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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.'"
This will turn around 180' once money comes into the play. You hear that RIAA bring in the millions and we'll do your dirty work for you.
In this world everyone will do it for the money.
Doing said dirty work could be risky. Termination based on loose accusations might end up in lawsuits. Somehow I got the feeling that they don't want any of those.
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 ...
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
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.
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.
... 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.
That's bollocks, the guy just didn't know what multi-national meant and is confusing it with intercontinental. From the sound of it he wouldn't consider a company operating in the USA and Canada multi-national.
Do you realise that this kind of attitude makes non-Americans appear to be overly eager to find ego-centric tendencies in Americans?
How many times do I have to say it?
It's like an entity that spent billions of dollars building infrastructure now feels like they have some right to charge money for people that want to use it.
Yes, I know it was done with taxpayer money. But taxpayers decided to vote in a government that made it clear they were going to privatise it, and now it's a typical corporate entity - one that owns almost all the telecommunications infrastructure in the country - and now everyone has to cop it sweet.
I find it hard to believe that this Mark Pesce bloke moved to Australia without realising that it has, like, 10% of the population of the USA and thus probably isn't as technologically effete. It's like an Australian moving to Japan or Korea and being surprised that, shit, if you pack 10x the amount of people into 1/10th the space, it's easier to more connect people with cables.
How many is many? Is it more than one? I've never heard anyone say that a company is bi. There's a thought for the day.
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?"
I look at it this way, in the US, if a company operates in two neighboring states it is not a multi state company. The same for companies operating in multiple countries, if a company operates in the US and Canada (or Australia and New Zealand), it is not multinational. There is nothing in its current operations that makes it significantly easier to operate worldwide than for a company that operates in just one of those countries. Now if on the other hand, it operates in say the US and France (or Australia and Japan), it is already operating over a greater distance and in significantly different business cultures, so most of the systems necessary to expand into a company operating worldwide are already in place. That being said a company operating in New Zealand and Australia is, generally speaking, closer to being ready to make the jump to multinational than one operating in the US and Canada (having to deal with offices where ground transport cannot be used to get from one to the other introduces some significant logistical hurdles).
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
In any case, for once, I agree with Telstra. I've been laughing at them every time they've called in an attempt to get my business for the last few years, but kudos to them for telling the Mob to fuck off.
yea, good luck with that one ARIA/AFACT. Telstra employ one of the largest legal teams in Australia and regularly, and very sucessfully i might add, defend itself against a litegious government department (ACCC) many times a year for the last 5 years since privatisation. I think their meeting would go like this..
1) AFACT: "Stop your users from downloading our content now!"
2) Telstra: "Umm.. No. What else ya got?"
3) ?
4) Telstra: Profit!
But hey, don't take my word for it, ARIA, AFACT, what ever you are called. Please, try it out a couple of times. It's not like you would be around for much longer after Telstra are finished with you.
(I can see their web site now. A big Telstra logo at the top/middle of the page and in large lettering, p0wned
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
I think you missed the point. The GP didn't say there were no legitimate reasons for consuming large quantities of bandwidth, just that the majority of the bandwidth hogs are most likely downloading music/movies/software. You can't really provide great statistics to prove it either way, because most people do not want to admit to illegal activities. Do you honestly think that out of all the people out there consuming massive amounts of bandwidth, a good chunk of them AREN'T downloading music/movies/software?? I have seen articles on Slashdot before in the past saying that more than 30% of total internet bandwidth is used by Bittorrent. And yes, I know Bittorrent also has legitimate purposes, but I really don't think all those millions of folks are just downloading gigabytes of Linux releases....
"But this one goes to 11!"
You certainly have medical research, you certainly have scientific research of all kinds, and you certainly have people who need a high-speed pipe to VPN into servers both inside and outside of Australia. You may not know them, you may not see them at work, but they are there, I assure you, and their work almost certainly makes your life better in some small way.
"Luke, you've switched off your targeting computer, what's wrong?"
Would they get sued for copywrite infringement if they used a duck as a mascot? AFACT AFACT
MISSING - Sig file. 2 years old black and white and very funny. If found please email me.
