this post was submitted on 19 Sep 2024
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Four more large Internet service providers told the US Supreme Court this week that ISPs shouldn't be forced to aggressively police copyright infringement on broadband networks.

While the ISPs worry about financial liability from lawsuits filed by major record labels and other copyright holders, they also argue that mass terminations of Internet users accused of piracy "would harm innocent people by depriving households, schools, hospitals, and businesses of Internet access." The legal question presented by the case "is exceptionally important to the future of the Internet," they wrote in a brief filed with the Supreme Court on Monday.

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[–] [email protected] 326 points 1 month ago (3 children)

I like the end result that ISPs are pushing back on this, but don't mistake this for altruism on their part.

Their businesses make money selling internet service. Were they to support cutting off those accused of piracy, they would be losing paying customers. Further, the business processes and support needed for this to function would be massively expensive and complicated. They'd have to hired teams of people and write whole new software applications for maintaining databases of banned users, customer service staff to address and resolve disputes, and so much more.

Lastly, as soon as all of that process would be in place to ban users for piracy accusations, then the next requests would come in for ban criteria in a classic slippery slope:

  • pornography
  • discussions of drugs
  • discussions of politics the party in power doesn't like
  • speaking out against the state
  • communication about assembling
  • discussion on how to emigrate

All the machinery would be in place once the very first ban is approved.

[–] [email protected] 113 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Plus, you aren’t disconnecting a person, but a whole family or business.

And since many areas in the US only have one provider, you force that family to cancel all streaming services they might have. It’s a lose-lose-lose situation.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I think a big problem we don't want to address is now that we're so interconnected, internet access is a necessity that should be classified as a utility. You can't just cut off someone's electricity without notification or process because they did something bad with it and it should apply here too

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 month ago (4 children)

Not if they get their universal digital ID system in place. It is the wet dream of tyrants of all kinds.

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[–] [email protected] 55 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I think it is also the user they disconnect for piracy tend to pay more. They tend to be more premium customers also why should they enforce what happens on their lines. It is an illegal search and seizure. Let the government get a warrant prove something is illegal then the ISP can disconnect them.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 month ago

Yeah who else is going to pay for 1GB speeds knowing the most they’ll ever get is 400MB

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I agree with all this, but I think it is all to say: ISPs support Net Neutrality when it behooves them.

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[–] [email protected] 180 points 1 month ago (6 children)

Sony can't have your electricity cut off if you pirate. Because electricity is a utility.

ISPs want it both ways. They want the legal protections of a utility without the obligations.

The solution is to give them the legal protection they want by declaring them a utility.

[–] [email protected] 33 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Those moments when you can't decide if someone's username means they're a science nerd or a Venture Bros. fan.

Me_irl:

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Who in their right Minds would want to be a nerd but not a venture brothers fan?

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 month ago (2 children)

I'm not certain but there's a high probability that that Venn diagram is just a circle

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[–] [email protected] 171 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

The headline should read:

Despite best efforts and all odds, ISPs find themselves on the right side of history.

[–] [email protected] 64 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (7 children)

Only because it would hurt their bottom line.

Funny how we can only win when it's corporations fighting each other.

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[–] [email protected] 118 points 1 month ago (2 children)

If someone is using municipal water in their meth lab, the whole city block shouldn't have their water shut off

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 month ago (2 children)

If internet companies want to make an argument like that, then internet should be treated as a utility.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 month ago (1 children)

~~If internet companies want to make an argument like that, then~~ internet should be treated as a utility.

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[–] [email protected] 109 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Not everyday i agree with ISPs but here we are. Guilty of and accused of are two very different things. Innocent until proven guilty.

[–] [email protected] 40 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Hell, I don't even want to ban users guilty of piracy. Oh no! Sony and it's BILLIONS of dollars will surely be affected by pirating their dvd of a movie! Heavens to betsy!

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 month ago (1 children)

You joke but that's how Sony feels when you buy a used DVD... They just can't admit it publicly

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 month ago (4 children)

They must HATE me......There's a thrift shop just up the street from me. I bought Deadpool on DVD/Bluray combo pack. Still sealed new from factory, for $2.50.

I buy lots of DVDs there. My sisters say my collection is rediculous. She means it in a bad way, like I need to get rid of some stuff. But hell, when it's $2.50, why NOT buy like 20 movies in an afternoon? And why NOT do that same thing several times a year? Although I will admit I'm running out of room......help! My apartment is filled with DVDs, and I can't see the walls anymore!

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 month ago (6 children)

Not for potato supreme. I'm sure labels and sony bought vacations for those sub human coup supporting shits

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 month ago

Never dehumanize fascists or fascist-sympathizers (redundant but ok), it's always important to remember that bad faith actors or their stooges are human and cannot be entirely eliminated from society, which is why people that fight for positive change have to set the rules such that bad faith actors' actions are either quickly recognized and mitigated, or have society structured such that even those motivated solely by unempathetic selfishness can only achieve status by masking and contributing positively anyway.

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[–] [email protected] 94 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Why don't they start with OpenAI and other LLM vendors, because they are the biggest copyright infringement abusers of all time?

[–] [email protected] 67 points 1 month ago (3 children)

Because they're also rich. Laws are for the poors.

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[–] [email protected] 80 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

There would be no more internet access for anyone anymore if that were allowed.

Soooo many insecure networks out there ripe for the picking if you know what you’re doing and have the tools available. And the tools are often free, not costing any money. From there, those networks are the places people will go to commit their “piracy”.

