ISP proposes independent body to police copyright Having survived legal action brought by content owners, ISP iiNet has proposed an independent body be established to help police illegal access to and distribution of copyright material on the Internet. In its white paper, entitled Encouraging legitimate use of Online Content, the company says the independent body could act as …
> It offers an “imperfect” analogy to traffic infringements, noting that whatever penalties someone may incur as the driver of a car, punishment never extends to “the total denial of access to transport.”
More like as the owner of a car you get penalised, regardless of whether you're driving it or not.
While it's my name on the contract with the ISP, there's no telling who's actually using the connection to do the naughty, but they're seeking to punish the whole household. (And yes I accept that I should be responsible for securing the WiFi, policing what the family are up to blah blah).
They stamped out piracy on Kazaa and Limewire and it's ilk, and if they get their way they'll kill public bittorrenting. But do they really think this will stop online piracy?
It offers an “imperfect” analogy to traffic infringements, noting that whatever penalties someone may incur as the driver of a car, punishment never extends to “the total denial of access to transport.”
A quick look on the WA Police site finds the following.
"For any applicable offence police must impound a vehicle for 28 days for a first offence. For a second offence they must impound a vehicle for three months. Upon conviction for a third or subsequent offence, as well as the normal penalties for the offence, a court may also order the permanent confiscation of the vehicle or its impoundment for up to six months."
http://www.police.wa.gov.au/Antisocialbehaviour/Reportinghoons/Impoundedvehicles/tabid/1570/Default.aspx
Also, the Police tow the car away when they stop you, not when a court says you're guilty. There's been a few cases here where the driver has not been found guilty, but they or the owner have been without the vehilce for 3 months. Forget about compensation too.
...if they had invested as must effort as they have invest trying to pursue the copyright infringers into actually creating viable, reasonably priced DRM free alternatives they would be laughing all the way to the bank.
Let's face it - torrents suck... quality is always an issue - poorly seeded torrents download crazy slow and there is always a chance that you'll finish the download to find a "password protected" zip, or worse a trojan. Even with usenet you never know what you are going to get.
So if there was a uber-fast server waiting to zap me a top quality DRM free alternative at a reasonable price... I'd be there.
I guess it depends on where and when you get the torrents from.
Poorly seeded? -- often down the the greedy who do not share but delete the torrent file as soon as it's finished the main file.
Slow? -- depends on the time of day and where you are. I won't bother trying if it's in the evening (UK), I'll set it up then kick it off first thing in the morning. Sometimes 100meg arrives whileI'm making a cuppa.
Unwanted extras? -- set the client to fire off your A/V scan as soon as the download finishes. Never had a 'password protected zip file' but then I tend to check comments before downloading. Keygens are usually marked as 'Trojans' so you need to check what the A/V is reporting.
Uberfast server? -- I guess a hundred seeds isn't fast enough at times - ah, well.
So to recap
Copyright *violation* is as bad as child pornography and needs a separate body to guard against it.
AFAIK Copyright violation remains a *civil* crime in Australia like everywhere else and it's up to the *producer* to chase them down. "Violation" just *sounds* really bad.
Aus ISP's are common carriers. It's *none* of their business what goes down their pipe (with the possible exception of spam from infected PC's).
I think the icon expresses my overall reaction.
With this paper iiNet have done the impossible - found a solution which isn't ideal but is at least bearable for all parties. It's a very clever idea - and therefore will be rejected by the people who have to make it happen. The IT industry doesn't sit well with legacy institutions like governments.
BTW I'm not employed by iiNet or anything - although I do use them as my ISP and find their tech support excellent.
What really gets me is this...
When the politicians and the government are doing things the general public doesn't agree with there are protests, public action, and (no that I condone it) in extreme cases of public dissatisfaction, assassination attempts.
Where is this kind of outrage by the public towards copyright holders? The only way copyright holders (MPAA/RIAA/ACIG), and even corporations who are trying to excessively lock down and control the public's use of their own devices (Apple/Microsoft/Sony) will ever learn is to find thousands of angry protesters surrounding their offices, waving banners and shouting over PA systems.
These kind of actions against corporations and corporate lobby groups would be an extremely effective tactic, even more so than against governments since the corporations have stock prices to worry about, any kind of public protest against a corporation will cause a sudden drop in their stock price, something CEOs really don't like since it effects their end of year bonuses.
The question is, how long can these corporations last before they are forced to bow to public opinion?
The RIAA and their friends don't sell music, they sell little plastic things and they have huge inventory problems. They don't want competition. Based on some stats from a local radio station's contest, I suspect that there is about one album worth of unique music made every year for every 1000 people. This means the billion or so people in the developed world should be making about a million new albums every year. That breaks the top 40 business in a very bad way.
When does a song like "Happy Birthday" go into the public domain? While the law won't agree with me, I think it already is firmly in the public domain since very few people have any idea who wrote it or recorded it.
I also wonder if the US Senate paid royalties for singing a copyright song on the steps of the capitol seen at least briefly by more than a billion news viewers around the world.
So who's going to pay?
The content industry? In which case, how can we have any confidence in the "impartiality" of this body?
The ISPs? Then how exactly is the burden being removed from them?
The government? Ah, then you've cunningly come up with another way of getting taxpayers to pay for copyright enforcement, without going through the hassle of criminalising casual infringement.
Some combination of the above? - would combine all of the above issues without solving any of them.
There are already laws in place that protect the copyright holder. It is already established that copyright infringement is a legal civil matter. The Onus is on the copyright holder to protect and peruse those that may infringe on their copyright .It certainly is not the governments’ responsibility and it certainly it’s a third parties problem
To legislate further to appease these whiny little brats will open up a can of worms. Where does it stop? Will the government then need to legislate and take responsibility for all copyright matters across all industries?
To the Entertainment industry I have this to say
STFU, grow up and take responsibility for the protection of your own property and business. Also recognise that technology and times evolve and so must you.
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