Some Details Emerge On The ISP Copyright Infringement Monitoring

Jill Lesser, the Executive Director of the Center for Copyright Information wrote a piece last week in CNN that explains a bit of the mechanism that ISPs will use in their cooperative effort with content owners to squelch copyright infringement on the web.  The plan calls for graduated responses from ISPs described as “non-punitive.”  The possibility exists for the ISP to dump a user to an educational page on the evils of copyright infringement or slow down the stream in some circumstances.  It seems that the content holder will be doing the tracking while sending notices of “hey you stop that” through the ISP.  Names and other personal information will not be given to the content holder.

It appears from her statement that the focus will be on peer-to-peer traffic:

As they have done for years, content owners will use technical methodologies to identify alleged infringements over peer-to-peer networks and will request that notices of such alleged infringement be passed on to subscribers by the participating ISPs.

I would find it hard to believe that content owners would limit themselves to P2P traffic given the number of file lockers, blogs, and other sites at which content may be available.  I suppose they could get the Megaupload treatment under existing law.  The tracking should have started July 1 if previous reports are to be believed.  We will have a better idea once the notices and the circumstances surrounding them start hitting individual users.  I have a funny that this may not slow down infringing conduct at all, and may be used as a failed experiment to show that we need more SOPA type legislation.  I hope they notice that not all P2P traffic out there contains copyrighted content.  [MG]