Is the Copyright Alert System actualy being used?

August 10, 2013 6:37 PM

It was big news in February that the major United States ISPs were going to start monitoring users' BitTorrent activity and issuing "six strikes" warnings against the owners of accounts used for piracy. But since the program went live, there's been almost no coverage of it that I can find, and I've gotten more and more curious - is the system actually working? Are there statistics available about the number of alerts that go out? Have any MeFites been the subject of one (or not been the subject of one despite continuing to download)? You'd think there would be something out there, but even sites like Ars Technica don't seem to have done much follow-up coverage.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish to Computers & Internet (3 answers total)

I read comments on TPB all the time from people warning that a particular torrent is being watched because they had received a letter from their ISP about it.

A seedbox is the way to go to avoid ISP problems.
posted by Jacqueline at 6:55 PM on August 10, 2013

I wonder about this too. My mother received an copyright notice about two months ago. A friend of mine brought her laptop to my mother's house, and forgot to turn off the BitTorrent, so my mother received an email notice about pirating Game of Thrones.

My mother has Comcast. My friends and I all have non-major ISPs so we've never worried about it. I told my mom to ignore the email...

But if I was in that situation, I would probably just switch from Comcast, LOL. I don't know any more than that, but I can email you the notification letter if you're interested.
posted by cmcmcm at 7:59 AM on August 11, 2013

I should add that the email arrived at my Mom's @comcast.net address... Who even checks those things?!
posted by cmcmcm at 4:16 PM on August 11, 2013