A coalition of US entertainment and telcoms giant have announced a unified, nightmarish copyright enforcement regime that involves sending a series of threatening letters to people whose network connections are allegedly used to infringe copyright. These letters will include non-negotiable demands to close off your WiFi router (essentially, the entertainment cartel is writing a private law making it illegal to share your network connection here).
They will also require you to reply to some letters or lose your network connection (meaning that people who miss a letter could lose their access). They direct users to a one-sided, ideologically charged copyright re-education site. Users who believe they are falsely accused must pay a fee to have their case adjudicated.
And though this coalition claims that this plan won't lead to disconnection of Internet users who fail to abide by the giant companies' demands, their press materials include an extremely speculative, nontraditional interpretation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act that implies that they believe ISPs must disconnect users who are accused of infringement.
Next, what opportunities does a user have to respond? The materials state that users can, for $35, request an "independent review" on several grounds before a "mitigation measure" is put in place. (It's unclear whether users have a vehicle to flag errors in response to earlier alerts in hopes of averting later ones.) The grounds for review include a basis to believe that the user was not engaging in infringement, that the account was incorrectly identified, or that "the alleged activity was the result of the unauthorized use of the Subscriber's account of which the Subscriber was unaware and that the Subscriber could not have reasonably prevented." (My emphasis.) Notably, the review process specifically states that failure to secure a wireless router will only be accepted once as a defense, a provision with serious consequences for small businesses such as cafes that provide wireless access to customers and individuals with open wifi. Also notable is the fact that users who wish to raise some defenses including fair use must be willing to have their personal information sent to the content owner who provided the underlying report of infringement.
