Verizon Bandwidth Throttling Revealed, Six Strike Policy Will Go After Piracy

Verizon has debuted its new “six-strikes” anti-piracy policy. Under the company’s new anti-piracy rules, customers will have their bandwidth throttled after they have been caught downloading illegal materials six times. After each infraction, Verizon customers will also be shown an anti-piracy video. After several infractions, Verizon will also turn over the users IP address to the MPAA and RIAA, at which time legal action can be taken.

Upon first and second strikes, customers will receive e-mail and voicemail warnings which explain their infringement and how to check for and remove file sharing software from the users computer.

Third and fourth piracy violations will take customers to a web page that will play a “short video about copyright law and the consequences of copyright infringement.” Before a customer can begin to use their connection again, they must press a video acknowledgement button.

Fifth and sixth piracy notifications will take users to a new website where three options will be offered. The first option will force customers to accept a 2 to 3-day data reduction policy, at which time their connection speed will be throttled to 256kbps. The second option will reduce speeds by 14 days, and the third option will allow customers to pay a $35 fee for their alerts to be reviewed by the American Arbitration Association.

While still unclear, it is believed that after the sixth strike Verizon will automatically begin sending a users IP address to the RIAA and MPAA without further warnings being sent to the customer.

Verizon will apply the six strikes rules to both personal and business account holders.