Pirates Suggest Copyright Alert System Inefficient With Crowdsource Tests

On February 25th, several United States ISPs got together and decided to launch the Copyright Alert System (CAS) in order to stop online piracy. With the CAS, ISPs would be able to detect when one of their users downloaded files illegally, and they would issue a warning to the user. The ISPs call it the "6 strikes" program, where the user would be warned up to 6 times, with each consecutive warning being more aggressive than the previous. Pirates from all around wanted to test out just how efficient the new CAS system was.

The pirates began testing out the Copyright Alert System shortly after it launched in late February. They proceeded to download many popular files illegally using Bittorrent and The Pirate Bay. They downloaded popular movies, TV shows, music albums, and even uploaded each file back into The Pirate Bay. These pirates made no attempts to mask their IPs and were intending to get caught.

But after quite a while, not a single warning was issued. Granted, these pirates were all using Verizon as their ISP, so we don't really know just how efficient AT&T, Comcast, Time Warner, or Cablevision's system is. The pirates intentionally went after torrents that have been proven to trigger CAS alerts in countries like France and New Zealand, but apparently in the United States, they aren't so heavily tracked.

The study lasted 3 weeks long, with the pirates downloading popular files and seeding them every day. But no warning was ever issued. A Verizon executive defended the company's position, saying that despite the study performed by these pirates, they have been issuing copyright warnings frequently. While we know that Verizon's Copyright Alert System needs a bit more tuning, we still don't know yet how efficient the other ISPs are.

[via Daily Dot]