Why the Copyright Alert System ended in 2017, and what it taught

Archive summary, written 2026. This page covers the end of six strikes: what was said in January 2017, what each side had argued for years, and what it meant for people online afterward. It is part of the Copyright Alert System history; this site is not the Center for Copyright Information, whose closing statement was posted on this domain.

The program had already been running on short extensions since its original four-year agreement expired in 2015. For the data it left behind, see what the program's reports said.

01The January 2017 statement

On January 27, 2017, CCI issued a joint statement for its members. As Variety reported that day, it said that "after four years of extensive consumer education and engagement, the Copyright Alert System will conclude its work." It credited the program with educating many people about legal content and online infringement, and said the parties remained committed to voluntary, cooperative efforts.

The statement did not explain why the parties stopped. Variety noted that the providers, studios and labels simply did not extend the pact. By then, mergers had changed the provider list: Variety named Altice, Comcast, AT&T, Charter and Verizon, the companies that had absorbed Cablevision and Time Warner Cable.

The MPAA's general counsel, Steven Fabrizio, gave the clearest hint. He said the program "was simply not set up to deal with the hard-core repeat infringer problem." In his view, providers had to handle persistent infringers under the repeat infringer policies of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

02What critics had argued

Critics had opposed the program since 2011. The EFF summed up its view on February 6, 2017. The agreement was negotiated without public input and treated accusations as conclusive. Review was costly and allowed only narrow defenses. The program relied on monitoring people's peer-to-peer activity, and its education materials were one-sided.

The EFF also gave the program some credit. Providers were not required to inspect their customers' traffic, they were not required to cut people off after repeated alerts, and an advisory board included consumer advocates, which the EFF had called inadequate but real.

Supporters saw it differently. In 2014 CCI and its board had called the program reliable, respectful of consumers and a model of voluntary cooperation, and the closing statement in 2017 still said it had succeeded at education. For them, ending it was a choice about what to do next, not an admission of failure.

Some rights holders were critics too, from the other side. In a February 14, 2016 report, TorrentFreak noted that several independent film studios had called the program an ineffective "sham". It also noted that under the existing terms, subscribers got no warnings after the sixth alert and faced no permanent disconnection.

03What changed for subscribers

For most people, the end of six strikes meant the end of a fixed ladder. There were no more shared educational, acknowledgment and mitigation steps, no more $35 review before a reviewer, and no common rules across the five providers.

It did not mean the end of copyright notices. Rights holders kept sending notices to providers, and providers kept forwarding many of them under their own policies. Federal law still conditions a provider's safe harbor on having a policy to end service to repeat infringers "in appropriate circumstances", in section 512(i) of the Copyright Act.

The legal pressure on providers also shifted. Music companies sued providers over customers who kept infringing. On March 25, 2026, in Cox Communications v. Sony Music Entertainment, the Supreme Court held that a provider is contributorily liable only if it induced infringement or offered a service tailored to it, and that knowing some customers infringe is not enough. That ruling sets the rules for providers today; it does not change what a notice means for you.

If a notice reaches you now, start with what to do when your provider forwards a copyright notice.

04From alerts to takedowns and AI claims

In 2013, the common copyright dispute for an ordinary household was a warning about file sharing. The common disputes now are takedown notices against things people post, and, more and more, arguments over AI: work copied by AI tools, or human work wrongly called AI-made.

The tools are different, but the questions are the same ones six strikes raised. Who has to prove what? How fast must you answer? Is there a fair, cheap way to say "you have the wrong person"? One lesson carries over directly: keep records before you need them, because in most disputes the person accused has to show what really happened. Our guides cover how a DMCA takedown notice and counter-notice work and takedowns involving AI-generated or AI-copied work.