AT&T, Comcast Confirm Trial Participation in RIAA’s ‘Three Strikes’ Plan
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Executives from AT&T and Comcast confirmed their involvement in an RIAA program in which the ISPs warn suspected infringers that if they keep uploading music via P2P, their connections to the internet will slow down, then halt altogether.
The RIAA told wired.com in December that certain ISPs had signed on to the program, but wouldn’t specify which ones. Cox Communications been has apparently been sending the notifications to its subscribers since October, and in January, CNET reported that AT&T and Comcast were expected to join the program as well.
But until Jim
Cicconi, AT&T’s senior executive vice president of external and legislative affairs (pictured to the left), and Joe
Waz, Comcast’s senior VP of external affairs and public policy (right), told attendees of the Leadership Music Digital Summit in Nashville about their companies’ involvement on Tuesday afternoon, it was unclear whether AT&T and Comcast were participating in the RIAA’s plan.
According to Billboard, the executives said AT&T and Comcast are participating on a “trial” basis in the RIAA’s “graduated response” program, which circumvents normal legal channels by allowing the RIAA to contact specific subscribers through ISPs. Normally, they need to file a “John Doe” subpoena in order to try to match an offending IP address to an actual person.
If suspected infringers continue to share under this plan, their connect speeds will dwindle. If they don’t heed additional warnings, they could lose their connections completely.
Before making agreements with ISPs, the RIAA employed a similar strategy with universities, and some resisted. For instance, Todd Cohen, director of media relations for the University of Kansas, told the Kansan, “My understanding is that the University’s best practices view point is to protect its students and show compliance to the rules but not to act as a legal agent.”
For now, at least, AT&T and Comcast do not share this point of view when it comes to their ISPs.
Photos courtesy of Leadership Music Digital Summit
Source: Eliot Van Buskirk
