Mexico's Senate Approves ISP Rules To Disconnect Persistent Online Pirates

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: On Tuesday, Mexico's Senate approved (PDF) a reform of the Federal Copyright Law that ties ISP liability to having a policy to terminate repeat infringers. [This policy has to be published permanently on their website and in their terms of service, and it must include a basic way to notify users. In other words, what can be terminated is the Internet connection itself, not just an account. According to Mexican business outlet EL CEO, this means that access providers such as Telmex and Izzi will need such a policy.] The Senate approved the amendments with roughly two-thirds of the vote, as the opposition voted against. The Chamber of Deputies already approved the same text in October, so the decree now goes to President Claudia Sheinbaum. Her government proposed the changes in May to bring the law in line with the USMCA trade agreement between Mexico, the United States and Canada.

[...] Providers that don't comply risk facing liability. Under the new rules, any ISP that fails to meet its safe harbor conditions becomes liable for its users' infringements if it knowingly contributes to, induces, or causes the infringement. The same goes for an ISP that can control the infringing user and profits directly from the infringement. In both cases, the Mexican Institute of Industrial Property (IMPI) can fine the provider up to roughly 4.7 million pesos (~$250,000), depending on the infringement. The law doesn't explicitly define the term repeat infringer, nor does it say how many piracy accusations it takes before a subscriber can be cut off. According to Aurora Lopez-Portillo, director of legal services at IP firm ClarkeModet, each provider has to decide its own threshold. She told EL CEO that ISPs should also check whether the accusations actually hold up, while giving users a chance to respond, even though the law doesn't require that.

During Tuesday's Senate debate, some lawmakers in the opposition raised similar concerns. Senator Gabriel Elizondo warned that families can share a single connection, so the pirating activities of one person could leave an entire household offline. Previously, opposition lawmakers proposed requiring a court order before Internet service could be suspended, but that proposal was not adopted. [...] There, failing to meet the safe harbor conditions, including the repeat infringer policy, is the first requirement for liability. If an ISP also contributes to infringement with knowledge of it, or can control the infringer and directly profits from it, it can be held responsible. The new repeat infringer rules will take effect 180 days after their publication in Mexico's official gazette, which hasn't happened yet as far as we can see. How Mexican ISPs will define a repeat infringer, and how many accusations it takes, has yet to be seen.

Definitions matter

[CommunityMember]

If there is no definition of persistent, the ISPs are going to go all draconian to avoid their own potential liability. This is not good for anyone.

Re:

[luther349]

to a do nothing law like most stuff because with vpn, tor, encryption and other tools the isp has no idea what a user is even downloading. this is probably aimed at pirate websites then anything else.

Re:

[Zocalo]

Or not. A disconnected customer isn't going to be generating any more revenue, so I'll expect this to be about as effective as everywhere else that has tried something similar; the ISPs will do the bare minimum (because to do more would cost more, duh!), wait for the take downs, and then take every possible step they can to avoid taking any action unless it becomes a slam dunk backed up with a court order. Factor in things like CGNAT, deliberately vague logfiles and short retention policies (complete and

What do Mexican Pirates even?

[outsider007]

Is Sabado Gigante still on the air?

Re:

[RitchCraft]

Mexican pirates don't need no stinking badges.

Here's a radical idea

[Black Parrot]

Why not hold the actual violators responsible rather than the infrastructure operators?

And only after their day in court.

Re:

[Alain Williams]

Because identifying who was doing the download is much more expensive than looking to see which ISP level connection the bytes went to. I suspect that they will blindly accept a DMCA type notification from the copyright holder regardless of accuracy.

Want to nobble your competitor coffee shop ? Just use their free Wifi to download a few files.

No!

[TheMiddleRoad]

Oh, wait. I should say this in Spanish.

No!

They want their lucha to be libre.

[TheMiddleRoad]

That is all.

Most piracy is done through residential proxies

[xack]

That is spread through malware and social engineering. A lot of people are going to get mistakenly disconnected because of malware on their system. I hope they realize that disconnecting a lot of people that are not technically inclined enough to know about the malware on their system is going to lead to a lot of complaints and unrest.

Re:

[tlhIngan]

That is spread through malware and social engineering. A lot of people are going to get mistakenly disconnected because of malware on their system. I hope they realize that disconnecting a lot of people that are not technically inclined enough to know about the malware on their system is going to lead to a lot of complaints and unrest.

Or pirate boxes. You know those boxes they sell at the mall that get you "Free TV, including Premium" or some such. They're basically just generic Android TV boxes preloaded w

data centers

[smillie]

Will they be blocking those LLM data centers from scraping the net?

Re:

[stabiesoft]

Exactly what I was thinking. But as we know, AI, billionaires, so do whatever they want. And love your sig.

VPNexico loves it

[nospam007]

They'll make a killing.

So what happens if you use a VPN ???

[bsdetector101]

Then what ??

Disconnecting themselves from frontier AI

[stephanruby]

So they're going to disconnect themselves from OpenAI and Anthropic.

That's a bit harsh, if you ask me.

Accusations?

[Sloppy]

The law doesn't explicitly define the term repeat infringer, nor does it say how many piracy accusations it takes before a subscriber can be cut off.

[emphasis mine] Surely they mean convictions, no?

Why would accusations be relevant? I accuse every single member of the Mexican government of having violated the copyright on my work, four times each. They all did it four times. No, I can't prove it, but the accusation stands.