2016 has marked a renewed effort to go after Americans who are pirating copyrighted content.
We have seen everything from ISPs working on ways to identify pirate live streams to cut them off to Amazon working to cut off sellers or fully loaded Fire TV devices. Now ISPs are threatening to cut off pirates.
Recently Time Warner Cable, which is owned by Charter, has started to aggressively send out letters to subscribers who have been recorded pirating content. Beyond the typical threats of legal action and potential costs they now are including a threat to disconnect you.
Here is the section that has been added to the warning:
“In addition, in accordance with our acceptable use policy, your internet service may be subject to termination at our sole discretion if we continue to receive credible allegations that your internet connection has been used to share copyrighted content without permission of the copyright owner.”
Time Warner Cable and their parent company Charter have to pass along copyright notices or they could face legal action; however, what is shocking here is the threat to disconnect users with what appears to be no due process. Although we do not support piracy, we don’t support the idea of account termination without due process.
Hopefully there is more to the TWC plan to disconnect users than is shown here or they face the risk of abuse like what we have seen on YouTube. No one wants to see content owners using fake content infringement notices as a tool to take someone offline.
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