AT&T first to test RIAA antipiracy plan
Updated Wednesday at 9:00 a.m. PDT to include quotes from AT&T and information about Comcast and Cox.
Updated Wednesday at 10:37 a.m. PDT to include a statement from an AT&T spokeswoman who wished to correct what she had previously said. She says now that the company asserts in the letters that it has the right to terminate a policy. She said, however, the company has no intention of doing so.
Updated Wednesday at 3:40 p.m. PDT: AT&T says that it won't ever terminate service of customers without a court order. To read more updated information about this, go here.
AT&T, one of the nation's largest Internet service providers, confirmed on Tuesday the company is working with the recording industry to combat illegal file sharing.
At a digital music conference in Nashville, Tenn., Jim Cicconi, a senior executive for AT&T, told the audience that the ISP has begun issuing warning notices to people accused of pirating music by the Recording Industry Association of America, according to one music industry insider who was present.
Early Wednesday morning, an AT&T spokeswoman confirmed that Cicconi made the statements.
In December, the RIAA, the lobbying group of the four largest recording companies, announced the group would no longer pursue an antipiracy strategy that focused on suing individuals, but rather would seek the help of broadband providers to stem the flow of pirated content. The RIAA said an undisclosed number of ISPs had agreed to cooperate but declined to name them. In January, CNET News reported that AT&T and Comcast were among the group.
Sources told CNET on Wednesday that a Comcast executive confirmed that the nation's second largest ISP is working with the RIAA. At the same Nashville conference where Cicconi spoke, the Comcast exec said the ISP has sent 2 million warning notices to customers accused of infringement by entertainment companies. The sources have also confirmed that Cox is a member. (You can read more about that here: "Comcast, Cox join RIAA antipiracy campaign.")
Representatives of the RIAA could not be reached for comment.
Cicconi told attendees of the Leadership Music Digital Summit that the notices, which are sent via e-mail, are part of a "trial." AT&T wants to test customer reaction, he said. It was unclear Tuesday evening if AT&T had included any threats to suspend or shut off service.
The RIAA had said that under its "graduated response" plan, repeat offenders faced the possibility of their ISP suspending or terminating service--at least temporarily. There are also other forms of escalating responses, such as the sending of multiple letters. Some of the notices could take a stronger tone or perhaps the ISP might follow-up with a phone call. Managers at the organization have also said they support due process to protect people from being falsely accused. What the due process includes has yet to be determined.
Reached Wednesday morning, Claudia Jones, an AT&T spokeswoman, said the company's letters do include a mention that company retains the right to terminate service. She wanted to make it clear that AT&T has no intention of doing so, however. Jones also said the ISP never shares customers' names or any other personal information. What the company does do is send a "cover letter" to the accused customer along with the letter the ISP received from the RIAA stating that the person's IP address was flagged.
AT&T goes on to tell the accused customer that the problem may be caused by a teenager in the house who may be illegally downloading or that the customer might have an insecure Internet connection and that someone could be using it to steal content.
The ISP also informs the customer that downloading unauthorized copies is illegal and should be prevented. As for chronic offenders, Jones was less specific but said: "We can't assume that people are stealing. All we know is that they are using a lot of bandwidth. We can't be the police or the copyright enforcer...that's up to the content owner."
All the activity going on with AT&T, Comcast, and Cox is likely the first stage in what promises to be a long and drawn out process of using ISPs to help protect copyright material.
ISPs have traditionally tried to stay out of the fray between the big entertainment companies and those who download music illegally. They remain squeamish about the possibility of alienating customers, according to music industry sources. The ISPs also don't like plans that call for them to cut off access and chase away a source of income.
Note to readers: Have you received a warning letter from AT&T or another ISP? If so, e-mail me by clicking on the link in my bio below. Please include your contact information. I won't reveal your name in any story if that's what you prefer.
Greg Sandoval covers media and digital entertainment for CNET News. He is a former reporter for The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times. E-mail Greg, or follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/sandoCNET. 
