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Australian ISPs Reject Calls To Police Their Users

Posted by Zonk on from the they-like-money-i-bet dept.

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.'"

2 of 86 comments (clear)

  1. Hmm... by Mystery00 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    A report produced last year by web monitoring company Envisional found the per capita rate of television show piracy in Australia was the highest in the world. It said Australians accounted for 15.6 per cent of all online TV piracy.

    I find that part particularly interesting purely because of the idea of pirating TV shows, how, exactly, do you pirate TV shows? Watching them on TV is a free service, you have also been able to record from the TV for a very long time, what exactly is the difference between recording from the TV, and downloading the show from the net, and how does that effect the broadcasting industry?

    --
    "we've got trenchcoats and bad attitudes" - John Constantine, HellBlazer
    1. Re:Hmm... by FellowConspirator · · Score: 3, Interesting

      They're worried about the advertisement being removed and being able to resell the content. Of course, the advertisement revenu is somewhat of a Red Herring, since the model already presumes all the revenue stems from the initial broadcast or rebroadcast (i.e., the cost is based on viewership for the time slot; so the advertiser's bought the attention of the estimated number of viewers).

      They're also worried that Internet availability undermines their availability to sell advertising for rebroadcasts and might impact packaged sale of shows on DVD. There's a better argument for that.

      I think that, increasingly, but removing their shows from Internet distribution they're undercutting exposue of their properties to a wide audience. There's plenty of opportunity to capitalize on content without adhereing to an onerous in-broadcast advertising model.