On May 28, the Center for Copyright Information
(CCI) released a report on the recently launched Copyright
Alert System (CAS). The CAS is a tiered notice and response system aimed at
reducing copyright infringement over peer-to-peer (P2P) networks. The CAS is an
innovative, comprehensive, voluntary collaboration between Internet service
providers (ISPs) and copyright holders which aims to educate consumers and to empower
content owners to protect their intellectual property by fighting online
piracy.
Content companies
including movie studios, television program producers, and the recording
industry are constantly creating new
ways to meet consumer demands by providing easy and affordable access to
content online. In order for these new platforms and technologies to be
successful, the firms must be confident that the works made available online
will not be degraded in value by unauthorized online behaviors or outright
stolen by pirates.
Content owners
today have tools to combat online piracy, but infringing behavior is still
rampant, particularly among P2P networks. The CAS is an online IP enforcement
mechanism that empowers content owners to enforce their IP rights against
unauthorized account holders in P2P networks. The CAS can be used as an
alternative to the DMCA’s notice and take-down procedure. Reports received from certain content owners (or their
authorized agents) regarding possible copyright infringement by file-sharing
programs or P2P networks will go through the new Copyright Alert System.
Reports from other owners (or their authorized agents) that do not involve file-sharing
program copyright infringement allegations will continue to be sent through the
standard DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) response system.
The CAS program
allows content owners to generate notices of alleged copyright infringement by
identifying the IP address associated with the potentially infringing behavior.
The content owner then notifies his or her ISP of the IP address, which can be
identified through use of publicly available IP address data. The ISP then
delivers a “Copyright Alert” to the P2P account holder(s) that content owners
have identified as engaging in unauthorized uses of content. ISPs do not share
any personally identifiable information about their subscribers with content
owners or CCI. Not all notices to ISPs result in alerts, because the system only
allows content owners to send one Copyright Alert in a seven-day period. Alerts
to consumers provide a grace period so that account holders and authorized
users can investigate and correct their behavior to stop improper uses of an
account. If an account holder does not believe its behavior is unauthorized, it
can challenge the alert with the American Arbitration Association (AAA). The
graphic below, included in CCI’s report, illustrates the alert generation and
delivery process.
The CAS was
launched in February 2013, and it has already identified many potentially
infringing behaviors online. The just-released CCI report reviews data
collected from the first ten months of the CAS’ operation. CCI reports that 1.3
million Copyright Alerts were sent to over 700,000 customer accounts, and over
2 million notices of alleged infringement were sent to ISPs in only the first
10 months of the program. No invalid notice or false positives have been
reported. More than 70% of those alerts generated were at the initial
educational stages, and less than 3% of the alerts were sent during the final
mitigation phase. Account holders who received alerts filed only 265 requests
for review with the AAA—this amounts to requests for review of just 0.02% of
all alerts sent to participating ISPs’ account holders.
Even though the
CAS has only been running for a short time, it seems to be off to a good start. The system already appears to be both
accurate – yielding no false positives –and necessary –given the high number of
unauthorized uses identified. Also, there is already evidence that account
holders that receive an alert do not engage in further P2P infringement, as the
chart from the CCI report below shows.
The CAS has also
provided useful data on consumers’ understanding of online piracy and behaviors
online. The
majority of users surveyed reported that they would stop engaging in copyright
infringement immediately upon receiving an alert and most (62%) reported that
they believe it is never acceptable to engage in infringing activity. However, a
majority of respondents expressed uncertainty of what constitutes infringing
behavior: 65% of the respondents agreed that it would be helpful if more
resources were available that make clear what content sources and online
activities are and are not legal.
Over the next
few months the Center for Copyright Information plans to analyze operational
data to track the impact of the Copyright Alert System on user behavior and
consumers’ attitudes towards copyright infringement. These efforts, in
conjunction with the continued operation of the CAS, will help educate
enforcement entities and consumers on the best ways to curb online piracy.
Hopefully, the CAS and CCI’s educational efforts will encourage consumers to
embrace authorized sources of legal and licensed content, decrease online
piracy, and protect the rights of content owners online.
PS – Over the past year, the
Free State Foundation has been engaged in an important educational effort of
its own to enhance the public’s understanding of intellectual property rights.
In a series of what presently constitutes six “Perspectives from FSF Scholars” papers, Free State Foundation
President Randolph May and Adjunct Senior Fellow Seth Cooper have been
addressing foundational principles of intellectual property. These scholarly papers
further the public’s understanding of the nature of IP rights and they explain
why our Founders thought it was important for the Constitution and our laws to
protect IP.
The six papers,
with links, are here:
Randolph J. May and Seth L. Cooper, "The
Constitutional Foundations of Intellectual Property," Perspectives from FSF Scholars,
Vol. 8, No. 13 (2013).
Randolph J. May and Seth L. Cooper, "Reasserting
the Property Rights Source of IP," Perspectives from FSF Scholars, Vol. 8, No. 17
(2013).
Randolph J. May and Seth L. Cooper, "Literary
Property: Copyright's Constitutional History and Its Meaning for Today," Perspectives from FSF Scholars,
Vol. 8, No. 19 (2013).
Randolph J. May and Seth L. Cooper, "The
Constitution’s Approach to Copyright: Anti- Monopoly, Pro-Intellectual Property
Rights,” Perspectives from FSF
Scholars, Vol. 8, No. 20 (2013).
Randolph J. May and Seth L.
Cooper, "The
'Reason and Nature' of Intellectual Property: Copyright and Patent in The
Federalist Papers," Perspectives from FSF Scholars, Vol. 9, No. 4
(2014).
Randolph J. May and Seth L. Cooper, “Constitutional
Foundations of Copyright and Patent in the First Congress,” Vol. 9, No. 18 (2014).
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