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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.'"
The issue here is the customer service costs (and loss of revenue). If an ISP cuts off a customer (rightfully or wrongfully), it's the ISP that pays for the irate calls from those customers and suffers from a loss of revenue. Even if the ISP uses an Indian call center, they still face several to tens of dollars in costs as the customer tries to determine why they were cut-off and how to regain service.
Assuming that people have a right to confront the accuser (AFACT), then shouldn't AFACT bear the labor costs of that confrontation?
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Besides, at the moment it's in the ISPs' best interest NOT to help the recording agencies out. They are, after all, a business and policing everyone's internet usage would cost a great deal of money. Are the recording industry peeps going to help pay for those costs? I didn't think so ...
Scary... This must be the first positive thing I've ever heard about Telstra. I'm wondering how long they're going to maintain that stand. Call me cynical, but I'm quite sure the next step is 'buy the government'..
Coz eternity my friend, is a long *ing time.
Of course, New Zealand is rightfully sovereign, but I'm not sure that calling an ISP that services both Australia and New Zealand a "multinational".
Do you realise that this kind of attitude is why Americans are stereotyped as being totally ignorant and ego-centric? Just because a company doesn't cater to your precious US of A, it doesn't mean it isn't multinational. Multi. National. It means that it operates in multiple nations. Such as Australia and New Zealand.
With all the zombie computers, trojaned by kids or simply hacked ones it would be easy to make victims download copyrighted stuff without them even knowing it. And so the ISPS would have to either shut down those people's accounts (even though they didn't do anything) or have loads of work to find the one who hacked the computer, and most of the time they probably can't.
... and that's really the crux of the matter. Every picture you take, every letter you write, every story you tell, whatever you create is copyrighted -- by you. You have every right in the world to distribute your creations and you expect to. When you browse a company's web-site, you are receiving images and content that are, ostensibly, copyrighted by them which they also freely distribute so that you can view them on your own computer.
The key is not that a work is copyrighted, but rather that the distribution occurs without the permission of the copyright holder. There's where it gets sticky. The ISP knows you are exchanging copyrighted works because everything is copyrighted. What the indutry is asking for is that the ISP identify specific chunks of data for which the distribution constitutes infringement. But how can the ISP know whether infringement is taking place?
For something to be infringing, they will need to know whether or not the sender of the content is the copyright holder, a licensee for the content with permission to redistribute (like iTunes), the terms under which the content may be distributed (only if fee collected and DRM in place), whether those terms are met (valid credit card number used / the user hasn't implemented a hack to remove DRM), whether the copyright has expired (there are still some copyrights that expire), or whether the distribution constitutes an exception to copyright protection (such as a "fair use" under US law). How can the ISP possibly know these things?
Well, they can't possibly distinguish (doubly so if the content is encrypted). Some of those things can only be answered by a court.
Nevermind it being an unnecessary burden on ISPs or a violation of their customers, the ISP is simply unable to know the legal context in which data is distributed and whether it may constitute infringement. Any accusation of that sort would necessarily need to be vetted through the approriate legal authority, not the ISP.
Well as you're 'Speaker of the truth,' I guess nobody likes the always on connection, modem latency isn't a problem, and people don't need the phone line free to talk to people.
It also says,
slow down or terminate user accounts that AFACT has determined are being used to distribute copyrighted works.I upload copyrighted works all the time, such as this Slashdot post. I also upload source code I have written to my web page. I share free software with people. Looks like AFACT would have shut someone like me down.
Or we can stop saying broad things like this. The University of Kansas says, "if you are caught downloading copyrighted material, you will lose your ResNet privileges forever." You can't use the Internet without downloading copyrighted material. Unless you have spent your life in a coma, you are probably a copyright holder yourself. Even if you are not (for some odd reason), there are lots of copyrighted works that you have permission to share with anyone.
There's a big difference. the RIAA is payed up with the right people in America. Apparently the ARIA isn't payed up with the right people in Australia.
"Luke, you've switched off your targeting computer, what's wrong?"
I won't even get into the problems with the copper infrastructure vs. fiber. I'll even leave the cost analysis out of the equation.
"Luke, you've switched off your targeting computer, what's wrong?"
Just setting the evil bit on packets containing unauthorised copies should be sufficient.