Slashdot Mirror
Internet Blackout Threat for Music Thieves in AU
An anonymous reader writes "News.com.au is reporting that the ARIA [Australia's Version of the RIAA] is making plans to have ISPs cancel or terminate the accounts of those who download music illegally. If the user is on dialup, that's not a problem: their telephone line will be disconnected. 'Fed up with falling sales, the industry — which claims Australians download more than one billion songs illegally each year — has been discussing tough new guidelines with internet service providers (ISPs) since late last year. The music industry is lobbying for a three strikes and you're out policy to enforce their copyright. Under this system, people who illegally download songs would be given three written warnings by their Internet service provider. If they continued to illegally download songs, their internet account would be suspended or terminated.'"
Why would ISPs agree to this? I can imagine it now, a group of ISPs implement this and then customers flock to the small ISPs who aren't big enough to warrent attention from the ARIA. Faced with a slump in revenue the ISPs reverse course and try to win customers back.
Let's not get started on SSL encrypted DCC transfers on IRC channels or private FTP servers! That's going to be almost impossible to track. These kind of darknets (as I've seen them called) or going to be very hard to shut-down!
Does this even matter anyway? My friend from Canada brought over his personal collection on a 320Gig drive when he visited this week. This is getting more and more common, people now have so much portable storage that it's often easier to swap collections and cherry pick the songs you like (or take the whole collection if you prefer). Compared to downloading, this is a far safer way to pirate on a huge quantity of music.
At some point, their revenues will become so small that they start to lose credibility. A case in point, where are the blacksmiths' guilds today? This whole issue with trundle on for some time to come but the inevitable will eventually happen. Time is on our sides, my friends.
Simon
Maybe this is okay and/or legal in AU. Is this legal in the US? What about due process? What about overdue process?
Anecdotally, as an aside, I had on my mind about three artists (new artists, e.g., Paolo Nutini), and hence, three cds I set out to find and purchase. Circuit City, no dice (didn't really plan on buying there what with their recent employee abuse program) -- they had about 1/4 the number of racked cds than last time I'd looked there. Best Buy, sorry. And the local CD store, nope! No selection, nothing. I don't know which came first the chicken or the egg, I don't even know which is which, but my thirst for new music is about the same as before -- but recently I'm finding I can't buy cds as before.
I'm not buying the "pirates decrease sales" spiel. My cause and effect for buying fewer cds is strictly the continued unavailability of cds on display. It used to be a smörgåsbord, now the stores look like the cutout bins of years past. This (the RIAA, and others) is an industry that rather than weather a business model storm and changing business dynamics to adapt continues to insist on taking their ball home with them (hey, it isn't even their ball!) so we can't play. And somehow, they still want to demand we pay them. Please, please, please!, just let them become irrelevant quickly so we can get on with our music!
How could they determine what is "illegal" and what is bought from a reputable online store? Or if a band offers a download from their website, would that be flagged as well? I don't see how there couldn't be any false positives with this agenda.
Napalm is nature's toothpaste
In any case, the implementation is sure to be a nightmare: families with shared accounts, botnets, and false-positive identification will make enforcement difficult, even if the ISPs actually wanted to comply. Which I doubt they do. Do ISPs have "common carrier" status is *.au? If so, they will be loathe to jeopardize it.
WOW that's really harsh!! I just hope America doesn't follow suit and make a similar law here. Dammit Austratila, what in the hell did you have to go and do that for??
Until they meet their pirate friend with a 10 Tera collection of Everything Ever Published Ever, and realize that they've been scared by the the boogyman, again.
Remember, it is all about money, big money, billions of buck that they wnat us to give them. Wish they would pay cops, firemen, teachers, and me so much. And to think, I am a dinosaur, deaf, blind, toothless, feable, crippled. Poor guys, they need the money to send thier kids to college I guess, or to get them a guitar.
Retired dinosaur, simple user, volunteer, guinea pig
OK, so our down-under comrades may have it bad if this goes through, but how much can one expect that the power-hungry RIAA is eyeballing the use of such tactics here in the US?
That besides, it raises a slew of other questions, like this scenario that could be used as sort of an "SDOS" (single denial of service) attack: Joe Aussie pays for a 3.0mbit link down in Perth, where he also enjoys the comfort and convenience of wireless Internet. How difficult would it be for anyone, and I mean damn near *anyone* to login to his network and start pirating anything from music to movies to God knows what else? Forget WEP encryption, recent articles have demonstrated that most networks could theoretically be cracked in minutes by someone with a decent knowledge of how it works. Never mind the hundreds upon thousands of networks that will go unprotected, and incidentally, exactly what methods will they employ to determine what kind of traffic (legitimate or pirate) is crossing the lines in Australia?
Sounds like a good time to go war driving!
That works both ways. If you cut off a (probably large) section of your customer base, you open the flood gates for competition in the longer term. Oh, as well as seriously damaging your brand.
I don't see why ISP's would agree to do this. It's right up there with... Load gun -> aim at foot -> Fire!
I am sure the ISPs, phone companies will hurry to terminate their contracts and sources of revenues with their own customers, so that the recording industry can make more profit.
