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Legal Group Says Unlimited Broadband Promotes Piracy

bennyboy64 writes "Unlimited broadband plans are all too familiar in many countries; in Australia they're scarce. One ISP offering such a plan between the hours of 8pm and 8am, AAPT, is being looked at as a matter of high interest by a legal group representing the interests of the global film industry, AFACT (the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft). It said AAPT was encouraging users to download copyrighted material. AAPT's advertising states: 'If you want unlimited music, unlimited games and unlimited movies — get unlimited off-peak broadband downloads from AAPT.' AFACT executive director Adrianne Pecotic said: 'In the context of the AAPT promotion, we have a concern that it could be misconstrued to promote illegal downloads and that's something that we'd like clarified.' AFACT is currently involved in what will be a landmark court case with Australian ISP iiNet. It recently claimed in court proceedings that there was a link between iiNet upgrading the service plans of heavy Internet users and the proliferation of film piracy."

52 of 247 comments (clear)

  1. I just use by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    aapt-get.

    aapt-get remove afact

    aapt-get install mapiratinboots

    1. Re:I just use by tsm_sf · · Score: 2, Insightful

      You're dealing with the same mindset that killed what would have been the most profitable online venture in history. The death of the original Napster showed us that their interest is not financial, but rather a matter of control.

      --
      Literalism isn't a form of humor, it's you being irritating.
  2. Oh, just piracy? by Jack9 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Also commerce and terrorism and scientific research and banking and hacking and collective processing and ....

    --

    Often wrong but never in doubt.
    I am Jack9.
    Everyone knows me.
    1. Re:Oh, just piracy? by dominious · · Score: 4, Informative

      ...porn?

  3. What about Interstate Highways? by meerling · · Score: 5, Interesting

    They make it much easier, faster, and cheaper to smuggle goods and other illegal activities across state lines.
    Obviously they were made to promote such illegal activities...

    (yes, that's sarcasm, and so is this...)

    >^_^<

    1. Re:What about Interstate Highways? by arbiter1 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      how about cars in-general, they let you carry hundreds if not thousands of pounds of illegal things so they promote the activity to

    2. Re:What about Interstate Highways? by wizardforce · · Score: 2, Insightful

      First let me say that I agree with you. Second, it looks like their beef was with how the isp advertised it. The implication being that any licensing charges associated with music, games and video would make it effectively impossible to make use of all that the isp was offering *legally*. But it is like you said, they *could* use it for those purposes but that doesn't mean that the risk outweighs everything else the internet user could do with the bandwidth.

      --
      Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
    3. Re:What about Interstate Highways? by AmigaHeretic · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I have to agree with this.

      Take torrents, people use them for sharing data. Now probably 90% of the traffic is illegal in some way.

      Now take the roads on my way to work. 90% of the people are doing something illegal on the roads. Usually that is speeding, of course some people are transporting drugs etc.

      So 90% of the population breaks the law when using the road. 90% of people break the law when using torrents.

      Does that mean we should get rid of roads?

    4. Re:What about Interstate Highways? by Architect_sasyr · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Can't we just get rid of the other 10% of the population?

      An interesting observation of my own about human behaviour has come to mind - if your average law abiding citizen (think they) can get away with it, they will break "soft" laws. Soft here meaning "I'm not harming anyone or stealing" laws, which is a rather common excuse for torrents ("I'll buy it later... if it's good") and speeding. Regardless of what we do about these things (speed cameras or taking down the pirate bay), normal, every day, generally law abiding people, will continue to break these "soft" laws.

      What that says about human nature, I don't know, it just seemed appropriate to the thread.

      --
      Me failed English...
      FreeBSD over Linux. If my comments seem odd, this may explain...
    5. Re:What about Interstate Highways? by Korin43 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Unlimited downloads of music, movies and games hardly implies copyright infringement. Examples: iTunes, last.fm, Microsoft's music store, Hulu, flash games, Steam...

    6. Re:What about Interstate Highways? by badboy_tw2002 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      The thing is, we're rapidly approaching the point where legal downloads are outlasting illegal ones. This month alone I've gotten three games of xbox live which probably totaled 8-10GB of data, not to mention probably 15-20 hours of legal streaming video off netflix, hulu, etc. But hey, lock me up for being a criminal. Hey Australia, 2001 called and they're jealous of your awesome internet!

    7. Re:What about Interstate Highways? by srjh · · Score: 4, Insightful

      There's also an increasing number of bands such as Nine Inch Nails and Radiohead who have legally released their own material for free online.

      And the sky didn't fall in.

    8. Re:What about Interstate Highways? by wizardforce · · Score: 3, Interesting

      What that says about human nature, I don't know, it just seemed appropriate to the thread.

      It says that human beings make at least a basic calculation of risk and harm. Soft "crimes" are perceived as being low risk, low harm. Otherwise, normal people probably wouldn't be engaging in them as much.

      --
      Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
    9. Re:What about Interstate Highways? by DemonBeaver · · Score: 2, Funny

      Nah, how about tubes?

      --
      This message was brought to you by Sarcasm and Troll Feeders United (STFU)
    10. Re:What about Interstate Highways? by jonbryce · · Score: 4, Insightful

      In Britain, a pretty large proportion of bandwidth is used for iPlayer downloads, which are legal. Youtube is also very popular, and is mostly legal - they have a royalty agreement with the MCPS.

      Most people who don't read slashdot find it very difficult to use peer to peer software and to find reliable downloads that actually are what they say they are without any trojans added.

    11. Re:What about Interstate Highways? by drsmithy · · Score: 3, Insightful

      What that says about human nature [...]

      It says much more about the laws than the people.

