Critics of the Copyright Alert System (CAS), also known as “six strikes” brought in yesterday (February 25th) to thwart illegal filesharing have accused the law of lacking transparency and lacking in penalties.
The CAS was designed by a group of content owners, internet service providers (ISPs) and the Government to curb illegal downloading by alerting and “educating” “casual infringers” when illegal filesharing is detected on their IP address.
Under the system, content owners identify illegally uploaded content on peer-to-peer networks. The group, which comprises AT&T, Cablevision, Comcast, Time Warner Cable or Verizon, is alerted if the IP address providing the content is their customer. Then, the ISP alerts the customer associated with the account.
However, if a consumer is caught downloading illegally, they receive an “educational” alert, which tells them what happened and how they can prevent it from happening again.
If pirating continues to happen through the IP address, users will receive the message again, followed by messages that ask them to confirm they have seen the alerts. The fifth and sixth alert are called mitigation alerts and will temporarily slow users’ internet speeds, depending on the ISP, but will not lead to termination of their account.
After the “six strikes”, the alerts stop, even if the user continues pirating, but the record of copyright infringement remains. However, it is unclear as to how that could be used in court.
Critics have accused the scheme as being a private copyright system, which does not have the protections and balances that the public copyright system has.
However, apparently, academic studies have shown that if people think they are being watched, they modify their behaviour accordingly, so the fact that they receive the alerts might be enough to deter the average illegal downloader. Only time will tell.