It will probably be for someone who has not done anything wrong and is suing emotional distress of receiving letters or something on those lines.
Your World.
Delivered.
To the NSA.
And the RIAA.
And the MPAA.
And to whoever else we feel like selling you to.
Because you are a slave and we hate you.
Just give us all your money and drop dead already.
Unauthorized use of copyrighted material in the form of packet sniffing. Pretty much the same thing the RIAA is claiming.
Cox Cable modem, CMA Cable modem, AT&T WiMAX and DSL, Embarq DSL, and many others already started downloads limits on January 1, 2009. The FCC isn't doing a damn thing about it, because, GASP! The data lines are owned and administered by the company that installed the wires, and they can do anything they damn well please with those lines, including download limits.
And Maccess is correct. Since CMA Cable started a download limit, I hardly download anything anymore, legal or otherwise. And I'm more extreme on the subject, as I keep a download log in a word processor to keep exact tracking of how much I download, as I've already been accused of downloading 100 GB from March 1 'til March 18, and I told them that means I'd have to download at 500 kilobytes (not kilobits) constant for 6 hours exactly a day to use up 100 GB in that many days, or 4.5 days at the same amount of kilobytes, which isn't possible. Hence, this is why I keep exact track of my downloads.
As far as it goes for AT&T...good luck. I'm sure people will sue you and lump you in their lawsuits with the RIAA. To solve the RIAA problem, how amount reverting copyright law back to the original code that Ben Franklin set-up in the 1700s? After a total of 28 years, it's public domain. I'm a bit more extreme, and I support after two years, it's public domain. If the act can't make money after two years, then it wasn't that good to start with. One day, the RIAA will stupidly go after Obama's daughters and not realize it. Then, it's over for them after that.
"The data lines are owned and administered by the company that installed the wires, and they can do anything they damn well please with those lines, including download limits."
Considering we've paid for those lines several times over they should not be claiming them as "their lines". Much like the interstate highways are not the government's ( ok, not the best analogy but close enough...)
Although I do agree with you. These compnies / corporations are becoming greedier and 2 years for copyright is not extreme in my opinion....
And since this only appears to apply to music, I guess movies are still fair game.
I mean, yeah go ahead and temporarily suspend my service. You'll quickly notice I'll also temporarily stop paying my bill. I hope they're not dumb enough to think all these people they kick off their ISP will keep paying lol?
Oh wait, it seems like a good idea right? Get all the heavy unloaders off your connection and save that bandwidth right? Only the web browsers and emailers will use it then right? That'll be GREAT!
I guess, good luck trying to sell a 50 mbps plan to somebody that only browses the web lol. 1 to 2 mbps is all they'll ever need. After all people are trying to take down or censor all the videos online too!
Who needs bandwidth if there's nothing to download lol? I don't. Since I don't pirate I just buy the smallest package they have and if I do need to download something big like a distro I just wait slowly on my torrent for a day or two or three.
Don't even get me started when innocent people starting getting accused by mistake. It'll be fantastic! Can't wait to see the results roll in lol.
Since I don't pirate I just buy the smallest package they have and if I do need to download something big like a distro I just wait slowly on my torrent for a day or two or three.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Ah, but *ALL* torrenters are illegal pirate scum! Just because you think what you're doing is legal (avoiding the "M$" and/or "Apple" tax) doesn't mean others HAVE to agree with you!
Remember, conjob got caught illegally forging TCPReset packets to forcibly terminate all Bittorrent traffic on their networks and to this day are still lying about it, plus the RIAA has a less-than-stellar record when it comes to treating people decently and lawfully. But we're supposed to trust the RIAA won't abuse this new power they haven't given themselves; we're supposed to trust that half the American population won't receive one of these notices over the next year or so. We're supposed to trust that conjob won't pull some idiotic stunt again, hacking the internet to prevent lawful usage because they simply don't like it.
