[Infowarrior] - The “Graduated Response” Deal: What if Users Had Been At the Table?

[Richard Forno]

July 18th, 2011
      
The “Graduated Response” Deal: What if Users Had Been At the Table?

Deeplink by Corynne McSherry
Co-authored by Eric Goldman

As was widely reported last week, several major internet access providers (including, very likely, yours) struck a deal last week with big content providers to help them police online infringement, educate allegedly infringing subscribers and, if subscribers resist such education, take various steps including restricting their internet access. We’ve now had a chance to peruse the lengthy “Memorandum of Understanding" (MOU) behind this deal. Turns out, as is often observed, the devil is in the details – and they are devilish indeed.

Let’s start with the people taking credit: major content owners, service providers, and some government officials, principally New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo. But guess who wasn’t invited to the party? The millions of subscribers who will be governed by the deal—the same subscribers who elect the politicians, buy the content owners’ goods and pay subscription fees to the internet access providers (which are likely to go up as administration costs are passed on – the UK’s graduated response system was estimated to cost about $40 per subscriber). Given that subscribers weren’t consulted, it’s probably not surprising that this deal is not in their interests.

Here’s some of the biggest problems with what resulted--and some ideas on what subscribers should demand of the system they’ll be paying for:

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https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/07/graduated-response-deal-what-if-users-had-been