Internet Censorship Back On Australian Agenda 109
New submitter aberglas writes "The conservative government's George Brandis wants to force ISPs to block sites that might infringe copyright. Brandis said he stood firmly on the side of content creators (a.k.a. Hollywood). Ban gross violators today, obscure ones tomorrow, porn sites, far left sites the day after..." From the article, too, this snippet: "The federal government is also considering implementing a "graduated response scheme" that could lead to consumers' internet accounts being temporarily suspended if they ignore notifications to stop downloading illegal content." Shades of the Copyright Alert System.
Re:All *might* infringe ... (Score:4, Interesting)
Lately there have been so many shitty movies out of hollyweird that I can't find anything worth downloading. It's a massive waste of bandwidth. I finally figured out that is how they are combating piracy now. The films suck so bad that no one wants to watch them even if they're free.
I fully agree, I have not watched a Hollywood movie in years.
Actually from the article Attorney-General George Brandis is the one who has flagged the changes, however he appears to agree and criticize the Copyright Act stating
"I firmly believe the fundamental principles of copyright law, the protection of rights of creators and owners did not change with the advent of the internet and they will not change with the invention of new technologies."
then
He described the Copyright Act as "overly long, unnecessarily complex, often comically outdated and all too often, in its administration, pointlessly bureaucratic".
In the article there is a statement:
Australians are among the most avid users of pirating websites in the world. For example, Australians accounted for 16 per cent of all illegal downloads of television program Breaking Bad.
Having never watched "Breaking Bad" I did a quick search and found it is a TV series which anyone with a Personal Video Recorder can actually copy if they wish to do so however this show is not a so called Hollywood movie and many people who have missed one or more episodes can actually catch up by going on-line and watch the shows at selected legitimate sites (a quick search will find them).
Of course you can download via torrent (no money changes hands) which I think the government would like to stop but there lies the problem, without snooping programs which can determine if a torrent download infringes copyright you have no way of knowing and ISP's would not be happy running this type of software since it would take up resources all for the sake of possibly catching an "illegal" down-loader. This type of thing would not be a vote winner.
The problem is that many TV shows can be caught up by going on-line and watching them at "legitimate" web sites. Bringing in legislation to block so called illegal torrent downloading will have an enormous voter backlash which no sane government in their right mind would want.
Re:Follow the money... (Score:5, Interesting)
I've always wondered why a person is always able to join a party, but I don't think I've ever seen a party kick someone out.
If you are an Aussie then you need to pay a bit more attention to who is who.
Most of those booted out of the major party are not MP's at the time. Recent example - "Billionaire miner" Clive Palmer who was at one time the Lib's largest financial sponsor was publically kicked out of the Liberal party prior to the last election. He formed the PUP party and narrowly won a senate seat in the last election and it is likely he will hold the balance of power when the new senate is seated (mid-2014). Clive Palmer recently gained federal permission to dump millions of tons of dredgings from his $30 billion coal port project into a nearby marine park on the reef. If your average Aussie threw a chip packet in the same park they would be heavily fined.
MP's normally resign their post and keep their party membership, Victorian state politician Tony Shaw uses this to his advantage and has recently forced the resignation of a premier and a house speaker. Liberals have kicked him out of the party and labour refuses to "negotiate" with him, but Shaw still has his seat and still has the balance of power. Shaw and Palmer demonstrate one of the few downsides of having a healthy population of independents elected.