After all, the RIAA are the good guys, only trying to protect the poor starving artists from being exploited by the horrible morally corrupt pirate scumbags like yourself who think just because they can find "legal" uses for P2P software they should have a right to use it. And those poor starving artists need protection because unlike you, they don't have a different colored Ferrari for every day of the month stored in their deluxe square mile sized mansion. (Please continue to ignore the fact that not one artist has ever seen one penny from this racketeering campaign; it's all gone to lawyers and the RIAA executives coffers, who incidentally DO have a different colored Ferrari for every day of the month stored in their deluxe square mile sized mansions.)
It's not like the RIAA would sue children and grandmothers for "piracy", would they?
;-) *wink indicating serious sarcasm used above, just in case it wasn't noticed*
But then again, AT&T did it before when they happily allowed the NSA to intercept every data stream between Asia and the US.
Can you prove what you've just written with citation that can be obtained or link via the Web? Othersie, you're speculating.
Yes, the government still has a monopoly on force. They just granted someone else that power temporarily for a specific purpose.
Not quite. The gubbiment strong armed AT&T into doing something neither the gubbiment or AT&T were legally entitled to do. You have to keep in mind that the government both did the illegal thing then later declared that it was illegal to begin with then tried to pass a law exonorating AT&T for cooperating.
Doesn't change the fact that the government has a monopoly on the use of force.
People forget that phone conversations cannot be recorded unless there is a warrant or both sides are informed that the conversation is being recorded.
Take off the tin-foil hat. Just because it's "not allowed" doesn't mean it isn't done. The way the courts are set-up to listen and rule on disputes like this prevents this from ruled against, and most people will submit, roll-over, ignore, or can't afford to file against the organization they're being accused by. Also, the lines in question are owned by AT&T, as is the service thereof, and AT&T can do anything they want with what they own, unless you've negotiated a contract different from the majority of AT&T users.
@Endbringer
No constitution, from a state or Federal, protects privacy anywhere. You have the Rights of not having troops housed on your private property, get a specific warrant to search your house, and to compensated for your private property if the representative management wants to take over that property, but nowhere is a "right" to privacy provided in any language anywhere in the whole land.
You are correct in there is no wording in the Constitution that states "The right to privacy shall not be infringed". But, the 9th amendment has been used to broaden privacy rights as Madison and the other framers wanted to protect privacy. It's hard to define the word privacy, so they mentioned specific ones in the Constitution, i.e., privacy of beliefs (1st amendment), privacy of home (3rd amendment), privacy of property (4th and 5th amendment). The 10th amendment also lends credence to privacy because the federal government was not granted power to spy on people (how's that working for us?), so if the imperial federal government was not granted that power, then it is up to the states and the people.
It's up to the judge presiding over the case of privacy per basis, and if the accused has retained a lawyer who knows how to talk the judge into agreeing or disagreeing with the argument presented.
Hey, you want my take, I say amend the Federal Constitution with wording that's simple: "The Right to privacy of the person cannot be infringed whatsoever under any circumstances, warranted or not, by any agency or organization, be them private or public thereof."
@Endbringer
AT&T is making money on a government invented medium of communications. AT&T is private. The internet is or was Government based.
I don't quite follow what the origins of the internet has to do with this. And what is wrong with AT&T making money?
Otherwise most of you writing comments on this story wouldn't have anything to do.
Get a life and get your hands out of my wallet.
1. EULA: you'll find AT&T actually have the right to spy on you because you agree to it. I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't in thier terms of use - which means you agree to it and thus have no rights.
2. Patriot Act - has the right to violate your rights for privacy. It is the Patriot Act and its sister subordinate laws (regs etc) that have been used against several individuals and organisations to "spy" on them without due cause; the right to due process or court obtained warrant (only suspician often without the normally required level of evidence or 'due cause') despite the fact that copyright infringment ins't a crime (it is illegal yes but not a criminal act, there is a difference). Indeed this Act in itself is contrary to much of the US constitution and it is heavily debated which should supercede which. The reality is the Act has a specific intended usage which we are all aware of and would probably be ok with if it was limited to that usage: The intent was to stop terrorists. Some kid downloading a metallica track is not a terrorist. Ergo, using the Act against them is against the intention of the legislature. Nevertheless, as the Act was conveniently written without its own constitution (which defines the limitations and interpretation of the Act) then it can be used on anyone for any reason.
