How Charter Communications warns accused file sharers
Note: This is a companion piece to the story "Has online piracy reached a tipping point?"
AT&T made news last month for acknowledging that it had begun sending warning notices to customers accused of illegal file sharing by the music industry.
Executives from the nation's largest Internet service provider said the notices were only part of a test. The company could have saved itself some trouble and just asked the advice of Charter Communications. Much of what AT&T is experimenting with, Charter has been doing for years.
AT&T said it only recently began issuing "cover letters" to customers accused of downloading unauthorized material. These cover letters accompany the cease-and-desist letters it receives from the music industry. The ISP acknowledged notifying customers the company has the right to cut off someone's service, but executives there insisted that it's only legal boilerplate. The company has no intention of suspending or terminating anyone's service because the Recording Industry Association of America has accused them of file sharing. AT&T would need a court order first.
By contrast, a Charter spokeswoman said that ISP has been sending its own warning letters--or what she called a "heads-up" letter--since 2001. Charter's notification is sent in addition to the warning letters sent by copyright owners. A music industry source told me that while the RIAA is trying to prod some ISPs to do more to combat piracy, other ISPs adopted strategies years ago to deal with illegal file sharing. Some of those programs closely resemble the kind of graduated response the music industry favors.
What this shows is that the music and film industries may not have too hard a time as they attempt to enlist ISPs in their war on copyright infringement (To see a story on whether piracy has reached a tipping point, go here).
I still haven't been able to get my hands on a copy of AT&T's test cover letter, but a reader was kind enough to supply me with a warning letter he received this month from Charter. He was accused of downloading content owned by NBC Universal.
While AT&T said the language in its cover letter about service interruption or termination had little relevance, Charter's letter doesn't mince words.
"Charter reserves the right to suspend or terminate the accounts of repeat copyright infringers," the company informed the customer in the April 4 e-mail. Later in the message, the company added: "If Charter continues to receive DMCA notices regarding your account or if you violate any other clause of Charter's Acceptable Use Policy, we will have no choice but to terminate your account."
Anita Lamont, a Charter spokeswoman, said this kind of language is industry standard.
"The warning of possible suspension/termination is required by the DMCA," Lamont wrote me. "Our DMCA notice reminds our subscribers of the requirements of our posted acceptable use policy."
She didn't, however, say whether the company has made good on the threat to terminate service.
I've included the copy of Charter's letter so customers of AT&T and other ISPs preparing to follow in its footsteps can get a look at what might be coming (Note that I've deleted identifying information).
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From: Charter Abuse Tracking System
XXXX@charter.net
Subject: [IP Address deleted] Notice of Copyright Infringement
To: (name removed)@yahoo.com
Date: Saturday, April 4, 2009, 10:30 AM
Dear Internet Access Subscriber:
Charter Communications ("Charter") has been notified by a copyright owner that your Internet account has been involved in the exchange of unauthorized copies of copyrighted material (music, movies, or software). We are enclosing a copy of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) notice that Charter received from the copyright holder.
It is possible that this activity has occurred without your permission or knowledge by an unauthorized user, a minor who may not fully understand the copyright laws, or even as a result of a computer virus. However, as a Charter Internet account owner, you can be held liable for this activity.
As a personal computer owner and a user of the Internet, we ask that you be aware of the following: Violations of federal Copyright law can result in civil and/or criminal liability, including payment of monetary damages, costs and attorneys' fees to the copyright owner. See 17 U.S.C. ?? 504-506. In addition, Charter's Acceptable Use Policy explicitly prohibits copyright infringement by Charter High-Speed Internet users. Specifically, Section 3 states:
NO COPYRIGHT OR TRADEMARK INFRINGEMENT
Customer will not use, or allow others to use, the Service to send or receive, or otherwise use any information which infringes the patents, trademarks, copyrights, trade secrets or proprietary rights of any other person or entity. This includes, but is not limited to, digitization of music, movies, photographs or other copyrighted materials or software. Customer must obtain appropriate authorization from such other person or entity prior to sending, receiving or using such materials. Customer represents and warrants that Customer is the author and copyright owner and/or authorized licensee with respect to any hosted content and Customer further represents and warrants that no hosted content violates the trademark, copyright, domain name or intellectual property rights of any third party. Charter assumes no responsibility, and Customer assumes all risks regarding the determination of whether material is in the public domain, or may otherwise be used for such purposes.
