Users suspected of illegally downloading content will be contacted with an initial warning message. If the monitored behavior continues, things will escalate. This is likely to include more direct, threatening messages, and actions such as throttled internet speed, or being forced to read “educational” material meant to indoctrinate users into being better consumers. If a user wants to appeal this process, say perhaps because a roommate has been abusing the internet connection, they will have to pay a fee of approximately $35.00.

While it is understandable that companies do need to watch their bottom line, and that theft is wrong, clamping down the market is not the way to go. The less free the market, the worse the market. On the flip side of the coin, invasion of privacy, and constant monitoring devalues consumers and denigrates them, in some ways, to the status of cattle. All of the companies involved in this big brother style move are already profitable, and yet they want to crush the market that has supported them to gain a projected profit.
Some would argue that these companies will actually suffer a loss from these decisions. Perhaps it will be most noticeable when consumers decide that it is a good time to jump ship, and sail to freer waters.

[Ed - This is a a vary bad thing to start happening and one that we siad would be comming shortly after SOPA and PIPA were shelved. At the time Hollywood was already asking ISPs to become the download police and to begin warning users of potentially illegal activity. Now they have taken that a step futher and are putting monitoring systems in place to improve what they already have. This is a serious violation of privacy already and that is before other details of users habits are exposed. As we have said monitoring of traffic even for a single protocol is a slippery slope that leads to monitoring other traffic all without the users consent. It is a form of wiretapping that is made legal all on the claim that they are working to prevent theft. The fact that this claim has been proven time and again to be false is of no consequence. You see all of these companies have streaming media services and you can bet that this new moniotoring was part of a deal with the MPAA and RIAA to keep those services running with current movies and music. The fact that consumers are the ones that suffer means nothing to them. In the end this will not stop piracy at all, it will only make people use more sophistcated means of connecting to torrent and other file shares...]

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