simple. That’s pretty damn obvious by now.”

        I disagree, son. Piracy as they describe it is a fiction. It’s a made-up boogeyman to justify digital feudalism. They wrote the fairy tale to get away with a massive power grab.

        As always, Anon, I must point out to your trolly rockhead self that malfeasance and unlawfulness are never defined solely by an accuser. By definition, laws imply more than one person agreeing to them. Otherwise, I could simply walk up to you and say, “It’s illegal for you to not let me hit you” or “You’re a pirate if you don’t give me your wallet.”

        “Do whatever they say and you won’t get their punishment” is a description of a state of oppression, not a state of lawfulness.

        You get off on punishment, which is why you consistently argue that all punishments are justified. For you, there is literally no difference between stealing a CD and uploading a fair use mashup, because the only thing that interest you in either case is the punishment. Literally, for you, malfeasance=hijacking.

        The rest of us don’t like punishment and we disagree.

        There’s your honest response for the season. I’m now going to ignore your kinky ass again for a while, because it’s useless to talk with someone who thinks obedience its own reward.

        • Pelham123

          Edit:

          “Bittorrent is a lawful software. It is NOT used to “mask malfeasance” — as you yourself admit when you describe such malfeasance as hijacking. ”

          It is not used PRIMARILY to mask malfeasance — as you yourself admit when you describe such malfeasance as hijacking.

          …

          And again, Anon, and I’ll repeat ti as many times as you like, certain rightsholders disagree with most people on what should be allowed to trade online. If rightsholders think an action is theft and the majority disagrees, then it’s NOT theft, pure and simple.

          Six strikes is nothing more or less than attempt to do an end run around that inconvenient truth by turning the debate about what’s allowed into a discussion between Comcast NBC Universal and itself.

          No sale.

  • Anonymouse

    Question: Is a proxy connection just as good masking your IP as a VPN server?

    • Liam Jh

      depends on your level of ‘routing’, and VPN’s are not fool proof, a VPN provider could sell you out (depending on there policy/location/will to act or lack of care)

    • Anyone

      yes
      in both cases other bittorrent users (and the tracking company) will only see the IP from the proxy or VPN, not your actual IP

      that being said, this “evidence” is so shoddy you will get strikes regardless, even if you don’t download anything

  • Guest

    So I assume everyone who use YouTube will get these notices as well because I for one do not see the difference between downloading on Piratebay and downloading from Youtube which BTW happens everytime you hit play on one of Youtubes videos. Youtube has EVERY commercially recorded song literally from the past 100 years on their website. Not only that, but entire albums and even entire movies which BTW are copyrighted. For example go to Youtube and type in “Beatles-Abbey road”,,,Wow look at that, Abbey road full album not once but like 4 times. Last time I checked The Beatles aren’t in the public domain. Or how about “39 steps Alfred Hitchcock”..Wow look at that, the entire movie on Youtube. Not once but twice. Let me see….Nope, 39 steps is not in the public domain…I looked it up – Current rights holder: Universal Pictures. My oh my so everyone who watches that is sure to get a 6 strikes notice.

    • http://modmyi.com/forums/iphone-4-new-skins-themes-launches/740147-neurotech-hd.html#post5637502 Jay

      “What about Youtube?” was my first thought, too. The ISP’s will do battle with small torrent sites no problem, but they’ll never take on someone with money like Google.

  • General Waste

    Yeah really – talk about guilty until proven innocent. Whatever happened to Verizon’s Discovery motive?

    Here is what I plan on doing as a Time Warner Cable subscriber:
    - Don’t bother using a VPN, get caught.
    - Defend “IP a person.
    - Win against MAFIA.
    - Sue MAFIA & partnering agencies for $2.64b USD,
    - Walk out with $1.05b USD
    - Start my own damn USA ISP for 10 Gigabit speeds. (US does not have data-retention laws so keep a very small amount of logs [small meaning 12-24h or none])

    The Wal-Marts, Anons, and Neji’s will be like:
    “Oh noez! hez got his own ISP! We can’t sue him anymore! I guess it’s back to receiving dirty Sanchezs until we can come up with another way to sue that bastard!”

    • Guess

      You’d best go to a different country, or they will say “omg, another kim dotcom seize all of his assets”

  • The Merovingian

    After reading through Verizon’s policy, I have had a meeting with several of my neighbors. We have decided that we will BEGIN pirating everything we can get our hands on. We’ve all purchased subscriptions to a VPN service (took less than a minute to set up), and are now downloading EVERYTHING 24/7.

    The RIAA and MPAA can SUCK IT.

    • xpmule

      plan an alternative solution..

    • http://thepiratebay.se/user/SCSA420 StoneCold420

      “The RIAA and MPAA can SUCK IT.” GUESS WHAT THEY CAN SUCK MINE TOO!!!

    • Guy

      I want to take a revolver and shoot people like you. I would feel no guilt.

  • http://modmyi.com/forums/iphone-4-new-skins-themes-launches/740147-neurotech-hd.html#post5637502 Jay

    How many customers do you think they’ll lose, and how quickly? There will be millions of people looking for a new ISP soon.

    • ThumbsUpThumbsDown

      Unless they know how to build one, can they find a new ISP?

    • Guest

      In most of the US, your choices are:

      1) The only ISP in your city, which is also a six-strikes member.

      or

      2) No internet connection.

  • Blank

    I wonder if these anti-piracy measures will also track filelocker downloads

    • Guess

      Nope, only the torrents. Torrent protocol is public so they can gather ips and harass isps.

    • Anyone

      no

    • MadAsASnake

      Nope. Whole scheme is pretty useless, even if it was 100% accurate and effective (accurate? ~10% effective? ~2%)

    • Guest

      No, which is why very forcefully and publicly shutting down one of the biggest filelockers with enough fire and brimstone and anti-terrorist troops to make most of the remaining filelockers commit sepuku was step 1.

    • Pelham123

      No, they won’t. They’re an attack on one communications protocol regardless of the legality of its use.

  • xpmule

    I think these ISP users will have to try and stay underground as best they can and hope the end result is the ISP loses enough business or gets enough angry customers or bad press etc that they revoke this crap,

    I’d suggest using a VPN service maybe but the first issue I have with that is that is their number one target right now i bet and i also don’t like the idea of paying even more money for what the ISP should be providing in the first place.

    The ISP customers privacy should be protected first and that if that is done then the Trolls shouldn’t be able to find any potential piracy.
    So whether anyone is actually guilty or not doesn’t matter to me. its a concept i think basically its like illegal evidence collection..

    • VPN

      Finally xpmule is attempting a coherent comment. Still flawed however.

      “I think these ISP users will have to try and stay underground as best they can and hope the end result is the ISP loses enough business or gets enough angry customers or bad press etc that they revoke this crap,” …- This is good. ISPs ONLY care about making money and KEEPING/GROWING their customer base. ALL ISPs HATE SIX STRIKES.

