Monday will be a sad day for US Internet users as the new Copyright Alert System rolls out to five major ISP’s including AT&T, Cablevision, Comcast, Time Warner and Verizon.  The Copyright Alert System (CAS) is meant to be an “educational” program that will fight low-level or “Casual” piracy in the United States.

Jim Lesser, the Director of the Center for Copyright Information which is implementing the CAS told TIME:

It’s sort of a new model of cooperation enabling the movie and music companies to be able to identify allegedly infringed files and pass those notices on to subscribers to their ISPs

Instead of actually cutting off service to customers that pirate media, the participating ISP’s will significantly slow down connection speeds after 5-6 offenses.  There is also the possibility that repeat “pirates” could have to complete “educational programs.”

The general consensus from people on the Internet is that the CAS is just another example of corporate interests controlling ISP’s.   CAS will reportedly make its way onto Comcast starting Monday, with the other four ISP’s following throughout the week.

The Center even released a nice little promotional video for CAS in case you wanted to learn more about it (Notice that it has 51 likes and 3,400 dislikes.)