Originally Posted by Quentin

Actually, downloaders need not concern themselves with this, regardless of where they are downloading from, as the notices the system is going to send out aren't about downloading; they're about seeding.

Here's a reasonably accurate account of how the system works.

When the system was discussed by a panel at the INET in New York last November (a panel that included the Jill Lesser, the head of the Center for Copyright Information, which is the group administering the Copyright Alert System), the panelists emphasized that people who merely download won't be receiving notices from the CAS; only those who seed p2p will receive notices.

As Ron Wheeler, a senior VP at Fox Entertainment put it: "If you're downloading, you're fine."

As such, will this system have any impact the piracy it seeks to curb? I'm going to withhold judgment on that for the time being... but my offhand hunch is that the answer will turn out to be "not really, no."