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Australian ISPs Reject Calls To Police Their Users
jon_cooper writes "After recent setbacks in the RIAA's lawsuits, the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft (AFACT) has decided to try a different approach in Australia - they want ISPs to do their dirty work for them. Australian ISPs, though, have soundly rejected calls from AFACT to slow down or terminate user accounts that AFACT has determined are being used to distribute copyrighted works. Telstra (one of the larger ISPs in question) had this to say: 'We do not believe it is up to the ISPs to be judge, jury and executioner in relation to the issue when the content owners have any number of legal avenues to pursue infringements.'"
There isn't any RIAA in Australia. It's ARIA.
Australia has Telstra the former national government owned incumbent telephone monopoly that still thinks its part of the government .
- hate-telstra/2007/05/19/1179497337693.html?page=fu llpage
Because it was the national incumbent Testra still own most of the infrastructure and has control over the Australian backbone that is leases to ISPs at exorbitant rates ,
Most Australian broadband plans are either metered or capped .
Mark Pesce an American that Lives in Australia (although we call him an Aussie now since hes applied for Citizenship ) who was also one of the creators of VRML did a great piece in the Meblorne Age why Aussies hate Telstra
http://www.theage.com.au/news/business/why-we-all
Basically not. The closest to multinational is #2 Telco Optus, owned by Singapore Telecommunications, in turned owned by the Singapore government.
AOHell gave up and sold their user base to Primus Telecommunications, who may be American owned, but not controlled as such.
ISPs won't be bullied by ARIA (australian RIAA) etc. as Aussie's are top pirates (forcing local TV networks to not seasonally delay American imports), and pay a hell of a lot for unfiltered internets. Considering internet here is sold in bandwidth quotas any limiting action above that is considered unacceptable by users and (some) ISP owners alike.
One of the major reasons cited for downloading TV here is the time delay from the US/UK. In the bad old days it took 3-4 years for ST:TNG to start here. Must have been the dubbing delay. We then got the shuffled season 1 and 2, the graveyard time-slot and irregular schedules. Back then people got around it by mailing VHS tapes.
So when Australian networks treat a show like garbage, downloading gives you a better product with more reliable timing. The counter for this is that we are now getting some shows within weeks of the original airing. Californication is about two weeks delayed. This helps protect the ad revenue.
How many times do I have to say it?
Copyright Theft eh? is that when you take someone else's copyrights and use them for your own purposes?
maybe like what verizon did?
remember people, copyright infringement != theft
exactly, do you pirate TV shows? ... you have also been able to record from the TV for a very long time
In fact, it has only been a recent development where recording a TV show to VHS or similar *hasn't* been illegal in Australia. The only provision for personal media recording used to be for live performances.
From memory, this changed sometime in 2006
When Futurama first came to Australia, it was aired 11.30pm on a Tuesday night. It was like this the first year and then it disappeared because of 'lack of interest from the viewing public'. The networks would show the first 6 episodes of the first season and then cut to the fourth season, then back to the 2nd season. You knew this was going on because there were characters that you 'knew' had been developed earlier. DVD's were not available until several years later. If you want me to start purchasing the DVD of new tv shows, air then properly so I can begin to enjoy them. Then I want to go out and be able to purchase the DVD once I decide I like. If you muck this order up, what do you expect?
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