Ignore the RIAA and their clones, and their artists. Stay with old music exclusively, or take the money that you would have spent otherwise, and support a local band, there must be at least one in fair distance who you like.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
I own almost 400 CD's and didn't want to go through the hassle of ripping all of them, so I downloaded a lot of them to put on my MP3 player. It was easier than having to continuously switch out CD's, and the quality of the .MP3's I download are usually better than the ones I rip. (Not to mention that many of my older CD's just don't rip properly.) How is this illegal? Or even immoral?
Whatever....they'll never stop file-sharing and will play catch-up forever with technology-savvy individuals who are smarter than they are.
I think that the decline of music sales coincides with the rise in internet usage not because of the terrible pirates of music, but because of porn. Bear with me, it makes sense if you think about it:
I used to watch videos for very mediocre music, because the chicks were hot, scantily dressed, and fed this former teenager's fantasies. But today's kids don't need to buy a CD to have fap-fudder, they can get free porn with ease.
I theorize that the so-called decline of the music industry isn't because of music pirates, as they claim, or because their music suddenly sucks (the monkeys sucked, sucking isn't new), but because they were NOT in the music of selling music, but in the business of selling sexually suggestive material.
You can't take the sky from me...
How do you steal music?
Isn't the penality for copyright infringement $250,000? If someone is really downloading illegally, why would the recording industry just want to disconnect their Inte'net instead of going for the jackpot? Oh I see, ISPs are happy to disconnect high-bandwidth users based on flimsy evidence, but a judge would require a solid proof.
With the newly restructured internet those who have been identified as online pirates will only be eligible for ISPs which block all streaming media content.
The business is going to go the way of automobile sales. Bad credit? No broadband streaming media enabled ISP for you. You might do better at the used car lot down the street and you'll have to take the additional hit of a high interest network nanny so, over the course of five years, you'll pay just as much for that pirate ISP as you would for a new car.
It'll be the next wave of socially stigmatizing people. "Daddy, how come we can't download music for our iPod?" "Well, kids, a long time ago I was caught copying a floppy disk." *wailing and gnashing of teeth*
While, down the block, in the house with the gas-guzzling 10-ton SUV belonging to the guy whose second uncle works for MS, whose third nephew is an aide to a state Senator, and whose sister married a middle manager in an accounting firm which manages investments for RIAA lawyers, they'll be streaming Star Wars Episode 15 in hi-def.
the NPG electrode was replaced with carbon blac
The RIAA and other groups claim that shifting the format (from CD to mp3) constitutes a new license and therefore you need to pay again. I do the same thing as you do, especially if my girlfriend takes the CD and I haven't put it on my computer yet,
Napalm is nature's toothpaste
I haven't yet RTA, but I expect to find that the difference between downloading and uploading music has been forgotten by whoever wrote the summary. It's terribly frustrating have repeatedly to explain to people that they can download with impunity as long as they don't upload.
Why can't people get this right even on slashdot???
--
So who is hotter? Ali or Ali's sister?
Owner free file system.
= News&file=article&sid=622&mode=nested&order=0&thol d=0
http://thebighack.org/modules.php?op=modload&name
Even in Australia they can start to fight back.
Sorry for the long assed url
Adebisi
How do you tell the difference between those illegally downloading music and those legally downloading it (i.e. they already have the album, but their CD-ROM broke so they need to download the track to play it on their PC because they don't own a stereo)?
For pirates, streaming isn't important, bits-per-day is.
If ISPs limit bandwidth that may have some impact, but removing streaming won't.
If necessary, pirates will disguise their traffic as whatever is allowed under the current anti-piracy regime.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
and I'm sure they'll just started looting the shops. Haven't they thought about this!
I wonder what is going to happen when the politicians who have sold thier souls to the record industry group realize that the people who they sold out are VOTERS. it doesn't take a very large group of extreemly motivitated people to swing an election.
I predict an interesting time in Aussie politics in about 3 years. Then, Payback time.
Everybody knows 3 people with my name.
(Almost.) If a system like this were put in place and rigorously enforced, and after a year the Australian music industry still saw declining sales, it would put a pretty big nail in the coffin of the "our industry is dying because of you filthy pirates" argument. The industry goons will not stop bleating that until it becomes such a ridiculous claim that any reasonable person reacts to it with derisive laughter instead of seriously considering it.
If, on the other hand -- unlikely though I think it is -- their sales shot up all of a sudden, then people like me would be forced to admit we were wrong. Which honestly I'll be happy to do if there are convincing hard numbers that contradict my point of view.
On the other hand, it's not worth causing so much trouble to so many people just to test a theory, which is why I'm only "almost" in favor of this.
That's fine... if ISPs are held financially responsible for the losses they cause when they disconnect someone groundlessly. Losses includes lost productivity, time spent on trying to get the service reconnected, lost business, distress, etc.
So, each Internet user in Australia is down loading more than 100 songs a year? Sounds like the usual hype, smoke, mirrors and bs the riaa uses in the US.
"I don't see why ISP's would agree to do this. It's right up there with... Load gun -> aim at foot -> Fire!"
Unsurprisingly slasdot wouldn't. Seeing other POVs isn't a strong point around here, so I'll help you out. Bandwith hogs* is a valid reason. Get rid of the illegal traffic clogging the networks and money is saved all around.
