Australian ISPs Reject Calls To Police Their Users

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.'"

Give it 1 year.

[Anonymous Coward]

This will turn around 180' once money comes into the play. You hear that RIAA bring in the millions and we'll do your dirty work for you.

In this world everyone will do it for the money.

Being carefull.

[z0M6]

Doing said dirty work could be risky. Termination based on loose accusations might end up in lawsuits. Somehow I got the feeling that they don't want any of those.

Hmm...

[Mystery00]

A report produced last year by web monitoring company Envisional found the per capita rate of television show piracy in Australia was the highest in the world. It said Australians accounted for 15.6 per cent of all online TV piracy.

I find that part particularly interesting purely because of the idea of pirating TV shows, how, exactly, do you pirate TV shows? Watching them on TV is a free service, you have also been able to record from the TV for a very long time, what exactly is the difference between recording from the TV, and downloading the show from the net, and how does that effect the broadcasting industry?

Re:AFACT should pay the call center costs

[conspirator57]

not to mention the upfront costs of adding systems and personnel to identify users who are distributing copyrighted works.

This requires very intrusive and labor intensive monitoring of P2P streams. In most countries, the copyright holder is responsible for enforcing their own copyright. For good reason.

Also, the people who would work for the ISP and end up with this job would likely have even less motivation than the ISP. It'd be a pretty demoralizing job.

From the putative ISP copyright holders' protection team cubes:

"User 1, day 1: No P2P."
"User 2, day 1: Linux distro."
"User 3, day 1: Teenagers who can't play guitar distributing own noise pollution. Note, may be the Wyld Stalyns. Extend monitoring to check for time travel signatures and alert labels' contracting groups."
"User 4, day 1: No P2P."
"User 5, day 1: Avril Lavigne. Forget it; that copyright's worthless anyways."
"User 6, day 1: Linux again."
"User 7, day 1: ... ...
"User 9999999, day 1: "No P2P."
"Whew, we're done. What a waste of time."

Re:Hmm...

[FellowConspirator]

They're worried about the advertisement being removed and being able to resell the content. Of course, the advertisement revenu is somewhat of a Red Herring, since the model already presumes all the revenue stems from the initial broadcast or rebroadcast (i.e., the cost is based on viewership for the time slot; so the advertiser's bought the attention of the estimated number of viewers).

They're also worried that Internet availability undermines their availability to sell advertising for rebroadcasts and might impact packaged sale of shows on DVD. There's a better argument for that.

I think that, increasingly, but removing their shows from Internet distribution they're undercutting exposue of their properties to a wide audience. There's plenty of opportunity to capitalize on content without adhereing to an onerous in-broadcast advertising model.

It's amazing!

[trawg]

It's like an entity that spent billions of dollars building infrastructure now feels like they have some right to charge money for people that want to use it.

Yes, I know it was done with taxpayer money. But taxpayers decided to vote in a government that made it clear they were going to privatise it, and now it's a typical corporate entity - one that owns almost all the telecommunications infrastructure in the country - and now everyone has to cop it sweet.

I find it hard to believe that this Mark Pesce bloke moved to Australia without realising that it has, like, 10% of the population of the USA and thus probably isn't as technologically effete. It's like an Australian moving to Japan or Korea and being surprised that, shit, if you pack 10x the amount of people into 1/10th the space, it's easier to more connect people with cables.

Re:Australian Copyrights Act

[Nazlfrag]

Thanks for the link, it was an interesting read. However, there is this section:

(3) For an infringement of copyright that occurs in the course of the carrying out of a Category A activity, the relief that a court may grant against a carriage service provider is limited to one or more of the following orders:

(a) an order requiring the carriage service provider to take reasonable steps to disable access to an online location outside Australia;
(b) an order requiring the carriage service provider to terminate a specified account.

(4) For an infringement of copyright that occurs in the course of the carrying out of a Category B, C or D activity, the relief that a court may grant against a carriage service provider is limited to one or more of the following orders:

(a) an order requiring the carriage service provider to remove or disable access to infringing copyright material, or to a reference to infringing copyright material;
(b) an order requiring the carriage service provider to terminate a specified account;
(c) some other less burdensome but comparably effective nonmonetary order if necessary.

So while it protects them from monetary damages, it seems ARIA has a case under those laws. Not the reassurance I was hoping for.