If there are any (US) constitutional lawyers out there, I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on this dire scenario. And again, forgive inaccuracies I'm at least 2 years out of date since last looking at that Act.
Queue up a Class Action lawsuit in 5..4..3... It's American we will keep feeding our lawyers.
I applaud the RIAA and AT&T for their efforts to curb the theft of copyrighted material by ethically bankrupt individuals like those who post here.
Copying something is a far cry from stealing it. Making a copy does not remove the original from the author. It does not prevent the author from selling it to whomever will pay for it. And it does not reduce revenues because all of the people making copies were probably not going to buy the thing in the first place.
Saying file sharing is stealing is like saying a photographer that photographs a sunset stole a sunset from you.
Just because people want to keep turning out products that are cheaper to copy than purchase, that does not mean that the financially astute copiers are stealing.
Times change. Industries rise. Industries fall and are replaced by other industries that will also rise and fall.
The music industry simply has a problem coming to grips with this portion of reality.
Oh, you say you didn't steal my intellectual property? Yeah right. Well guess what, with this setup I don't have to prove it. YOU HAVE TO PROVE YOU DIDN'T! All I have to do is accuse you and send the request and your OFF! Then I can sue you for every dollar you got! LOL.
Oh, now maybe you realize that this isn't about theft?
http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/03/18/2223232
Why don't you read that find out what's really going on?
No, many of us don't support theft, but that's not what this is about. Stop being a sheep and understand that. If you can't see it by now, then you never will until they come to take all your life savings for something you didn't do, or a member of your family, or somebody uses it to shut down your business because they don't want to fairly compete with you.
So the one thing never changes, there's no such thing as a free lunch --- if you want to enjoy music, movies, books, software, chip designs, whatever, you've gotta pay. If you want everything 'free,' go to a popular socialist country such as North Korea.
how about you grow up and start living in 2009. i can access anything you've ever "created" within seconds and have it on my hard drive in a few more.
i can and will use this technology any way i see fit. who do you think you are to tell me what i can and cannot do in my life?
The moral of the issue is this: The RIAA and MPAA member companies have abused their market position to force sub-standard music and videos to the public at an inflated price. To top that off, they have appointed themselves as lords and keepers of all audio and visual works. As such, they have been acting a gatekeepers by deciding what music and movies are going to be available for us to enjoy, removing any they find undesirable. To support this, they have done everything in their power to suppress alternative avenues to gain access to this rejected content.
To try an protect a failing profit model, they turned to suing downloaders who were getting their content on the web, dubbing them "pirates". Of course, it turns out that these individuals were some of their best PAYING customers who were sampling media that was not easily accessible from any other source and then PURCHASING the content they downloaded and decided they would like to keep. Please note that this has been the unofficial business model that Japanese anime producers have been using when deciding what content to export to the US and it has worked very well for them.
The RIAA and MPAA and their member companies have likely damaged any hope of their being part of the next generation of media distribution. Their actions have offended their potential customers to the point that they feel that these organizations need to be removed and that boycotts and copyright infringement (not "theft" as you put it, please read the definition of these two terms) are appropriate tools to achieve this. I for one, am happy to consider myself among their ranks. I have stopped going to movies, purchasing CDs or DVDs, watching television or purchasing any media content online. What little music I listen to is either on terrestrial radio or on albums I purchased before my self-imposed boycott. They will not receive another dollar from me, if I can help it. Maybe, not so strangely, I don't often miss any of it.
So, I for one, hope to see the demise of the RIAA/MPAA and their member companies and will do my part in seeing it happen; copyright infringement or not.
