Last summer major ISPs including Comcast, AT&T, Verizon and Cablevision signed off on a new plan by the RIAA and MPAA taking aim at copyright infringers on their networks. According to the plan, after four warnings ISPs are to begin taking "mitigation measures," which range from throttling a user connection to filtering access to websites until users acknowledge receipt of "educational material." The plan, as with most plans of this type, was hashed out privately with the government's help -- but with no consumer or independent expert insight.
The EFF has already pointed out some serious problems with the plan, ranging from users only being able to use the "open hotspot excuse" once, to users having to shell out $35 to protest their innocence. It will also likely jack up the cost of broadband service further, as non-pirating users have to subsidize efforts that likely won't do much to impact piracy.
So where does the plan stand now? According to a report over at Ars Technica the plan's still still in the oven, the group that will spearhead the effort (the Center for Copyright Information) remains hard at work, and ISP users should start being "educated" very soon:
Curious if the consensus behind the deal was falling apart of proving harder to implement than expected, I spoke to several sources in the rightsholder and Internet communities; each agreed to speak off the record, as CCI has yet to make public announcements. Each confirmed that the project is pressing ahead and that it will in fact launch shortly. CCI has just hired an executive director, and the group plans a set of new announcements once the director is in place and up to speed.
Meanwhile ISPs like Verizon continue to send users letters at the entertainment industry behest, some going so far as to voluntarily insist that users will have their connections severed if the file transfers persist (in Verizon's case, we've found they're bluffing).read comment(s)