Intl MPAA/RIAA to ISPs: cut your own throats

The MPA and IFPI (international versions of the MPAA and RIAA, respectively), has produced a report describing the code of conduct they'd like ISPs to embrace -- basically, they want ISPs to act like AOL in the old days. Any ISP that adopts this code of conduct is cutting its own throat -- seriously, this thing is a frigging embarrassment, it really makes the IFPI/MPA people look like they live in Narnia. The MPA/IFPI people I've met on the road are generally lightweights, prone to telling easily countered lies, ignorant of the law, fumble-tongued and ham-fisted. This report tells me that my impression of them was dead on. Here are some callouts from CoCo:

* "remove references and links to sites or services that do not respect the copyrights of rights holders".'

* "require subscribers to consent in advance to the disclosure of their identity in response to a reasonable complaint of intellectual property infringement by an established right holder defence organisation or by right holder(s) whose intellectual property is being infringed"'

* terminate contracts of recidivist'

* implement instant messaging to communicate with infringers'

* implement filtering technologies to block sites that are 'substantially dedicated to illegal file sharing or download services.'

* voluntarily store data for copyright enforcement...

"To enforce terms of service that prohibit a subscriber from operating a server, or from consuming excessive amounts of bandwidth where such consumption is a good indicator of infringing activities."

Link (via Copyfight)