ISPs Won't Admit Participation In New RIAA Plan

**OG PooPiN** Wed Jan 07, 2009 8:59 pm

The RIAA recently announced that they'd struck closed door deals with several ISPs to boot repeat P2P pirates off of their networks. The only ISP we're sure has signed on to this so far is Cox -- and despite what they tell their subscribers, the DMCA does not require ISPs to participate in this project. If anything, the DMCA's safe harbor provisions protect ISPs from having to participate in a system that's going to be costly and potentially unreliable.

"We are not working with them on this"
-Verizon,
on the RIAA's new three strikes plan
While the RIAA says they've struck deals with a number of "leading" carriers, apparently those carriers don't want their cooperation publicized. Wired news has tried to track down which ISPs are participating in this plan. Only Verizon offers official comment, saying definitively that "we are not working with them on this." You might recall that Verizon has won previous run-ins with the RIAA over disclosing P2P user identities. Their FiOS infrastructure capacity also doesn't require that they use piracy as an excuse to boot P2P users (yet).

AT&T, Comcast, and the National Cable & Telecommunications Association all offer no comment. So why are the deals not only being hashed out in private -- but nobody wants to admit they're participating? If stopping piracy is the right thing to do, why aren't ISPs proudly crowing about their involvement at every opportunity?

Potentially because piracy has been broadband's unspoken killer app for the better part of the decade, and ISPs want to eat their cake and have it too. Carriers don't want the negative PR kick and potential customer defections associated with clearly announcing that they're fighting piracy, but they want to quietly tackle congestion while staying on the RIAA's good side -- so they're playing along quietly.

Or perhaps, as Techdirt reasons, the involvement of NY's Attorney General has some ISPs thinking it's mandatory. Andrew Cuomo most recently informed ISPs they'd be sued if they didn't participate in his crackdown against child porn -- a plan that in reality didn't actually accomplish anything.