*And to cover the follow-up complaints. One people who abuse the networks aren't customers, and two no one else will want them either so running to someone else will not work. And last I don't think they're as big a group as chest-beaters would like to think. Oh and as far as the "competition" angle. Well all you abusers please feel free to start your own "pirates" ISP. A heavy dose of reality is long overdue for all of you.
it's seem that the best way to defend against this is to promote the hell out illegal downloading so everybody does it. :)
When the ISPs have disconnected half of their customers maybe they will think again about this deal.
PeerGuardian. Cox Cable in Florida uses the same policy. One request from any random media company and they cut off your bandwidth. Give 'em a call and they warn you that you have two more chances and then they turn off your cable. Don't ever get Cox if you have a choice... but not because of this - they just stink in general. I installed PeerGuardian2 when I got off the phone with them, and haven't had an issue since.
backup complete bitches... sue me, term me, eat me
"If they cut you off, you're done."
In the States that's the fastest way to bring on an anti-monoploy suit. What are the legal ramifications of a non-government organization that could "cut you off" form a significant section of society? Will the ISP hold a "trial" to allow the customer to deny or defend the charges?
We are all just people.
When can I get in "talks" with ISPs to change their guidelines?
Would you kindly mod me +1 insightful?
According to TFA: "We had a meeting a few weeks ago with the Internet Industry Association (about the new guidelines) but we're yet to hear back.
Yeah. The IIA is probably still working on getting "Sod off, wankers!" translated into legalese.
The MPAA is already using similar tactics in the US. Cox Communications once put a hold on my account because a DVD rip was found on my account. Once I called tech support they explained that on the first and second offense access was simply suspended until the client called in, and the account would be suspended after the third violation. He then went on to say that it was the MPAA scanning P2P networks, rather than the ISP. We even ended up chatting about different firewalls and ways to avoid getting caught.
Now it was my fault...I had turned off my firewall for work, and forgot to bring it back up when I was finished. So shame on me. But the bottom line is that this practice is already in place with at least one major American ISP and MPAA properties...
*For the sake of simplicity, I ignore Tasmania and the other islands, although I'm sure ARIA is counting them. I also round off the decimals
I need a wheelchair van for my son. Help me get the word out. https://www.gofundme.com/wheelchair-van-for-jj
What is so great about today's music that people will either a) buy overpriced CDs or b) blatantly disregard established trade practices (i.e. you purchase what you consume) to get it?
...) for a really long time (like 20-30 years) instead of selling out to the machine for a quick $mil$.
I've listened to modern music. It sucks. What's worse, it all sounds the same, so that the suckiness permeates the broadcast spectrum, from radio to Wal-Mart.
Fortunately, the music I prefer is available in the used and discount bins at the local indie record store. I can buy all the oldies I like, rip to some portable format (just once, of course), and not have to bother with the whole business, since I'm a stingy sort, and wouldn't copy my 'personal backup' for anyone.
Sadly, this silly game of cat'n'mouse will continue for at leat another decade or so. As long as the dealer is a middle-man between the maker and the junkie, and as long as the junkie buys what is being dealt, the --AA traffikers will continue these tactics.
Musicians/Artists: use teh 'net to hype yourself to get people to come to your shows and spend real money on real stuff and see a real band and hear real music (or see real theater,
From a section of society?? Hell, I remember about 10 years ago when many people didn't have the internet. It's hard to argue, even in this day and age, that it's THAT important.
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
If the Aussie industry's sales are that poor, shutting down must be a viable option. Do it -- then Australia will really understand your worth.
This goes back to how they know what you are downloading is illegal. What ISP is going to capture all of their customers traffic and listen to the songs you download to find out what is legal and what isn't? None.
So who does that leave to police this? The music industry. So on mere accusations, the music industry can revoke your internet service. There is no burden of proof. Data can be manipulated. If I get pissed at my neighbor and I work for the music industry, all I need to do is insert their IP address into a file of illegal downloaders a few times and they'll lose their internet connection.
Its truly time for alternative internet services. Preferably some wireless or mesh network-based service that has no central controller...much like packet radio.
Yeah, I think the ISPs would lose a lot of customers - not in protest, but simply because their
traffic looked like or really was pirated material.
Sieg Heil!
Signature applied for, Patent Pending
If they manage to get laws passed, the ISP's dont have much choice in the matter.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
''If you donload music, we will cut off your Internet'' is actually something they dearly would want to do, but it is completely infeasible on a larger scale.
Think about it:
(1) They cannot prevent encrypted traffic: Pople working over VPN or SSH, SSL to stores, encrypted email, etc.. Also it is difficult to really ID encrypted traffic and protocol headers can be faked.
(2) How much bandwidth do music download take? 1MB per minute of music? Even with 28Kbps downstream, i.e. slower dial-up speed, that means a minute of music takes 40 seconds to download. Throtteling encrypted traffic is not going to help. But it will cost ISPs customers that are doing legitimate things.
All in all this is just one more empty threat in the music industries scare tactics. Just as the others before, it will not work. And it will certainly not fix their basic problems: An outdated business model that does not fit the techological realities and a lot of bad music people are unwilling to actually pay for.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Australia has a telephone supplier with a "universal service obligation" - there is no way anyone is going to lose their telephone connection. The basic telephone service that they are mandated to supply also has a *fixed* non-timed charge for local calls (ie. the ones you use for ISP connections), so that basic service is all you need.