      “I’d suggest using a VPN service maybe but the first issue I have with that is that is their number one target right now i bet and i also don’t like the idea of paying even more money for what the ISP should be providing in the first place.” …- This is fantasy land. The #1 target is the common (naked) ISP client. Use a free VPN like VPNBook and defeat MarkMonitor and six strikes. VPNReactor has free accounts also.

      “The ISP customers privacy should be protected first and that if that is done then the Trolls shouldn’t be able to find any potential piracy. So whether anyone is actually guilty or not doesn’t matter to me. its a concept i think basically its like illegal evidence collection.” …- And demand WORLD PEACE too! Fantasy Land!

      Bottom line … USE A FREAKIN VPN!
      If you like torrents (like me) use a VPN!
      Free VPN. Paid VPN. Double VPN tunnels.
      ALL GOOD.

      Naked good for hot babes, bad for torrents.
      .

  • Y ?

    Penis

  • Neb12

    the problem I have is that Verizon has been collecting info on me for 3 years.
    I have 5 strikes. outside government law, but corperate law.
    You do that to me and that will be the end of our relationship.

    youre way wrong

  • sammyman

    well, i hope verizon and all the others are prepared for a loss of business … that’s where it will really hurt them … must be others besides the big 5 to get internet in USA? …. i mean,i really have no other use for the internet if i can’t download stuff … whether from YOUTUBE (the slush fund of the mpiaa) or ‘”criminal” pirate sites or public.

    so, if it comes down to it … it’s a goodbye to my money ….

  • Anon

    They are not going to lose any meaningful business. Let’s just see where this goes. If this really doesn’t work well, they’ll keep trying different things until they get it right. The more pirates push the more government and industry will push back. At the end of the day it’s illegal, end of story, and none of you are Rosa Parks. lol You won’t be pirating forever unless you really are a foolish diehard, and even then if you get caught they’ll fuck you up. That’s enough for a warm feeling here already and they are only now just getting started.

    • http://thepiratebay.se/user/SCSA420 StoneCold420

      I’m NOT worried about them fucking me up as they already did and do you think I’ve changed my attitude after spending 3 years in a Federal Prison shithole for copyright infringement? HELL NO!!! I say FUCK the FEDS, FUCK HOLLYWOOD, and FUCK YOU if you don’t like it. MILLIONS AND MILLIONS OF PEOPLE WILL CONTINUE TO SHARE FILES DAILY UNTIL THE DAY THEY DIE AND THERE IS NOTHING YOU CAN DO TO STOP IT LOSERS. OH AND BY THE WAY I USE A VPN SO GOOD LUCK FINDING ME ASSCLOWNS

    • Scary_Devil_Monastery

      Really?

      As soon as any street gang with a laptop finds out they can fuck anyone over, anywhere, at no risk of getting caught using this six-strikes scheme, it’ll be a matter of minutes before Verizon is a smoking hole in the fiscal landscape.

      “If this really doesn’t work well, they’ll keep trying different things until they get it right.”

      No. If this doesn’t work right then one of the last measly crumbs left in the barrel are gone. There is no magic bullet remaining to you, Anon. Not even a full-blown HADOPI regime in France where the state can run over civil rights like a bulldozer through wet paper did anything really noticeable.

      But you think the watered-down cardboard cutout bogeyman called the “six-strikes” will have effect? Or anything exceeding that will ever be implemented?

      Dream on, Anon. Not even if you lived in China will you see anything better come along.

      “The more pirates push the more government and industry will push back.”

      They can push all they like. It will make no difference. Because in this instance it’s quite literally beyond the hope of anything either corporate or government sector to do jack shit about “piracy”.

      “At the end of the day it’s illegal, end of story, and none of you are Rosa Parks.”

      That remains to be seen. Rosa Parks was arrested for sitting in the front of the bus, All Jeffersson and Washington really set out to do was object on a silly tax on tea. Gandhi had no higher goals in mind than protesting to the taxes imposed on private salt manufacture in India when he set out.

      And I’m pretty convinced at every turn some flabby redneck or the equivalent thereof was going on just like you are now. Babbling about petty crime and “law is law”.

      Now you can rewrite history in your own mind as much as you like – but the fact is, your “cause” is as dead as communism. You’ve had your run and are now redundant. That said I suggest you get off these boards and spend some valuable time standing in line at the job office before you get the next headcount cut right between the eyes.

      “…and even then if you get caught they’ll fuck you up.”

      And that’s worked so very very well for you, hasn’t it? Every time a big fine or a hefty sentence is handed down, the pirate movement grows even more.
      Gee. It must surely come as a surprise to you that punishment is not a deterrent at all. Not like you could guess that from the past few centuries of copyright…oh wait, you could.

      And even there you get your warm jollies from the one in a million who got caught? Well, it’s good you have a positive outlook, Baghdad Bob. Reminds me of the time when you were declaring Iraqi victory while there were a pair of Abrams leisurely parked at the back of the picture.

    • Pelham123

      Hi, Even Creepier Anon than the Other Anon

      Six strikes is not a “push back” on “pirates.” It’s a threat to anyone who uses a file-sharing program for anything. It’s another attempt to assert that rightsholders dictate fair use and other consumer rights at their pleasure.

      And it has nothing to do with legal or illegal. it’s outside the law. Which is why its scary.

    • Guest

      At one point in France’s history, copyright was enforced so strongly in the fashion industry that infringing on a design carried the death penalty…

      WHOA, WATCH OUT!!

      Ok, now that I dodged Anon’s six litre splooge, I’ll finish the history lesson: even the death penalty didn’t stop piracy.

    • ScrewEwe2

      Anon, did you ever spend time on financial message boards playing a “short”?, because your doom and gloom posts sure do sound like they’re out of the short’s bag of tricks.

  • Riii

    Just to be clear, this only attacks torrent, magnet, peer2peer right? Not use of filelockers like mediafire or direct downloads? Please answer for I might end up having to switch to one of the ISPs that are part of six strikes.

    • IHaveNoBalls

      As far as i know this only affects P2P. I think they are taking advantage of the fact that people have to display their IP address with bittorrent/emule ect. So with file lockers, you’re ip never gets shown to the world so you are still safe.. That’s the logic i’m going on..

      • Guest

        Correct.

        The only change is that before they had to sue you and prove their case.

        Now they can skip the court and attack your connection at will to suit any marketing plan du jour. It imposes the Youtube takedown system on the general public’s IP connections.

    • Anyone

      only torrents
      filelockers or other p2p protocols are fine

      or simply get a VPN for $10 a month and carry on torrenting

  • http://www.facebook.com/BrettNYC Brett Landau

    I’m a Verizon FiOs customer, should I be scared?

