RIAA and ISPs to police your traffic starting July 12

During a panel discussion held for U.S. publishers today, RIAA chairman Cary Sherman said his association and a number of ISPs—including AT&T, Cablevision, Comcast, Time Warner Cable, and Verizon—will begin policing traffic to crack down on piracy starting this summer.

The deal is not new, however—the RIAA and the participating ISPs came to this agreement last June. But the delay was bureaucratic: according to CNET, Sherman explained that, “each ISP has to develop their infrastructure for automating the system, He gave July 12 as the “start date” for the traffic monitoring to start.

“The system” according to Torrent Freak, involves major labels monitoring BitTorrent and other peer-to-peer networks for copyright infringement, and then reporting that infringement to ISPs, who will monitor their networks for the transgressors.

Then, the ISPs will send goon squads out to capture transgressors and bring them back to the compound for “re-education.”

Just kidding. Sort of.

Once an ISP has determined that you’re accessing pirated material, there will be an “Initial Education step” in which customers are informed that they’re engaging in an illegal act. A customer may get one or two of these education notices and, if the pirating doesn’t stop, they’ll be issued another warning. This warning will require acknowledgment of receipt, “along with a pledge to end infringing activity from the account,” according to TorrentFreak. If that doesn’t take, the ISP will issue a Mitigation Measure Copyright Alert, which could involve throttling or curtailing the connection, although it won’t yet lead to a total cut off. (Here’s Ars’ rundown on how to challenge a Mitigation Alert.)

Still, there are several holes in the policing scheme the copyright holders and the ISPs have set up. Peer-to-peer services will be the most affected here, and materials downloaded using a VPN, downloaded from an obscure torrent site, or downloaded from media portals will likely be unaffected.

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