Australia also has unbundled services - your internet connection is separate from your telephone service.
Bottom line:- if your ISP cuts you off, they can't stop your telephone (even if they are the same company)) and you just go elsewhere.
Please don't take this post as being unloving on my part. I know I disagree strongly with the opinions of many people here.
The prevalent attitude amongst this community of users seems to be that stealing music is morally acceptable because "downloading music doesn't hurt sales", "the RIAA is a bunch of jerks", "I bought the song so nobody should be allowed to tell me what I'm allowed to do with it", and/or "I can't get it anywhere else". None of these reasons justify stealing.
Does piracy hurt sales? Maybe it hurts them a lot, maybe a little, or maybe it helps them, none of those things give you the right to decide that you can take for free the copyrighted material of someone else. If piracy helps music sales then the RIAA still has the right to stick with an unprofitable business model. It's not for you or I to usurp someone else's rights saying that it's for their own good. From what I read on Slashdot the RIAA seems to target innocent people who already have significant burdens in life or don't know much about computers and networks so that the RIAA can change or clarify laws by courtroom verdicts. That's wrong and Yahweh sees it. For those that think that it's okay to steal from the RIAA because they're evil; that eye-for-an-eye approach to justice is also wrong. If you bought the song online from someone who had the right to sell it then you bought it under the condition that you were not allowed to reproduce and redistribute it. I'm trying to think of how to put this bluntly enough to make it obvious without sounding insulting... You are being provided with a song that you aren't entitled to own at all. You can't take advantage of an offer that you're not entitled to and then cry out "oppression" because it's not everything you desire. Maybe you actually can't get a song in any legal way. Well, it's the property of someone else. If they choose not to sell it then that's their prerogative. People seem to think that they have more rights than they actually do. I think it was last year in France that there were protests over proposed legislation to make it easier to fire an employee. From the perspective of most Americans it is absurd to think of a company being obligated to retain any employee, especially an unprofitable one. Should a company not be allowed to terminate an employee that they feel is doing an unacceptable job, or to let some people go to save the whole company from bankruptcy (note that I'm not saying it's right to let someone end up on the street if it can be avoided)? Likewise this attitude of entitlement to music or the right to do with a digitized song whatever one wants is unfounded.
If you didn't have your internet connection tommorrow, and were told that you were accused of being a thief, would you be like, "Well it wasn't that important." I think you might have failed to infer that 10 years ago (little internet), now (majority internet), will lead to a future world where to be denied internet access will be equivilent to being denied any use of a telephone, cellphone, or wireless communication device. I think you would be pretty pissed off. The internet has and will continue to become more and more important.
But I also agree with you that the internet does not feed you, clothe you, or provide a place to live. Those come from people, not machines, and we should not look away from those right next to us.
---FourChannel---
That would be illegal for the carriers to deny you a right to the internet as has already been ruled by SCOTUS. A hacker's sentence and parole were altered to not include a ban on internet usage because it would deny him of a necessary right to the internet. They deemed the internet so important in life now that it is a staple for most americans and therefore a right that should not be trounced upon easily. The large carriers whom are granted near monopolies on phone and cable service whom operate the high speed connections would quickly get sued and prosecuted via RICO and anti-trust laws if they started pulling that crap here. At least they should, with Gonzolas at the helm though they would probably be to stupid to look into it.
Wow... At least Hitler would have liked them.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
something needs to be done about these people. I don't care what country you're talking about, or which particular flavor of the RIAA you have to contend with. Something needs to be done before these assholes bring the roof down on all of us.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
They don't have to. Take a look at a typical Acceptable Use Policy. They don't have to provie it in court, they simply have to find that you're doing something against their policies. The same policy that some of us beg to be used against spammers and phishers and virus-laden zombie machines is similar to what RIAA wants used against pirating downloaders, and it does *not* require a trial.
License, eh? That means they're happy to replace lost or damaged media at cost, right? /retorical
"Internet Blackout Threat for Data Duplication in AU" ?
Don't call them "thieves" when they are not thieves. Duplicating data is not physically nor morally similar to stealing. Copying data does not make one a thief. Incidentally, the US Supreme Court agrees with me on this one (for what that's worth).
If the ISPs follow your line of reasoning, they'll be woefully inadequate for handling the bandwidth demands created by the large scale move to TV-on-the-internet, which is only in its infancy with the likes of Youtube today and is already starting to cause ISPs to wig out.
ISPs are worse than useless - they're a hindrance - and the sooner we find ways to decentralize internet access to where people don't need central ISPs, the better.
ISPs don't have a God given right to tell internet users what to do, and when the technology comes to where they're not needed for access, this truth will become glaringly evident.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
It's not the MP3 per se that's illegal in this case, at least under US law. In fact, personally ripping an MP3 from a CD you own is possibly (this is still not clear) illegal in the United States. Note that it's the ACT OF RIPPING that's supposedly illegal, the act of making an unauthorized copy. Just like making a direct copy of the CD (in CD-Audio format) is also supposedly illegal. Now that MP3 or CD copy may be technically "counterfeit merchandise", but OWNING it is not illegal per se. So it's really up in the air whether PURELY downloading an MP3 (from an FTP site for example) of a track on a CD you already own is illegal. Probably not. But UPLOADING even a tiny part of that MP3 to anyone (even people who own the CD) IS ILLEGAL as it's "distribution". Due to the way most P2P programs work, downloading MP3s through P2P is illegal because you're "distributing".
