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ARIA Threatens To Sue Internet Service Providers
tymbow writes "It seems that ARIA (The Australian Record Industry Association, like the RIAA) is threatening to sue ISPs who allow the illegal download of copyrighted music. Could this lead to a situation where Australian ISPs are forced to actively censor websites and P2P protocols? What happens to legitimate P2P content like Linux distributions? It will be interesting to see where this goes."
Are people pirating by other means and lots of linux users switching ISPs because BitTorrent is getting blocked.
The ISP is being sued for hosting a website that provided illegal downloads of copyrighted material. Although they do mention p2p sharing as a revenue for ISPs they can't really sue over something so hard to track.
They already did regarding on hold music and the telcos are now paying one dollar per telephonenumber to the ARIA.
Idiots.
bash$
No. ARIA is what you get when you rotate the letters in RIAA one to the right.
It's just hard to tell who's fault it is.
In the Untied [sic] States, the people who post copyrighted works without authorization and without exemption are direct infringers. The person who operates a server is a contributory infringer if the server has no substantial non-infringing use and a vicarious infringer if he has the authority to police the server and profits from the infringement. I don't know about Australian law, but these sound like the sort of extensions of the scope of dog-standard Berne copyright that any common-law country's judges would create.
has any drunk driving accident victim sued the bar which sold them the drink?
Yes. (fifth story down)
Random and weird software I've written.
Well, ISPs could block a known port or range of ports. IIRC, gnutella uses 6346 as a default. Block all traffic on 6346 and that'd stop gnutella traffic for the most part.
And users could get past that by changing the default port. I'm not on gnutella but I'm pretty sure that's possible. If it isn't currently, it could be with a quick patch.
Then, ISPs could sniff traffic and look for mp3-ish content. And block that.
And the next gen file swapper would simply encrypt packets, making sniffing computationally unfeasable.
So the short answer is no, ISPs could not enforce this. They could throw up roadblocks, but they would eventually just be speedbumps.
Weaselmancer
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
It happens, but usually only when the driver was at a restaurant/bar, and they kept serving him when he was obviously too drunk. Bar's are liable for that sort of thing.
It's a poor example, though, since drunk driving is a crime against society (ie, you can be arrested and tried in criminal court), whereas downloading britney spears' latest and greatest is a civil offense (not to mention bad taste in music).
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
I don't know how it would fit with the ISP actually hosting the files though... One would suppose that that would make that site the "server" and would make the ISP liable.
In the United States, the ISP is typically considered to have the ability to police the use of its servers after having received a takedown notice detailing the URLs or IP addresses where infringing copies are available. I'm pretty sure that even in the absence of a direct Australian counterpart to the Dumbest Mistake on Copyright in America, which codified the procedure for sending takedown notices, such a takedown letter tradition could be forged from the common law technique of cease-and-desist letters.
Hey, we're not responsible for Mel Gibson, alright? He was born american, and he's american now. He just trained here.... Even Russell Crowe was born in unzud, but he lives here.
Send lawyers, guns, and money!
I've never seen BT used for illicit activities
The Suprnova tracker network is used both for lawful and infringing purposes.
kazaa- already uses encryption .. there is still a way to find out that the service is being used.
.. some default and if they fail then they go back to port 80 .. who is going to block that port -:)
kazaa - is also slick since they use many ports
mls
It's called WASTE...google it. (Link is best I could find in 5 seconds)
-insert a witty something-
This is crap. Poor journalism too.
IANAL, but it's my understanding that the Communications and Privacy acts make it illegal for telco's and ISP's to snoop on customer activity (wiretapping). As such, they are not responsible for what their users do. They are also not entitled to reveal the details of users who are up to illegal activity unless compelled to by a court or the police.
A while ago there was a thread in the Internode forum on Whirlpool about this, where one of Internode's representatives explained it all (well, what their lawyers told them)
I was talking about this very topic with someone yesterday. It appears the ARIA is trying to use wording in Australian copyright law to claim ISPs are responsible for the copyright infingement of people who use their network. It's a stupid and somewhat illogical claim, but not really all that surprising.
Some high profile lawyers have already had a say on the issue, and have stated that ISPs would likely be in breach of the more recent privacy act if they were to implement the sort of censorship the ARIA is demanding.
As an aside, it must be said that both copyright and privacy laws have some serious issues in this country. It is illegal to copy music from a CD in any shape or form. You cannot legally burn copyrighted CDs to use them in your car, you cannot legally make MP3s from copyrighted music to use on your PC regardless of whether you purchased the music or not. Also, the new privacy act is so over the top in some places that it is virtually impossible for some organisations to come into compiance with it without breaking it in the process...
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Any man who can drive safely while kissing a pretty girl is simply not giving the kiss the attention it deserves. -- AE
This is a case where you can thank Microsoft and Apple. What is the one thing that eats bandwidth like nothing else?
Video conferencing.
Sure the telcos would love to kill it, but everyone else wants it to be the next big thing. Apple is pushing it with iChat AV and MS is pushing it with Messenger. Yahoo and AOL are doing it as well.
Video needs lots of outgoing bandwidth. Lots of people want to video conference.
Problem solved.
That was APRA (Australian Performing Rights Assocation, not to be confused with the other APRA - Australian Prudential Regulatory Authority) who sued Telstra, not ARIA but they're in bed together. APRA look after the writing royalties for their members, ARIA enforce the reproduction rights.
Copyright Act 1968 (Cth) s39B says:
A person (including a carrier or carriage service provider) who provides facilities for making, or facilitating the making of, a communication is not taken to have authorised any infringement of copyright in a work merely because another person uses the facilities so provided to do something the right to do which is included in the copyright.In non-lawyer speak, this approximately means that you can't go after an ISP merely because its users mis-use the service to breach copyright - any more than you can go after the telephone company providing the local loop that all those dial-up accounts go through.
So ARIA can huff and puff, but this house ain't coming down...
Dear Mr Smarmy,
APRA, the "Australian Performing Rigts Association" ONLY collect money for PUBLIC performances of music.
http://jesus.everdense.com/
I would like to point out that although authorisation of illegal copying is general regarded as a breach of Copyright in Australia, there are plenty of exceptions to this rule.
The exception of most interest here was introduced by the Digital Agenda copyright reforms in 2000. They are sections 39B (for works) and 112E (for subject matter other than works) of the Copyright Act 1968 (Cth). These sections preclude from the infringement by authorisation provisions anyone who provides a communication service.
The purpose of the introduction of these sections was precisely to prevent the big record labels going after ISPs for something which, as pointed out before, they legally have no control over (due to the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth)).
I personally cannot see how such litigation can be successful in the courts in light of sch provisions unless there is some other way of reading the wording "not taken to have authorised any infringement of copyright".