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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.
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...
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
--
So who is hotter? Ali or Ali's sister?
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.
I'm not familiar with ARIA, but maybe they - unlike the RIAA - actually want their business to thrive rather than shifting it to profit-by-suing-customers? Who knows, they may even have legitimate evidence for the copyright infringement in Australia instead of picking a customer to sue from a hat as the RIAA seems to be doing.
"A witty saying proves nothing." - Voltaire
(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.
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.
"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.
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.
*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
''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.
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---
I disagree . people who download much (like pirates) will probably pay for higher bandwidth . So if they reduce your bandwidth , you should pay less . so they will lose money .
Slipping shoelaces ?
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.
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.
Have you ever been in an internet cafe where the girl two seats over has got 12 tabs open in her copy of Firefox, and each one is a different YouTube video loading up? What do you think that does to the bandwidth? How about downloading music videos from Yahoo Music? Think that is nice and kind to your bandwidth?
Have you ever legally downloaded television episodes before? You know, it's just one of the many completely legitimate uses for BitTorrenting. Guess what? You can get yourself distros of Linux with Torrents too. But, they should just be lumped in with Pirate Useage of bittorents, right? HELL, since all this pirating is being done via Downloading, why don't we eliminate downloading alltogether? No more updates, patches, fixes, no more digital distribution of Movies or iTunes, that way we KNOW all those nasty software pirates can't get their booty, aarr, matey.
The fact of the matter is that downloading large files is NOT illegal, nor is it a violation of your contract with your ISP. The size of the file has nothing to do with whether or not the contents of those files are pirated. A little FYI, does the name Angelfire ring a bell? You know a free web host that limits the amount of space and bandwidth their free customers get? Do you know how Angelfire (and other hosts like them) was used to promote Piracy? Pirates would sign up with multiple accounts, and break their large files into a ton of small, 2 to 3 meg zip files, then put one little zip file on each account. So how do you monitor for that? People are loading larger files (than those) in rapid succession (the same way) from legitimate sources.
How do you stop me from pirating software while I am at an internet cafe or coffee shop with free WiFi? Especially if I am using my bandwidth throttle so I DON'T eat up all the bandwidth from everyone around me. Face it. Pirates are actually much more accomodating, far more civil, and much more aware of exactly what they are doing, as opposed to you. You still think that all those bandwidth hoggers must be downloading illegal software or porn.
*shudder*
"I love deadlines. I love the whooshing sound they make as they fly by." -D. Adams
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.
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.
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.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
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.