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

Re:Say goodbye to the Blacksmiths of this century

[PPH]

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.

I'm not familiar with Australian law. Perhaps there are no 'safe haven' provisions w.r.t. copyright enforcement and its either play netkop or be sued by the copyright owners.

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.

Never underestimate the bandwidth of a package of DVDs going down the highway in a FedEx truck

The copyright folks are shooting themselves in the foot with this ISP nonsense. Its far easier to detect on-line IP theft (if transfers aren't cloaked in some way) than it is to intercept other means of transfers. This makes me think that the service termination threat might be a scare tactic. As with most intelligence gathering efforts, you don't advertise your methods to your target so they can employ countermeasures. Perhaps a few people will get their access discontinued because their kid downloaded a few songs. No doubt, it will be for a relative ly minor infraction, since that enhances the fear factor more so than going after the major violators. The event will be highly publicized, with sobbing parents on TV and the smaller violators will be discouraged. The bigger ones have more vested in their opreration and will be more likely to employ countermeasures.