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We Asked Verizon About the New Copyright Alert System. Here’s What They Said…

Paul Resnikoff
16

The following is a conversation between Digital Music News (posing as a prospective customer) and a Verizon FiOS sales representative.

verizonletter

16 Responses

    • Avatar
      FarePlay

      The reality is that google, verizon, et.al have opened the door a crack and are most likely trying to figure out how to balance their bottom line with public opinion/pressure.
      So pressure is the key to getting advertisers and cellular providers to do more.
      It can be done, it isn’t really even a lot of work. It is a numbers game. Who has one minute a week to repost a simple message, i.e. poster art, with a message, culprit that changes every week?

      • Avatar
        Visitor

        Are you seriously basing this entire rant on what some random “customer service” from Pakistan representive said?

  2. Avatar
    Visitor

    I think that chat person may want to read Verizon’s tos…

  4. Avatar
    Casey

    And unfortunate reality is support is often times required to make sales, not just help people. They will do anything to make their necessary sales if they want to keep their jobs.

    On a side note however, she was talking about usage caps. You were talking about illegal downloading/uploading. Being as she was most likely a tech support person in India with minimal English, she probably did not catch on to the reference of illegal activity and thought you were talking solely about usage caps.

    • Avatar
      Visitor

      Agreed – the word illegal wasn’t used at all. None story.

    • Avatar
      Grassfed

      I want to carry a bag full of heroine through customs at LAX. Is that okay?
      Oh, sorry, I want to carry an *illegal* bag of heroine through customs at LAX. Is *that* okay?
      Verizon is not training its teams at all.

    • Avatar
      danwriter

      Her English is better than some of the stuff I’ve seen here. “heroine”?

  5. Avatar
    Earnest Scribbler

    I would like to carry a heroine through LAX too. I was thinking Florence Nightingale, founder of nursing, or perhaps Margaret Sanger, pioneering advocate of birth control and women’s health.
    Would this be OK?

  6. Avatar
    dsbd.net

    verizon will send letters. their letters state that it’s is up to the copyright holders as to whether they will be pressing charges.

  7. Avatar
    Trust and Obey

    Nothing in that text exchange leads me to believe that Paul was actually in contact with a human being.
    All of those responses to questions could have been generated by a program that recognizes key words and phrases then replies with stock answers that encourage purchase of product.
    Only when the program fails to reply would an actual person look at the text.

    • Avatar
      Visitor

      Even still dammit! Verizon is just NOT DOING ENOUGH! Just like GOOGLE! If you see their TV commercials, it is evident that they can do amazing things. Surely they can program their customer service bots to denounce piracy! They could hire Dave Lowery to write the script!

  8. Avatar
    Visitor

    total non-story. it is possible to download terabytes of legal content from within the range of artist and formats mentioned by the customer – all without triggering a copyright alert. last week i downloaded a track from karl hyde’s unreleased new album because he provided it free on his fan site. i would not expect a chat center person to be familiar with all the content or the release date statuses of all the content on the internet. and even if the customer said i get a lot of cam’s from pirate bay, it’s still not verizon’s job to police intentions but rather to notify you once you have actually broken the law.
    this is a service verizon provides for, and in conjunction with the copyright holders. it’s not a self-contained policing mechanism whereby verizon has a staff combing the library of congress for copyright holder data. the “day of releases” question certainly could mean the day of release on itunes – a site which also has all the best albums by drake, adele, fun, etc.. the copyright alert question concerned quantity and did not address issues of theft, piracy or anything else warranting comment other than that fios would appear to be very fast. in the end, mia said you MAY NOT receive any mail or letter, because usage is unlimited. cute enough, but zero story here..