Some of the biggest Internet service providers in America plan to adopt policies that will punish customers for copyright infringement, and one of the top trade groups in the music biz announced this week that it could begin as soon as this summer.
The chief executive officer of the Recording Industry Association of America told an audience of publishers on Wednesday that a plan carved out last year to help thwart piracy is expected to prevail and be put in place by this summer. RIAA CEO Cary Sherman was one of the guest speakers among a New York panel this week and he confirmed that, at this rate, some of the most powerful Internet providers in America should have their new policies on the books by July 12, 2012.
Last year, Time Warner, Verizon, AT&T, Comcast, Cablevision Systems and other Internet service providers proposed best practice recommendations that they suggested would help curb copyright crimes on the Web. The end result largely settled on consisted of a “graduate response” approach, a plan that would mean culprits could be issued a series of warnings for illegally downloading suspect material which, after a certain number of offenses, would lead to “mitigation measures,” connection speed throttling and termination of service.
"We anticipate that very few subscribers, after having received multiple alerts, will persist (or allow others to persist) in the content theft,” the Center for Copyright Information said in an official statement last summer as plans were first publicized. Now nearly a year after developments made by the big ISPs were first discussed, the RIAA’s Sherman says that online censorship sanctioned by corporate conglomerates such as Time Warner and Verizon are practically set in stone.
Discussing the road to realizing how to implement the policies, Sherman briefly touched on the technical aspects of the plan this week during the panel. "Each ISP has to develop their infrastructure for automating the system," Sherman said. They need this "for establishing the database so they can keep track of repeat infringers, so they know that this is the first notice or the third notice. Every ISP has to do it differently depending on the architecture of its particular network. Some are nearing completion and others are a little further from completion."
So what does this mean for you? If you’re an Internet user in America, almost certainly something significant. Between Time Warner, Verizon, AT&T, Comcast and Cablevision, those ISPs alone accounted for around 51 percent of the market in America back in 2008. Figures from June 2010 collected by the United Nation’s ITU division suggests that there are around 240 million Internet users now in the US, which means more than three-fourths of the country’s total population. With those big ISPs only thriving since their last figures were disclosed, 51 percent coverage of the market today would mean that around 120 million users can expect to fall under the umbrella of a massive campaign that could soon see half of the country at risk of having their Internet shut off.
Read more: RT
