Music biz looks to US’ ‘six step approach’ to combat piracy

Music Rights Australia last week responded to the government’s Copyright – Online Infringement consultation. In that document, the peak body made reference to examples of ‘industry schemes’ which it hopes rightsholders and ISPs can agree to in a bid to stem file-sharing/illegal streaming.

We asked Music Rights Australia to be more specific and explain in further detail what an ‘industry scheme’ might look like. Here it details what it, and therefore the wider Australian business, believes to be a sound model: the US’ ‘six-step’ approach, or ‘Copyright Alert System’.

Rightsholders and ISPs have a range of ‘mitigation measures’ available to them (once the six steps process has been exhausted) under the US scheme. They potentially include: a temporary reduction in uploading and/or downloading speed; a temporary step-down in the Subscriber’s service tier to either the lowest tier of Internet access; a temporary redirection to a landing page until the subscriber contacts the participating ISP to discuss with it the Copyright Alerts; or a temporary restriction of the subscriber’s Internet access for some reasonable period of time as determined in the participating ISP’s discretion.

Music Rights Australia explains in more detail how the process would work in practice:

The Copyright Alert System(CAS) is administered by the Centre for Copyright Information (CCI) which is governed by an executive committee made up of ISP and content industry representatives. Funding for CCI has been split between the Participating Content Owners Group and the Participating ISPs.

The scheme has been nicknamed “6 Strikes”, after the number of warnings  which will be have been  received  when a mitigation measure is imposed. It actually comprises 7 steps: 1. Initial Educational Step. 2. Acknowledgement Step 3. Mitigation Measures Step 4. Post Mitigation Measures Step 5.            Reset 6. Transmission of Copyright Alerts to Subscribers 7. Notification of Ability to Request Review.

The warnings have three levels – Educational, Acknowledgment and Mitigation. Each participating ISP sends an account holder up to two Copyright Alerts during the Initial Educational Step; followed by two more Copyright Alerts during the Acknowledgement Step; then if required, one alert during the Mitigation Measures Step (a “Mitigation Measure Copyright Alert”) which sets out the specific Mitigation Measure to be applied and informs the account holder that, unless the account holder has requested review under one of the dispute resolution mechanisms specified, the ISP shall apply the selected Mitigation Measure after the expiration of a notice period. Finally, during the Post Mitigation Measures Step, the ISP will send one Mitigation Measure Copyright Alert and shall apply the specified Mitigation Measure and may, at the ISP’s discretion, send additional Mitigation Measure Copyright Alerts and apply additional Mitigation Measures, subject to the account holder’s right to challenge Copyright Alerts at this step.

Once the 6 alerts have been received by an account holder, the ISP’s can apply a range of mitigation measures, which will depend on the particular service provider.

During the first 10 months of operation, the CAS sent out over 1.3 million alerts to account holders, with over 70% of these occurring during the initial education stage and less than 3% sent at the final mitigation stage. This is notable, as the CAS is ultimately aimed at “educating internet users, modifying attitudes and changing behaviour by helping account holders to understand the importance of copyright protection and the risks inherent in using P2P programs to obtain or share digital content”.  The CCI has stated that the premise of the CAS is that the majority of consumers will be inclined to change their behaviours and take corrective action if their alleged copyright infringement is brought to their attention, with 79% of respondents in a recent survey believing that if they receive an alert, that would be “somewhat” or “very influential” toward getting them to stop infringing behaviour.  Notably, CCI has reported that 57% of users surveyed stated that they would stop engaging in copyright infringement immediately upon receiving an alert.

The MOU also outlines an Independent Review Program, managed by the American Arbitration Association (AAA), which provides a non-exclusive avenue of appeal for Subscribers who wish to challenge a Mitigation Measure.

In May 2014, the CCI reported that, from over 1.3 million alerts generated through 2013, only 265 account holders filed review requests with AAA. Notably, of those reviews, not a single one was identified as an invalid notice. Of the successful challenges, the majority were based on the account holder making a satisfactory case that someone other than the account holder was using the account to engage in infringing behaviour.