Do you know that the Copyright Alert System starts Monday?

You're being lied to. This has been in effect for over a year.

This is guaranteed to be a bonanza for smaller ISPs who couldn't care less what you're downloading since they are totally immune (by law) from any liability, like your phone company can't be sued if you use the telephone to commit a crime. You can simply tell your ISP to shove it and take your business elsewhere.

Once the large providers see that they are simply losing some of their best customers (i.e., those paying for large bandwidth), their shareholders will convince them it's not in the corporate best interest to do Hollywood's dirtywork for free.

If someone is so concerned about you getting a free copy of something, they are certainly able to file the papers necessary to stop you using the courts to enforce the laws, as they were intended. Nobody says enforcing copyright has to be easy.

This is a problem for people who are couch potatoes.

Time Warner owns a lot movies - all copyrighted by them.

They have a keen interest in making sure the people who use their internet service aren't getting the copyrighted movies for nothing from other websites who aren't paying royalties to Time Warner.

AT&T has a movie service they call UVerse.

They have to lease the rights to those copyrighted movies.

They have a keen interest in making sure the people who use their internet service aren't getting the copyrighted movies for nothing from other websites who aren't paying to lease the rights.

People who are not couch potatoes don't care, there's plenty to do in the real world.