ISPs as copyright police

Recent Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement talks reportedly have placed proposals on the table that would force ISPs to watch for and ultimately punish illegal downloaders of copyrighted content.

For service providers, the desire to be good corporate citizens has to be balanced with the practical issue of how to implement such schemes and the ongoing battles over the outer bounds of net neutrality.

In play is not just the idea of having ISPs track downloaders, but playing enforcement cop as well. Options include sending out e-mails to violators or even throttling network bandwidth as a warning, a tactic that Richard Cotton, general counsel for NBC Universal, recently proposed.

The talks come as net neutrality issues heat up in the U.S., which at their heart call for service providers to take a hands-off approach to what travels over their network. Content providers, though — especially the music, TV and movie industries — aren't so much concerned with neutrality but with what they believe is the business-model-demolishing theft of their content online.

Last December, the Recording Industry Association of America said it was already working with ISPs on an enforcement approach that involved the provider sending up to three e-mails to users who share music with others. After that, according to the plan, the ISP may cut off or restrict the user's Internet access.

Such a three-strikes approach is in play in France while U.K. ISPs have agreed to send out notices but stopped short of banning individual users.

Like net neutrality, the concept of ISPs as copyright cops is clearly in play.