AT&T disconnects whole families from the internet because someone in their house is accused of copyright infringement

It's been five years since America's super-concentrated telcoms sector announced their "voluntary Copyright Alert system" (AKA Six Strikes), a system that said that if your someone in your household was accused of six acts of copyright infringement, everyone in your house would get the internet death penalty, having your net connection terminated.

The years of inaction after the policy was enacted, lulled a lot of us into thinking that the telcos and cable companies had thought better of playing judge, jury and executioner for people's internet access, but as the years ticked by, the sector has become even more concentrated, and what was once unthinkable is now reality.

This year, AT&T was allowed to buy Time-Warner, creating a second Big Telco/Big Media chimera (the other being Comcast/Universal), whose priorities are now split between providing access and taking it away (compare with what happened when Sony bought Columbia and went from being a company that provided new ways to listen to music to a company whose mission was to restrict how you listened to music).

AT&T has now begun to disconnect customers accused of infringement -- that is, accused of watching TV or listening to music in ways that are suboptimal for media companies' shareholders.

The customers who are being disconnected have never been able to face their accusers or have a day in court. The people they live with are not accused of any wrongdoing. The internet they are losing is likely the only option they have for broadband -- or one of two options, with the other one likely being a cable company like Comcast who may now join AT&T in a race to the bottom. Read the rest