In an effort that’s doomed to fail, AT&T has joined hands with the Hollywood studios in an effort to sniff and snuff out pirated content over the Internet. AT&T SVP Jim Cicconi said the top telco and top broadband service provider is working with a crew of major studios on a technology that would identify when customers upload or distribute pirated content over the Internet.
Although clearly designed to warm the cockles of Hollywood’s heart, AT&T is setting itself up for a fall on so many levels with this harebrained idea. First, detection technologies are just not effective, or as EFF’s Fred von Lohmann says “The risk AT&T faces is fighting the last war by spending money and energy plugging an old hole in the wall when new ones are breaking out.”
In other words, the instant the telco puts into place the detection technology, some clever hacker will find a way to get around it.
Second, it’s virtually guaranteed that any such anti-piracy technology is going to either mess up customers’ broadband Internet experiences or, worse, alienate them altogether by flagging false-positives. If the technology catches (or blocks) legitimate uses of copyrighted material, as it is bound to do, customers would be outraged and AT&T would likely get hit with lawsuits galore. On top of this, rivals (read Comcast, Time Warner Cable and all the others) are likely to promote the fact that AT&T polices what its customers do over their broadband connections, thereby causing even more customer alienation and defection.
As Public Knowledge’s Gigi Sohn said in a statement:
AT&T’s greater challenge will be to recognize that simply because there is copyrighted material online does not make use of that material illegal. We hope AT&T takes the time to study the recent history of material being taken down in error. Viacom, the studio quoted in the story as supporting AT&T, had to admit it made a mistake in sending a take-down notice over a parody of the Colbert Report. It will be difficult if not impossible to design a technology to make certain the fair use rights of consumers to use copyrighted material in a lawful manner are protected.
Beyond all this, however, by proactively taking on the responsibility of monitoring the kind of content that customers transmit over its networks, AT&T could be setting itself up for all kinds of legal obligations. For example, will AT&T itself incur infringement-related liability if its detection technology fails to work or if a snafu temporarily shuts down the snooping functionality? After all, the studios would be counting on AT&T to snag pirated material and if AT&T fails to do so, will the studios or copyright owners go after the telco for failing to keep its word?
I could go on and on about why AT&T should steer completely away from becoming a piracy cop, if for no other reason than to protect its own hide. But, hey, it sounds like this train has left the station and AT&T is committed to at least trying to work out a system with the studios. Good luck to them!
Cynthia Brumfield at 12:36 PM|Comments(0)
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