AT&T Starts Six-Strikes Anti-Piracy Plan Next Month, Will Block Websites
Last year the MPAA and RIAA teamed up with five major Internet providers in the United States to launch the Center for Copyright Information (CCI). — The parties agreed on a system through which subscribers …
Context & Ripple Effects
AT&T's rollout is the first concrete step in the [[a:1191881|six-strikes framework the major ISPs agreed to with the studios and labels back in July 2011]], which created the Center for Copyright Information as the joint enforcement vehicle for five providers. What was then a signed memorandum now becomes an operational program with a named start date.
The timing matters because the content industries are running a parallel track: TorrentFreak reported in June 2012 that the MPAA and RIAA were weighing direct lawsuits against persistent BitTorrent users, so the alert system arrives alongside — not instead of — litigation pressure. Pickup across Engadget, Gizmodo, SlashGear and WebProNews shows the story has moved well past policy circles into mainstream consumer-tech coverage.
First-order effects
- AT&T subscribers accused of repeated infringement will face escalating alerts next month, culminating in the provider blocking their access to designated infringing websites — the harshest measure any of the five participating ISPs has committed to.
- The Center for Copyright Information gains its first live test case, and the other four signatory ISPs face immediate pressure to confirm their own launch timelines rather than let AT&T define the program alone.
Second-order effects
- Subscribers seeking to avoid detection shift toward VPNs and encrypted traffic, pushing the measurement problem from raw IP monitoring toward harder-to-classify flows and raising the stakes on how CCI's evidence review actually works.
- For the MPAA and RIAA, a functioning alert system changes the calculus in their deliberations over suing persistent BitTorrent pirates: graduated ISP warnings become both a filter that identifies the worst offenders and an argument that due process preceded any lawsuit.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, US broadband providers become standing enforcement intermediaries for copyright holders — a privately negotiated alternative to the SOPA-style legislation Congress failed to pass, with website blocking decided by industry agreement rather than court order.
- The five-ISP structure sets a template other access providers would have to join or visibly opt out of, making participation in graduated-response schemes a de facto condition of being a mainstream US consumer ISP.
The trend: Copyright enforcement in the US is migrating from courtroom litigation toward ISP-operated graduated-response systems brokered by industry coalitions like the Center for Copyright Information.