Free for a Fee

Earlier this week, the Copyright Alert System (CAS)—better known as “Six Strikes”—finally debuted. On Wednesday, both Verizon and Comcast activated the service.

The new system is funded by a group known as the Center for Copyright Information (CCI), which is made up of five major American ISPs, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). It’s been in the works for years and may provide a significant change to the copyright infringement policing regime in the United States.

At the end of a series of six alerts, accused infringing customers could have their home Internet connection significantly slowed down. Those accused of infringing can file an appeal for $35. (Here’s the CCI’s new video explaining the process and its new promo video.)

Not surprisingly, the two Pirate Bay cofounders who appealed their Swedish conviction to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) have lost.

As we reported last year, Jonas Nilsson (attorney to Fredrik “tiamo” Neij) and Peter Althin (attorney to Peter “brokep” Sunde) filed an appeal in June 2012 to the Strasbourg, France-based court.

In a unanimous decision, the ECHR ruled Wednesday that the petitioners’ application was “inadmissible,” finding that the existing Swedish conviction did not violate Neij or Sunde’s human rights. The decision was made by seven judges from across Europe, representing Liechtenstein, Germany, Slovenia, Ireland, Ukraine, Sweden, and the Czech Republic.

A federal appeals court has rejected a major record label’s effort to undermine the legal safe harbor provided to user-generated content sites by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Under that 1998 legislation, sites like YouTube and Flickr are immune from copyright liability as long as they promptly respond to takedown requests by copyright holders. The safe harbor has become a foundation of the Internet economy, allowing entrepreneurs to build new user-generated content sites without worrying about being held responsible for their users’ infringing uploads.

The Supreme Court of the United States announced on Monday that it has denied certiorari (PDF)—declined to hear the case—of Jammie Thomas-Rasset, a Minnesota woman who was ordered to pay $222,000 after having downloaded 24 songs off Kazaa several years ago. When her legal travails began in 2007, the case was the first trial involving unauthorized file-sharing of intellectual property heard by a jury in the United States.

The Supreme Court’s denial of certiorari means that the decision from the United States Court of Appeals for the Eight Circuit ruling (PDF) in September 2012 will stand. The Eighth Circuit upheld the very first ruling for $222,000 (at $9,250 per song) in damages. It’s an amount which has varied across three subsequent trials, reaching as high as $1.92 million and later falling to $54,000 (upheld last year before later being overturned by the Eighth Circuit).