If people had your attitude in the 1970s, there wouldn't be any computers anywhere. With the exception of Bill Gates, everybody else in the industry was sharing everything to further the development of the industry. If they had your attitude before the 1970s, most of the motion pictures and books and such would be gone by now (as seen in comics before the 1960s, because nobody pirated the comics, most of the comics are lost forever). What about building designs, like pillars, or housing frames, or whatever? I'm not saying people should pirate things, but it happens. Too bad. Also, you try explaining to people that your music or picture on the 'Net, or whatever is not for the taking. If the RIAA wants to control music, digital methods won't work in the long-run. Maybe they should go back to cylinder phonographs...
If you do mind if I watch everthing, then you just might have a clue why not liking the invasion of your space is different than being honest.
As for the people that download any content I make. Whoo hooo. Free samples!
And please, Ikrupp and contentcreator, for the last time, look at your statutes. Piracy is not stealing. It is copyright infringement. It is not even a criminal act. Yes it is illegal as it is the infringement of an Act, but it is on par with a parking infringement. By your narrow definition, if someone stays in a 2 hour parking spot for 2 hours and 5 minutes then they should be arrested and banned from driving forever for STEALING that car space for 5minutes!! Oh the humanity.
And yet, here is the democracy in action for the parking scenario: if people in the community argued that the 2hour limit was no longer sufficient, the democratic process would allow this to go to the local government body and have the limits chaged. Now there would be pros and cons for changing the parking model but it would be properly addressed and debated. This is a bullying match where large corporations with unlimited wads of money are fighting to keep a parking system that doesn't work at all. The spaces are too small for the big cars and there aren't enough of them and the price is too high. It isn't about wanting something for nothing, it is about right to access. Music is for people, just like car spaces.
No, pirates ARE NOT criminals according to your own statutes. Please look at the Crimes act (or its equivalent as the name changes per state) - you will NOT find copyright infringments, nor will you find parking violations. You will find however find a range of different types of theft (ranging from petty theft through to grand larceny) - these are crimes, not just infringments.
of course, the only people who will be affected by this are the "poor" while ceo's children are given carte blanche.
no company should be allowed to influence government and get laws passed that work in their favor to the detriment of everyone else.
First, I think you're a troll the RIAA or similar-type agency hires to go around to sites like CNET to forward your POV. Tell your masters that you can catch more flies with honey than salt.
Also, are you a Democrat, Leftist, Liberal, or Marxist (or a flavor thereof)? Because if you are, and then you want people to pay for your "efforts" and content, then you're a hypocrite. You see, that's the attitude of a Republican Christian Conservative Capitalist, who wants to be paid for all of their time, efforts, services, and content created therein.
Anyways, computers and piracy go all the way back to beginning of the micro-computer in the 1970s. Everybody copied everything, and that's where it started. If you want to protect your content, then create a format that's so hard to copy that people will have no choice but to buy the original if they need the program. But if I didn't pirate Adobe in the 1990s from my high school's CDs, I'd never have bought Adobe Photoshop 5 and Illustrator 8 in 1998, then Photoshop 7 and Illustrator 8 in 2000, then CS in 2005, CS 2 in 2006, CS 3 in 2007, and last year, CS 4. I always spend the most amount of money on the suites that have all of the programs therein, costing me, I think, around $2500 a year. That means, since 2005, I've given Adobe $10,000 of my money, because I buy directly from them, plus the two previous versions I bought before that at very large prices. Also, because I need to use these programs, I had to buy new hardware every two years, starting with a G3 Mini-Tower in 1998, then a G3 Blue & White, then a dual G4 tower, then an early G5, followed by a quad-core G5, then a Mac Mini, MacBook and I'll be getting a Mac Pro. So there's lots of money spent there, too, to an actual company. Then, how about the three Macs I owned before the G3 Mini-Tower? The one before the G3 was the one I installed the school's Adobe discs in early 1998. By June of 1998, I bought the G3 and brand-new copies of Adobe Illustrator 8 and Photoshop 5, then worked the rest of the summer to get more money and pay for my college classes.
Does anyone see the point now?
