Copyright Alert System Starts in Coming Weeks, No Termination Option, CCI Says

The system will not include service termination as a mitigation measure, Lesser wrote. The potential for ISP service termination, which ISPs must include in their policies to qualify for safe harbor status under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, concerned public interest groups when the system was first announced last year. But, Lesser told us, termination was “specifically discussed and rejected” because the CCI is attempting to educate, not punish users.

Instead, users will first receive educational alerts that their IP addresses are connected to P2P piracy -- as identified by copyright-infringing content detector MarkMonitor -- followed by alerts that require users to indicate to their ISP that they received the alert, CCI said. After those alerts, users will face mitigation measures which “will vary by ISP and range from requiring the subscriber to review educational materials, to a temporary slow-down of Internet access speed,” the group said.

If users continue to access infringing content after six notices, Lesser told us, the program stops. The system is aimed at educating people who “are not trying to be large scale pirates and game the system,” she said, and anyone who doesn’t respond to the first six alerts probably won’t respond to anything the CAS can do. Sending out more notices or implementing more mitigation measures would be “a waste of our resources,” she said. Instead, CCI hopes the system will inform people who may not know their computers are accessing pirated material, like parents of teenagers who download music, or people who may not know how to access legitimate content, she said.

Users can seek an appeal if they feel they have gotten an alert in error, Lesser said. “You'll be offered a way to challenge those notices” when you receive them through the American Arbitration Association, she said. Users filing appeals will pay a $35 fee, she said, but that money is refunded if the appeal is successful. Users won’t be subjected to mitigation measures for the notices they are appealing until the appeal is decided, she said: The appeals process allows users to “avoid a mitigation measure,” and “you won’t have any of those imposed while you're in an appeal."

The fact that service termination will not be a mitigation measure has lessened concerns, Public Knowledge Vice President of Legal Affairs Sherwin Siy told us. But, he said, there is nothing in the announcement “preventing that from changing in the future, which is why it’s critically important for the procedures and systems involved to be transparent and accountable."

The Center for Democracy and Technology -- whose board include CCI’s Lesser -- is similarly “encouraged to see that nobody is going to be losing Internet access” but waiting to see what happens as the system is implemented, said CDT General Counsel David Sohn, also director of its Project on Copyright and Technology. “It’s good that they've taken some time to try to get this right,” he told us, but the program as outlined in the description “doesn’t answer all the questions.” For example, “We don’t have enough information to judge at this point” how effective the program will be at correctly identifying users linked to copyright infringement and addressing wrongly issued alerts in the appeals process, he said. Additionally, he said, the plan doesn’t address how ISPs will ensure that users see the alerts, such as whether the illegal-downloading teenager is sitting at the computer when the alert pops up, he asked. But, he said, “this program does have some safeguards,” and he is “hopeful” to see its implementation.