Charter is registered under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 (DMCA). Under the DMCA, copyright owners have the right to notify Charter if they believe that a Charter customer has infringed the copyright owner's work(s). If Charter receives a notice from a copyright owner alleging any Customer has committed copyright infringement, Charter will notify the Customer of the alleged infringement. Charter may determine that Customer is a repeat copyright infringer if Charter learns that Customer has engaged in online copyright infringement on more than one occasion. Charter reserves the right to suspend or terminate the accounts of repeat copyright infringers.
We ask that you take immediate action to remove the infringing material from your computer and stop its exchange. If Charter continues to receive DMCA notices regarding your account, or if you violate any other clause of Charter's Acceptable Use Policy, we will have no choice but to terminate your account. You may view Charter's rules and policies at http://www.charter.com/site/policies.aspx.
If you need assistance in removing the referenced infringing material, please refer to the Security Center at http://www.charter.com.
If you have any questions about this matter, please contact us at (phone number deleted). Representatives will be available to take your call Monday through Friday 8am - 8pm, and Saturday and Sunday 8am - 5pm (CST).
Sincerely,
Charter High-Speed Internet Security Team http://security.charter.com
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. 
"AT&T said it only recently began issuing "cover letters" to customers accused of downloading unauthorized material."
What exactly constitutes illegal downloading? If someone goes to a file sharing site, and downloads a copywrited song or video it is illegal, yet going to a legitimate site and playing that same song or video in a player embeded on the site often downloads that same song or video to your internet cache on your hard drive - end result, you have the same copywrited file on your computer and you have downloaded it. A huge percentage of people who use the internet thus have copywrited material on their hard drives that they have downloaded.
The problem isn't with the downloading, the issue is with the uploading, or illegal sharing of this material. In fact, I don't think I've even seen someone successfully taken to court and prosecuted just for 'illegal downloading" of songs or videos - for sharing content yes, uploading yes, but not just downloading. A computer's internet cache on the harddrive is full of copywrited material that was 'downloaded'. If the ISP's are issuing warning just for 'downloading', I can see some very interesting court cases coming.
In the past, I have seen IPs registered to law firms, Macrovision, AT&T, Verizon, both local and national government entities and numerous IPs registered in China, attempting to peer around, looking for violations.
Since the DMCA is an end-around of due process, unless the DMCA is revised - which is highly unlikely given that President Obama has been on a hiring spree, grabbing former and current employees from the RIAA to work at the Justice Department - we should not expect this issue to go away anytime soon. If anything, I suspect that copyright enforcement will increase.
Eventually, someone is going to sue the pants off of his or her ISP and the copyright holder who slandered the user. Thats what it is. Accusing without proof... Slander etc. Someone needs to give it back to the stinking industry organizations.
Greg Sandoval here, the author of the story. I would love to learn more about this ISP. My e-mail is at the bottom of the story. If you don't want to identify the ISP, just learning about how these abuse teams go about their business I think would be important.
What does upset me is that no place in their letter or their TOS do they state that they will throttle your downloading application of choice. While it is certainly their right to do this, they also encouraged me to up my speed to 10meg service when I complained about my slow download speed. I know for a fact, a friend of mine is a Charter employee, that they use equipment from Ellacoya to throttle bandwidth and per application bandwidth in their head end in our area.
How many customers have upped their speed for more money a month, when they were in fact being throttled?
We've seen how weak the evidence companies like media sentry and bayTSP gather really is.
NYT: Huge Debt Prompting Bankruptcy of Charter
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/13/business/13cable.html?ref=business
1. make movie prices on a dvd movie affordable and not like $22.
2. movie theaters cheaper so more people could afford to go out and see the movies.
3. and make music cds affordable
everything is so inflated because of there greed that more and more people are averting to "illegal downloading" including me. And the truth is I would stop doing it if they made everything more affordable.
- by September 28, 2009 11:07 PM PDT
- GUILTY!: I got one of these letters after a friend 'attempted' to download a stupid episode of House. Oddly, the 'attempt' at downloading, which the file was never completed; is still considered piracy? What if I sold you some cocaine. You took it home and opened up the baggy and it was foot powder. Was I still selling drugs? Or did you buy a $50 bag of footpowder? Even if my 'attempt' was to sell you drugs, I never actually did. Thus, even if my attempt was to get a malicious, evil, pirated copy of a House epiode. What if the episode was currupt (as many are) and I was unable to watch it. Was I still breaking the law? The house episode download was cancelled but I never actually confirmed whether it was a good copy. Was I actually commiting piracy, even if the file was incomplete? Just because of the name? Its like the cocaine bag. - Go figure.
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