  • RickZ65

    I hope this inspires smaller ISP’s to crop up and offer consumers better choices. As it is now we really don’t have much in the way of real competition. So as part of the six strikes we have to watch a movie about the damage copyright infringement causes. Hmm, will that include Kanye building his new mansion and the poor poor movie and music industry millionaires laughing all the way to the bank. Why is our ISP’s involved in policing us now? This is ridiculous. They don’t have the balls to say it’s not their job to monitor what everyone does online. The Mafiaa is a joke. I have purchased more music and movies because is have been able to easily find stuff due to Youtube/Streaming etc. Artists and movies I never ever would have heard of if I the Mafiaa had complete control. They will not be happy until they control the internet completely. The music industry hates the fact that we are not duped into buying a shitty album for nearly twenty bucks each because of one good song. They have lost their control and minds long ago. It has been said over and over again – if they worked together and offered consumers a reasonable choice, a streamlined site and incentives we would come. The dummies don’t see it took Itunes to force them to work together. Even if you hate Itunes the fact is they had to give in. They could have created something better but how many years later they still want to make war and treat consumers as criminals. Doesn’t that just create blowback? All we have is disgust and contempt for the MPAA & RIAA while they should be doing everything they can to win us over. When 8 year olds are criminalized for download ing MUSIC for gods sake something is wrong. REAL artists want their music, art, movies shared with the world regardless if they get a penny. There are many artists who get that and are thriving and doing just fine!

    • IHaveNoBalls

      “REAL artists want their music, art, movies shared with the world regardless if they get a penny. ”

      I agree entirely, Ive been making music for 2 years now and when ive made something great (not just ok) ill share it with the world for free. If i can get some money for doing it great but that isn’t my concern. I just want to make some music and see what my peers think of it.
      This idea of music for money is stupid to me when people can make it for next to nothing. Plus their are millions of people world wide that will offer their music for free.
      So why exactly do we need the RIAA when music can be created and distributed for next to nothing?

      • RickZ65

        Would be great to hear your tunes when they are released and I would definitely pay. I hope more artists take control of their product! Which would mean MORE money directly for them!!! The fact does remain that the industry is able to push and market and make mega stars out of many. The old payola schemes of long ago exist in different forms. Publicists making scandals or stories for singers like Nikki Manaj or whoever to create an image that is shoved in our faces. While new artists trying to make it on their own may not be able to afford the publicist and marketing & packaging of the “image”. We don’t need the RIAA, they need us but are doing everything they can to hold onto a very old control of how, when, where, and what we purchase an when we can poop. Radiohead among many released one of their albums online for free and then pay what you think it’s worth. I ended up paying. It was great they saw that not all of us want everything for free. It is about respect for the art.

      • Guest

        I’d be more inclined to believe you if you weren’t hiding behind the “…and when ive made something great (not just ok) ill share it with the world for free.” Surely in two years (unless you are working on an opus of some sort) you must have created something you can share with us?

        I’m quite “up” for listening to something that is “just OK” considering the amount of dirge that is out there – fire up a link, please.

        Or are you just bullshitting like “Plop” and the others who spout about themselves being artists and how file sharing for free is the greatest thing since slied bread yet when you ask for a link to their material they mysteriously go quiet / disappear?

        You are right, you don’t need the RIAA if you want to do everything by yourself. However, artists who do decide to work with the RIAA deserve to have their rights respected

  • EricPost

    I take it it’s six strikes in total. What if you get to strike six and prove you’re innocent, get your $35 back? Then do you start over with no strikes?

    Also who can claim copyright? Can I claim or do I have to prove I own the copyright?

    • IHaveNoBalls

      Q: “What if you get to strike six and prove you’re innocent, get your $35 back?”

      A: They said you will get the money back

      “Also who can claim copyright?”

      Interesting question. This has all been setup by the MAFIAA so ide assume that its only them that get to make a claim of infringement for the moment at least. If that’s the case, that’s a good thing because none of us really need the shit they produce. And if you want anything they own the rights too, get it now.

      When the six strikes comes in, either get a VPN or just don’t download anything made by the MAFIAA via P2P.

      Filelockers FTW in 2013!

      • MadAsASnake

        Ahhh – but you will have to prove the unproveable. I would not give them a penny – it’s straight out theft.

    • Scary_Devil_Monastery

      “Can I claim or do I have to prove I own the copyright?”

      Actually, I doubt you can. Unless the MPAA has graciously taken your work under their wing – without asking you, of course – then you probably have to go through a court in order to get a remedy.

      Another way in which the MPAA act like the mob – or like their canadian cousins from the CRIA (six billion dollar lawsuit, anyone?).

    • Anyone

      yeah, you cannot prove that you did not download, proofing a negative is impossible

      an old lady without a computer found that out the hard way in Germany

  • Donnieblah

    This is stupid they make it against law to share to keep the poor poor and the rich rich what happen to free market if it needs a law to make money then it’s out of date anyway!

  • Andrew Lee

    I can’t wait to start going around Warloading from anyone using Verizon. Alright I’m just kidding but you can be sure there will be plenty of people doing just that for the fun of it. I mean the average household WiFi security is pretty much garbage..

    Any tech savvy user will not be slowed down one bit by this.
    What do you think people are going to do when they get that first email? Will they stop? Of course not, they’ll look for better ways to hide their online habits so they don’t get busted again.

    Also anything you can find as a torrent you can bet your ass you’ll be able to find it on a file storage site. Sure you might not be able to download as quick BUT!! you’ll be able to download multiple files at once.

    Shit with some proxies, jdownloader, and a decaptcha service you can put thousands of files on your list. You can go to work, play some games, get some poon, or whatever your thing is lol.

    The point is do you really think Verizon will keep playing along once they start losing customers? I doubt it but I could be wrong.

    • Scary_Devil_Monastery

      You probably aren’t wrong. Remember when Google agreed to the automated DMCA takedowns? Recall how the industry said all our fears were “overblown”?

      Now with millions of takedown requests each week, and an estimated error rate of 33%, it turns out even the most paranoid tinfoil hat didn’t dream it would turn out like it did.

      If anything even remotely similar happens with Verizon’s “six-strikes” that impact will be millions of consumers going “Wtf? But I don’t even have a torrent client…”.

      Were I a venture capitalist, I’d be looking for new ISP’s startups cropping up in the areas covered by Verizon and practice shouting “Shut up and take my money”.

      Bcause what Verizon risks doing is to voluntarily shoot themselves right in their market niche.

  • foff

    Although they try to skirt around the issue. By making you do anything is tantamount to forcing a confession. I personally at some point would terminate my connection. After a couple a days if you reconnect as a new customer with a clean record. In my area none of the isp’s have a residential contract. You are free to quit at any time.

    As soon as this six strike bullshit is in place I expect tons of youtube vids telling people what to do. This effort will one big ass fail. We don’t fucking need nanny isp’s.

