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AT&T to cut off some customers' service in piracy crackdown

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Re: AT&T to cut off some customers' service in piracy crackdown

#81

Post by jedberg »

jrockway wrote: post #24

I wonder when this will spread to other industries? Say someone doesn't pay their newspaper bill. Maybe contact their water company and ask them to shut off their water, to encourage them to pay. It's worth a try, right? I get why content rights owners go to the ISP to get at the ISP's customers who are doing things they don't like. I don't get why ISPs play along. It's extra work, and it makes the customer hate the…

The ISPs are common carries, so they have to play along with the rights owners.

A better analogy would be getting USPS to stop coming to your house when the content creators find out you've been mailing pressed DVDs from your house.

The difference of course is that you could switch to UPS or FedEx. For 72% of the country, you can't switch ISPs.

Re: AT&T to cut off some customers' service in piracy crackdown

#82

Post by [deleted] »

jrockway wrote: post #24

I wonder when this will spread to other industries? Say someone doesn't pay their newspaper bill. Maybe contact their water company and ask them to shut off their water, to encourage them to pay. It's worth a try, right? I get why content rights owners go to the ISP to get at the ISP's customers who are doing things they don't like. I don't get why ISPs play along. It's extra work, and it makes the customer hate the…

[deleted]

Re: AT&T to cut off some customers' service in piracy crackdown

#83

Post by coldtea »

dionidium wrote: post #60
kragen wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The story doesn't have any such details. Please remember that the most famous such case, the prosecution of Aaron Swartz until he committed suicide, was for downloading academic papers from JSTOR, presumably including many century-old texts, and that the current best system for obtaining academic papers you're legally allowed to get — Sci-hub — is on the receiving end of a series of lawsuits from companies who didn't…

The prosecution of Aaron Swartz, a farcical tragedy, has nothing to do with this story.

At has at least 2 things to do: it involves copyrights, and it shows that copyright enforcement (and strict at that) is not just about "the latest hits" (like with movie/music piracy for example).

Re: AT&T to cut off some customers' service in piracy crackdown

#84

Post by pavel_lishin »

mdpopescu wrote: post #79
eiaoa wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> what happens if your service is cut in error. Do you trust ATT to have a fair, easy appeals process? This is where many of the arguments against government regulation break down. If you take government out of the picture, you're still left dealing with massive institutions and bureaucratic regulations. The main difference is that those institutions are even less accountable to the average person than the government…

Yep. We need government, because without government nobody would save us from the abuses of copyright law, enforced by the government! And let's not forget, there is no competition - because the ISP has a legal monopoly, also enforced by the government. Yep, government regulation sounds great. /s

This story is very specifically about a corporation enforcing those laws.

Re: AT&T to cut off some customers' service in piracy crackdown

#86

Post by viraptor »

tantalor wrote: post #8

The podcast Reply-All had a good episode about why this is problematic earlier this year. https://www.gimletmedia.com/reply-all/118 Excerpt: ALEX: So finally, I find this website that is called the Center for Copyright information. PJ: And what’s that? ALEX: It’s a website that is run by both the entertainment industry and the ISPs, they’re working together. And the deal is, if you feel that you have wrongly received…

> you can go to this website, pay $35, and you can appeal it.

If you get ignored but you paid, does it mean you're open to make it a small claim case with binding result? Or would that only recover your money (after a fee of $50 or so...)

Re: AT&T to cut off some customers' service in piracy crackdown

#87

Post by ddingus »

cronix wrote: post #40
bitxbitxbitcoin wrote: post #2

Some of you might be wondering why "a little over a dozen" people being booted from their ISP is newsworthy. This is figuratively the beginning of a very, very slippery slope.

Soon we will probably have an Internet Citizen Rating, similar to Credit Ratings, or China's Social Credit system.

Facebook Trust Score

Re: AT&T to cut off some customers' service in piracy crackdown

#88

Post by ddingus »

Spivak wrote: post #12
dawnerd wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and I bet those "over a dozen" people are also their highest in terms of bandwidth use. Smart pirates use vpns anyways.

ISP sees high amounts of traffic over a public VPN and kicks you off their network for suspicious activity. You go to appeal it in one of their 'courts' and since there aren't really any rules the burden of proof is on you. You really were pirating so such positive proof doesn't really exist and you're off the internet for good.

VPN + YouTube

Re: AT&T to cut off some customers' service in piracy crackdown

#89

Post by eiaoa »

mdpopescu wrote: post #79
eiaoa wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> what happens if your service is cut in error. Do you trust ATT to have a fair, easy appeals process? This is where many of the arguments against government regulation break down. If you take government out of the picture, you're still left dealing with massive institutions and bureaucratic regulations. The main difference is that those institutions are even less accountable to the average person than the government…

Yep. We need government, because without government nobody would save us from the abuses of copyright law, enforced by the government! And let's not forget, there is no competition - because the ISP has a legal monopoly, also enforced by the government. Yep, government regulation sounds great. /s

> Yep. We need government, because without government nobody would save us from the abuses of copyright law, enforced by the government!

That's an entirely different issue from what I was commenting on.

> And let's not forget, there is no competition - because the ISP has a legal monopoly, also enforced by the government.

You're forgetting that ISPs are natural monopolies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly:

>> "A natural monopoly is a monopoly in an industry in which high infrastructural costs and other barriers to entry relative to the size of the market give the largest supplier in an industry, often the first supplier in a market, an overwhelming advantage over potential competitors. This frequently occurs in industries where capital costs predominate, creating economies of scale that are large in relation to the size of the market; examples include public utilities such as water services and electricity.[1] Natural monopolies were discussed as a potential source of market failure by John Stuart Mill, who advocated government regulation to make them serve the public good."

> Yep, government regulation sounds great. /s

You're right, it does sound great; especially when you remove the blinders of misunderstanding. Admittedly, it's not entirely without it's own problems, but those problems are best solved without re-introducing the problems that regulation successfully mitigates.

Re: AT&T to cut off some customers' service in piracy crackdown

#90

Post by [deleted] »

dawnerd wrote: post #7
bitxbitxbitcoin wrote: post #2

Some of you might be wondering why "a little over a dozen" people being booted from their ISP is newsworthy. This is figuratively the beginning of a very, very slippery slope.

and I bet those "over a dozen" people are also their highest in terms of bandwidth use. Smart pirates use vpns anyways.

[deleted]
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