If you think about it for a minute, this is basically pure extortion by the labels against the ISPs "Do what we say (read: Give us money.), or we will put you out of business." The ISPs really have no choice but to fight, because if they continue to pay blackmail to the labels they'll eventually be forced out of business. Again, make no mistake, the labels want the ISPs to give them a pile of money. This isn't about "enforcement" of any "laws". They simply see the ISPs as a juicier target that's easier to sue. This strategy hasn't worked in the USA, where telecom companies have a lot of power, so they're trying it in Australia were media is considerably more powerful.
The article doesn't even try to look rational.
... iPod creator Steve Jobs has caused a lot of headaches for music producers and artists worldwide, but plenty of joy for fans" Don't artists like having their work heard? And remember music producers (the actual guys credited on songs as 'producer') are often the actual artists behind the recording. Oh they don't mean producer, they mean arbitrager. The guy who stands in the middle with his hand out taking credit(and cash). Is iTMS.com.au up for renegotiation already?
It starts off with a picture of Jobs with the bizarre caption "Digital boy
"the industry - which claims Australians download more than one billion songs illegally each year" Well it is an island founded by thieves and murderers. At $AU300,000 per that's $300,000,000,000,000 the genes really concentrated that talent considering they only bought $80,000,000 worth.
"peer-to-peer websites such as LimeWire"
WTF is a peer-to-peer website? Seriously.
"Those with dial-up internet could face having their phone disconnected." Just in case you weren't certain that this is really about renting access to your culture.
No they don't. They may argue that it's not a fair use (though I haven't heard that one for a while) with regard to format shifting, but that's all. Virtually no works other than computer software and internet-downloaded media are even claimed to be licensed routinely. And in fact, they aren't. I've never even heard of a regular CD in a record store where the copyright holder claimed that it was being licensed, not sold. So don't assume that everything works like software, and better yet, don't assume that anything should: EULAs are anachronistic and provide no benefit to anyone, really. The only reason they're still around, (other than to allow abuses by licensors that no one should be tolerant of) seems to be inertia.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Someone is going to make a lot of money. Set-up a VM service outside the AU and let users remote in and run P2P clients within the VM. The users bring down the files from the VM directly to their home PCs via encrypted methods - even something as simple as sftp would work. There's no files stored on the ISP inside the AU, no way for the ISP (or anyone else inside the AU) to know what's in the encrypted traffic stream.
If an ISP starts doing any company (or cartel's) bidding, they no longer can claim to be neutral for content. This means that if so much as one child porn images streaks across an ISP's wires or servers, they can be credibly liable. After all, they actively prohibit copyright infringement, so why can't they stop or prevent the commission of a real criminal (or even tortious) act? While I doubt that criminal prosecutors would take that to heart, I do know that it would very likely leave a participating ISP quite defenseless to any civil suit that comes along naming them as a defendant...
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
The flaw in this insane argument is that the ARIA (and the ISP) becomes responsible for anything that results from the former customer not having a telephone line.
Did I read this correctly? The ARIA is going to get the telephone company to permanently disconnect some poor Australian's telephone if they believe that they are downloading music? Not everyone has a cell phone or will be getting a cell phone. What about the lawsuits that happen against them when a child dies because there wasn't the ability to call the emergency authorities after a household accident? The parents sue the ARIA on the grounds that the child would not have died if the ARIA had not forced the removal of the telephone line on superficial and unproven reasons. The newspapers start yelling about innocent Australian children forced to die to protect trashy American pop music profits.
The above poster is right about the hard disk swap to build music collections. I do this with older 40-120 Gig hard drives. Fill them full of high-quality 200+ bps MP3s, package them in bubble-wrap, and loan them to friends, co-workers, and any interested party. This and inexpensive double-layer DVDs that hold 150 albums is the real future of music distribution, not commercial music download services.
It's too bad that the ARIA/RIAA doesn't understand this. The era of selling individual recordings is just about over. Not just the idea of selling a single three minute song on a plastic disk or a download of a song for a set price. People in the future will be buying large collections of music and media that has a common theme, like all the 'classic rock recordings' of the 1970s, on a hard disk or DVD set. And they won't be buying these items from the five multinational corporations who persist in holding the illusion that they own them.
That's just not true. I have over a dozen ISPs I can choose from here, and the majority of metropolitan based people in Australia do also.
-- Even if a god did exist, why the fsck should I worship it?
of that now when i down load i will burn 100 extra copies for people without net and be sure to trade copies with my friends. we will get lots more music when the current industry is gone.
It just goes to show, copyright holders are determined to extend their legal rights at every opportunity, regardless of whether their industry is being helped or hindered.
I theorize that the so-called decline of the music industry isn't because of music pirates, as they claim, or because their music suddenly sucks (the monkeys sucked, sucking isn't new), but because they were NOT in the music of selling music, but in the business of selling sexually suggestive material.
That, sir, is an amazingly insightful suggestion.
I've not heard your theory before, but the more I look back at memorable examples from music history (and the remarkable lack of counter-examples) and our eager viewing of the weekly chart shows on the box, the more I think that you're on to something.