@Btm... --- I'm not troll, I work for myself. And I'm seriously p-o'd about people trying to claim that they can just take what I do because they want it. Don't try to use your later purchases to justify piracy. It's not up to you to decide. Adobe can create educational versions, trial versions, whatever they feel appropriate, it's not up to you. If you don't like it, don't use it, use something else you pay for or that is formally free. But I'm thinking that you paid that money because it was worth it, because it helped you earn a living. Not up to you to decide whether they can or not. I'm sure when you send out a bill, you expect people to pay THAT AMOUNT, not say they only feel like paying $5 today, or think they don't want to pay at all.
And yes, I do expect to be paid for my time, efforts, services, etc. Duh! Last I checked that wasn't a republican vs democratic thing, it was a capitalist vs socialist thing. If you prefer the socialist take what you want approach, head for one of those remaining fantastically successful varieties such as North Korea.
Note that if you actually have a product worth paying for... people tend to pay for it. The people that pirate often don't have money to buy what you're selling, or find what you're selling to not be worth paying for. Therefor, if they didn't pirate the material, you wouldn't have made a sale anyway. There are no revenues lost to piract.
You're accusing someone of stealing? Man you better be careful who you accuse with no proof. P2P does have legitimate uses, ya know. And if you marketed your content in such a way that people want to buy it, there wouldn't be a problem, would there?.
The failure here is in your own offerings or lack thereof. Personally I've spent a fortune on music through four different media changes. Vinyl, 8 tracks, cassettes, then CD's. I won't spend another dime on hard media. I was forced to buy albums that had maybe one or two songs that I liked out of a bunch of junk. Now I can pick and choose the songs I want, and I am not forced to buy something I don't like to get what I do like. There's where your revenue has gone bud. I spend .99 instead of fifteen bucks.
That's exactly why music companies have lost money, not because of P2P. Why would anyone in their right mind pay fifteen dollars for an entire CD when they can mix and match songs however they like? And people who download P2P are more likely to have already paid for a song. Or they're checking out music BEFORE they pay good money for it, to see how well they like it. The RIAA are idiots. If they made it easier to buy music, people would buy it, instead they cling to outdated sales practices and they keep losing money. You don't buck what customers want and survive.
And hey, I feel sorry for the movie industry and Blu ray too, because I absolutely refuse to spend more money on media changes meant to steal my money. VHS> DVD> full screen only DVD> WS DVD> Blue Ray DVD. They're doing just what the music Industry did. This time around I'm too smart do it. They can kiss my lily white rear end. I'm not spending a fortune on movies I already bought and paid for in another format, because they've decided to change formats. People are sick of that crap. If they weren't then the movie guys and the music guys wouldn't be screaming about revenues.
The movie industry and the music industry has ripped off the public enough, and now the pubic is ripping back, and they don't like it too much. It's instant karma dude.
So my suggestion is dell your whatever in a way that people will want to buy it, be flexible. The RIAA and the movie guys aren't. They're paying for it, and so are the artists. See since people don't want but just a few songs from an album, maybe it will improve what the artists produce. I happen to think it's stealing to make people pay for something they don't want. But that's an acceptable form of theft to you, because it lines your pockets.
Turns out my 16 year old son had torrented Saw V the day before it was released in the theater. On the one hand, I was impressed that someone was watching the bit streams that closely. On the other, I told my son if it ever happens again, he'll pay the lawyer bills.
RIAA is upset because now we are not forced instead wasting monies buying all of the songs we don't like, when we really only want 1 song, not 13....
"The RIAA said an undisclosed number of ISPs had agreed to cooperate but declined to name them. In January,"
1. The RIAA is continuing to support a failing business model. They took too long to adapt to internet distribution, in fact, fighting it for the first 5 years. In that time illegal file sharing took off and people have become accustomed to getting music free. Now, I'm not saying this is right BUT, I, and clearly the community here at CNET, a more informed community know this is copyright infringement. The problem is that there are still millions of people who don't know file sharing is copyright infringement. To add to that, the only successful digital model pioneered by Apple, is still seen by many as too expensive, and until recently, carried the burden of DRM.
