Slashdot Mirror
Australia Considering P2P 'Three Strikes' Law
caitsith01 writes "ITNews reports that Australia's ever-unpopular Minister for Communications, Senator Stephen Conroy, has foreshadowed new action by the Australian Government to crack down on illegal file sharing under the guise of promoting the digital economy. Options apparently being considered include the controversial and previously reported French three-strikes approach and an approach which sounds suspiciously like New Zealand's even more dubious guilty-upon-accusation approach to filesharing. Needless to say, although the Government is consulting with 'representatives of both copyright owners and the Internet industry in an effort to reach an industry-led consensus on an effective solution,' arguably the most significant group — ordinary Internet users — are not being consulted. Senator Conroy is the man behind the crusade to 'protect' Australians from the horrors of the Internet with a mandatory, government-run blacklist, an effort which recently earned him the title of Internet Villain of the Year for 2009."
There I said it. Those with money and power control all governments, even democratically elected ones. Sure you could vote out the bad politicians, but democracies are notorious for having apathetic voters. Tax dollars being given to billion dollar corporations and withheld from the poorest of communities. Criminalization of copyrights to protect billion dollar corporations, when all along civil courts could have served the needs of everyone easily.
Every article I see about this always uses the scary language. "ILLEGAL FILE SHARING" This is quite frankly disturbing to me.
I can't help but think of Darth Sidious telling Knute Gunray, "I will make it legal!"
Except in our case, the evildoers who sit in our houses of legislation will make it illegal!
It currently is not.
They're using their grammar skills there.
You can't download here, this is the war room!
I don't pirate software, music, or anything else. I understand a lot of people do, however. The thing I don't get in all this, he's essentially correct. Downloading music or other files illegally should be punished.
The problem is that there's no way to prove who actually downloaded the content illegally. I also don't understand the /. crowd and the belief that downloading stuff off the internet without paying for it (assuming it isn't offered freely) is just fine to do.
I seriously don't get that. Why do people think it's okay to download stuff without paying for it?
Sent from your iPad.
Hmm.... So now I won't be criminally prosecuted or even sued for infringing copyright, I'll just be disconnected from my ISP? What's stopping me from signing up with a new one? Hell, maybe I'll sign up with a different provider just for committing copyright infringement. And there's no risk at all. Good one Conroy, that makes as much sense as trying to filter the internet.
mate, i hear iraq are looking for a new information minister?
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Lets hope The Pirate Party of Australia comes to the rescue here.
You can tell how powerful someone is by the magnitude of the crime they can commit and be able to get away with.
Despite the Sturm und Drang about copyright and filesharing here on Slashdot, most people really don't care one way or the other. Those that do care are so polarized on the issue that there isn't a middle ground to be had.
This is sad, because it didn't used to be this way. Early on, it was always clear that filesharers were breaking the copyright law and that something had to be done about it. What happened was a massive campaign to change the laws to crack down on illegal filesharers. Legal filesharing got caught in the rising tide, but we on the legal side of filesharing always said that it would be better for copyright holders to target the illegal filesharers directly rather than try to paint filesharing with a broad brush.
Then something happened. We got our wish. And suddenly a lot of the people who were calling for the heads of illegal filesharers were also putting their own heads on the chopping block. Now instead of outcry over copyright holders suing everybody, the illegal filesharers are finding other ways to justify their illegal actions.
I find it sickening that a group as creative and smart as the Slashdot community could be so blind to the value of copyright. I share all my code under the GPL because that is what I feel works best for me, but I wholly understand the desire to keep things strictly copyrighted on the part of others. The idea that these people are somehow in the wrong for trying to exercise control over their own works is a bad mind virus, and I'm afraid that the tenor of stories like this are indicative of a fatal infection.
So long as people keep trying to justify stealing by using excuses like "consult the people", there won't be much left to steal soon. We wonder why the economy is as bad as it is yet still feel entitled to just take everything without paying for it and then get upset at the people we're stealing from. Imagine if our employers started taking the same approach to employees.
I thought everything was going to change with John Howard out and Rudd in. Kinda like Obama (PBUH)........so what happened?
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
I am forced to somehow like the idea of a three strikes system. We really should ban ISPs when they interfere with P2P traffic for three times.
Only MC Double Def DP can save us now from those downloading with Hitler!
Therefore we aren't sharing files. We are sharing temporal garbage as far as either of us knows. If you want to make sharing garbage packets illegal, I think you'd find a lot of people wanting to tell you to mind your own business.
So, if I somehow sent you the source code to Windows, you would just say that it was only a stream of "garbage packets"? I'm sorry, but data can be extremely valuable, whether it's in the form of code, movies, or music. Packets by themselves are only packets, but it's what they carry that counts.
... send them to a far-away island populated entirely w/ aboriginals and convicts???
hmmm.. or maybe ship them back to the UK?
Politics will sooner or later make fools of everybody... - Dick Armey
People, people, be reasonable! There is a simple and effective solution. Everyone should start downloading illegal content. Then after 3 strikes we'll all be out, and then the internet will disappear in the puff of logic :-D
How about governments tackle the more important crime of the film and music industries running a cartel? It is things like region encoding which allows the media companies to run protected cartels in the various ways they've carved up the plant and where people can buy DVD's etc. from - this screws over consumers. Or is that the media companies give very generous amounts of campaign money to the politicians in different countries, and the politicians actually don't care and turn a blind eye about consumers?
Take Nobody's Word For It.
... because then the amount of money I spend on DVD's will drop to almost nothing.
I don't watch broadcast TV and so the only way I find out about good shows is by P2Ping them. Oh well other companies want my money if the TV/movie industry doesn't.
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CINC, 4th Penguin Legion
Well, come on, since Australians come from Australia, as everyone knows, and Australia is entirely peopled with criminals, and criminals are used to having people not trust them, this law makes perfect sense!
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
The question is, how many times have people been lawfully charged and convicted of illegal file sharing in Australia? I am not actually aware of any, sure the big movie companies and such send you emails accusing people of it all the time but lawfully charged and prosecuted? If it's down to what the big companies think then very few people will have an internet connection by the end of the decade, and there's the problem, nobody is going to police it at a government level, they will all just process the reams of logs and traffic that some private eye contractor on behalf of 'corny entertainment' shoves in there face and the normally responsible person get persecuted, and not properly prosecuted.
I RTFA, and it says that some copyright owners have suggested a three strikes law, but that this is unpopular. The government is interested in an "appropriate solution" to the issue of copyright infringement via the Internet. The language in the quoted passages is quite neutral and correct -- speaking of unauthorised copies, rather than theft.
There are many ways this issue could be resolved. It could be through complete copyright reform, however that is unlikely. It could be through criminalization and tough statutory penalties, which would be very unpopular. It could be by declaring the Internet and P2P as a type of broadcast system, with mandatory licensing of copyright and statutory royalties (like radio).
This is not an excuse to panic and engage in public Conroy-bashing. Join an appropriate lobby group, engage in public discussion of solutions fair to all parties, do something constructive. If you let a politician believe that he is hated beyond redemption, or a political party believe that they've already lost the next election, then they have absolutely no incentive to do what you want between now and when they leave office.
Be careful. People in masks cannot be trusted.
For the record, the New Zealand law referenced in this article (or rather, the specific clause that allowed guilt by accusation) has been postponed pending a review.
I guess the way to game this system is to accuse the accuser, I mean, if enough people spend time accusing the accuser of pirating software. They will be forced to spend time defending themselves instead of attacking 8 years olds and puppies.