Comcast is already one of the worst companies in America, and now it wants to become one of the most annoying.

As a part of the industry’s new “six-strikes” anti-piracy system. Comcast will hijack its customers’ web browsers if it suspects them of piracy and prevent them from accessing the Internet until they change their ways. (Comcast calls it a “mitigation measure.”)

Comcast says the browser hijacking will only go into effect after customers fail to respond to multiple previous Copyright Alerts like the one to the right. This means that no one should be surprised when Comcast cuts them off.

Fortunately, Comcast says that the system will never be used to terminate accounts, nor does it affect so-called essential services like Skype (because web browsing isn’t an “essential service”, it seems).

Still, false positives could be a problem. As with anything involving ISPs and piracy, this sort of thing is an inexact science: While Comcast clearly knows which customer is attached to which IP address, the same can’t be said for copyright holders, who have a track record of suing dead people, grandmas, and people who don’t even have computers.

That should, of course, horrify you if you’re Comcast customer, which — let’s be honest — is a bad enough status as it is.

Filed under: Business

Categorised as: Chief Digital Officer | Digital Media | Feedster

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