  • Topo

    Not a problem…I’m from the school of VyprVPN & I don’t use overpriced rip-off artists Verizon.

  • Haggie

    I use an offshore Torrent box and then auto-download to my NAS drive. Going on two years, hundreds of movies and TV shows, and not a single copyright notice.

    $20/month

    • http://twitter.com/coderyder Code Ryder

      t45ty45y54y

  • NewClear

    If Verizon cared about the privacy and satisfaction of their customers, they wouldn’t breach their privacy and monitor their internet browsing patterns, they wouldn’t treat their own consumers like criminals and threaten/intimidate them, and they would kindly tell the MAFIAA to take their “six strikes” idea and shove it.

  • Zwabbit

    The best solution I would think its most appropriate is one you receive your first warning is to cancel you subscription on the bases of being falsely accused. Only problem that might arise is the lack of competition in some markets..

  • joexxx

    “The potential for copyright holders to use the alert system as solid evidence gathering for lawsuits remains one of the most problematic aspects of the six-strikes scheme.”

    This statement doesn’t mean anything. Alert system carries no legal weight and is no more solid than the evidence that is collected by, say, BayTSP right now.

    ISPs think that they will be a way to cover their a$$, but in reality they’re putting themselves into a very questionable legal and market position. Since they do not provide content, nor do they provide consumption of that content, the only way they can survive is to remain completely neutral. And they need to fight for that neutrality tooth and nail.

  • joexxx

    Confession of what?

  • Hillbicks

    Suckers of Satan’s c*ck, each and every one of them.

  • Alpha_Geek_Mk2

    So what you’re saying is, use a seedbox and SFTP, and none of this matters? Got it.

  • JAIL

    I WOULD SUGGEST USE A GOOD VPN WHEN DOWNLOADING NEWER MOVIES/MUSIC, BUT MOST OF THE TIME I DOWNLOAD OLDER MUSIC SO I NEVER WORRY.

  • Zenamez

    “provide a link to see if file sharing software is operating on your computer and how to remove it”:

    So in other words, no large legal programs for you now! (what if it’s baked into the OS like it is in Linux Mint? Removing it is just stupid since you practically need it to download the distros in the first place without waiting for a year for the direct download to shift).

    “Made to watch an anti-piracy video”:

    And how are they meant to make sure the ‘customer’ hasn’t just scrolled to the tick box as they do with the “do you agree with the terms” window when installing things and ignored it? Heck, I know if I was forced to watch it, I’d just mute it and watch youtube videos or TV until it’s finished (like I did when Youtube made me watch one of their videos on copyright infringement after Hannah Minx sent me a false takedown notice because I made fun of her videos (They’re not about learning Japanese, they’re just for showing off her cleavage without being called a Attention whore like the reply girls). In failing that, I’m now expecting some mandatory multi choice test on what you watched mailed to your door and timed. It’s just as silly as this whole strikes policy.

  • http://twitter.com/OffBeatMammal Offbԑatmammal

    what happens in a bunch of Verizon users fire up TOR and leave it running. How will they be able to prove infringement in that situation (and hopefully the workload it creates would make them re-think this)

    of course the real solution is for the studios to actually make content available anywhere in the world, easy to access without trying to make users pay for everything six times for the 3D 4K Directors Cut with enhanced audio track and HDR menu graphics edition

  • Mc

    Here in britain, It took the machinations of the MAFIAA to force through the digital economy act in our legislature to get a strikes system on the cards, which has at least some semblance of due process (even if its totally bullshit). But YOU guys……..welcome to private law, enjoy your stay.

    They know after the SOPA debacle, congress doesnt want to look at anymore piracy legislation for a while. Hence “voluntary” agreements.

  • ivran

    Everybody just torrent a crap ton of legal material when these systems start getting implemented. Then, when people start getting in trouble for something completely legal, we’ll start flinging the lawsuits.

    • Guest

      That won’t work. They are only monitoring certain copyrighted torrents. No one will be watching any legal torrents.

      • Guest

        The automated monitors are monitoring torrents they claim are copyrighted, and they often claim copyright over stuff in the public domain, fair use works, other people’s works, etc. And you won’t know what they’re claiming until you get the strike.

        Overreaches may not happen right out of the box but they are inevitable. People will get strikes for legal torrents.

  • Guest

    Given that we already know that static IPs of various locations – such as record labels, movie studios and governmental buildings – have been found guilty of sharing music, movies and games, fair’s fair.

    Bombard these locations with letters and emails claiming that they’ve had their sixth strike. No, we don’t need to assume that they still have five strikes or so. Under such a system it’s perfectly reasonable to assume they’re already guilty.

  • Dog

    Let’s upload some fakes and see if they get monitored. I’d love to see some serious mistakes during this stupid scheme.

  • DocGerbil100

    As I see it, there are really only two ways this is likely to go.

    The first is the way it went in New Zealand and France, with very few people (or even no people at all) ever getting as far as the sixth strike. If that happens, we’ll all point at it and laugh and that will be that – hooray and huzzah for the cheapness of Big Business.

    The other way is that all those companies involved do their best to be as comprehensive as possible in identifying and processing infringers. This is not too likely, because it will, of course, be very expensive – ISPs and companies like MarkMonitor all invariably insist in charging by the number of IP addresses gathered – but it is at least possible that those involved will break the habits of several lifetimes and spread some serious dosh around.

    It’s the second scenario where things get really interesting. I imagine the first few notices will have the same effect as DMCA notices passed on by ISPs – i.e. almost none at all. But those fifth and sixth notices? Up until now, the only exposure that the average American household has had to the anti-piracy industry – beyond the odd DMCA notice – has been YouTube videos being blocked and second-hand accounts of other people getting shafted by the trolls.

    But what happens if and when large numbers of staunch, church-going Christian right-wingers start getting their internet throttled en masse because of false allegations of torrenting? I forsee an awful lot of very bad publicity heading towards the businesses involved. In extreme cases, I forsee bullets from some of the nuttier members of the public.

    I don’t know what will happen, but I do know one thing: like Anon the troll who posts on here, I’ve got my popcorn. Unlike Anon the Troll, I rather think it’s clear who’s going to take the most damage here – and it won’t be file-sharers. :)

    • Anon

      “Unlike Anon the Troll, I rather think it’s clear who’s going to take the most damage here – and it won’t be file-sharers. :)”

      You are right. It will be the internet AND our liberties all BECAUSE of file-sharers.

      • Guest

        So stop calling for more laws, dumbshit. If you can’t stand the noise don’t pound the fire alarm.

      • Anyone

        it’s not the filesharers fault, they are not bribing politicians to change the laws

      • Shit Blizzard

        You are right. It will be the internet AND our liberties all BECAUSE of the MAFIAA.

        FTFY

      • DocGerbil100

        Hello, Anon the Troll. :)

        Actually, the reverse is far more likely to be true.

