United Against You
An Internet Service Provider (ISP), provides access to the Internet. Comcast, AT&T, and Verizon are a few examples of companies that offer services to customers so that we can surf the net, watch movies, write and receive email. But now imagine that everything you access on the Internet is being monitored by your ISP. This is exactly what ISP’s have agreed to do. ISP’s have agreed to implement Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) technology, in order to prevent illegal downloading or sharing of material that is copyright protected.
Starting July 1st, many ISP’s will discourage customers from illegally downloading copyright material. The antipiracy program lobbied by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) with the help of the White House, believe that this program could greatly reduce file sharing and unauthorized access to protected material. After many meetings with major Internet providers and the RIAA, policies were written and accepted. “Graduate response”, which is the name of the program, will establish a database housing customer information who share or download illegal content. A message will go out to the offender “educating” them on illegal use of copyright material. If the offender does not stop, a last message will go out, where the customer will have to acknowledge receipt of the warning.
If the offending customer is caught again after receiving the last warning, the Internet provider can then take action. There is a list of agreed to penalties by the participating ISP’s. The ISP can reduce the amount of data per second that you receive, known as throttling bandwidth. They can also terminate your Internet service completely. Can you imagine not being able to get on the Internet again?
The RIAA incorrectly thought that they could get an antipiracy bill, since they had the support of the White House and other federal law makers. Thus the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) was introduced. Do you remember when sites like Wikipedia, went dark to protest SOPA?
SOPA was the legislation that gave U.S .law enforcement the ability to go after trafficking of copyright material and also went as far as to prohibit companies that aided these websites that violated copyright material. If your website linked to one of these illegal sites, your site could be shut down. In fact, it could order payment facilities to stop doing business with your website, if it was suspected of using unauthorized copyright material.
What is most frightening is the power that businesses actually possess in a person’s life. It bothers me that my ISP can have control over what I watch and do, and I pay to have this done to me. Today, the issue is around copyright material. But what will be the issue of tomorrow, which they will want to control? What if writing Happy Easter, becomes illegal because the language is found to be offensive? Technology exists today in which words can be blocked from leaving the network.
The response against SOPA, overwhelmed lawmakers, whom had once supported the passing of this bill. However, we must understand come July 1st, that SOPA was the least of our issues to staying connected.
