American ISPs to launch massive copyright spying scheme on July 12

Whether it is a failure or not, depends on the effect that they intend. If it is simply to instill fear in order to effect people's behavior, it might be quite a success.
Also, considering the exorbitant amount of the penalties that have been levied is some court cases, they don't have to win many to rake in a profit. It doesn't matter to me whether I'm involved or not, because what is done to one person is done to all of us.

It seems to me that the rights of people no longer count for anything in this country, otherwise they wouldn't even contemplate such an atrocious plan of action. On the other hand, it doesn't speak well for the people, because in the past, we wouldn't have allowed it to go this far, without raising the roof.

Layback Bear said:

I'm still trying to understand why millions of people (the little guys) stealing online is okay. Who else other than the ISP has the ability to monitor the stealing? It is like asking a camera on a ATM machine to only take pictures of people stealing $5000.00 or more. We will never stop bank robbery but that doesn't mean we should stop trying. Some say the penalty for getting caught are to high. The penalty for not stealing is none, zero, nil.

True, but in this day an age, the penalty for being SUSPECTED of stealing is fairly high.

Layback Bear,

This topic is not about whether it is right to steal or not, but how it should be dealt with. It probably is not important to you, but the Biblical penalty for stealing is to have to repay sevenfold, not seven thousand fold. If one takes the average cost of a movie or music DVD to be at ~ $20. then seven times that amount is $140. Even with court costs, it shouldn't cost more than a few hundred dollars for a conviction.

Of course, if the penalty was of that caliber, it wouldn't be such an attractive prospect for the legal beagles.

Layback Bear,

It doesn't matter whether you believe in Biblical principles or not, nor how the Bible and law interact, nor does it require a mathematical genius to understand the numbers. What does matter is if the law is just. What is worse, is that this scheme doesn't necessarily involve the law directly, it is a conspiracy between lawyers and businesses, but the law is suppose to regulate them as well as the thieves. Being a thief is wrong, regardless of how deep your pockets are, and while thieves do steal from thieves, it is not the function of the law to aid and abet such criminality.

On top of all of that, this type of action involves a lot more than thieves, because the innocent will also be accused and penalized, and that is the greatest crime of all.

If you can't understand that, I don't know what more that I could say to make it more understandable.

a couple concerns:

1) Could this be considered warrant-less wiretapping?
2) How will this affect Open Source users?
3) Will ISPs send out a notice to their customers about their intents?
4) What kind of transparency will be presented - if they tap into my private data (medical/insurance, etc) how do I know they didn't see my information?
5) How can they prove this is effective and fair if they only hit up the small guys compared to the big guys?
6) What would happen if a company is inadvertently tapped for illegal abuse?
7) How will teens explain this to their parents?