The US 6 strike rule has been one of the numerous topics we’ve been following. With it scheduled to start as early as the beginning of this month to a few days later, we’ve been on the lookout for things like quantity of the warning letters. No news has surfaced since it was suppose to begin. So, what happened? It turns out that the system was delayed.
The 6 strike rule in the US is one of a large number of issues we’ve been tracking. Earlier, reported that the 6 strike rule was suppose to begin as early as the first of this month. Some outlets suggested it was a few days after the first, but all the scheduled days came and went without so much as a whisper on the warning letter front.
We searched high and low for any signs that the warning letters were sent. It’s not all that unreasonable to expect big news stories saying that thousands of people have received warning letters to be popping up everywhere. After all, something like that is a sure-fire way to attract readership. As days went by, we started wondering if the media was ignoring the issue or if something happened that stopped the warning letters from ever reaching customers. It turns out, it is the latter. The planned six strike rule has been delayed – reportedly for another few months. The DailyDot reports:
“We do not intend to launch until we are confident that the program is consumer friendly,” Caroline Langdale, a press contact for the six strikes system, told the Daily Dot.
“We expect our implementation to begin later this year, with each of the ISPs launching at potentially overlapping but different times,” she added.
The system was, at one point, expected to start on July 12—though the system’s implementation was clearly was off schedule. Before that, the system was expected to start in late 2011.
They were “not hard deadlines, but were intended to keep us on track,” Langdale said.
Of course, that little tidbit was never really made clear to the public before to our knowledge. I have to admit, this six strike rule schedule is sounding an awful lot like a scene from, coincidentally enough, Pirates of the Caribbean where Captain Jack Sparrow says that the code is more like “guidelines”.
Movie quotes aside, it’s extremely difficult to even picture where simple accusations of copyright infringement leading to consequences for the consumers could ever be “consumer friendly”. I personally have yet to see any proposal or implementation of a three strikes rule (let alone in a 6 strike rule) that was actually balanced and consumer friendly. In some instances, I’m aware of such rules even became legally unworkable in some cases.
In any event, this does open up the remote possibility of a stalemate between ISPs and major rights holders where an agreement is never reached and the rule never being implemented. It’s a long shot, but it’s not impossible either. Business plans between two parties do break down, so it’s not unheard of in the business world.
For now though, users are, at least, getting an unexpected reprieve. When the rules will be implemented is unknown for now, but the suggestion seems to be that it’s still months away for now. We’ll continue to monitor the situation in the US as this story develops.
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Drew Wilson is perhaps one of the more well-known file-sharing and technology news writers around. A journalist in the field since 2005, his work has had semi-regular appearances on social news websites and even occasional appearances on major news outlets as well. Drew founded freezenet.ca and still contributes to ZeroPaid. Twitter | Google Plus
