Australian Federal Police Raid Major ISPs

pflodo writes "The Australian (newspaper) has an article about Telstra the major Australian ISP and other 'declined to name' ISPs that have been raided by Australian Federal Police to 'seek the identity of particular subscribers' in relation to their activity and files stored on the ISP's servers. I imagine they will eventually raid some domestic homes and make a scapegoat of some unfortunate teenagers."

Comments

Can somebody explain Australian law for me?

[Rev.LoveJoy]

I admit my ignorance here, but why would the police actually "raid" the ISPs in question rather than just subpeona the information they require through the court system?

From the tone of this article it strikes me that the police suspect the ISPs of criminal complicity in regards to their subscriber's alleged actions.

Is this how it normally works down under?

Cheers,
-- RLJ

Re:Can somebody explain Australian law for me?

[Snaller]

I may be a little bit under read when it comes to the law, but here in australia I was under the impression that ignorance is no excuse. In fact I was under the impression that this was the attitude of courts world wide, can't image a court going "ahhh well you didn't know murder was a crime. Off you go then, and don't do it again.".

Except there are differences(and not everything is murder). The postoffice is generally not considered to be guilty if someone sends a bomb (or anthrax) via the mail - so here Ignorance IS not only an excuse, but a just defense. Same with the ISP, depending on what has happened, they probably had know way of knowing what was going on. Of course it they had movies for download on their main page that'd be something else :0)

Lately...

[asparagus]

It seems like the Aussies have taken a page or two from the US's "Big Book O' Terrorism" manual.

Any .au geeks that have lived in the US and would care to compare/contrast the two in terms of rights, both real and perceived?

Copyrighted Material?

[ChibiTaryn]

What I want to know is, what exactly constitutes "copyrighted material" legally here in Australia.

I have a bunch of SNES ROM's and anime (series, music and movies) that have no licencing in Australia. I also have some PlayStation ISO's, same deal. The anime/game wasn't released in Australia (or in any PAL territory, with some of them), so the only way that I could get it was online.

If it were possible for me to have acquired this stuff another way, I'd have done it...

Is that kind of thing considered illegal?

Re:Copyrighted Material?

[Mark (ph'x)]

IANAL but isnt copying media a civil matter, and only distribution is criminal?

Additionally I really hate these stupid numbers that are thrown around... $60million? Yeah maybe... but if i copy a few gig of mp3 off a friend i am NOT ripping the ARIA off for $200000 bucks. Maybe I will not buy a couple of CD's. Sure the record company loses $60. But seriously... these guys with 200 gig of mp3 are hardly likely to have gone and bought it all if they couldntve downloaded it :P

What college student can afford a few million dollars in music?

ISP premium privacy services...

[megazoid81]

If the legal framework allows it, there should be ISPs who offer separately secured hardware and better assurances of privacy protection and non-disclosure to paranoid subscribers who are willing to pay a premium for this purpose. I, for one, would gladly pay up for such assurances. Any other takers?

Presumably, there could be some kind of ISP credit rating to add accountability and prevent consumers from rapidly switching ISPs to circumvent scrutiny. Privacy premium Internet access could be granted based on records of responsible online citizenship and satisfaction on the ISPs part that the subscriber wouldn't do anything illegal and get them into trouble.

Would it be possible to convince ISPs to implement such an 'Iron Curtain' feature or would it qualify as aiding terrorists, like purchasing narcotics does? *sigh*

$60 million---How do they know?

[release7]

Estimating of the cost of infinitely reproducible 1s and 0s is probably futile and ultimately an exercise in the absurd. Journalists need to stop reporting such numbers as fact without explaining where exactly how this amount is arrived at.

My guess is that these dollar figure likely assume that every copy of a song downloaded results in a lost record sale so the record labels can cry "boo-hoo" all the way to the bank. However, just because I have the Rocky theme on my hard drive doesn't mean that I would have run out to the store and plunked down $13 bucks for the CD otherwise.

Let's look down the road, shall we?

[djupedal]

"Authorities in [your country name here] today raided several warehouses, looking for beer making components in a widespread crackdown on home-brew that several large consortiums claim is responsible for annual corporate loses in the millions."

"Authorities in [your country name here] today raided several warehouses, looking for bolts of fabric in a widespread crackdown on home-made garments that several large consortiums claim is responsible for annual corporate loses in the millions."

"Authorities in [your country name here] today raided several warehouses, looking for metal forging tools and raw materials in a widespread crackdown on home-made bicycles that several large consortiums claim is responsible for annual corporate loses in the millions."

