
"If you download potentially copyrighted software, videos or music, your Internet service provider has been watching, and they're coming for you. Specifically, they're coming for you on Thursday, July 12. That's the date when the nation's largest ISPs will all voluntarily implement a new anti-piracy plan that will engage network operators
in the largest digital spying scheme in history, and see some users' bandwidth completely cut off until they sign an agreement saying they will not download copyrighted materials." One day, years from now, historians are going to debate whether this was the point of no return.
Member since:
2005-07-06
First, the article is talking about copyrighted stuff (sw, video, music). I think I can risk stating that a very very large percentage of all content is copyrighted, which doesn't mean one's not allowed to use it, download it, and do a lot of other things with it. Copyright has (almost) nothing to do with the associated license, and there's no way an ISP can reliably monitor the licensing status of all contents you download.
Second, "even share information on repeat offenders with competing ISPs, effectively creating a sort of Internet blacklist" -- now, WTF? There are really no privacy and data protection laws in place in the US? I mean come on, ISPs freely sharing among each other? It's very brotherly, no doubt, but wrong nonetheless.