Some of the so-called facts in TFA are a bit dodgy.
About 80% of ISP end-users in Australia are using an ISP that is a different company to their telephone services provider. ARIA would have legal problems getting telephone services cut-off as well due to the requirement for Telstra(/rebadged phone provider) to provide emergency services capability to all landline nodes.
Of course, the fall in CD retail prices due to price pressure from online music sales has nothing to do with this. People can now buy just the tracks they want instead of getting an album-load of crap on CD.
Of course, competition from online music sales has nothing to do with this. People can now buy just the tracks they want instead of getting an album-load of crap on CD.
Australian Bureau of Statistics Census figures show that only 18 percent of Australians have internet access. According to ARIA, now, every single Australian with internet access is a music pirate.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
But I also agree with you that the internet does not feed you, clothe you, or provide a place to live. Those come from people, not machines, and we should not look away from those right next to us.
The internet is how I run my servers, contact my clients search for help. So it does provide the income that I need to do all of those things
Cutting off my internet access would very quickly leave me homeless.
Uh no, not in Australia, you have hundreds to chose from usually. There is (or at least was) a guide in APC (Australian Personal Computer) that pretty much lists all the service providers you can get. Out in the bush its harder (most places there still can't get broadband) but most towns that have over 30,000 people usually have some pretty good options.
Make SELinux enforcing again!
no isp in AU will do this, OR they will sign a loose deal and never have the balls to enforce it. why you say? because i can promise massive litigation against them if they do, and no business would ever willing take the burnden of potential litigation that another business has previously been dealing with. not to mention all the angry support calls and extra work it will cause them. it's already been established that isp's can't be sued for their users downloading music, so why the fuck would any of them want to do aria's job for them? my bet is there's no isp's seriously considering this and it's yet more bullshit from the music industry.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Yup, nothing to see here. Move along.
How will Australian ISPs know when one of their clients is a music thief? I would imagine a music thief wouldn't have access to the internet, otherwise he'd just download music instead of stealing music CDs from stores.
Modern copyright is theft of culture from everyone and it retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences.
Okay, so... first of all, obviously, this is in principle very outrageous. However, there are several points that must be kept in mind.
a) As mentioned many times before, "Why would ISP agree with this?". It's been discussed, let's skip it for now.
b) More importantly, is it even real? With stable traffic in units to tens of gigabits, L7 filters of any kind are absolutely out of question... unless music asociations are willing to back their demands with a solid pile of gold.
So, how will it get implemented? Just like it's been done before. ISP gets an email from a lawyer of $arbitrary_company. ISP does customer->email_counter++ and fwds it to customer. If customer is over limit of 3, customer's out.
Naughty, innit? But seriously... how many emails like these are sent? How many did piratebay get?;)
As a part of ISP EULA, it's quite terrible and I would think twice before I agreed with it (as a customer). As a real threat, it's laughable just like all other precautions. So to sum it up the slashdot way... Nothing to see here, move along -- I, for one, welcome our new ISP overlords.
If the Australians vote in a Howard government again that would enact such a law, then they deserve this crap.
Really - it's time that we stopped blaming lobby groups for promoting their agendas. They do what it is in their nature to do. If the people of Australia are so enamored of PM Howard and his Tories to support this sort of thing (assuming it is implemented) then they get the sort of government - and laws - that they deserve.
Lobbyists further their own agendas. When the voter stops furthering his or her own personal agenda - then they get what they deserve.
(Note to Americans readers: the democracies of most other industrial nations offer more electoral choices and have significantly larger voter turnouts than your own because of compulsory voter registration. There are vast restrictions on election and lobbyist spending during elections in other nations that are not present in your own. Please don't judge "the inherent flaws in the system" within America and suppose it exists everywhere else. It does not. If the Australians re-elect this government - it's their own damn fault.)
.Robert
"ISPs don't have a God given right to tell internet users what to do, and when the technology comes to where they're not needed for access..."
No, they have something better. They have the contract given right to boot off their network anyone who's affecting their other paying customers. You all talk about your rights like it's your "god-given" network to do whatever you want. Well here's reality. Your rights end were others begin. Here's the other half. No one wants a customer who's going to drive away other paying customers. That's why running to another ISP will not work.
"ISPs are worse than useless - they're a hindrance - and the sooner we find ways to decentralize internet access to where people don't need central ISPs, the better."
Why is it those who know the least make the loudest complaints? You don't know geography. You don't know economics. You don't even know physics.
"...this truth will become glaringly evident
I'm afraid that the only one who needs to face "the truth" can't handle "the truth". Start your own ISP, let all the hogs abuse you, then tell us who needs to face the truth.
"If the ISPs follow your line of reasoning, they'll be woefully inadequate for handling the bandwidth demands created by the large scale move to TV-on-the-internet, which is only in its infancy with the likes of Youtube today and is already starting to cause ISPs to wig out."
Cable TV works fine. And those "wigged out" ISP's will handle it much better when the abusers are booted. Also one thing I forgot to mention the administrative overhead of dealing with all the DMCA requests that illegal downloaders generate. Boot the hogs and those disappear.
would you title a story about bush protestors "pinko commie liberals erode national security"?
would you title a story about anti-abortion republicans "fascist corporate schills demand an end to women's rights"?
then why the heck is this story about civil disobedience to controversially overreaching copyright laws entitled "internet blackout threat for music thieves"?
