[solaris]

The anti-piracy lobby has been putting pressure on ISPs to act against customers who download copyright infringing content. Thus far, most ISPs have simply forwarded the takedown requests they receive, but Cox Communications is taking it one step further, by disconnecting alleged copyright infringers.

With 3.5 million Internet subscribers, Cox Communications is one of the larger ISPs in the US. Like all the other Internet providers, Cox receives numerous copyright related takedown requests from anti-piracy organizations.

However, it’s how they handle these requests that’s quite unique, and disturbing to say the least. Instead of sending their customer an email, notifying that they have received a DMCA takedown request on their behalf, Cox disables their Internet connection. Here is a quote from the warning page customers get to see when their Internet connection is cut off.


Under the DMCA, we have the responsibility to temporarily disable your Internet access, until such time as you take the necessary steps to remove the infringing files and to prevent further distribution of copyrighted material.


There are a couple of things wrong with this notification. First of all, and most importantly, the DMCA doesn’t oblige Cox to disable a customer’s Internet access at all. They have to notify their customer of the alleged infringement, but the measures they actually take are clearly out of proportion, and definitely not in the best interest of their customers.

Full story here: Cox Disconnects Alleged Pirates from the Internet | TorrentFreak

[gluteus maximus]

The anti-piracy lobby has been putting pressure on ISPs to act against customers who download copyright infringing content.

Once again we see a story purporting to be about downloading. It's not. It's about peer-to-peer filesharing, which is uploading. The self-appointed internet police join in with the filesharing, and see who the content is coming from. And then send out the threatening letters. Given the risks of simple p2p, and the number of alternatives, it's surprising that so many people still do it.

gm