ISPs Could Profit From Download Pirates

As Kevin had previously reported the RIAA had withdrawn from legal action against music-sharing individuals.  The duty of policing the internet from pirates has since passed on to the the individual internet service providers; however, the void left by the RIAA’s has begun to be filled by third party anti-piracy firms.  One such firm, Nexicon, had devised a new profit sharing plan in hopes to attract ISPs to sign up for their service.

In an interview with CNET, Jerry Scroggin, the owner of an ISP operating out of Louisiana, said he was contacted by Nexicon with a profit sharing proposal.  What Nexicon proposed was to share with the ISP a portion of the settlement obtained from the individual caught file-sharing illegally.  Nexicon offers a number of different anti-piracy services but one of their more inventive strategies is what they are calling the “Get Amnesty” program.  

Nexicon claims that they are able to intelligently filter the internet traffic of an individual and ascertain whether they are sharing copyrighted content over programs such as LimeWire, BitTorrent and Newsgroups.  Upon successful verification of the illegal act, Nexicon would contact the individual and offer them a chance to settle the allegation before proceeding to court through the “Get Amnesty” program.  This is the “new revenue” stream Nexicon will share with the ISPs.

When asked if he would be interested in such a service, Scroggin wasn’t particularly impressed with the whole approach.  He mentions correctly that Nexicon’s services are not provided for free and that the profit sharing would only occur if the Amnesty program was successful.  For a smaller ISP such as Scroggin’s operation, this is not the most economical way to police the bandwidth.  However, if the approach Nexicon has taken is to be echoed by other anti-piracy firms, it could spell a very difficult road ahead for legitimate users.  

None of the anti-piracy firms have actual historic data to support their claims of intelligent detection and then there is the question of false positives.  If you found yourself legally downloading data through a BitTorrent transfer protocol, would you be flagged by these third party services?  When CNET asked a Nexicon representative, he said that the company “uses a combination of automated and human systems to flag copyright violations and send take-down notices…the system is less likely to accuse someone by mistake.”  Less likely is certainly not never.  As Scroggin so truthfully said, “I would still wind up losing customers.”

If your ISP decided to employ such tactics, the thing to remember is that there are often choices.  But if you are without an alternative service provider, then we may all be headed towards a slippery slope with internet policing in the future.