Regular Readers may recall a previous posting about the "
Memorandum of Understand". If not, here's the summery from that posting;
Summary: there's a private agreement between Copyright holders and network service providers coming into force in July that will mean what you do is to be monitoring with respect to copyright infringements. P2P networks are of particular interests. In affect, users will be regarded in principle as being guilty of infringement by the very act that they are being actively monitored for it. You have no say in this as a user except to switch providers to an ISP that has not signed up to the Memorandum of Understanding - this isn't public policy so there is no political recourse, no member of Parliament/Congress that can be called.
In reading the summary of the original post above, it's clear to the reader that SOPA,
PIPA,
ACTA, and the myriad other attempts[
1][
2] to reign-in the Internet are not actually needed; 'private corporations' operating over a 'public' network only need to agree between themselves with respect to policing what goes on. Government has never really been necessary except to 'legitimise' the presumed (assumed?) authority of both ISP and Content Provider to then do what they have wanted to do for a long time - 'notify' and 'prosecute' without due process in law, 'infringements'. The legislation lays this out point blank.
Say hel-lo to my little friendEnter the
Center for Copyright Information, a joint venture between Network Operators (ISP's) and Content Providers. It's the "
Memorandum of Understanding" realised. Claim is made to "
..represent artists and content creators..", you and me in other words, the people who actually make the stuff we watch, use, play and listen to. Except they don't. It's the large lobbying groups that categorically feed on 'artists and content creators', the Usual Suspects like the RIAA, MPAA etc. etc.., the ones pushing, hard, for that aforementioned Government 'authority' to go after infringers. But this is not really the point about this post, although it does 'forewarn', in a manner of speaking.
The CCI is a consumer information hub about Copyright, ostensibly where, upon receipt of a Notice, one would be sent for 'educating', to learn about Copyright and what it means "to you as a consumer". All well and good. Except... how exactly do they know to whom a Notice is to be sent?
The CCI itself is not an investigatory body. Nor is it a Government Agency - its a private partnership initiative. It has no 'legal' powers (in the sense that it can 'enforce' an action). So, without going through the expense, in terms of time, money and resources to provide the evidence of infringement in pursuit of a Court Issued Order to require an ISP to hand over Personally Identifiable Information (your account details, incl. name, address, account age, traffic, sites visited etc.etc.), precisely
how does the CCI know where to send the Copyright Alerts and direct users to themselves?.
It's funny one should be asking that because it really does make one wonder why they go through all that trouble pushing for the aforementioned SOPA, PIPA et-al (wasting tax-payers money to boot), except perhaps for the Government sanction authority, when all they have to do is agree amongst themselves to share the necessary data to prosecute (take action) against users through simple Terms of Service Violation citations, typically the "account suspension when network stability is undermined".
It's more than likely other 'service violation reasons' can be use, the larger point being the provision of evidence that would satisfy a Judge or Jury seems rather less important that 'we' think it would be, certainly when all it takes is a simple procedural agreement between co-conspirators to abuse the public trust (we subscribe and agree to services provided by Private Corporations on the understanding that - and this is stated contractually in the ToS we 'sign' - our Privacy is protected to the full extent of the law and that it cannot be bypassed without exception).
Further Reading
