Comcast is hard at work attempting to gain

The film and music industries have been waging a war against file sharing through the courts for years, but have more recently started working with governments and ISPs to stop sharing at the source. The so-called “six strikes” copyright alert system (CAS) went live in the US earlier this year, but it has thus far failed to deter piracy. Comcast is now spearheading an effort to overhaul CAS and convert illegal downloads into paid ones.

Under the current six strikes model, which most major ISPs participate in, a user is sent increasingly annoying warnings each time an instance of copyright infringement is detected. After five or six warnings, the ISP is authorized to slow the connection for a period of time, or even shut it off temporarily. This has proven to be a fairly weak deterrent by Comcast’s own measures. Going too far the other way comes with its own problems.

A number of European countries have instituted three strikes laws that carry harsh penalties for people suspected of repeated infringement. France was an enthusiastic supporter of its version of three-strikes called Hadopi. Under this system, a user would receive two warnings, then after a third alleged incident, their internet access would be cut off. Not only that, the users would end up on a blacklist that prevented other ISPs from providing service for at least a year. Hadopi has been widely criticized,Cheap Dedicated Server and was recently scaled back. Now the third strike only triggers a small fine.

The conversion system as described by Comcast would use the same mechanisms to detect the sharing of copyrighted works, but instead of sending out a warning letter, it would take immediate action. A popup window would be pushed to the user offering the opportunity to rent or buy the content that was allegedly just downloaded for free. It might link to the cable provider’s own video-on-demand service, or an external one like iTunes or Amazon.

Comcast is hard at work attempting to gain support for it’s conversion strategy with other ISPs and content owners. It’s not hard to figure out why Comcast would be in favor of this move — it is both a content holder through its ownership of NBC-Universal, and an ISP with the Xfinity products.

For years the copyright holders in various industries treated infringement as a crime that deserved harsh punishment. Working from that starting point, individual users have been sued for millions of dollars for sharing a handful of songs. In some ways the new proposal assumes some piracy is simply a matter of convenience. If a pirate is provided with a quick and easy to to pay for the content, they might do so.

The Center for Copyright Information, a group of ISPs which back the alert system, has yet to take a position on Comcast’s new plan, but it has been made aware. Comcast believes the plan is workable, but will users respond to popup messages asking them to spend on what they just got for free?
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