Slashdot Mirror
Australian Government Considers Copying UK Copyright Law Ideas
msim brings word that Australian legislators are considering an anti-piracy measure that would require ISPs to terminate internet access for people who repeatedly download copyrighted material. The legislation would set up a three-strikes system similar to the one proposed in the UK recently. While British ISPs resisted suggestions that they act as internet police, the response may not be the same in Australia, where the government has already tried to censor the internet.
"Under the three-strikes policy, a warning would be first issued to offenders who illegally share files using peer-to-peer technology to access music, TV shows and movies free of charge. The second strike would lead to the offender's internet access being suspended; the third would cancel the offender's internet access."
British Parliament sues Australia for copyright infringement.
Do they think the ISPs will voluntarily give up a 30% plus chunk of their revenue stream?
Depends on if the government lets them raise the rates to make up for "losses due to piracy", doesn't it? Well, isn't that the argument used by the MAFIAA?
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
Pictures -- I'm pretty sure all the pictures we download are copyrighted. Probably at least half of it being on websites that were not the express permission of the owner.
I'm pretty sure articles too, which some blogs insist on quoting in near entirety to get traffic.
Why should other mediums get special treatment under the law?
According to the article, it only targets Peer to Peer technology, not FTP, HTTP or other protocols...
Which if IIRC is where it all started.
Of course, when Peer to Peer programs start using modified versions of well known protocols such as FTP and HTTP then identifying the difference between illegal and legal traffic is going to be impossible... Either that or Youtube is completely screwed.
GrpA.
Enjoy science fiction? "Turing Evolved" - AI, Mecha, Androids and rail-gun battles. What more could you want?
Encryption has nothing to do with this. This is about the RIAA monitoring the torrent servers that you're using, noting your IP address and what you're downloading and sending a note to your ISP asking them to tell you to knock it off.
On the third warning, they'll disconnect you.
Not Meta-modding due to apathy.
Using tools like encryption only help mitigate the symptoms in the short term. We need to see a change in ideology overall, not just in the electorate, but in the leadership.
Rudd wants to get broadband to more homes not less, and most governments know stuff like this would be wildly unpopular, and the ISPs have exactly the same financial reasons(increased monitoring costs, loss of revenue from cancelled subscriptions, potential repercussions from improper cancelations), so are just as likely to fight.
Personally I doubt even the Brits who have a much more invasive approach towards their citizens than we do are going to pass something like this, it's political suicide to try and save something that probably can't be saved.
How does an article about a filtering scheme introduced by the previous government support your claim that this filtering will likely go ahead? The current government has next to no track record, except in declaring the net filtering introduced by the previous government a failure.
Really, what are you trying to say and did you get an interesting moderation for the same reason as a triple breasted bearded dwarf might be considered "interesting"?
I don't therefore I'm not.
"selectively".. as are most laws these days.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Considering that the internet is becoming an absolute necessity to actually live, communicate etc, cutting of access is like saying you can't walk on the roads... to me it's starting to sound like a human rights violation. It's a necessity. In 20 years, nothing works without it. Imagine losing your bank account, having no phone, no home address... it would create a vast criminal class without ability to live a proper public life.
Darundal, we now have a new administration, the Rudd government referred to the the article.
The new government is making a big noise about listening to the people on a wide range of topics. Of course, the bureaucrats at the Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy are still the same ones who promoted the previous attempts at censorship. Perhaps this is the right time to contact the new minister, Senator Stephen Conroy, with a balanced view on the issue?
What would Slashdot readers recommend as a good starting point for information to educate a government official on the problems with Internet censorship?
The basis for the article, and in fact the only actual quote from a government minister, is as follows:
"We will also examine any UK legislation on this issue [including any three-strikes policy] with particular interest," he [Minister for Communications Stephen Conroy] said. Nowhere does it mention that the Australian government is "Considering copying" UK's laws.
Because it's obviously 'sexy' at the moment to write about technology and internet related issues (Going by the number of articles to do with p2p, Facebook, YouTube etc.) these two journalists have decided to write an article with pretty much no grounding in fact - but it does have a sensationalist title (The alliteration is nice too, I'll admit) and therefore people will read it and submit it to Slashdot.
Oh and then we'll link to an article about the Australian government's attempts to stop kids looking at porn (Because that's highly relevant?). I live in Australia, and according to that article I apparently need to verify my age before visiting 'Adult sites' but a quick check shows I don't. As for this quote; "While British ISPs resisted suggestions that they act as internet police, the response may not be the same in Australia". I'm sure you guys have heard of those DMCA take down letters issued by various copyright holders to ISP's and in turn to customers? Well the biggest ISP in Australia, Telstra, which has around 50% of the market doesn't even bother forwarding those to the customer who has apparently breached copyright. It seems that Australian ISP's have a lot more respect for their customers then ISP's in Britain and America.
You still have to make a listing of the files available and searchable for each node/sharer.
Besides, if they do have a way for the files to be identified, at least to a reasonable degree of certainty, then why shouldnt we have a law like this? You can always contest it in court if you feel you have been wrongly accused.
