“Major internet providers are ending a four-year-old system in which consumers received ‘copyright alerts’ when they viewed peer-to-peer pirated content,” reports Variety.
An anonymous reader quotes Engadget’s update on the Copyright Alert System.
It was supposed to spook pirates by having their internet providers send violation notices, with the threat of penalties like throttling. However, it hasn’t exactly panned out. ISPs and media groups have dropped the alert system with an admission that it isn’t up to the job. While the program was supposedly successful in “educating” the public on legal music and video options, the MPAA states that it just couldn’t handle the “hard-core repeat infringer problem” — there wasn’t much to deter bootleggers. The organizations, which include the RIAA, haven’t devised an alternative.
“Surprise: it’s hard to stop copyright violators just by asking them,” reads their article’s tagline, which attributes the failure of the system to naive optimism. “It assumed that most pirates didn’t even realize they were violating copyright, and just needed to be shown the error of their ways.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.