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.
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.
The downloading is rarely the issue. The issue is the liberties and justices sacrificed by lobbied and next-to-corrupt politicians in the name of saving the record industry. The consequences of this will not stop at pirates, it spans over the entire society, effectively undermining the freedom and security enjoyed by all of us. Is it really worth it? Some people seem to think so. I don't and I don't give a shit about filesharing.
Don't be crazy anymore!
Few people say it is okay. A lot of people however say that you won't manage to prevent people from file sharing unless you control Internet and personal computers completely and that would have a huge cost to society. Therefore, if filesharing becomes such a serious problem that it prevents artists from getting a decent pay (this has still to be proved though), the remuneration of artists has to go through a different system.
It looks like people are wanting to just get free stuff, but the claim is different : they say that trying to protect a revenue stream based on the control and production of copies, in a world where making copies is basically free, is nonsensical and counter-productive.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
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.
On slashdot? It's the guilty-upon-accusation bit that bothers people here more.
It's the "Every kind of P2P is people violating copyrights" idea that idiot politicians have that bothers people here on slashdot.
I don't care if 90% of the people using a certain protocol are using it to swap the latest transformers movie because I'm part of the 10% using it for legitimate purposes.
Should I be denied my right to disseminate information because of that 90%?
If 90% of the people in your apartment complex are growing their own pot and you're part of the 10% that is not should you lose your right to not have the police kick down your door without a warrant?
I feel exactly the same way.
Illegal file sharing is wrong and there should be consequences for it. It is however not theft. Theft involves taking something away from another. With filesharing, ownership and possession remain with the originator.
What is theft is the extension of copyright, erosion of fair use and bypassing of the courts that media companies are bribing governments around the world to achieve. And its not theft from an individual, it is theft from the public domain, it is theft from us all.
These 3 strikes laws are intended to circumvent the courts and allow media companies to extort real people into paying them with no burden of proof or legal recourse.
They shot first.
How long is copyright today? 70 years? 90? 150?
Companies are stealing our culture. Perpetual extension of copyright is theft from society.
Compared to the artists of the days when copyright was 20-something years, today's artists don't contribute more to society, yet they demand many times the protection. They want to get this for free -- they've never offered any form of payment, no return on investment for society.
When my grandmother was a child, she heard a song. If I were to listen to her sing me that song, she'd be breaking the letter of the law. Compared to a few brittany spears songs, the theft of every copyrighted work for 50 years is a much greater crime.
It's been a long time.
if I somehow sent you the source code to Windows, you would just say that it was only a stream of "garbage packets"?
You wouldn't?
That's not payment. Society at large doesn't gain anything from being able to have 150 year copyrights. It's only freeloaders who want to sell dead people's works as their own who are crying that copyright needs to be longer.
The "Happy Birthday" song first appeared in print in 1912. In other words, before nearly every defining moment of the 20th century. Despite that, it is a copyrighted song -- The Time-Warner Corporation owns the rights and charges $10,000 per performance in royalties.
So you're a filthy disgusting criminal. YOU. I know you sang the song publicly and didn't pay Time-Warner their due. Why are you such a filthy disgusting criminal? Why don't the long long long dead writers of "Happy Birthday" deserve compensation for their work?
It's been a long time.
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.
LIES
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
Care of Wikipedia:
The melody of "Happy Birthday to You" comes from the song "Good Morning to All", which was written and composed by American sisters Patty Hill and Mildred J. Hill in 1893.[3] They were both kindergarten school teachers in Louisville, Kentucky, developing various teaching methods at what is now the Little Loomhouse.[4][5] The sisters created "Good Morning to All" as a song that would be easy to sing by young children[6]. The combination of melody and lyrics in "Happy Birthday to You" first appeared in print in 1912, and probably existed even earlier.[7] None of these early appearances included credits or copyright notices. The Summy Company registered for copyright in 1935, crediting authors Preston Ware Orem and Mrs. R.R. Forman. In 1990, Warner Chappell purchased the company owning the copyright for US$15 million, with the value of "Happy Birthday" estimated at US$5 million.[8] Based on the 1935 copyright registration, Warner claims that U.S. copyright won't expire until 2030, and that unauthorized public performances of the song are technically illegal unless royalties are paid to it.
Further,
"The documentary film The Corporation claims that Warner/Chappell charges up to US$10,000 for the song to appear in a film.
The Walt Disney Company paid the copyright holder US$5,000 to use the song in the birthday scene of the defunct Epcot attraction Horizons."
So I'm not wrong, get stuffed.
It's been a long time.
I seriously don't get that. Why do people think it's okay to download stuff without paying for it?
The thing is, that's only a tiny part of the real issue, and only acts to camouflage the real threat.
The real threat is that the government will lose its initial sense of trepidation over filtering content it doesn't like and start applying it wherever it finds an advantage to do so. It only takes a little bit of time for a bureaucrat to become comfortable with previously unpalatable acts.
Laws like the Three Strikes rules can be used to enforce an autocracy. If you can keep any particular group of people from communicating, you've nullified their impact on society. It starts with good reasons, good intentions, then progresses from there to "is it convenient".
Pretty soon you're seeing calls for increased monitoring to enforce compliance, then you have statistical modelling on top of that, then profiling, then ... pretty soon you can't talk to your friends or share photos without a license. And how is this different from all previous evil governments throughout history, all of whom started with good intentions?
Is that what we want?
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
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.
A valid point to some extent, but still no.
This uproar among Slashdotters is not heard only when politicians trade the democratic freedoms and rights we all have come to take for granted in order to please the media lobby. It is also heard when US customs claim the right to go through all the data on your laptop when you cross the border or when voting machines are closed source. Or when the Swedish government and parliament passes a law enabling a civilian authority to scan _all_ communication passing the Swedish border (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FRA_law).
My guess is that this is due to the fact that the average Slashdotter was here when it started. Or at least, as myself, have the deepest respect for what it was that got it all started. Thus, the average Slashdotter simply understand the implications to the potential of the internet and the purity of democracy of a closed source voting system, or the lack of privacy when passing through customs, or the wider implication of sacrificing privacy and freedom on the internet - just to save music.
Don't be crazy anymore!