        A weak implementation of the scheme (as per the three strikes farce in New Zealand) will establish very clearly that groups like the MPAA, RIAA, et al, have no genuine interest in stopping piracy – only in claiming to want to do so.

        If you’re an anti-piracy group, it’s easy to claim to want piracy ended, but if you don’t actually use the tools available to stop it when you get them, it’s easy for the public and for governments to conclude you’re a bunch of fraudsters, taking money for a battle you’ve no intention of really fighting in any meaningful way, much less actually winning.

        A strong implementation of the scheme, conversely, runs the risk of another full-throated roar of rejection by the American public a la SOPA and a subsequent abandonment of support by ISPs and US politicians – something which would severely set back their campaigns, both in the USA and internationally.

        It would be very difficult to continue demanding that every country in the world should implement such schemes if their own general public and government at home have tried it and subsequently rejected it outright.

        How many politicians do you know of who want to be associated with that kind of unpopular failure? How many ISPs and content companies want to be seen to have endorsed and paid for it? The trade groups cannot afford for this system to be seen to have failed in the USA.

        In terms of fighting for legislation, the only place they can really go to after this is – as your comment suggests – a fight to ban specific services and protocols that allow file-sharing, anonymity and / or unlicensed encryption. Whichever one they choose, that’s a hell of a fight, all by itself. Going into it with the worldwide political and economic millstone of a failed six strikes scheme hanging round their necks guarantees outright rejection by politicians of all hews in almost every country on Earth, the USA included.

        Their only way to avoid this is for all the players to carefully aim the six strikes scheme at a precise and narrow field where the fifth and sixth strikes aren’t seen to be affecting too few or too many people. Given the lack of real will by the ISPs, given that the trade groups’ judgment is suspect at the best of times, I think they’re far more likely to miss the target by miles.

        The more I think about it, Anon, the more I think popcorn might be inappropriate. Right now, I’m thinking of a steak dinner, some ice cream and a rather nice bottle of Glenmorangie I’ve got saved. :)

      • Scary_Devil_Monastery

        “You are right. It will be the internet AND our liberties all BECAUSE of file-sharers.”

        If that happens we know we live in a totalitarian fascist regime. Because no democratic regime can suffer such violations of human rights because of the violations of artificially granted privileges.

        That means government change.

        You are, however, wrong. To begin with, no pirate is even remotely threatened by loss of liberties or internet. Schemes such as this will impact legitimate consumers only.

        At that point you think the irate people will listen to the person who cut their access going “Don’t blame us for doing this?”.

  • AJ

    1776 WILL COMMENCE!

  • iMeZiv0x

    Not so long ago there was an article showing RIAA/MAFIAA members BT’ing themselves. I sure hope they get a video link, given that they, themselves, are business users.

  • Guest

    United Fascists of America !!!

  • Iseedeadpeople

    You want to take away my torrent, I only have this to say:
    FROM MY COLD! DEAD! HANDS!!!!!!!!!!!!! NEW WORLD ORDER!!!! AREA 51!!!!! ALIENS!!!! UFOS!!!!!

  • Mallie Mall

    the article states “file sharing” only. what if you were downloading via news servers or irc? meaning, no uploading at all. i know this is very debatable but i’m curious as to what some of your opinions are regarding this matter.

  • Rape

    This is basically all a fear campaign. It happened all the way back when metallica sued napster. They try to scare people and treat us as if we’re all their kids, or like the Elders in a jehovah’s witness church. It’s messed up.

  • mjbor

    Couple of things come to mind: First would be to tell Verizon that one would not be bound by their “option” to arbitrate and that one in no way gives up their right to pursue legal action. Second would be to tell Verizon that any reduction in speed and/or suspension would be construed as failure to perform on their contract and payment will be withheld until the matter is resolved legally. You might lose your service, but if you go to small claims court, they don’t get to bring their lawyers… it is just you and the representative or person (like the CEO) named in the suit.

    I would like to see specifically where it states that one agrees to the six strike harassment and how they make you “sign” the contract agreeing to these terms.

    One other “share the pain” thought comes to mind. Go to a site where you can set up a free website. God knows, there seems to be enough of them out there. Post a web page stating that any service that takes you on agrees to your TOS. List how you do not give up your right under any circumstances to pursue legal action, etc, etc. Then, if the BS hits the fan, point them to your website, and explain that these are the terms they agreed to when they took you on. Of course, you probably have to email them before the BS hits the fan and let them know the site exists. They might also drop you like a hot potato. But it does give them a taste of their own medicine.

    Cheers one and all…

  • hellooooo

    so glad i switched my isp to charter, verizon never even brought fios here

  • Baader Meinhof Complex

    We must start executing all MAFIA members, blowing up their cars, their offices, their homes, we must spill oceans of blood.It’s the only thing they fear- death and decay.
    And everyone conneceted to MAFIA and responsible for The War On Human Rights And Freedoms, corrupt judges, corrupt FBI officials, government officials must be taken care of.
    Allahu akbar!

    • ScrewEwe2

      MAFIAA, Music And Film Industry Association of America: A parody created on April 1st 2006, as a hypothetical merger between the MPAA and the RIAA, the industry associations for Films and Music respectively. Both have been accused of exhibiting racketeering behavior.

      http://mafiaa.org/press_room/

      MAFIA, (specifically) An international criminal organization of Sicilian origin operating in Italy and the United States.
      Definition taken from Wiktionary: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Mafia#English

      Some history of “The Mafia”: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mafia

      I would have to think that The Mafia takes threats of bombings directed at them more seriously than a parodied organization that actually doesn’t exist, although supposed members of “Cosa Nostra” have historically said that “The Mafia” doesn’t exist either.

  • Shenmueryu

    Ok…so let me get this straight. You can agree to PAY and have your internet speed reduced after what the 4th or 5th warning? lol. Fios isn’t the only way to go anymore…they can try if they want. Next people will drop their expensive phone plans as well

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Jack-Straw/100002694451161 Jack Straw

    LOL, fine. I’ll just dump my subscription with you, buy a hacked modem, and start anonymously stealing your cable at uncapped speeds for free. How stupid are you, ISPs? You think you can fuck with us? We pay you for your services. We tell you what to do, not the other way around. Without us, you go bankrupt.

  • http://www.facebook.com/alyssa.vogan Alyssa Vogan

    So glad Cox Cable doesn’t do anything!

    • Anonymous

      Glad to hear that.

  • chris_p_bacon(R.O.L.L)

    this is possible but in caps lock it just doesn’t have the same effect somehow, sorry to be a damp squid old chap

    • Anon

      Schmuck is well named. Let’s move on.

    • Shit Blizzard

      i disagree

      they finished it off with INTERNETZ, that alone makes it effective

  • seth

    So what happens when you download things from zippyshare? Is downloading music from them going to count as a strike?

