Patrick Ross had a great post up at the Copyright Alliance blog last week about some of the inaccurate coverage of AT&T's new efforts to notify subscribers of copyright infringement. A number of reflexive critics suggested--again, inaccurately--that this was the beginning of a three-strike rule or a "campaign to kick people off the internet."
But as Ross rightly notes, merely sending notices about infringement is a far cry from a three-strikes proposal, and AT&T has been emphatic about saying it has no intention of cutting off subscribers. AT&T's CEO Jim Cicconi made this pretty clear, saying, "AT&T is not going to suspend or terminate anyone's policy without a court order."
The reality is that sending notices about copyright infringement is very effective consumer education. As Cicconi explained, "In most cases the behavior changed immediately" after receiving a notice. "It validated what so many of us knew instinctively: that so much of this is kids doing it without their parents' knowledge."
That's good news. At Copyright Alliance, Ross points out that "most of us can be persuaded to play by the rules when it no longer seems to be in our interest to break them. The effect of these letters show that."
Response to the letters also underscores the intuitive idea that once people understand that they're breaking the law and learn that they have a reasonable alternative, most people don't want to infringe copyright. That's a big part of the reason there's so much experimentation right now on the part of content creators and distributors to make their products available to as many people as possible.
The best way to address bad information is to provide good information. It's hard to understand why the critics would object to AT&T and other ISP's providing good information to consumers. If ISP's can help reduce illegal activity and piracy by educating consumers, that is a win/win situation for everybody.
The Skinny on Noticing
No TrackBacks
TrackBack URL: http://blog.artsandlabs.com/mtadmin/mt-tb.cgi/67
Leave a comment