Im serious. If we find a way to enforce copy right again, why shouldnt we? I know we like stuff to be free, but it really shouldnt be unless the person chooses to give it away.
I think we need a war on this stupid "war on" meme. For music companies or journalists to suggest that the downloading of music justifies the same response as Hitler's invasion of Poland is disgusting.
No difference to all those fake rolex watches etc., should it be a criminal offence to buy one or to have it in your possession.
Should the government make the end user liable for being the 'victim' of a fraud. Similarly those people who have been victims of phishing, a downloaded a fake copyright infringing version of their banking web site, not only does the victim have their account raided by a criminal, but the government will fine them in addition, perhaps by confiscating what remains of that bank account, as well as of course kicking them off the internet.
Of course you can not differentiate between different types of copyrighted content, so unknowingly click on a web site that contains 3 infringing photos, and they will kick you off the internet. Well if they really are going to be a bunch of fucked up phreaks, why don't they make it a criminal offence, to download infringing copyrighted content, I am totally positive that after just one month using the internet their would not be one person who has not unknowingly downloaded some infringing content, be a piece of writing, a photo, a portion of a web page design, some web page coding, or a viral video etc.
So the maroons can try to turn the whole country into a prison and oddly enough honour it's heritage as a prison colony, with a 'Rudd'y fool as the head warden.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Australia is still under the sovereignty of the Queen, so what is the problem?
chief of state:
Queen of Australia ELIZABETH II (since 6 February 1952)
represented by Governor General Maj. Gen. (Ret.) Michael JEFFERY (since 11 August 2003)
head of government:
Prime Minister Kevin RUDD (since 3 December 2007)
Deputy Prime Minister Julia GILLARD (since 3 December 2007)
cabinet:
prime minister nominates, from among members of Parliament, candidates who are subsequently sworn in by the governor general to serve as government ministers
elections:
none; the monarch is hereditary; governor general appointed by the monarch on the recommendation of the prime minister; following legislative elections, the leader of the majority party or leader of a majority coalition is sworn in as prime minister by the governor general
Ramen
Do you ever look forward twenty or thirty years and wonder what the world of technology will deliver to us? What it's potential is and what will actually be realized?
In the last 20 years we've gone from home computer systems with half a meg of ram or less to a worldwide network of high powered PC's in every home, evolving human interaction from e-mail, IRC, web pages, instant messages, internet radio, internet video, 3D virtual worlds, online stores, the participation of a global audience in projects ran by NASA, live news coverage from hundreds of vendors - it's impressive. And we have more to look forward to: 3D TV, space elevators, nanotechnology, advanced AI, accessible quantum computing, artificial limbs that interface with our nervous system, maybe even space travel to other worlds.
Sometimes I catch myself wondering about all the things I can't even imagine today that will come along after my death and I'll never experience. Then I think about modern day issues such as this ludicrous copyright legislation, in my home nation (UK) no less, and I wonder if in ten years time if the Internet will even be recognizable as a free, neutral foundation for furthering mankind, or will it simply be transformed into a Government regulated and observed, pay per use, pricing-tiered no-man's land destroyed by industries seeking to motivate individuals to purchase their products or works as a product of fear mongering and contorted calculations of "damages" that haven't even been shown to have occurred?
Copyright is necessary such that those who spend their lives creating works valued our societies can continue to do so. It is a balance between the needs and desires of our societies and the needs and desires of our artists, authors, and musicians. It is not a tool to be wielded by industry associations to sue individuals who can't afford to buy a dozen CDs, let alone defend themselves in court, into bankruptcy for the purposes of a public scare campaign, nor a tool to twist the laws of a society against itself solely in the interests of those agencies - those agencies who themselves are not the artists, authors, and musicians who create the works they claim to protect, and who they have recently announced they seek to pay less.
Please stop this madness. The world will suffer greatly at the hands of a small group of greedy executives and their shareholders if this nonsense continues much further down its current path.
So who decides when an infringement occurs? If privacy laws prevent ISPs from snooping on traffic (or do they?), and the main source of copyright complaints comes in the form of mass mail from industry associations, who's to verify and decide what is a "strike" and what isn't? What is the appeals process? What is cutting someone off meant to realistically achieve? And finally, what's the weather like in Sweden? I think I'd like to move there.
Encryption can fail if the government makes it illegal or establishes a way of forcing the populace to give the passwords during an investigation. Such investigation could start simply by monitoring your bandwidth usage and comparing it to that of someone who only sends mails and browses for porn from time to time.
However, there should be ways of making the such a monitoring useless. For example, a worm could be done that connects to torrent sites and download movies to random folders in your computer. The worm could accept suggestions about how to search in such a way as to make it impossible to discern if the movie it downloaded was the "infected" user's choice or simply a random popular choice.
With a portion of the population not willing to patch or kill the worm, the propagation would be brutally fast (taking into account which part of the internet population would be voluntary victims).
You'd have to hunt down the unwillingly downloaded Harry Potter latest movie or britanity spear latest... whatever she does now. However, bandwidth speed is growing fast and multimedia size is more or less constant.
