Verizon ends service of alleged illegal file downloaders

Verizon ends the service of alleged illegal file downloads: A few months after Verizon communications begin issuing warnings to accuse file sharers, the company has acknowledged that more offenses could result in a service interruption. "We've cut some people off" one Verizon online spokeswoman told CNet "we do reserve the right to discontinue service, but we don't throttle bandwidth like Comcast was doing.

Verizon does not have bandwidth caps. It seems that Verizon, one of the country's biggest broadband providers has adopted an approach to illegal file sharing that sounds very similar to one promoted and published heavily by the music industry.

In December 2008, the recording industry Association of America, stunned the digital music world by announcing that it would no longer filed lawsuits against individuals accused of file sharing. Instead the are RIAA said it has agreements in place from groups of the major Internet service providers that would adopt a graduated response to copyright infringement. But a year after the RIAA made the announcement not one major ISP has acknowledged support for the RIAA's plan.

While Verizon did not disclose how many customers have been cut off, someone in Verizon said the numbers are small. They added that litigation in the area is down significantly and the number of subpoenas or court orders Verizon gets are isolated and not at all widespread. A simple scolding e-mail may turn illegal downloaders into model Internet citizens. We've found that we didn't have to worn most people a second time. Most people stop. Or they tell whoever is doing it to stop. A lot of people are unaware that someone in their home is downloading copyrighted material music, movies and games till they get the warning e-mail.

Verizon says it's not actually monitoring what its customers download on the Internet. Rather, the copyright owners are capturing Internet protocol addresses and requesting that Verizon send out e-mail warnings. They did not disclose how many such warnings arise in has sent. Verizon was careful to note that employees does not give information about the user to copyright owners without due process, which means that pariahs and must receive a court order before it would hand over any contact information.

Some customers may jump ship to another ISP or seek ways to mask their IP address. But at least one reader of CNet who received the e-mail has stopped file sharing cold turkey, "I'm going legit."

Source: CNet News