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
remember, according to the reaganomics apologists, they can do whatever they want, theyre a private company, and who gives a damn if they have power rivaling the government.
hence: dmca abuse is perfectly OK, att comming back together is OK, and reclassification of monopoly internet providers into an "information service" to serve their desires for non-neutrality is OK.
the solution to that pesky bill of rights.. privatize it so you can claim "private property" against anyone who decries the obvious erosion of rights.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Actually according to US law in most states if you knowing own a copy a piece of music without owning the original (ie, a "pirated" or "stolen" copy) then technically it could be considered a stolen good since the MAFIAA claims so and that jurisprudence has been set in the courts. Therefore, if you own a illicit copy, then yes you could be charged to possession of stolen goods and in many states if the products in question total greater than $250 then you could also be charged with grand theft which could give you up to twenty years of ass pounding.
Pagan? Geek? Check out #paganism on Freenode IRC
You're right...I'm in Melbourne, and can choose from dozens and dozens of ISPs...most of them do suck, however. As there's basically no such thing as unlimited downloading in Australia (see previous sentence) I'm agog that we manage to steal a billion dollars worth of music a year, as it takes so fucking long to steal on our crappy bandwidth.
You completely missed my point.
1) I'm saying technology will progress to the point where ISPs aren't needed and each of us can get directly onto the net without them.
2) Your definition of "abuse" is already on the verge of collapse. People will be watching movies and TV episodes over the net, and very soon. They're already doing it on a relatively tiny scale now with the likes of Youtube. So what you define today as "abuse" will be defined very soon as "normal use" or even "less than normal use". This has already happened in the past. The websites most people browse right now would probably have consumed abuse level bandwidth in 1999. Youtube would have crushed any ISP's bandwidth back in 1995.
So in essence, your heroic ISP exercising its "rights" makes it inadequate to handle the bandwidth demands of today, much less the future.
Unless you're arguing that technology should be held back, your only course of response here is a mea culpa, or more uneducated schoolboy rants. My money is of course on the latter.
You're still trying to challenge me? LOL, you little pipsqueak, welcome to school.
Lesson #1: economics. ISPs have survived financially with raising bandwidth to meet rising bandwidth demands. That's a FACT, and you look like a total retard by trying to contradict that.
Lesson #2: physics. You're an idiot yet again. Bandwidth has been increasing to meet consumer demand. This is not going to stop any time soon unless people like you take over, which fortunately is not ever going to happen.
Geography is irrelevant here. This is a global phenomenom.
Obviously, your reading skills are nonexistent. I said the time will come that ISPs aren't even relevant. P2P or some emerging technology will enable people to get online without needing a centralized ISP. Why would I want to start a new ISP when in perhaps 15 years TOPS, they'll be like the dodo?
Your knowledge of the internet hovers between nil and zip, and nil is leaving town.
Illegal downloaders are not the biggest threat that ISPs face: Youtube and its siblings, are what present the new major threat. Streaming video, streaming audio, pay per porn...
Allow me to introduce you to the term "adapt or perish". No, really, you're clueless about what that means. Don't even bother coughing up your pathetic rendition. The ISPs are going to adapt to rising bandwidth demands or they're going to be ditching even legal customers, or they'll get majorly bogged down.
It's that simple. And yes, I am a network administrator. I run a data center. I know the business, and you just talk a bunch of crap. Go back to your Spongebob reruns and cool yer heels, son.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
No-fly lists seem to be in wide use in USA without any legal recourse or court oversight. I don't see why they wouldn't work for ISP's as well as they do for airlines.
3 years? Ha. Try again. It's only a few months until our next major election. If this stupidity got anywhere near being made into law then the party who backs it could be losing some seats in the future. A good chunk of the Australian population has internet access now. Passing a law like this would be politically costly.
This will most likely not even get passed in due to the Liberals (currently in power) needing every single vote they can get due to what they have currently done.
(FYI: Liberals are going to lose by a landslide as long as labour doesn't screw up their campaign. All Labour needs to do is say 'we are not liberal' and they are in).
There may only be one provider for the physical line but ARIA is suggesting removing the connection at the ISP. No where in the article does it say that you can't just switch ISP.
I don't see what the big problem is, this is no where near as harsh as RIAA. Furthermore if you like the song, pay for it! And don't tell me "I want to try before I buy", you can do this in most record stores I've been to, there are a multitude of options available for previewing songs on music sites and for smaller bands you often get them actively putting their songs up for free.
I live in Australia.
The APC Broadband Choice section gets its information of Whirlpool, http://bc.whirlpool.net.au/
You can see that almost every major centre in Australia has various ISP's trying to get your money, but to be honest its utter trash the idea that they will cut off telephone use, as thats typically Telstra domain not ISP domain. The author is just proving he doesn't know what he's talking about.
I always wondered where this setting was...
Even if Telstra was to cut off telephone access, optus has their own network infrastructure in metro areas.
It would be problematic for them to implement this at best, with encryption and overseas anonymous proxies I hardly see how it would be possible to catch more than a few people.
