AT&T as Copyright Police: New Policy Aimed at Piracy Protection

by Tina Kells | March 27, 2009 at 11:44 am

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Copyright holders can breath a sigh of relief now that AT&T has taken on the role of the Copyright Police. AT&T announced that it will begin sending warnings to people who are downloading copyright protected music, movies and video, advising them of the law and asking them to stop. If they don't stop, AT&T will comply with any court orders to cut off their Internet access.

In the past ISPs have provided copyright holders with the IP address of people who download pirated materials as requested. It was then up to the copyright holder to sue on a case by case basis and recover any losses from that individual.

The new AT&T policy takes piracy protection one step further by levying a preemptive strike warning users that they are breaking the law and that in doing so risk losing access to the Internet.

AT&T and other participating ISPs are doing more for copyright owners than they are legally obliged to, according to Fred von Lohmann, a senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. However, they do have an obligation to have a policy in place to kick off repeat offenders, he said.

AT&T will only forward the notice and won't threaten its customers with suspension of service or any other sanction, Cicconi said. If copyright holders want to go further, it's up to them to bring court orders, he said.

"It seems to engender a good response from customers, and we've seen a fairly dramatic drop-off in file-sharing activity once people receive a notice, so we feel this works," Cicconi said.