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I don't get it... why do the ISPs even bother opting in? Isn't it just time and money spent on basically making their customers angry, and for what benefit on their part? Why spend money on something that provides no obvious benefit, and many negatives, to the company?

I know some ISPs are also content providers, so I get that one. But what about the rest?




Looks like most ISPs are either content companies themselves (Comcast) or have tight relationships with them (AT&T, Verizon).

They all see higher profits in screwing over consumers, apparently


Another possibility: content companies said, do this, or we'll try to get the USG to force you to, which will be more expensive for both of us.


As I recall, it was reported that the US Copyright Czar was involved in getting these ISPs together and negotiating this.


Bit-torrented videos probably constitute a significant fraction of their bandwidth. If this is cut down significantly, their equipment costs will be less, possibly with added revenue as well. If they accidentally happen to flag Netflix videos, then pass the popcorn. (I wouldn't be surprised if class action lawyers are already gearing up).


Their equipment costs would be less, but their income would be way less. The only reason I pay for the channel as wide as I have is to be able to stream video, download stuff, etc. For reading email and commenting on HN, I'd be good with fraction of that bandwidth. In my book, trying to have the customers to reduce the consumption of goods they are selling is insane, but then again, in copyright world sanity is an obstacle, not a requirement.


You can upsell people on the benefits of streaming legit videos as well.

Especially if the ISPs come to an arrangement with content providers to sell access to their content as an add-on to the broadband service.

They can also charge content providers a premium to deliver their content at a higher priority than content of other providers.


The problem is legit video offering sucks. It is loaded with thousand of DRM hoops and constantly plagued by turf wars between content providers and delivery, so any given moment any content you enjoy can be gone because two suits somewhere couldn't agree about some royalty payment.

If they ever took their collective heads out of their collective asses and offered me a convenient DRM-less subscription service that would enable me to enjoy my favorite shows and movies online without enduring inconveniences that makes one think it was designed by TSA - I'd be super-happy to use that and give my money to them. But the aren't doing it! Instead, they pump money into stupid anti-piracy schemes and starting a war on their own clients.


Not that Torrentfreak is the most reliable source in the world, but they did it because of this: http://torrentfreak.com/comcast-wins-protest-against-shake-d...

The ISPs are sick of having to deal with all these (expensive) subpoenas, and they'd rather have copyright holders foot part of the bill for implementing this "six-strike" system. Simple cost-benefit: the ISPs are going to save money in the long run if the media companies aren't breathing their neck.


The cost of processing a strike make be less than the cost of processing a subpoena.


This could be a used as a bargaining chip in order to get cheaper content. So Verizon, for example, might say if you don't let us broadcast this new show in our FIOS network then we'll refuse to adhere to the 6-strike rule.


Most ISPs don't like torrent-traffic (or traffic at all) because it costs them money for every single packet that gets transmitted. Torrent tends to end up sending a lot of small packets which costs the ISP more than if you would have downloaded the files from a single server. Plus customers flooding the network with tons of packets also means slower internet for others.

That and the content provider thing are the main reasons some ISPs are already sending letters to heavy-torrenting users todays.


They are offered guaranteed immunity in return. As a business, this kind of (my qualification to same: short term, narrow scope, and coerced) risk reduction can be hard to pass up. As a publicly traded business, you might even be sued by your shareholders for passing it up.

P.S. As others have pointed out, where they are also large scale content owners, it may reflect overlapping interests rather than coercion.


> They are offered guaranteed immunity in return

They already have immunity from their customer's actions. Taking that away and then offering it back conditionally seems more like a threat than an incentive.


Probably because these companies are also selling content right now, and these are the same type of companies that were throttling torrents not too long ago. This is an excuse for them to start banning such customers from their service.




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