  • chris_p_bacon(R.O.L.L)

    one outcome. a court-case. because everyone will continue as before because nobody is going to be disconnected or imprisoned, and eventually, the authorities will get sick of it again and the film/music wazzocks will pressure for prosecutions, and then it will be back to square one. unfortunate though, for the many wifi spots that were free and will be either closed or sign in for traceability or go the way of Mcwifi donalds where downloading is very hard, and impossible with torrents, unless you have a way around node blocks. it is not very nice though, for the average American to have this shoved down their throat, because to me it seems to infringe on your personal freedoms, i do sense dome kind of backlash and even a slow, but definite trend of internet users switching providers or going mobile altogether. torrents have been historically well seeded by Americans, maybe that will change now, which may slow the whole torrent scene down and reduce speed significantly. this has to be the worst kind of news to start a new year and i would petition the government to withdraw it immediately. i do think these lawmakers should go and fuck their-selves on a regular basis

    • Guest

      I’d imagine that most heavy duty seeders are already masking their IP addresses, so this probably won’t be a big deal to them.

  • Luke Solis

    does this happen if you use their Verizon’s DNS? or does this happen regardless of what DNS you use.

    • MadAsASnake

      DNS is irrelevant in this situation

  • Nospam

    i wish that someone would start a group “Boycott the Maffia” on facebook I’m sure it would draw more attention to this and show a push back, and start a following. If people stopped buying merchandise that contributed to this Maffia organization they would loose the funding to bribe politicians and services into pushing their agendas

  • Capt_Jack

    My experience shows VPNs are susceptible too. I’m assuming my BT Guard VPN connection has been compromised via Time Warner. The proxy no longer will engage any trackers on any P2P sites. First indication of trouble started Monday with a decrease in D/L speed from 1 MB to 4kb/sec. Decreased utorrent D/L limits to 500kb; that worked for two days, then dropped off to 4kb/sec. Thursday all connections failed. Haven’t received any strike notifications. That would be prima facie evidence tantamount to invasion of privacy. Ride to the sound of the guns!

  • Zanduar

    Verizon already throttles speed without notification and frequently gives speeds lower than advertised. Unfortunately so do almost All ISPs.

  • Ayoo215

    privatei nternet access only 39.95 a year get it…

  • Rusty Shackleford

    Money talks, so these ISPs should think about that before putting these measures in motion.

    Sucks for those that only have Verizon in their area.

  • s s

    After you receive 6th strike you are ordered onto death row because you are a bad person and should be punished with the full force of the american law

    good luck to all those who get fucked hard by corporations worldwide

  • ThumbsUpThumbsDown

    Absolutely no legal foundation for this whatsoever.

    It’s purely Corporate: Six Huge Monopoly ISPs who control 75% of the American Telecom Market acting without any legal framework, other than their combined TOSs.

    Can they be successfully sued into the new stone age? You bet!

    Can they be politically and financially castrated by the citizens they’ll be abusing? Absolutely!

    Will they get away scott Free with trying to impose this disgrace on 340 Million American citizens?

    If they do, perhaps they will NOT have won a battle. Perhaps, they will have won the War.

  • Samuel Adams

    Rogerbix says: “Unless of course Verizon inserts binding arbitration language into their new TOS, which makes the chance of any cases making it into an actual courtroom very remote.”

    False. Even if one were to have actually signed a contract with an ISP agreeing to binding arbitration, it still wouldn’t preclude suing anyway. It happens. However, in this case, there is no signed contract, but rather just an ISP’s Terms Of Service which they unilaterally amend and alter at will. There is no bargaining and where there is no bargaining the courts have often deemed them unenforceable. An ISP’s Terms Of Service is not a binding signed contract but, rather, in legal parlance, an “adhesion contract.” Adhesion contracts have often been voided by the courts because they may be deemed as granting “unequal bargaining power, unfairness, or they are legally unconscionable.”

    Ophelia Millais says: “But the Six Strikes system forces you to opt out of using the courts; the ISP’s TOS requires you to agree to resolve disputes by arbitration, i.e. private, secret courts.”

    False again, for the above reasons. Furthermore, binding arbitration, at least insofar as conducted per American Arbitration Association rules, are not a “private, secret courts.” There are many circumstances under which submitting to binding arbitration is far preferable to civil litigation. However, this matter would not be one of them and, thankfully, Verizon’s adhesion contract is not likely to be viewed by any civil court as legally binding and, therefore, would not preclude suing Verizon, or MarkMonitor. However, a defamation suit is unlikely to get traction unless one can show actual monetary damages or damages in loss of reputation, etc.

  • Samuel Adams

    To add to my above comment, even though a defamation lawsuit isn’t likely to prevail, it could very well compel a large corporation like Verizon to want to settle out of court for some unspecified monetary consideration, rather than going to trial. It may very well also compel them to rethink their policies in this matter.

  • Morris

    A vision of a trend in the foreseeable future…

    Users hiding everything they do from ISPs and the government through increased encryption, VPNs, etc. I would imagine there will be an increased number of websites switching from http to http(s).

    I wonder if this six strikes scheme also has a monitoring element for activity ASSOCIATED with filesharing like how many times in a month you visit torrentfreak, TPB, etc. and that would trigger increased monitoring of bandwidth usage and whether you use the bittorrent protocol??

    Tips…

    1. Don’t associate yourself with any site or business that blatantly exposes your personal information (stupidbook, etc.)

    2. Don’t openly give personal information about yourself to anyone. Live quietly, privately, and anonymously. Don’t talk about filesharing on the phone, skype, through texts, emails, etc. If you do, create everyday code words only you and your friend know. If you talk about downloading something, don’t say download, say, BUY.

    3. Stop using google for anything. Use ixquick via https. https://www.ixquick.com/ If you use google chrome, stop. That browser violates your privacy and feeds data back to google everytime you use it. An alternative to chrome is ‘SRWare Iron’ which is basically the same as chrome with privacy features and you can still use chrome extensions.

    http://www.srware.net/en/software_srware_iron.php

    4. Use a vpn if you can afford it.

    5. Use Peerblock, Peerguadian, or Iplist (Linux). Yes, yes, I know. It has its critics, but I still stand by it because if it only offers SOME protection, SOME is better than NONE. Before I started using a VPN, I fileshared for five years or so with Peerguardian and received ZERO letters from my ISP in all that time and I was downloading “hot” items like new movies. The results speak for themselves. If it ever blocks a website you need to access like KAT, just put the address range in your Allow list.

    6. Make sure you FORCE encryption in your bittorrent client. Don’t just enable it, FORCE it. Don’t allow legacy connections.

    7. In Firefox and other browsers, make sure your browser is set up to delete ALL surfing information when the browser closes. In Firefox, Tools>Options>Privacy, check “Tell websites I do not want to be tracked.” Check “Accept cookies from sites”, “Keep until – I close Firefox”. Check “Clear history when Firefox closes” and in the “Settings” button, check all the items listed.

