How Effective is the 'Six Strikes' Policy?

The question on the effectiveness of the six strikes policy in actually preventing piracy is something that critics of the system frequently bring up, and for good reason. Such a system requires ISPs to keep massive amounts of data regarding their subscriber's activity online. By keeping all of this data, organizations such as the RIAA or MPAA can request records for subscribers whenever they see fit. This data is also vulnerable to subpoenas from external organizations such as copyright trolls to law enforcement. In other words, despite what ISPs and content providers say about your information being confidential, the six strikes system is conveniently aggregating data on suspected bad behavior which can be viewed by almost everybody. There are no laws regulating this so private organizations can easily request the information or failing that, a subpoena is usually all it takes to release information.

Case in point, copyright troll Malibu Networks recently requested six strikes data from Verizon. When Verizon refused, they subpoenaed Verizon in federal court to compel them to release information. The data in six strikes logs are like a gold mine for copyright trolls since it allows them to easily practice what are called "John Doe" blanket lawsuits. See the recent Prenda trolling case for more details on blanket lawsuits and how such copyright trolls work. Anyways, Verizon, to their credit, has refused to turn over data and is fighting the subpena in court. It will be interesting to see how this turns out since such requests are more likely to come along in the future.

Back to the question on effectiveness, with all of the privacy issues stemming from six strikes, such a system must be worth all of the privacy issues right? Probably not, since the copyright alert system or six strikes is actually really ineffective at preventing piracy. First, it is very easy to circumvent the system. Since the system is targeting BitTorrent users using IP addresses, simply using a virtual private network (VPN) or other anonymous proxy service to mask your IP address is enough to get around the primary detection system.

Second, it turns out that actually triggering the system might be more difficult than it was made out to be. A recent study of the system by users who attempted to trigger the copyright alert system found it difficult to do. In fact, after downloading a whole bunch of popular movies from torrents and then seeding the torrents for nearly three weeks on an open IP address, there was no warning. This might not tell us a lot but it does call in to question the effectiveness of such a system if it can't pick up someone torrenting copyrighted material for three straight weeks.

So what do you think about six strikes one you factor in the privacy issues? Feel free to leave a comment below!

Sources:

• Subpeona against Verizon for Six Strikes Data (.PDF)
• http://www.dailydot.com/society/triggering-copyright-alert-system-study-verizon/
• http://blogs.computerworld.com/internet/21817/six-ways-pirates-can-get-around-coming-six-strikes