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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."
I'm currently programming forum software. If this succeeds somehow, it's basically saying that as a provider of a service, even indirectly, I am responsible for all use of that service.
Users should be responsible for THEIR OWN use of the service. If you're going to punish something (and sorry about agreeing with the RIAA here, if only in theory), punish the act of breaking the law, not the catalyst that allows it.
My code doesn't tell between good and evil, sorry.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
NExt they can sue the phone companies, then the post office, and hell, lets sue the highway department, theyre all used to carry illegal music.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
It seems that they're trying to get the ISPs to accept responsiblity for their users' actions. You can sue another large company without nearly as much negative press as suing individual users, but the tricky part is that the ISPs actually have money and the need to fight.
So, the ARIA is trying to get them to accept it, and if they don't there'll probably be a PR campaign aimed at the politicians and lawmakers to pressure them to hold the ISPs responsible. If it goes over well for the ARIA, you can be damn sure the RIAA will try the same.
"But I trust in the people's capacity for reflection, rage and rebellion." -Oscar Olivera
Im not entirely sure how they will manage to enforce this in the end.
Sure, you can block ports, but ports can be changed.
Sure, you can scan for certain protocols in use, but protocols can be masked by ssh and the like.
I think the main issue being missed here is that P2P is not inherantly illegal. A car could be deemed illegal, because you *can* run over and kill a person. But trying to illegalise all four-wheeled automotive transport is clearly madness. Well, for the moment anyway...
Oh no! The ISPs will block my favorite ports! I might have to change the settings of my P2P programs! Oh the inconvenience!
Seriously though. They are only doing this because when they go out of business they wont have any money with which to pay for frivolous lawsuits. Better now than never I guess.
And this lawsuit and ten million more like it, and a thousand clever laws and all the DRM in the world wont change the fact that their business model is fundamentally screwed and nothing is going to bring back the scarcity upon which their profits are based.
You can outlaw camcorders in video theaters in New York, but what if today's pirate is in Hong Kong? I saved 10 bucks by seeing Matrix Revolutions with chinese subtitles. It was barely worth watching for free (as I suspected), so I will definitely not be catching it in the theatere or on DVD.
Fuck you and your shitty sequels hollywood. I only pay for high quality product now. I intend to see return of king in the theaters and also get the trilogy DVD when the boxed set is released. I am an informed customer, only one of a growing group.
In other news the NAAFP (National Association for the Advancement of Fat People) is suing cows for "aiding and abetting" the exploitation of obese Americans.
In an unrelated case, a New York City woman is suing a concrete manufacturer for providing a pavement in which a Manhattan man had grounded himself whil illegally blowing a puff of cigerette smoke in her face.
IMO, what they're going to end up doing is throttling upload bandwidth on broadband connections to a tiny trickle; just enough to type in URLs or transmit your mouse coordinates in an online game. That would basically be the end of P2P networks: without any fast uplinks, P2P traffic would be starved down to dial-up speeds.
The ISPs would like to do this anyway because they really want you to pay extra for a commercial account to run any kind of server. The small number of high-cost commercial accounts will be easy to police for piracy.
The Internet will devolve back into a model like broadcast radio and television, with a few large publishers broadcasting unidirectionally to the masses. The general public's contribution to the Internet will largely be limited to text posts on blogs complaining about the situation.
What a stupid fuckstick. That goes double for the moderator.
It's the Australian Record Industry Association.
Artists are only part of that. Other parts of it is distributors, record companies, etc.
That includes Australian companies selling music by foreign artists.
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