Im honestly sick of record labels crying that they cant turn a profit when the market is disappearing. I have a question for everyone. How many Blacksmiths do you see around these days? Do you know why? Its because the market for them isn't there anymore would be blacksmiths are now in other markets. When will the music industry shut up and move to another market?
An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
The headlines - elderly mother dies, clutching cut-off phone, after grandchild's visit.
Phones save lives. Wrongfully cutting phones off, or in one Telco's blunder, failing to repair them has cost LIVES. Never mind about how 911 does not work down under, or that an ambulance may not get dispatched in time, assuming there is a hospital that will accept you.
There are a few issues here, alleged illegal - well allegations are cheap, and noting is illegal until it has been heard in court. That a 3rd party has no legal standing. That the ISP is/or could be the target of costly litigation, and lastly, the right to have a land line is currently entrenched under Australian law. IANAL.
Having the local congressman's campaign office's phones cut off, or a whole government departments phones cut off, - because a miscreant or cleaner decided to do a few sneaky downloads would be a hoot!
Oh God. This is like teaching physics to a March of Dimes kid. You keep thinking that, and say hi to 1940s bandwidth theories and 1995 standards of "bandwidth hogs" for me.
BTW Slashdot is a huge bandwidth hog. I suggest you sign off for good.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
I can see this affecting legal free downloads (sites like MacIDOL, etc) more than it will with torrenting and limewire. If the bastards at my ISP implement this, and wind up cutting me off for downloading a song that's made publicly available, I'll have their effing nuts in a legal vice if it effing bankrupts me.
"I hope you like Guinness, Sir. I find it a refreshing substitute for, er... food." Col. Jack O'Neil, SG-1
What follows is my opinion only, and should not be construed as representing the facts of the matter in any way possible, except where noted.
.torrent file and manage to get me disconnected, I'd likely sue them under an "interference with contract" tort. The simple act of being connected to a tracker does NOT imply, as Mediasentry would like it to, that you are moving any data whatsoever.
The problem with this is that the IIA is likely to agree to this proposal in some form or other, in order to be seen to be doing "something". The CEO of the IIA has a reputation as a lobbyist first, and an ISP Industry Association CEO second. If the IIA is seen to be "proactively setting policy" on something as big-ticket as file-sharing, then Coroneos'll likely go for it. It doesn't matter if the "policy" in this case was written by ARIA, three ISPs and a singing waiter, or even The Piratebay. This is a worry.
Fortunately, while most of the east-coast ISPs are IIA members to some degree or other, Adelaide and Perth based providers are typically members of SAIA or WAIA respectively, and pay (at most) lip-service to Coroneos' lobbyists.
Additionally, if ARIA thinks they have the legal right to demand your phone get disconnected, then ACMA (AU equiv of FCC) will likely hit them with something called the Universal Service Obligation (briefly: at least one licensed carrier MUST provide phone service in a given area to ANYONE who wants it, subject to paying the bill.)
Finally, if ARIA's goons see that I'm connected to a tracker that happens to be announcing for an MP3
Storm. Teacup. Move along.
You're doing it wrong.
Besides the big-name ISPs whose sole purpose is to rip off the country, in Australia, I don't think there really are any monopolies on internet. Many ISPs are available Australia-wide, and I had, when I switched ISPs lately, over a hundred to choose from.
Ezekiel 23:20
That raises a funny point: I used to promote and DJ at doof parties in and around Sydney and all my 12"s have a notice that they are not for public performance on the label. WTF else do they think ppl do with vinyl records? I know you could buy a public broadcasting licence from the MAFIAA but no promoters I know bothered. Also, the kind of music I'm talking about was only targeted at that scene (and maybe bedroom bangers) so??!1
Me lost me cookie at the disco.
Hi all, this is my first post. I know this is off topic, but upon reading this it struck me that the Australian government are quite daft when it comes to the law. I mean I was watching the telly the other day and up pops John Howard; he was saying he's looking at changing the law to stop HIV-positive people coming to Australia. I don't know what you might think but I think the moral implications are scary. http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/SYD219295 .htm
As far as I'm concerned forcing Internet providers to cut off their customers is out right stupidity. I was reading about this push to revamp the internet and the first thing that struck me is, they're going to force the world to go underground, I mean how many internets do we need? http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070413/ap_on_hi_te/re building_the_internet
I think most people are decent enough, and will do what they can get away with by and large, but once you open a big door like the internet, I can't see most people being satisfied with it being slammed in their face.
I don't think this has been applied in actual criminal cases. RIAA civil claims do not seem to be be resulting in criminal cases for theft or grand theft. Large scale producers of copied DVDs are usually charged with producing counterfeit goods, as that is a more applicable statute.
No wonder piracy is getting so common in Australia; in stores they are trying to sell Xbox 360 games for $120, which at the moment is equal to $99.94 USD. It is utterly ridiculous.
In the 1970s, Pinochet's Chile, with its authoritarian government, lack of civil-liberties protections and strongly corporatist ideology became a testbed for radical "free-market" policies. A lot of the reforms implemented by Reagan and Thatcher were first tested in Chile.
Right now, Australia (with its authoritarian government, lack of civil-liberties protections (there is no fair use, no safe harbour provisions, and no legal protections for free speech) and strongly corporatist ideology) is becoming the Chile of intellectual-property absolutism. Australian copyright laws are more draconian than those in the US or EU, and are only going to get more severe.