Watch Out Pirates, ‘Six Strikes’ Is Gonna Get You!

It was bound to happen. And this is why we can’t have nice things. Five of the largest ISP’s in the U.S., including Comcast, Verizon, Time Warner, AT&T and Cablevision, have finally decided enough is enough with these damn pirates.

That’s right, the infamous “Six Strikes” anti-piracy program, also known as the Copyright Alert System (CMCSA), is going live on an Internets near you. Among the five ISP’s who think this is a good idea and will have some effect on limiting online piracy, Comcast is first out of the gate with the launch of its system today.

The rest are expected to follow suit later this week. According to those who support it, the new system is designed to “educate” users of the consequences of copyright infringement. Yes, because education has done such a great job so far.

Don’t worry, though, the new program won’t allow ISP’s to completely cut off your service if they happen to think you might be a pirate. It does, however, allow them to temporarily reduce your internet speed or block popular websites after “repeat offenses.”

How they actually determine what these offenses are, and who is directly committing them, hasn’t really been adequately spelled out yet. What it seems like to us is yet another attempt by large media corporations to hold onto a disintegrating business model by any means necessary. Good luck with that.

We don’t condone piracy and we don’t steal content. We pay for our stuff, unless people are kind enough to send it to us for review purposes. We appreciate that.

What we don’t want or appreciate is ISP’s, or anyone else for that matter, controlling what we download and when. Or, through the half-assed implemented of some “anti-piracy” program, our own legitimate use of the internet is disrupted in some way.

If we pay for a service (and pay we do) we should be able to use that service in the way we see fit. It’s as simple as that.

We welcome your comments.