And what exactly is piracy? If I purchase an album on iTunes but choose to download it on ThePirateBay, is that really piracy? Because I have done that when the music THAT I FUCKING PAID FOR is no longer available for me to download off of iTunes and Apple won’t give me a refund for said music purchase. People do it for games that include shitty DRM and don’t allow them to easily install on another device like Linux too.

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[–] [email protected] 53 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (4 children)

imagine getting banned from the one monopoly ISP available to you in your entire city. what do you do after that? sell your house?

[–] [email protected] 43 points 1 month ago (3 children)

It's insane that people (okay, mostly corporations) try to argue internet access is not a utility. What happens then? Does your home value decrease? Or does the next purchaser have to petition the ISP to convince them they are a different, non-infringing customer and hope they reverse the ban??

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[–] [email protected] 41 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Heartbreaking: Worst Corporation(s) you know, just made a good stand

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 month ago (3 children)

Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

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[–] [email protected] 35 points 1 month ago

Terminating service over allegations of piracy. Kicking someone off the internet because an automated copyright system accused them of piracy. That's crazy.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 1 month ago

So Sony wants to punish ISPs for continuing to "allow" illegal things to happen? Hmm remind me again which company it is that has had so many data breaches that users have come to just expect it? Sounds to me like if they are allowed to pursue attacking internet providers then they themselves should start seeing lawsuits for continuing damages until such time as Sony is able to successfully recover all stolen personal data and other parties can no longer use it for profit.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 month ago (4 children)

How can you hold a company responsible for someone else's actions? When someone hits someone with a car we don't go after the manufacturer. I think ISPs should only be held accountable for their own actions.

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 month ago (18 children)

I never understand how this community relates to copyright. It's all the freedom of the high seas until AI gets mentioned. Then the most dogmatic copyright maximalists come out It's all anti-capitalist until AI is mentioned and then the most conservative, devout Ayn Rand followers show up.

[–] [email protected] 34 points 1 month ago (3 children)

It's almost as if the people here favor individual rights over corporate profits.

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Some of it is about the "Why"s.

Netflix nearly stamped out piracy for a while there by being a vastly more attractive alternative. Between them and Hulu, and to a lesser extent prime(at the time) if it was streaming, you could watch it somewhere at a reasonable price for a marginally reasonable viewing experience that was at least as good as most TPB downloads.

Then the IP owners got greedier and decided to strike out on their own with the "everyone has a streaming service" model, which would be GREAT if they largely shared content, but they don't.

The greed continues, not in order to adequately compensate creators, but to make a few handfuls of people not just rich but filthy rich. Every action they take suddenly becomes more penny pinching for more greed. At this point lots of the CONTENT CREATORS wish they had a better choice (how often do they say 'please watch it this way, that's just how they rank stuff, sorry'?)

Why is it the opposite with AI?

Because in comparison with stuff like streaming video or music platforms, AI is BARELY pretending to offer a functional service in exchange for the greed that's behind all of the money they're trying to force it to make for them.

And that's just for one side of the debate.

Why isn't the fact that AI is largely garnering the same responses even from DIAMETRICALLY OPPOSED GROUPS telling you something about how bad of an idea it is in it's current incarnation?

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Here's my guess. Piracy provides a competition against the horrible practices of streaming and entertainment companies that doesn't otherwise exist, forcing them to provide a better service.

Artists are just a single person making art and their service isn't gobbled up by the capitalist machine and turned into something user unfriendly. They don't usually make too much money, unlike huge entertainment corporations, either.

When it comes to piracy, individual content creators often don't care as long as they get money to live. There have been people who work on video games or movies who say they don't care if others pirate their work as long as others get to see it. But for AI, it copies and changes the work, stripping the art of its original watermark, and it sets itself up to be a replacement of the artist itself. It doesn't just spread their work without having you pay for it, it replaces the concept of needing an artist altogether, but only by using their labor in the first place without paying them for it.

If piracy let movie studios replace the idea of needing individual content creators, writers, artists actors, etc then people would feel differently I think. As it is now, people don't care about big studios, they care about the individual. Piracy currently only really harms the former and not the latter. AI is the opposite.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (4 children)

Everyone is different.

I personally think copyright and patent laws need to die. If you can't protect your own secrets, don't rely on taxpayer resources to do it for you.

White-collar workers were cool with machines and poorer nations taking blue-collar jobs. Now that it threatens them and their money, the hypocrisy is on full display.

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 month ago (2 children)

It still makes me feel some type of way that Sony (a Japanese company) gets so much sway over US business and policies. It’s something I thought about a lot when Microsoft was trying to close its deal with Activision. I don’t care much either way about multi-billion dollar conglomerates (or trillions in Microsoft’s case) butting heads but it did strike me as odd that a foreign company had that much of a hold on the deal. I get that piracy of media is frowned upon but like the ISP’s are arguing here, the affects of cutting off access to their clientele would have a lot of negative impact. I once again sit here wondering why a foreign company should have that kind of power over American citizens… you know?

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 month ago

May I introduce you to Nintendo?

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 month ago

Looks like an old-politician idea to me; a generation late. Nowadays, cutting internet is as bad as cutting electricity.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 month ago (1 children)

The supremes: oh! Yes! We are on your side ISPs! The MPAA and RIAA will now be allowed to sue individual users directly bypassing courts.

Have fun! You got them boys! You got that 98 year old grandma! Get her house! And that minority girl trying to download the new Beyonce songs? Deathrow! 1 per song! All the single ladies our ass! You wouldn't download a car! We're the Supremes! Watch us! But first Trump is president starting now, and poor kids shall get no food in school! They wouldn't be poor if they got food! Oh and women....we did the abortion thing already darn!....no vote for women! Marriage age 6 now, overruling all states laws.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 month ago

Let's get you back to your room Mr. Thomas.

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