The 2011 Memorandum of Understanding behind six strikes, in plain English

Archive summary, written 2026. Almost everything about the Copyright Alert System traces back to one document: the Memorandum of Understanding, or MOU. This page explains it in plain English, section by section. For how the program played out, see the six strikes overview and timeline. This site is not the Center for Copyright Information, which the agreement created and which once posted the text on this domain.

We worked from the final text dated July 6, 2011 and from contemporary analysis on both sides, including an MPAA executive's February 18, 2014 paper for the World Intellectual Property Organization, which calls the agreement a voluntary supplement to the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Quotations are short; the summaries are ours.

01Who signed it

The main parties were the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), called the "Content Owner Representatives". On the other side were five internet providers listed in Attachment A: the AT&T companies, the Verizon companies, Comcast, Cablevision (for its systems in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut) and Time Warner Cable.

For certain sections, the studios and labels themselves also signed on: Walt Disney Studios, Paramount, Sony Pictures, Twentieth Century Fox, Universal and Warner Bros. for film, and UMG, Warner Music Group, Sony Music and EMI for music. The trade groups for independent labels (A2IM) and independent film producers (IFTA) were named as part of the effort.

The agreement was voluntary. It was not a law or a regulation, and it bound only its parties. It ran for four years from the date all parties signed, and any party could withdraw early on stated grounds.

02What the internet providers agreed to do

• Run a Copyright Alert program. Each provider would build a program substantially similar to a four-step frame: up to two educational alerts, two acknowledgment alerts, one mitigation alert with a penalty, and one post-mitigation alert.
• Forward notices. Providers would match notices from rights holders to residential wired broadband accounts and send alerts, up to agreed volumes set in each provider's implementation agreement.
• Apply temporary penalties. At the mitigation step, providers chose from a list: slower speeds, a lower service tier, a warning page until the subscriber called, a temporary restriction, or a warning page with a copyright lesson
• Protect key services. Providers did not have to apply a penalty likely to cut off internet phone service, email, home security or medical monitoring.
• Report and pay. Providers would send monthly anonymized statistics and fund half of CCI.

A footnote made clear that the agreement did not require providers to terminate repeat infringers under the DMCA; references to termination were informational.

03What the rights holders agreed to do

• Detect and notify. Rights holders would identify alleged peer-to-peer infringement using written methods and send notices to the provider that held the internet address.
• Submit to technical review. CCI would hire an impartial technical expert to review those methods on an ongoing basis and recommend fixes.
• Accept review results. Rights holders were bound by the outcome of a subscriber's review for purposes of the program.
• Fund half of CCI and help build its education program, which was to point people to lawful sources of music, film and TV.

The agreement did not stop rights holders from suing anyone. The later alerts had to say so, and providers kept counting notices after the sixth alert so the information could be used in a lawsuit.

04Consumer protections in the text

The agreement included several protections that supporters pointed to:

• a seven-day grace period after each alert, and a reset after twelve months with no notice;
• no identifying information to rights holders except through lawful process or the subscriber's own choice of defense;
• a review program run by an outside body, with a $35 fee refunded on a win, and six defenses;
• a three-member advisory board of consumer and subject-matter experts;
• a waiting period of 10 business days or 14 calendar days before any penalty, so a subscriber could ask for review.

Critics found the same protections thin. In its July 18, 2011 analysis, the EFF said the advisory board had no vote and the burden of proof sat on subscribers. It added that the six defenses left out others available in court, the deadline was too short, and nothing penalized rights holders for wrong notices. The review rules are explained in our guide to the alert stages, and common questions are answered in the Copyright Alert System FAQ.

05The amendments, 2012 to 2016

The parties could change the agreement by mutual written consent, but the text said no change could raise a provider's notice volumes without that provider's agreement. CCI posted amendments alongside the original text on this domain during the program; this summary does not detail them, because we could not check those copies.

The later changes are better documented. TorrentFreak reported on September 3, 2015 that the original agreement had quietly expired and that the parties had agreed a four-month extension while they worked on changes, with yearly notice volumes a likely issue. On February 14, 2016, TorrentFreak reported a further, shorter extension to March 22, 2016, and a CCI spokesperson called it routine business while the parties refined the system.

The program ran on until January 2017, when the parties chose not to continue. That story is told in the launch history and the pages that follow it.

06Where to read the original

The MOU was published by CCI as a PDF on this domain in 2011. We do not republish it, because the text belongs to its authors. Public web archives keep the copy that once lived here under its old address, and copies circulated among lawyers and researchers who followed the program; one widely linked law office copy was not loading when we checked in October 2026.

When you read it, start with Section 4(G) for the alert steps and Attachment C for the review program. Those two parts explain most of what subscribers experienced.