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.'"

Comments

over one billion severed?

[morethanapapercert]

Let's see here, ARIA is claiming >1,000,000,000 songs downloaded every year by Australians. According to Wikipedia, .au has a population of 20,788,357. This results in 48 songs for every man, woman and child in Australia every year* (I can't be bothered to RTFA, how long have they been doing this?) I dunno about you, but to me that looks more like an unexploited potential market. This is even more true when you consider that not every person in Australia has an Internet connection and of those who *do* have a connection, not all choose to infringe on corporately owned copyrights by downloading music without ARIA's blessing. Based on hearsay and such, I'll make a wild guess and say it's more like ten million Aussies downloading >150 songs each per year. That's only roughly 600MB per person/account but I've heard that Australia has poor long haul connections to the rest of the world, so downloading that much from other people around the world shows a great deal of interest. Ten million music fans, all heavy consumers and the **IA can't figure out a working micro-pay/pay-as-you-go music download system?

*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

Re:Monopolies prevent this

[KeensMustard]

You typically only have one service provider in a given area. Really? In rural/regional areas I suppose you might be stuck with Telstra, but I wouldn't describe that as typical. In metropolitan areas you can choose from numerous carriers - Telstra may own the hardware (mostly) but that doesn't entitle them to say who uses it.

You forgot one:

[Penguinisto]

Common Carrier Status.

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...

/P

Declining sales?

[Chuck Chunder]

If a system like this were put in place and rigorously enforced, and after a year the Australian music industry still saw declining sales

What do you mean "still"? 2006 saw an increase in sales.