A good argument can be made that safe harbor and legal requirements aside, it is in your interest and your customer’s interest to forward notices when possible. Most customers seem to stop once they realize what they are doing is observable and potentially illegal. If that results in less court orders to ISPs to reveal the name behind the IP address, the ISP avoids that hassle.
Customers sometimes don’t realize they are doing anything wrong. The Popcorn Time app is a big problem, many people assume because this pretty app lets them download movies, it must to legal to download that content (even though it’s Bit Torrent behind the curtain). You don’t have to be a complete moron to believe this. Note the big ISPs typically include language like this: “Your account was identified by its IP address. However, in keeping with the AT&T Privacy Policy, we have not released your name or personal information, and we will not do so except as required by a lawful request for records.” Yes, notices demanding payment are problematic, none of us want to lend our credibility to an extortion letter. I don’t think we’ve received any here, in fact DMCA notices overall are way down from 3-5 years ago, at least for us. I think that’s because people just stream stuff. Seems like the payment demands tend to go with porn copyright trolls. Previous discussion here seemed to indicate that altering the notice in any way, like to delete the payment demand, would be a bad idea. Since we are not required to forward the notices, I guess I might just happen to lose those that demand payment. From: Carl Peterson Sent: Tuesday, October 13, 2015 2:25 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Take down notices/Copyright infringement notices.. Sure, Takedown notices don't apply to ISPs which are "Mere Conduits", i.e you don't store the information, you just pass along whatever bits your subscriber is requesting from some third party. As a conduit, you are required to have an AUP which allows for the termination of service to repeat infringers, and have a registered contact with the copyright office in order to take advantage of the safe harbor provisions of the DMCA. Good info on the DMCA here: http://digital-law-online.info/lpdi1.0/treatise35.html That being said, outside of the DMCA, some would argue that you have a duty to your customers to inform them of settlement offers. I don't agree with that interpretation, but I am not a lawyer and would be just as worried about the liability of forwarding bogus extortion "settlement offers". In any case, that isn't part of the DMCA. On Tue, Oct 13, 2015 at 3:01 PM, Peter Kranz <[email protected]> wrote: Care to expand? >>Forwarding notices isn't part of the safe harbor provisions for ISPs. -- Carl Peterson PORT NETWORKS 401 E Pratt St, Ste 2553 Baltimore, MD 21202 (410) 637-3707