    In SRWare Iron, install the “Click and Clean” extension which can do what the above Firefox options can do. Configure it do delete all your surfing data when you close the browser. Click and Clean Options>Extra, “Delete private data when chrome closes.” In Click and Clean Options>Chrome, check all the boxes.

    In Opera, Settings>Preferences>Advanced tab>History, addresses 0. In that same area, check the box below cache “Empty on exit.” In “Cookies”, check “Accept cookies only from the site I visit”. Check “Delete new cookies when exiting Opera”.

    8. Install the Ghostery plugin to your browser. This wonderful plugin is available for all browsers. Make sure you configure it to block all by selecting Options>Trackers tab, “Select All” and click Save.

    9. Via proxybay.info , choose an http(s) proxy for TPB as your default TPB access. Hopefully all torrents sites will switch to https. Maybe Torrentfreak will as well.

    10. Keep a watch out in the near future for the new ixquick email service which is in development right now. It will be more anonymous and private than typical email services.

    I hope this has helped someone.

    • Morris 2

      Update to Ghostery plugin…allow Disqus, or you can’t make comments on Torrentfreak :-)

      Morris

    • ScrewEwe2

      You could have added “Never install or allow to be installed Google Desktop to be installed if bundled with another application”.

      One of the lists I have installed in Peer Block is the “Advertizing and data tracker Servers” list, as well as the “Malicious spyware and adware servers”. I also make my own block lists, one for MarkMonitor’s IP ranges as shown below. This in no way represents all their IP ranges, but as I find more I can add to the list.

      • Morris

        Thanks for posting the ranges and lists.

        M

  • http://www.facebook.com/john.barson John Barson

    This is spam. The link takes you to a scam Home Profit System. Where you should really be going is the the scam reporting site:

    http://reviewopedia.com/workathome/home-income-profit-system-review-is-it-a-scam/

  • Dc1961

    “they should implement this in the Asian market because they are the ones who really need to learn copying other people’s work is wrong”, says this Asian reader.

    • Indiagrt

      fuck the Asian leader we Asian know better then any leader… this is guyz don’t know how provide basic amenities to people… they talk such bull shit………

      • http://www.facebook.com/gpharman George Harman

        I think he said “Asian reader” not Asian Leader. I think you are having a communication meltdown instead of breakdown

  • Zypkode

    When is i-Tunes going to get a Letter?

  • Zypkode

    It is not who is Downloading. It should be who is Uploading. Someone has to Upload it before it can be Downloaded. Gravity at work. What goes Up must come Down.

    • MadAsASnake

      … and the uploader is often the monitor … though this is almost impossible to prove too.

  • Eliz

    Will Verizon itself monitor visits to the bay and other torrent sites, or is it only acting on notice from copyright holder?

    • MadAsASnake

      MarkMonitor does the monitoring and passes the data to Verizon. Verizon will have no idea how good this is as this is kept secret. Note that if it was any good, they would not need strikes.

      The ISP then matches the ISP to it’s logs to determine the account holder (NOT, I note the infringer, assuming there is one).

      The account holder is then presumed guilty. Can appeal, but need to prove a negative (impossible in this case) and pay $35.

      • Eliz

        I see that on other ISP’s guidelines for the six strikes, part of the punishment is a block on filesharing sites. Sounds like they are keeping an eye on which site you visit that are frowned on by them.

      • Eliz

        So should we use a VPN when visiting piratebay or only on torrent software?

  • Aaaa

    I need a good laugh. I hope the video comes online soon.

  • Aaaa

    Alert 7, Your forced to attend a family dinner at Joe Bidens house. The ultimate punishment.

  • keenox

    The American law is shit. You can sue just about anyone for any stupid reason. Look at Apple and the other new wave of companies that make money only from suing.

  • Sebastian DeGeneres

    Why do not they just make it into 9 strikes and it would take about a year or two to get towards last one. I think that way it would be kind of funny and would allow for much more communication between the ISP and the owner of the internet connection.

  • David Perriman

    From my UK viewpoint, I find incredible that these moves are being done outside the law with no due process in the courts and on mere accusations with no cast-iron proof, other than an IP address, which has already been tested in court as not corresponding to an actual person. I can see some court action coming out of this but not the sort that the ISP’s will like.

  • David Perriman

    Meant to ask if it’s only the big boys’ ISP’s that are up to this nonsense across the pond. Hope this isn’t taken up over here.

  • chris_p_bacon(R.O.L.L)

    here is another slant on this. chelsea is going to be supplying free wifi via goooooooogle. $40,000+ dollars a year and people are going to be getting internet speeds of their dreams. does this begin a new area of exploration? is it a scam? i am confused and wondering if it is a pr stunt. but at the end of all discussion looms one very big question. where does this fit in the six strikes scheme? us non Americans look over the water at what is going on and we are so confused, explain por favor

  • http://pagesofinterest.net/ Michael Robinson

    Six strikes? Lucky, we in New Zealand get only three.

  • Bill lawrence

    Verizon is the worst phone company on the planet… I lived under their intolerable regime for five years and everyone was so relieved when they left northern New Mexico… were replaced by Windstream. The perfect example of a big predatory telecommunications company backing the consumer to the wall. Fuck Verizon!

  • ndmushroom

    Anyone else noticed how alert 2 prompts users to remove “file-sharing software” in general, thus criminalizing all filesharing?

    • UninvitedChristopherGuest

      It’s possible a bot or Trojan horse has installed file sharing software onto someone’s computer. Unlikely, but possible. Or, maybe the people’s clever, mischievousness child has installed it on the parent’s computer, or on a siblings’s. Or a devious parent has installed it on their child’s computer?!

  • Doug

    The bad news…My buddy received an email from Verizon last week stating his ip address has been found to be downloading and distributing copyrighted material, specifically the the TV show Psych. The funny part about the whole thing is the email was delivered to the Verizon spam folder! He doesn’t remember what the rest of the email had to say, he is trying to retrieve it. If successful. I will provide more.

  • Bobzilla

    Under U.S. law, TITLES are not subject to copywrite. Neither the ISP nor the so called copywrite holder knows what the CONTENT is of the file, only the title, case closed.

  • Tyler

    There will be a way around this..there’s always a way

  • Lisajedwards94

    They are wanting more $$ no free T.V.want to take all the free away….and spy on us and control what and where we go on line..we have options!

  • CheekyMonkey

    SAG-AFTRA ONE UNIUN Why now? Such a coincidence… United they stand in there lobbyists :-)

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  • Qua Couron

    If I was a customer….I’d just go to a new ISP…why stick with one that does this? In fact, good luck Verizon, you’ll be losing a shitload of customers. Have fun with that one

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  • Jacob

    People need to learn how to protect themselves and learn how to be anonymous https://sites.google.com/site/seedboxhowto/

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  • helloboy

    Find out who is the most influential on that service and make false claims under a dummy system until they get kicked off but we all know this will not affect anybody with political power or money.