Yes it should, if it can be established that a reasonable person would have thought that the watch was counterfeit (i.e. `replica' in the title of the auction, suspiciously low price,etc.), they should be prosecuted. This is no different from `possession of stolen goods' or `handling' in the UK: you cannot simply claim that you had absolutely no knowledge that the goods were stolen if it would have been obvious to a reasonable person that they could not be legitimate. The same rule could easily be applied to copyright infringement: nobody will ever prosecute you because someone posted an infringing picture on his website. However, if you download songs and movies from other users using P2P software, it is almost certainly copyright infringement.
Australia's bandwidth is sold wholesale to ISPs at a rate that makes it hard to turn a profit unless the bulk of customers don't use anything like their monthly quota. The first people tot have their access suspended will be the ones who use every last byte, which generally means the ISPs are currently losing money on those customers. The ISPs have different business models, and different demographics to their customer bases...so I imagine the quality providers with good deals and speeds will hate this sort of legislation, as their users are in the know, often nerds, and won't stand for it. But the major guys, Optus, Telstra, etc, with all the families who didn't bother shopping around in the first place and don't give two figs about copyright law, or any other tech/political issue - they'll love the opportunity to cut off all their heavy users.
This is indeed the case. I fear that this legislation is unworkable.
May I suggest that any Australian readers voice their concerns?
It is actually quite easy to find your Federal member of Parliament. Just go to this site and search your suburb. For a list of members, here is an alphabetical list, party list, list of members by state and also an electoral list.
Once you've found your member, their contact details can be found if you follow the links.
The more people who get involved, the more that politicians will listen. Don't let lobbyist groups get away with this sort of rubbish!
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
If you've got a copy of the Star Wars animated feature on your machine a month before it comes out in the theater I'd say you have a mouth full of chicken feathers and claiming you didn't know it wasn't out yet isn't going to fly. One of the biggest problems with the whole argument is there's a lot of different positions falling under the hat of P2P. People argue that there are legitimate uses but most of it seems to be sharing copyrighted material. Then there's others that are claiming fair use but that's murky too because fair use was never meant to be a dodge for getting around paying for materials. Then you have people that flat out don't want to pay for anything and why should they if they can download it for free? I don't know, maybe because the producers of all this content you want for free may decide to do something that pays instead of producing free content? The subject really needs to be divided up into several arguments. File sharing of non copyrighted materials isn't an issue so it's a non argument and can be excluded. Fair Use? Well Fair Use doesn't cover uploading a movie that has yet to hit the theater for your closest hundred thousand friends to download. So we are largely left with "I don't want to pay for anything" being the argument. Well since the people making said products don't want to work for free so you don't have to pay then either some one else has to pay for you or the products will cease to be produced and everyone will loose including those willing to pay. The debate is being clouded by the different issues but it really comes down to free verses pay. Pay is called capitalism, free means the government pays for content then you get what they want to produce and you pay for it with your tax dollars. So unless you want to watch documentaries on the life and times of Ronald Regan and George W Bush or hear their favorite music you might want to consider paying for music and movies you like. Socialism and Communism may sound like a free ride but you still wind up having to pay through taxes and you tend to get a lot of crap. Yes most films and music are crap these days but believe it or not it can get a lot worse.
I have my doubts about exactly that theory. I for instance am quite ignorant about brands. I wouldn't be able to make a difference between a pair of brand name sunglasses and a counterfeit one, because I simply don't know the brand names. So if I am on vacation, and my glasses break, I just go for new ones, and I would surely take a pair which I like, and where the price looks reasonable to me. I simply have no clue what brand name sunglasses are supposed to cost.
I know that we (bombarded by advertisements and brand name awareness) are supposed to know all the brand names and the associated prices. I call that bullshit. I just don't care. I never have. And I never will. I am buying functionality, not brands. If a pair of sunglasses works for me I don't care about the name that is printed on them. I wouldn't pay more if I remember an ad I saw for the name.
Umm, this might sound like a nitpick, but you forgot another not insignificant category --- legally sharing copyrighted material. Think Free software, CC licensed audio and video, etc. I download several GB every month, and I'm sure I'm not alone. People do produce things for reasons other than just money.
Just sayin' s'all...
Cogito, ergo sig.
On the third warning, they'll disconnect you. If that's how it's going to happen, what's to stop me (or anyone else) from faking said screenshots with RIAA IPs and making their ISP shut them down?
Infinite time means everything that can happen, will. You being you is absolutely incidental. You do not exist.
Wouldn't it be possible to write a custom BitTorrent client that connects to the swarm but doesn't actually download anything?
Couldn't you then sue the living daylights out of them for falsely accusing you?
What if it was built into BitTorrent clients as a kind of mass protest to connect to but not download from random swarms? Would this cause any problems for those actually wishing to use the torrent properly?
Sure they could monitor for people actually receiving data from them hence actually using the torrent properly but it'd be a hell of a lot more hassle for them no?
(I don't think this is a troll - it's a valid point)
Encryption may be a bad solution but it's possibly our only one in the forseeable future. If goverments do outlaw encrytion, or at least make it illegal to withhold your keys (as they do already in some countries), then steganography will be the next step.
Standard encryption should be enough to stay one step ahead in the arms race for now, though.