ISPs and Rightsholders Extend “Six Strikes” Anti-Piracy Scheme

Does anyone know if the six-strikes program is even working?

The six-strikes Copyright Alert System will remain in place. The MPAA, RIAA and five large U.S. Internet providers have unanimously agreed to extend the program. The parties are currently negotiating if and how they can improve the warning system in the hope that it will eventually change people's attitudes toward piracy.

Because strangling our bandwidth and gouging us for content are definitely working as well.

It's working so great, that they have to revisit it over and over till they feel that crimin... erh, paying customers... understand that piracy is wrong mk.

I'm sure it makes VPN providers happy.

The negotiating part of this is the ISPs asking for large sums of money to do this. might as well get money from anyone they can.

[RIP]Zeus;1041834849 said:

It's working so great, that they have to revisit it over and over till they feel that crimin... erh, paying customers... understand that piracy is wrong mk.

Click to expand...

How is a pirate a paying customer? The whole issue with pirates is that they're not paying.

The real problem with the piracy issue is that everyone is an arsehole. Pirates are arseholes for not supporting the creators of content that they enjoy watching, and studios are arseholes for refusing to delivery the content in a user friendly manner.

I personally subscribe to a streaming service that delivers all the content I want, but rather than watch the stream I download Blu-ray rips for the convenience and control that video files offer over video streams. After watching a downloaded file I always play the first 30 seconds via the streaming service so that it gets registered that I've watched it and a portion of my subscription fee will go to the appropriate content creator.

If you're paying for the content and then pirating it for convenience, I see nothing wrong with that. Sadly, most people who pirate do it simply because they don't want to pay.

Coming next, government regulation of VPNs.

Mr Milquetoast said:

How is a pirate a paying customer? The whole issue with pirates is that they're not paying.

Click to expand...

I think a lot of pirates actually would be paying customers if piracy wasnt an option. Not everyone is "too broke to afford it" whatever that means.

Mr Milquetoast said:

If you're paying for the content and then pirating it for convenience, I see nothing wrong with that. Sadly, most people who pirate do it simply because they don't want to pay.

Click to expand...

Storing many terabytes of data on a dedicated server in your house ain't cheap. The money is just allocated to a different industry.

I have easily spent over $1000 getting a system setup that lets me watch movies on my own terms.

McFry said:

I think a lot of pirates actually would be paying customers if piracy wasnt an option. Not everyone is "too broke to afford it" whatever that means.

Click to expand...

I disagree. I think many pirates simply wouldn't consume the content if they couldn't pirate it. I'm sure there are some that would be I'm guessing a lot just don't consider the content to be worth the cost or hassle to obtain it legitimately.

When it comes to digital media, there are five groups of people:

1) People who will buy it new
2) People who will buy it used
3) People who will get it via P2P or some other unauthorized source.
4) People who don't care about it enough to buy it or get it via an unauthorized source.
5) People who have never heard of it.

The industry sees everyone other than the first group as lost sales. Others see people who use P2P as thieving ingrates who just don't want to pay. Both are false. If someone is obtaining their digital media via P2P then they wouldn't have paid for it anyway. There is also no evidence to suggest that it causes any financial losses to the industry. After all, the industries have been making money hand over fist even as P2P has become more and more prominent. There are many moral arguments against it but morals and ethics are completely subjective. When it comes to financial arguments none of them stick.

Lord Nassirbannipal said:

If someone is obtaining their digital media via P2P then they wouldn't have paid for it anyway.

Click to expand...

I agreed with much of what you said, but do you have anything to support this statement other than your personal opinion of the matter? If we use the music industry as a guide, people illegally downloading music did hurt the industry, which saw sales drop due to less people buying albums.

The music industry is in a unique position in that they can sell you individual songs from the album, which is one of the biggest gripes people had - why buy the entire album when I only want one song? It allowed them to sell the individual songs for very cheap and a resurgence of legal purchases happened.

The movie industry cannot do such a thing, you cannot sell me only 1/13th of the movie (realistically). It is an all or none affair for them.

I posit that a good bit of the people who download movies would buy them instead if there was no other choice - just like they did before they could download them.

What I think Hollywood needs to do is provide a very cheap download service - time bombed of course. For $1, you can download the movie and watch it once. If you find you like it, you will get a code for $1 off the purchase of the movie. This gives them some money and allows people to watch the movie so they can decide if they like it enough to actually buy it. I have no idea about how to do the time bombing, but I am sure it can be done.

I pirate all the time. Why? Because it's the most convenient way to watch what I want. Advertising and cable prices are becoming unreasonable. Especially when I'm only interested in a handful of shows.

Honestly, most pirated content is not the best quality either. A better distribution media I would pay for. Let me pay for what shows I want to download. Make them quality copies, and allow me to run them locally without having to be connected to the damn internet to watch something I payed for.

Unfortunately, this is never going to happen at a reasonable rate, if at all. Yay for VPN.

Also, 6-strikes is dumb. Hardly anyone uses their ISP provided email.

cybrsage said:

I agreed with much of what you said, but do you have anything to support this statement other than your personal opinion of the matter?

Click to expand...

The only real data I've ever seen came from 2DBoy, who estimated(based on data they gathered about their games) that the conversion rate for anti-piracy schemes was about 1/1000. That is to say, for every thousand pirates you keep from pirating the software(or presumably the song, movie, or TV show), one of them will buy it.

I have gotten more than six strikes and ZERO has come of it.

I just pay for my content.