Introduction:
“Big Brother”, the surveillance of internet users in the US, is now a reality. Last Monday will go down in history as “Black Monday of the Internet”, a black page for the online community of the internet for the entire internet. The bad beginning was made and “a bad thigh follows”.
The basic function of the CAS monitoring system is to monitor all activity of a user's login account and discover when the user distributes material that is subject to copyrighted exploitation.
We assume that the companies that monopolistically exploit the copyrights on works of culture and heritage (e.g., movies, music, books, etc.) have informed the five ISPs participating in the system in the USA, with all the “locked” works in their exploitation, which they have acquired through exclusive-use contracts with the creators of those works.
The system operates with a kind of penalty ledger (something like a point system) where each time a user commits an offense, the system automatically charges them a penalty point to their account. As soon as the user is charged with 5 or 6 penalty points, their Golgothan begins.
The article we present below refers to that very “Golgotha” that awaits the user-offenders. And this is only the beginning, because as you understand, the internet access provider companies participating in the system are very stingy with the announcements and information they give regarding the “punishments”. The reason is simple, as private ISP companies, their clientele are those who will be punished. That is, each company must, besides monitoring their customers, also take on their punishment, always in accordance with the dictates of the industry exploiting intellectual property rights. Informant, Police Officer, Prosecutor and Warden, 4 in one, for private companies, that as soon as the related campaigns start to fall, they will begin to lose, with the douches, their valuable customers and along with them their profits!!!
Read the article to see what awaits us and us, in the rest of the world outside the USA:
(Republished with translation into Greek, from The Daily Dot: “ISPs release more details of new piracy punishments”, by Kevin Collier (email, twitter) on February 28, 2013)
The Daily Dot
News
ISPs leak more details about the new piracy punishments
With Kevin Collier on February 28, 2013
After a year and a half, since the news first leaked, internet service providers (ISPs) were working together with the lobbying interests of copyright exploitation, on a new anti-piracy program, the companies refused to comment on what measures would be taken against piracy suspects.
But now that the Copyright Alert System ( CAS ) is here, ISPs have finally leaked some of the details about what they will do if they think someone is illegally sharing copyrighted material while online.
As has long been established, all five participating ISPs, i.e. AT&T, Cablevision, Comcast, Time Warner, and Verizon, will gradually increase their “ mitigation measures ” whenever a home user’s internet account is “ caught ” by the system as suspected of committing piracy. But how will repeat offenders who have been flagged for the fifth and sixth time in a row (this varies by ISP) “ comply ”?
Verizon, as revealed in leaked documents in January, says it will slow down the connection speed of any violator in a process that will make the connection “crawl.” But, as reported by Mashable and Time Warner, users will find their internet browsers locked until they call the company to receive an “educational conversation” about copyright. Similarly, TorrentFreak notes that Comcast users will be able to use “basic services,” but their browsers will also be locked until they call the company and have a similarly “constructive” conversation with company executives.
AT&T is less clear. According to an official statement, users are repeatedly prompted to “take an extra step (when logged in) to view educational materials posted on a web portal that educate them about the distribution of copyrighted content while online,” although it’s unclear what those “educational materials” might look like.
And then we come to Cablevision. The Daily Dot reached out to two Cablevision representatives on Wednesday. One did not respond to a request for comment. The other could not confirm what specific mitigations thecompany will implement or when the monitoring service will go live, only saying that “we are participating.”
It should be noted that all five ISPs repeatedly refused our requests for any comment regarding the CAS before it was put into operation last Monday.