  • ryder4life22187

    why don’t they start and look at how much they charge for each new release movies/games. I don’t know about the rest of you but paying 20 to 35 bucks a movies is getting out of hand. Can’t wait til blu ray is no longer the new thing and some other format has taken it’s place and they want to charge 40 to 50 bucks a movie.

    • UninvitedChristopherGuest

      No one’s holding a gun to your silly head telling you to buy anything.

  • Scott Rosenberg

    The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers,
    and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be
    violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause,
    supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place
    to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.[1]

    Sounds illegal to me

    • UninvitedChristopherGuest

      No, you’re using public phone lines and other non private means of communication to obtain stolen material. It’s similar to the charge of Wire Fraud for using the phone lines to transfer illegal funds. Corporate greed is reprehensible but simple ignorance of the law is no defense.

  • XPLiCiT

    we all just need to nip this in the bud, sue the riaa with a class action for attempting to quell freedom of speech.

    • UninvitedChristopherGuest

      How is stealing copyrighted material freedom of speech? Seems like the empty headed ramblings of a demented sociopath.

  • tacos

    What’s that old saying, two wrongs don’t make a right? How can they legally just decide to moniter you?

  • JoJo2001

    I’ve uploaded 71 torrents since I read this. And the number will keep raising, bitches. Try to track me, FBI.

  • johndoe

    So watching legal porn is all of a sudden a crime? because they gave me that warning just for watching online porn what the fude does this have to do with downloading torrents?

  • Who

    actually I should have put it this way..the “IP logging” *taping/recording*
    oops sorry folks.

  • ScrewEwe2

    “While this fact sheet deals only with wiretapping and eavesdropping on telephone conversations, wiretap laws are broader in scope. Federal wiretap laws apply to oral, wire, and electronic communications. However, the federal law does not currently regulate silent video communications, such as webcams or other video monitoring without an audio component. A well-publicized case involving a school laptop in Lower Merion, PA highlights this limitation.“

  • Yourmove

    What you don’t seem to understand here is that they will do what they want. Stop living in the past thinking some quaint old notion of what “wiretapping” meant means anything these days. The rules have been changed, and will continue to be changed, whenever, and wherever they become a hindrance to the furtherance of state/corporate power.

  • IHaveNoBalls

    Can i just confirm this finally. The evidence of infringement that they will use against you, will be a screenshot of peers for any chosen torrent (or maybe they harvest data directly from trackers?)

    If that’s the case how is that evidence? I could use paint to alter a screenshot Ive taken from u-torrent peer list, change an ip address to the MAFIAA’s and then i have the same “evidence” as them?

    I’m also wondering if its not really a wiretap because the information they are logging is publicly displayed? (although i think that’s what you were trying to say in you’re follow up comment)

  • Who

    ANY kind of information RECORDED that can be used. IP’s, what you are uploading/downloading, email’s, blogging…..ANYTHING.

    “wiretap” is the taping in to a computer via any electronic connection.

    “wiretapping” is the “recording” of ANY communication via an electronic connection.

    (sorry I spelled it as taping and that’s wrong…. oops)

    USED in a manner to SPY on is UNLAWFUL by ANYONE that does NOT work for the government AND WITH a COURT ORDER.
    *if you can’t understand….. EVEN the GOVERNMENT MUST have a court order*

    I don’t know how else to make this shit ANY more clear except for the FACT that they CAN’T monitor what you do. you apparently didn’t read ANYTHING on that link, or what I quoted from the link.

  • Ophelia Millais

    The screenshot method is something that copyright trolls use, and does afford some opportunity to convince a court that it’s unreliable. But the Six Strikes system forces you to opt out of using the courts; the ISP’s TOS requires you to agree to resolve disputes by arbitration, i.e. private, secret courts.

    The actual evidence and collection methods used for the Six Strikes system are mostly kept secret. Do a web search for Independent Expert Assessment MarkMonitor and you will get an overview of the system they’re planning to use.

    By calling everything “trade secrets”, and relying on hush and arbitration clauses in contracts, they minimize the risk of ever disclosing anything about their methods to the public.

    IANAL, but even if a court were to rule that the arbitration clause in the ISP’s TOS doesn’t apply to your claim of illegal wiretapping (unlikely), you’d have a hard time convincing a real judge that it was a wiretap, because no one is “listening in” on your communications with others—they’re just posing as BitTorrent peers and gathering evidence based on your “voluntary” (even if automatic) communication with them directly. Also, you signed off on your contract with the ISP, knowing full well that for purposes of this program, you’re 100% responsible for the traffic on your line.

    Not saying I agree with it. I’m just skeptical that it would be possible to challenge under wiretapping laws. I mean, you think they haven’t thought of that already?

  • MadAsASnake

    @Ophelia

    Most of these terms will not meet any test of fairness – you cannot deny people the right to an audience in front of the judge (though they can make it difficult). It is especially unfair if there are no alternate suppliers in your area.

    I would also note that they will very quickly hit the problem that HADOPI did: trying to “enforce” any more than a token few alleged infringers will lead to a customer revolt. Pretty sure Verizon don’t want that sort of publicity.

  • ScrewEwe2

    Here is the PDF of the document “Independent Expert Assessment MarkMonitor” that Ophelia mentioned.

    http://www.copyrightinformation.org/sites/default/files/Independent%20Expert%20Assessment.Content.CCI_.Redacted.pdf

  • Who

    @Ophelia Millais: yep that’s correct….they do this cause they don’t want to go to court and confront a REAL Judge as they know they WILL loose.

  • Who

    I am well aware of the FACT that they will do as they please. I have ALREADY made that statement a wile back. I am just showing the PEOPLE were it is written in the LAW for there benefit. this is the PEOPLES POWER against this shit. IF they ever have to go to court…….there will have a defense now against them.

  • Who

    “involving a school” ya that may be, BUT if you actually read the US copy right law, schools are soposta be exempt from this BS. as I posted above as regards to fair use…..”for educational purpose” is NOT subjected to infringement.
    not worded that exact way but you should get the point.

    so technically that should not of even happened. “corrupt government” regardless of what the law says they do whatever anyway.

  • chris_p_bacon(R.O.L.L)

    2nd that

  • ScrewEwe2

    Who, the point I was actually trying to highlight was that a “print screen shot” of the torrent activity by the monitoring companies could conceivably be ruled legal because it excludes any audio evidence, and therefore would not be considered wiretapping. The fact that the “case involving a school laptop” was noted is superfluous information to the point I was making. The point is: the federal law does not currently regulate silent video communications, such as webcams or other video monitoring without an audio component.

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