Australian ISPs Reject Calls To Police Their Users 86
jon_cooper writes "After recent setbacks in the RIAA's lawsuits, the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft (AFACT) has decided to try a different approach in Australia - they want ISPs to do their dirty work for them. Australian ISPs, though, have soundly rejected calls from AFACT to slow down or terminate user accounts that AFACT has determined are being used to distribute copyrighted works. Telstra (one of the larger ISPs in question) had this to say: 'We do not believe it is up to the ISPs to be judge, jury and executioner in relation to the issue when the content owners have any number of legal avenues to pursue infringements.'"
AFACT should pay the call center costs (Score:5, Insightful)
Assuming that people have a right to confront the accuser (AFACT), then shouldn't AFACT bear the labor costs of that confrontation?
Re:Of course they won't (Score:2, Insightful)
First ever positive Telstra comment... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Same ISPs as in the U.S.? (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course, New Zealand is rightfully sovereign, but I'm not sure that calling an ISP that services both Australia and New Zealand a "multinational".
Do you realise that this kind of attitude is why Americans are stereotyped as being totally ignorant and ego-centric? Just because a company doesn't cater to your precious US of A, it doesn't mean it isn't multinational. Multi. National. It means that it operates in multiple nations. Such as Australia and New Zealand.
Idiots (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not wrong to distribute copyrighted works... (Score:5, Insightful)
The key is not that a work is copyrighted, but rather that the distribution occurs without the permission of the copyright holder. There's where it gets sticky. The ISP knows you are exchanging copyrighted works because everything is copyrighted. What the indutry is asking for is that the ISP identify specific chunks of data for which the distribution constitutes infringement. But how can the ISP know whether infringement is taking place?
For something to be infringing, they will need to know whether or not the sender of the content is the copyright holder, a licensee for the content with permission to redistribute (like iTunes), the terms under which the content may be distributed (only if fee collected and DRM in place), whether those terms are met (valid credit card number used / the user hasn't implemented a hack to remove DRM), whether the copyright has expired (there are still some copyrights that expire), or whether the distribution constitutes an exception to copyright protection (such as a "fair use" under US law). How can the ISP possibly know these things?
Well, they can't possibly distinguish (doubly so if the content is encrypted). Some of those things can only be answered by a court.
Nevermind it being an unnecessary burden on ISPs or a violation of their customers, the ISP is simply unable to know the legal context in which data is distributed and whether it may constitute infringement. Any accusation of that sort would necessarily need to be vetted through the approriate legal authority, not the ISP.
Re:Of course they won't (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Hmm... (Score:2, Insightful)
It also says,
I upload copyrighted works all the time, such as this Slashdot post. I also upload source code I have written to my web page. I share free software with people. Looks like AFACT would have shut someone like me down.
Or we can stop saying broad things like this. The University of Kansas says, "if you are caught downloading copyrighted material [slashdot.org], you will lose your ResNet privileges forever." You can't use the Internet without downloading copyrighted material. Unless you have spent your life in a coma, you are probably a copyright holder yourself. Even if you are not (for some odd reason), there are lots of copyrighted works [gnu.org] that you have permission to share with anyone.
Re:Give it 1 year. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Of course they won't (Score:5, Insightful)
I won't even get into the problems with the copper infrastructure vs. fiber. I'll even leave the cost analysis out of the equation.
Re:Technical solution (Score:2, Insightful)