Australian ISP's To Crack Down On Piracy 108
xav_jones writes "The ABC is reporting that 'Australia's five major ISPs have revealed their plans to crack down on online piracy by sending warning notices to suspected illegal downloaders while assisting rights holders to pursue serial offenders through the courts.' The idea is that '[d]uring an 18-month trial, rights holders would send copyright infringement notices, including evidence of copyright infringement and the IP address involved, to ISPs who would then send "educational notices" to the internet users concerned.' Further action would entail that '[u]sers who are suspected of further copyright breaches would then receive up to three warning notices before rights holders are able to pursue court action.' This seems a gentler approach than other countries. Will it prove more effective and/or cost efficient?"
who is paying? is court precursor to all action? (Score:5, Insightful)
(1) Will nothing happen to the alleged offender (i.e. no throttling/cut-off/etc.) unless and until a court has found against him?
(2) I don't understand how a group of ISPs in cooperation with "rights holders" could get to decide when "rights holders are able to pursue court action" unless there is some legislation behind it - ideas?
(3) Would the "rights holders" be paying for the admin involved in all of this?
Re:who is paying? is court precursor to all action (Score:5, Insightful)
What Evidence (Score:5, Insightful)
The real issue is what evidence will be deemed acceptable, what proof will be required of uploading content. Nothing automated, who monitored it, what content was uploaded content was downloaded (file names not good enough as no one has copyright on file names). The period over which that IP address was monitored with at least one independent witness (can't have for profit people who get paid per copyright infringement notification).
Problem is this 'creative industry' has a history of being creative with lies, as such any accusation should be corroborated by independent people to ensure validity.
Regardless of the lies and bullshit, the whole industry is still parasitic by nature, it neither feed, clothes, houses or heals. It is a luxury and it's impact upon the necessities of life always needs to be limited.
this is not reasonable (Score:5, Insightful)
Please not that this may sound reasonable but it is not. In the end it just comes down to the ISP giving information on its customers to third parties without a court order.
Re:I already got a letter (Score:5, Insightful)
although, I am just considering a whole bunch of proxies and Tor.
...and this is where their master plan breaks down.
If they squeeze too hard the piracy networks will just add another layer of obfuscation. Everybody's bandwidth requirements could double because they're all part of a network of proxies and the ISPs will lose out long term. I wonder if anybody's pointed this out to them yet...?
The legal way is the right way (Score:4, Insightful)
If only other countries worried about copyright infringement would adopt this novel concept...
Sounds like a good approach - for the file sharer. (Score:5, Insightful)
This approach means that if I read it correctly the file sharer gets four warnings (one "educational letter" and three formal warnings) before anything happens.
That means that smart file sharers will take action after the first letter, to cover their tracks. E.g. starting to use encryption, or other methods that hide to the ISP what you're up to. And after that there are three warning letters that allow fine tuning of their methods. Receiving such a letter basically means "you're doing something wrong, we can still see what you're doing!".
And the end result: the ISP happy as there is not much for them to do; the recording industry happy because they don't see any file sharing taking place any more; and the user happy because they can continue what they've been doing over the last decade but now they're safe.
Re:I already got a letter (Score:5, Insightful)
Right now, VPNs are being used by this purpose, but when more people get disconnected, VPN use will become more common, just because people will actually start caring who is listening in.
I know I do this if I'm using a local wireless network. This way, someone listening in or using a FireSheep type of utility isn't going to be able to get far. Enabling a VPN means that I don't have to worry about a lot of local attacks, be it DNS poisoning, Phorm-like ad intrusions, or other man in the middle stuff. And none of this is for covering illegal/criminal activity -- it is to keep someone from interfering/eavesdropping with my network connectivity.
What is happening is that this is only going to shoot ISPs in their own foot. People move to VPNs, and now instead of being able to catch the serious criminals (the child pornography guys), all lines will go dark. Of course, governments and ISPs can go after VPNs, but that turns the "game" from passively sniffing traffic into an active cat and mouse play in both the legal and technical aspects.
Of course, the next step from VPNs are offshore VPNs, and this will mean that a routine shakedown for IP violations will turn into an international incident, and there are plenty of countries out there who will be more than happy to give the US the middle finger when it comes to hunting someone who pirated the latest Justin Beiber CD.
ISPs need to be smart and just sit back and only go after users who commit the more heinous crimes. If they go after every Joe who copies a MP3 file, then everyone will start using encryption.