And you are just the ignorant other side of the coin. It really feels good to tout out the stereotype of how Americans are so stereotypical of other countries, doesn't it?? But don't listen to me, you said it best yourself -
Spoken like somebody entirely culturally ignorant of the rest of the world. Yet more reinforcement of the anti-USA stereotype. You don't really believe that it means anything else, you just want an explanation for the disagreement that involves Americans looking egocentric. Face facts: you are a typically self-centred(sic) Yank hater.
"But this one goes to 11!"
And WoW isn't a multi-million dollar available online only game; you can play it with your chums on your LAN connection you know
Well said.
To anyone from outside of the U.S. reading this thread, please do not judge all Americans by the loud-mouths among us. Many of us cringe too when we hear/read comments like the above.
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
Exactly!
:rolleyes:
That's why I, a computer geek who has never, even once (no seriously -- I haven't) used KaZaA, BitTorrent, Gnutella, etc. to download pirated music, am still using a 56K modem.
No, wait...I've got a DSL connection. Why did I spend the extra money to upgrade from dial-up to DSL? Oh, yeah...that's right...I got tired of waiting days for an anti-virus update (back when I still used Windows), I'm running a web and e-mail server at my house, I got tired of getting kicked off-line every time my wife called home, I wanted faster access for the multimedia that is used in so many web pages for the last...ummm...ten?...years.
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
You don't know me, and don't even know my nationality, yet you group me into a class and assume things about me. Who is the arrogant ignorant one really?? For the record, I hate ALL "loud mouthed twats" regardless of where they live.
I would slap you, but it isn't even worth the sting on my fingertips.
"But this one goes to 11!"
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?
Simply put, what we (and they) need is a set of extensions to TCP/IP so that a copyright information header is prepended to every payload, specifying in detail the rights the source host has in propagating the packet in question. These will have to be added to every packet and the TCP/IP standard will have to be rewritten, but it shouldn't affect service levels due to cheap and ubiquitous broadband.
When I was a kid, we only had one Darth.
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?
.
Thats OK. They operate in Australia, New Zealand AND Tasmania.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Considering New Zealand is mentioned in the Australian Constitution as a Colony which allows us to point out the the South Africans and English that Australia and it's colonies has 3 World Cups to their one each means that New Zealand cannot be considered a seprate country to Australia. We just like to pretend it is to save us from embarresment about their Welsh and Scottish inherited sheep shagging tendencies.
Yes and we are all a bunch of dirty thieves!
While your typed that I stole your wallet.
Now watch as i escape on my kangaroo!
</sarcasm>
I don't see what iTunes has to do with scientific and medical research.
I work as an independent IT contractor to a huge media retailer in Australia, and part of my job involves grabbing an enormous amount of data (catalogues, etc) from various suppliers in various formats, and making these data fit our internal system - I have to receive & send this stuff from home, where I do my work.
All told, I go through ~60GB a month, and need a fast connection to satisfy the demands of a company that wants to be accurate to one minute ago. So thanks for your complete ignorance, but that's what it is. Think Steam, LEGAL movie downloads, ITMS, Linux distros, the list of large, legal files is never-ending.
....Your own private definition of "multinational" ....
:)
Goodness, have none of you ever hear of a dictionary to look up the meaning of words??
Merriam-Webster:
2 a : of, relating to, or involving more than two nations *a multinational alliance* b : having divisions in more than two countries *a multinational corporation*
ñmultinational noun
There now go and argue some more!
All theory is gray
But there are so many of them ...
So which of those two has seceded from the Union? BTW you need to update your flag, it's still got 50 stars.
A real Australian would escape on someone else's kangaroo...
(a) an order requiring the carriage service provider to take reasonable steps to disable access to an online location outside Australia;
(b) an order requiring the carriage service provider to terminate a specified account.
(4) For an infringement of copyright that occurs in the course of the carrying out of a Category B, C or D activity, the relief that a court may grant against a carriage service provider is limited to one or more of the following orders:
(a) an order requiring the carriage service provider to remove or disable access to infringing copyright material, or to a reference to infringing copyright material;
(b) an order requiring the carriage service provider to terminate a specified account;
(c) some other less burdensome but comparably effective nonmonetary order if necessary.
So while it protects them from monetary damages, it seems ARIA has a case under those laws. Not the reassurance I was hoping for.
I know... :cries:
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?