And keep in mind that your tax monies are paying for the police to take action to support these corporations as they reach further and further into your pockets - and your life. Think this is all a reach? Think again...

$60 million?

[the_proton]

Hrmmm, that sounds a bit dodgy to me...

Lets think about it, assuming each song is worth $5 (a bit generous but let's be nice...), that makes around 12 million songs. With each song being around 3 MB, that'd be 36,000,000 MB... which is about 34 TB.

Now you can't tell me that any ISP lets customers have that much storage, and they would probably notice if someone, or a small group, was contributing to 34 TB of traffic.

Sounds like someone might be overestimating by a bit don't you think?

- proton

Decidely odd

[ras]

Copyright violation in Australia is a civil offence in Australia, unless you sell the stuff. Search for the word "civil" here.

I know this with a fair amount of certainty, as I was on the end of a similar search warrant during the "drink or die" bust. At the time I was totally mystified as to why, after telling me they were going to search my work place for "copyright violations" and having a search warrant that said they could look for anything illegal under Australia law, they took absolutely no interest in the various CD collections we have, nor did they search any of the workstations for illegal software.

It turned out the target was a guy who used to work here and who did (briefly) have an IRC chat with drink or die after it had been infiltrated. That was how they got our IP. The cops were interested in IRC logs mainly, but I had cleaned up the servers ages ago. His house was later searched and the fed's did find his collection of 200 odd pirated movies. But it was just a hobby - he did not sell anything. I am presuming that is why he has not been charged.

It is a weird hobby if you ask me. It costs more here in Australia to download & burn a movie then it does to hire it, a lot more in fact.

Anyway, there has to be more to this than was reported in the article. For the police to be involved someone must be suspected of selling, or somehow otherwise getting monetary gain out of illegally distributing copyrighted material. Australia's copyright laws may sound lame from what I have said, but if someone is found to of broken the criminal law it won't be a slap on the wrist. They will end up in jail.

Really music?

[QueenOfSwords]

Is it possible the MP3 story is a cover for an ongoing investigation into child pr0n ? Perhaps that's what the AFP are actually after but they don't want to tip off the crims, they go to ground very quickly.
There was that story on the news in Australia last night about concern for the whereabouts of a child depicted in a porn photo, those photos don't get out unless someone gets busted. These raids could be a result of that. Just a thought.

My experiences with Law & Carriers

[harikiri]

When I worked at a major carrier in Australia as a security admin, we had some on staff known as 'LELU' - which from recollection stands for Law Enforcement Lliason Unit. These were the people whom the different law enforcement groups would approach with warrants and requests for subscriber info. Then LELU in turn would approach the security geeks and say 'we need to know which subscriber was on IP address x.x.x.x at 10.30pm GMT+11'.

Not once do I recall a 'raid' of our subscriber info. The LELU process seemed to be a good mechanism for law agencies to work with the techs at the organisation.

Re:big problem here...

[TWX_the_Linux_Zealot]

"Let's say I steal a $500 stereo. The government might spend $10,000 investigating my crime and imprisoning me. By your argument, "the authorities and lawmakers" would be better off leaving me alone. "

first off, that's NOT what he's talking about. If I read his post correctly, he's talking about collateral damage. It'd be more like if there was a criminal in the house next door to yours, and the government bulldozing your house to erect a barrier around the criminal. Damage was done to others in the name of the investigation by the government. This is a problem. We haven't even gotten into what the investigation itself cost...

" You disgust me. IT'S A CRIME. While you may look at it as a fairly innocent, no harm done crime, it is the law that distributing copyrighted material without the owners permission is illegal. We don't get to choose which laws we obey. Before getting a warrant, police don't think 'I wonder what the negative consequences of this warrant will be?" They think "Someone is breaking the law. I should stop them.'"

Have you looked at the music industry much? Popular musicians have albums go platinum and the industry, selling CDs for $17.95 each, says that the album isn't profitable and barely pays the musician anything. It's to the point that musicians like Moby are going on to talkshows on NPR and telling people that he'd rather them 'steal' his music and listen to it if they aren't going to pay the RIAA for it, rather than it go unheard. Others have come out and directly asked where the money is that the RIAA has asked Congress for regarding pirate-able media taxes, since the artists themselves haven't seen a dime from it, yet the RIAA said it was for the artists' benefit. The entire system is screwed to a pooch, and if the music industry in general isn't willing to adapt itself to meet new demands or new paradigms, it should die.

If you want to compenate a musician for their contribution to society, attend a concert of theirs, or send them a check for $20 or something as gratuity. Don't pay the RIAA any more for their stupid practices.