Major ISPs agree to "six strikes" copyright enforcement plan

I'm glad to see a crackdown on copyright infringement and the like. Hopefully this will cover stuff like operating systems and other software, rather than just music and videos. A torrent found OS is just asking for trouble.

Agreed, it's good to see they are finally getting after pirates, but I don't see how they will be allowed to disable their ability to dial 911 or other medical/emergency related services upon the sixth offense. Isn't that going against the First Amendment?

If you read the article carefully, you'd see that is precisely what they said they wont do.

Fifth Offense:

ISPs are not obligated to impose any Mitigation Measure which would disable or be reasonably likely to disable the subscribers voice telephone service (including the ability to call 911), e-mail account, or any security or health service (such as home security or medical monitoring).

Sixth Offense:

Whether or not the ISP has previously waived the Mitigation Measure, if the subscribers account again appears to have been used for content theft, the ISP will send another alert and will implement a Mitigation Measure as described above. As described above, it's likely that very few subscribers who after having received multiple alerts, will persist (or allow others to persist) in the content theft.

Actually, it looks like they will on the sixth offense.

smsff7 said:

This is very upsetting, MPAA and the RIAA have way to much power if they can do that. I hope this 6 strikes ends fast

They're not the only ones.
Corporations (and their lobby groups) have way too much power (in general).

They have so much power that the Government/politicians are scared of them.
Just look at the Phone Hacking scandal in the UK.

In Australia, the Government proposed increasing taxes on the mining companies.
The mining companies spent millions on anti-Government ads and threatened to close their mines.
IMO, that is basically "Economic Terrorism" (OBL wanted to crash the World economy, particularly the US).
If I was in charge, they wouldn't have known what hit them.

I'm always amused/outraged (when I read another forum - I call it the "computer flame blog") by the number of people (mainly from the US) who believe that corporations should be allowed to do ANYTHING THEY LIKE (i.e. they should be completely unregulated).

These same people throw massive tantrums whenever the Government tries to act the same way.
At least you can recycle/replace the idiots-in-charge of the Government (every few years).

LiquidSnak said:

I'm glad to see a crackdown on copyright infringement and the like. Hopefully this will cover stuff like operating systems and other software, rather than just music and videos. A torrent found OS is just asking for trouble.

Or the best way to get microsoft backup media... unless you enjoy digitalriver raping.

PwnFrnzy said:

Fifth Offense:

ISPs are not obligated to impose any Mitigation Measure which would disable or be reasonably likely to disable the subscribers voice telephone service (including the ability to call 911), e-mail account, or any security or health service (such as home security or medical monitoring).

Actually, it looks like they will on the sixth offense.

Please note the bold. As described above refers to throttling and landing pages, etc.