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Hollywood Muscles Aussie ISPs Over Movie Downloading

Posted by timothy on from the beside-the-law dept.

Tenaka Kahn writes "Whirlpool is reporting that American movie companies are using a company (MediaForce) to try and muscle Aussie ISPs into disconnecting users who indulge in movie sharing."

5 of 350 comments (clear)

  1. Can't stop it in the US by Blaine+Hilton · · Score: 4, Interesting

    It seems like if they can't stop it in the US of A they might as well try some other countries...

  2. Re:From the article. . . . illegal? by blowdart · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Well if a home user can do it, so can a company.

    Start up Kazza (lite), start downloading a file.

    Open up a command line and run netstat

    You get the IPs you are downloading from clearly displayed.

    Now track those IPs via RIPE, ARIN and APNIC and you know the ISP, send legal letter, then errr, profit?

  3. What is wrong with this? by Quikah · · Score: 5, Interesting

    IANAL, but isn't sharing a movie or music a copyright violation? The owners of the copyright are asking the ISP to stop the people who are infringing their copyright. What is the problem? Copyright is pretty much international law with the Berne convention. I see no jurisdiction problem here.

    --
    Q.
  4. This is not the way to fight Hollywood! by QuantumG · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Whining about what the copyright holders are doing to protect their legally sanctioned monopolies is not the way to go about fighting this kind of thing. Anyone who has a lawyer will always be threatening someone, that's what lawyers are, they're middle men for thugs, and that's what thugs do, they threaten. If you receive a threat (from anyone) there is only one response: ignore it.

    Unfortunately, there are some people who respond to threats. In Australia we have had a number of ISPs that have failed to honour the contracts they have made with their customers out of fear of litigation. This kind of yellow belly behaviour is common where the threatened feels no respect for those who will suffer from their complacency. These are the people we need to report.

    If you have had your account removed or your service disconnected by your ISP, please report it!

    It is the responsibility of our freedom loving society to avoid service providers who fail to protect that freedom. If each of us take notice of these reports and boycott those ISPs that fail to protect us, then maybe we can affect real change.

    --
    How we know is more important than what we know.
  5. Moral of the Story by salesgeek · · Score: 4, Interesting

    ISPs - Don't log anything that isn't 100% necessary, and then set it up so it autodeletes to protect your customers. Remember that your customers are your most valuable business asset, and third parties asking you to close and account are creating a retention problem. Can you afford a 1%-3% increase in attrition?

    Record/Movie Biz - Stop the witch-hunt before public opinion turns on you. Copyright is an abridgement of free press and speech... What the people gave you, we have the power to take away... Find ways to lower costs and make getting new music easy... and for God's sake MARKET DECENT MUSIC and MOVIES. Most of the crap you've foisted on us is suitable only for MST3K or the soundtrack of a movie on MST3K... Come out with something NEW already (when the biggest movies of the year are based on an old novel and a comic book or are sequels, you aren't exactly pumping out the new ideas...)

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    -- $G