US Internet service providers AT&T, Cablevision, Comcast, Time Warner Cable, and Verizon are rolling out a system in the coming weeks to warn or punish users who download and share copyrighted content.

The Copyright Alert System, proposed last year, will be used to deliver warnings and infringement notices to ISP users illegally downloading copyrighted material.

ISP providers have structured the system to deliver warnings to initial offenders via email. These emails will contain warnings about illegally downloading copyrighted material and provide links to websites with more information.

If the illegal downloading continues the next warnings will be displayed on the computer screen as a browser page when the user accesses the internet. The user must click-through this page to acknowledge the notice, in order to access the internet.

Punishment for further offending will vary from provider to provider, ranging from requiring the subscriber to review “educational material” to throttling data speeds. In the case of Time Warner Cable, the fifth infringement will result in the user’s internet connection being suspended. This forces them to call Time Warner in order to reinstate it, which, as Time Warner Cable spokesman Alex Dudley puts it, “is just to get you to pick up the phone so you can listen to us preach about copyright infringement.”

It is unclear what further action ISP providers can take apart from suspending access to the internet. Some ISP providers will be able to terminate users’ internet use with that specific company, but that won’t prevent them from joining up with someone else. This is because ISP companies don’t have access to users’ personal information due to privacy laws, which prevents them from taking matters further.

The point of the alert system is to prevent users from even reaching that point, but in reality it is expected to be a very minor deterrent.