2. The RIAA companies need to clean house and adapt for a lower revenue industry. The truth is that they are spending way too much in overhead trying to sustain their failed business models and match expected revenues/profits of the past. There are still tons of middle men, worthless executives, and generally unsustainable expenses. Let's not forget their ridiculous ideas to regain that lost revenue by taxing USB thumb drives, selling music on thumb drives, and ringles. The future of music will not be able to support these expenses. In fact, the future may not need the RIAA labels at all. The cost of producing an album, marketing it, and distributing it digitally is a minuscule fraction of what it used to be, and songs should not cost $1 a piece.
As a few people here have pointed out: Make a CD that is worth buying and we will, but if there are only 2 good tracks and the rest is filler, guess what, no sale. We'll buy the tracks, but not the CD.
my own two cents: simply put, right or wrong, you can't win against 'free.' the landscape has forever changed. as a musician myself, i have some level of sympathy for the artists, but it's just the way it is, and is why touring/merch becomes the money maker for successful artists. you can debate, argue, threaten, etc but in the end, let's face it, MUSIC IS NOW FREE. just as newpapers have to accept the fact that no one needs them anymore due to any number of online options that are greater in depth, breadth, personal preferences, etc. it's over johnny. the ones that will make it are the ones that embrace it and move WITH it. those that stand on the same tired arguements (as valid as they may be) their days are numbered.
Problem with this is proxy DNS , ENCRYPTION TECHNOLOGY , packet encryption Stenography , Phishing codacs looks like file or data comes from a legal site such as hulu, itunes and Netflicks
On other Hand Trojans and Macro's on effected PC can be used as Botnets for trading illegal media
Kremlin encryption So many ways around bit stream tracking. They can only read data with in standard formats. Anyone that has illegal stuff on there computer and is effected by a botnet you may have a legal loophole out blame it on the Botnet trojan
Food for thought RIAA is barking up the wrong tree the CUSTOMER
Sad fact RIAA full of stupid people who all need to work for AIG. Right now around world there are thousands of programmers making work a rounds to ISP sniffers. In end RIAA going have to make flat fee web sites for there copyrighted media. ISP's going have spend millions for Sniffers to catch ever changing trading technology not to mention how much they going hurt there customer base.
How are these ISP's going to handle the mess with this? They are going to face it on all fronts, technical, customer relations, and public relations.
Also, since this changes condition of the end user contract, will they be informed in writing? What grievance process will exist for users who will (and many will) be falsely accused.
Sounds like a really bad plan.
It's not like the RIAA would sue children and grandmothers, would they?
- by Michichael March 25, 2009 9:43 AM PDT
- I can't wait until I get one of these notices. I've run circles around AT&T's techs at work and at home. When you get one of these letters, demand that they provide proof of the allegation. No proof, no cooperation. :)
- Like this Reply to this comment
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- by Dalkorian March 26, 2009 10:46 AM PDT
- That's the best part - the accusation isn't coming from AT&T but from the RIAA instead. AT&T just forwarded it to you, so they have to prove nothing. It's you against the RIAA, not you against AT&T.
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- by Michichael March 26, 2009 12:15 PM PDT
- Dalkorian,
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Showing 1 of 2 pages (101 Comments)And the RIAA has "proof". Ignore the fact they acquired it illegally and ignore the fact that it actually proves nothing. They accuse you, so you are guilty. It's a nuisance to deal with your defense in court because you ARE guilty (they said so!), so you will have to pay their lawyers fees as well if you dare to pretend you have a defense. Thrice. Plus a penalty if that isn't discouragement enough.
Meanwhile they have pressured AT&T to cut you off, so preparing a defense will become a bit harder - but that's OK because they said you're guilty so you shouldn't be wasting their time trying to defend yourself anyway.
Actually as the annotations stated above, in order for AT&T to cut off your service at the behest of the RIAA, according to their own terms of service, they *must* comply with the law and get a court order to break their own service agreement and cut a customer off. So, once again, no proof, no cooperation. AT&T may do a lot of things wrong, but they've learned from their mistakes and realize that their customer is their primary revenue, and they're not going to get involved in a pissing contest when the RIAA doesn't have a stone to stand on.