Major ISPs agree to “six strikes” copyright enforcement plan
American Internet users, get ready for “six strikes.” Major US Internet providers—including AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, Cablevision, and Time Warner Cable—have just signed on to a voluntary agreement with the movie and music businesses …
Context & Ripple Effects
After years of on-and-off negotiations over a graduated-response program — flagged as imminent in June 2011 — the largest US broadband providers have signed a voluntary deal with the movie and music businesses rather than wait for legislation. The White House's own blog publicly endorsed the arrangement on launch day, signaling administration buy-in for private enforcement where bills like COICA-style proposals stalled.
The cast matters: Comcast enters this agreement fresh off its regulator-approved NBC Universal merger, making it simultaneously one of the country's biggest access pipes and a $30 billion entertainment company — a dual role that will color how its enforcement obligations are read.
First-order effects
- American subscribers of AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, Cablevision, and Time Warner Cable move under a six-alert graduated scheme, with account-level consequences escalating for accused repeat infringers — enforced by the ISPs themselves at no statutory mandate.
- The five signatories absorb the operational cost of running a notice-and-warning apparatus, converting copyright enforcement from a courtroom matter handled by the RIAA and MPAA into a routine customer-service function inside each ISP.
Second-order effects
- Comcast's position is structurally awkward: as NBC Universal's parent it now polices piracy on behalf of an industry it partly belongs to, inviting scrutiny of whether the alert thresholds and penalties it applies favor its own content arm.
- Studios gain a single negotiating counterparty covering most of the US broadband market, raising pressure on smaller regional ISPs to adopt the same program or become the path of least resistance for infringing traffic.
Third-order effects
- If the voluntary template holds, copyright enforcement migrates from legislation and litigation to privately negotiated contracts between rights holders and intermediaries — with governments endorsing rather than mandating, a model exportable to other jurisdictions.
- Access providers drift from neutral-conduit status toward gatekeeper duties negotiated industry by industry, a precedent that extends beyond copyright into whatever content category negotiates next.
The trend: Broadband providers are being folded into privately contracted content enforcement, shifting copyright policing from courts and Congress to the network operator's customer account.