In a piece of news that barely made any headlines last month, a group of small movie studios teamed up to launch a new coalition dubbed the Internet Security Task Force (ISTF). But while the group’s launch largely went under the radar, it’s now looking poised to be much more aggressive than The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), the trade association that represents the six major Hollywood studios.

ISTF, which includes Voltage Pictures, Millennium, Bloom, Sierra/Affinity and FilmNation Entertainment among its members, today announced its first point of action – calling for an end to the voluntary “six strikes” Copyright Alert System, the anti-piracy agreement between MPAA, The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and several of the U.S.’s largest Internet providers.

ISTF lists data that shows the six strikes law is not having the desired effect, and has publicly described the system as a “sham”.

Mark Gill, President of Millenium Films, said in a press release that his studio had forwarded numerous piracy notices concerning the movie Expendables 3, but ISPs only took action against a small fraction of these.

“We’ve always known the Copyright Alert System was ineffective, as it allows people to steal six movies from us before they get an educational leaflet. But now we have the data to prove that it’s a sham,” Gill said. “On our film ‘Expendables 3,’ which has been illegally viewed more than 60 million times, the CAS only allowed 0.3% of our infringement notices through to their customers. The other 99.7% of the time, the notices went in the trash.”

Under the Copyright Alert System, U.S. ISPs agreed to forward a limited number of notices per month, which means that anything above that threshold is not sent, ISTF complained. The organization’s data on Expendables 3 infringements therefore suggests the system is less effective than previous systems which it replaced. The group pointed to Cox Communications Inc., and Charter Communications Inc., two ISPs that chose not to participate in the Copyright Alert System, which saw a decrease of 25.47 percent in reported infringements between November 2014 and January 2015, compared to an increase of just 4.54 percent among ISPs who joined the scheme.

“These alarming numbers show that the CAS is little more than talking point utilized to suggest these five ISPs are doing something to combat piracy when in actuality, their customers are free to continue pirating content with absolutely no consequences,” said Voltage Pictures CEO Nicolas Chartier. “As for its laughable six strikes policy, would any American retailer wait for someone to rob them six times before handing them an educational leaflet? Of course not, they call the cops the first time around.”

But while the ISTF’s data gives cause for concern over the Copyright Alert System, the studios seem somewhat confused about how it works. Customers can actually recieve an educational notice the first time they are caught – the “six strikes” instead relates to the graduated response scheme, which dishes out stronger punishments each time a customer is caught infringing on copyrights.

Despite this, the ISTF has proposed the “notice-and-notice system” used in Canada as a better alternative. The group notes that as of this year, Canadian ISPs are obliged to forward all infringement notices to customers regardless, and says the system has been extremely effective in reducing digital piracy.

ISTF points to data that shows Bell Canada has seen a 69.6 percent decrease in infringments so far this year, while rival firms TELUS Communications Company, Shaw Communications, TekSavvy Solutions, Inc. and Rogers Communications saw decreases of 54 percent, 52.1 percent, 38.3 percent and 14.9 percent respectively. ISTF said the data was collected via CEG TEK, an American monitoring firm that send infringement notices paired with settlement requests on behalf of copyright holders, sometimes demanding hundreds of dollars from alleged pirates.

As such, these threats seem to have the desired effect, ISTF says.

Currently, U.S. ISPs are not obliged to forward copyright infringement notices, though some ISPs (such as Comcast Corp.) do so voluntarily, but without the settlement demands. The ISFT is hoping to force ISPs to forward all infringement notices in future, and has written a letter to the MPAA, RIAA and major ISPs urging them to ditch the Copyright Alert System in favor of the Canadian model.

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