ISP’s Join Anti-Piracy Efforts

The battle against online piracy rages on with a number of high-profile ISP’s joining the fight. The latest efforts of the music and movie studios to curtail the rampant piracy issue have drawn some of the world’s largest ISP’s—AT&T, Cablevision, Comcast, Time Warner, and Verizon—to become involved as well. The new agreement will see ISP’s issuing alerts to those subscribers whose accounts are being used to unlawfully acquire copywritten content.

According to the National Cable and Telecommunication Association (NCTA), billions in earnings and tax revenue are lost every year due to online piracy. The new agreement will let users know when their accounts have been compromised and, in theory, reduce the number of illegal downloads. “Often, subscribers – particularly parents or caregivers – are not aware that their Internet accounts are being used for online content theft. Other subscribers may be unaware that downloading copyrighted content from illicit sources is illegal and violates their ISP’s Terms of Service or other published policies,” states NCTA Executive VP James Assey. Under the new agreement, subscribers who repeatedly ignore warnings from their ISP’s will be subject to further examination.

Interestingly, the new system includes nothing about terminating subscribers or releasing subscriber identities to copyright holders. As copyright infringers as a whole seem to have established themselves as a pretty determined group, the success of this new agreement remains to be seen.