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.'"

Comments

It's not wrong to distribute copyrighted works...

[FellowConspirator]

... 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.

Re:Of course they won't

[robbiethefett]

Most of the biggest demands for broadband probably come from people who illegally download and/or upload copyrighted content. If those acitivities were forced to stop, those people would quite possibly be happy with dial-up. Who do you work for? MaBell? MS? **AA? I'm not sure what your angle is, but it would appear that you have no clue as to why the words you just typed are completely ignorant and devoid of the tiniest bit of truth. You want legitimate uses for bandwidth? How about Gaming; be it console or PC, they all share broadband online services. Or possibly streaming On Demand services from cable companies. What about the thousands of universities all over the place that send HUGE data files back and forth between researchers. But maybe you're right.. if those researchers want to cure cancer they can try doing it one packet at a time, huh? What about when Grandma Jones wants to see her newest grandson, but she's immobilized half a world away? I guess sending her video caps from the insanely expensive HD camera you bought just for that sort of thing is unnecessary. And I guess it's pretty stupid to think that people spend millions of dollars each year on fully-legit for-pay services like itunes, streaming netflix, and skype.
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.