    12. Re:What about Interstate Highways? by Stanislav_J · · Score: 2, Interesting

      They make it much easier, faster, and cheaper to smuggle goods and other illegal activities across state lines. Obviously they were made to promote such illegal activities...

      Well, both the Interstate system (originally known as the National System of Interstate and Defense Highways) and the Internet (which grew out of ARPANET) were both originally conceived at least in part with government/military interests in mind.

      You just can't trust civilians with these things...

      --
      "Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket." -- Eric Hoffer
    13. Re:What about Interstate Highways? by nine-times · · Score: 4, Insightful

      That's largely what I came in here to say. It may be true that really fast unlimited Internet access makes it easier and more convenient to engage in certain kinds of illegitimate behavior, but it also makes it easier to engage in lots of legitimate and useful behavior.

      In this case, it may be true that unlimited broadband will hurt media companies by making piracy easier, but it could also help their businesses by opening up all kinds of new business opportunities. The problem they're having seems to be that they're dragging their feet on new business opportunities.

      My big question is, who's paying this "legal group"? Is it the record companies who are trying to keep their old business models? Or is it the ISPs who are looking for an excuse to not provide good service?

    14. Re:What about Interstate Highways? by Kjella · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Not really. It's well proven that people will break any limit a little as long as the risk/benefit is in their favor, and won't back down until you're way over the limit. Speeding is a very good example, I think everybody agree you need speed limits and can't have people going 100 km/h through a residential area that should have 35 km/h. So you make the limit 30 km/h, most people drive 35 km/h but you can hit those going 40 km/h+ hard because they're like "way over". Those that go 35 km/h aren't practically punished because there's so many and the fines would be so little because it's just over, in fact the speeding cameras and traffic controls normally don't issue tickets at the lowest level. It wouldn't matter if the limit is 40, 50 or 60 km/h, it's always this way. Call it a little bit of marketing - instead of increasing the limits and having a real sharp dropoff, they put the limits very conservatively, let people skirt the rules a little and get general agreement that too much is too much. So it's much more about human nature than actually being bad laws.

      --
      Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
    15. Re:What about Interstate Highways? by Hatta · · Score: 2, Interesting

      And the Grateful Dead, who got the idea from old bluegrass musicians. Free music has been around a lot longer than the internet. The internet just makes it so much better.

      --
      Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
    16. Re:What about Interstate Highways? by drsmithy · · Score: 2, Informative

      The stats don't show that that its helping but you in Victoria you can (and will) get a ticket for going 103.1 in a 100 km range. The road between Melbourne and Sydney has cameras that take photos of registration (licenses) plates about 8 times along the 6 hr trip and if you are more than 3% over, they send you a ticket in the mail.

      Note that the Australia Design Regulations for vehicles state a speedometre only needs to be accurate to +/-10%, so you should be able to challenge any speeding ticket that falls within that bound fairly easily.

      With that said, pretty much all speedos read low by ~4-5%, so if you're ticketed for >5% or so over, it's essentially guaranteed you "knew" you were speeding.

    17. Re:What about Interstate Highways? by jesset77 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      And the Grateful Dead, who got the idea from old bluegrass musicians. Free music has been around a lot longer than the internet. The internet just makes it so much better.

      Haha, it's funny when people say "nuh, not only can piracy walk down this street, so also can free or independently produced content!"

      All the while Big Media execs are going "tomaytoe, tomahtoe.."

      --
      People willing to trade their freedom of expression for temporary entertainment deserve neither and will lose both.
    18. Re:What about Interstate Highways? by spire3661 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Content providers will always act as if there is no legitimate use for the internet besides commercial offerings. Not really surprising....

      --
      Good-bye
  4. Frivolous lawsuit filer should pay defendant costs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    First shoot all the lawyers.

    Then shoot all the lawyers AGAIN!

  5. No different than Hard Drive advertising by joeflies · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Consumers don't understand what a terrabyte is. They do understand that if it holds hundreds of thousands of songs, then it must be huge though. So hard drive manufacturers often advertise how many songs, movies etc a hard drive can hold. It never said that you should be filling it with illegal music or movies, even though most people don't legally have a terrabyte of music. It's more or less to convey massive size to someone who doesn't understand what the technical metric measures out to. So if australia's got a problem with the ISP, let's see them apply that rule evenly and ban hard drives too.

    1. Re:No different than Hard Drive advertising by blind+biker · · Score: 2, Funny

      Consumers don't understand what a terrabyte is.

      Yep. Looks like you're a bit confused, too.

      --
      "The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
    2. Re:No different than Hard Drive advertising by rolfwind · · Score: 2, Insightful

      So if australia's got a problem with the ISP, let's see them apply that rule evenly and ban hard drives too.

      But it's not "Australia" that has a problem with it, just an overly loud special interest group that wants to fuck over the other 99.9% of the population to their insane demands and with the $$$ and lawyers for it too.

      Forget about tarring and feathering tax collectors, these groups are even worse and that punishment would be too kind!

    3. Re:No different than Hard Drive advertising by syousef · · Score: 2, Funny

      even though most people don't legally have a terrabyte of music.

      I see you've never had a conversation with an audiophile. "MP3? Don't even talk to me if you're using MP3. FLAC? FLAC is for suckers man. I use a terrabyte per CD man. I know CD is only 44.1kHz and 44,100 samples per second but unless you're ripping your wave files at 320kHz and 440,000 samples per milli-second you're missing the forth golden harmonic. Don't forget to use pure gold cables otherwise it degrades and you won't hear the difference"

      --
      These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
    4. Re:No different than Hard Drive advertising by Kjella · · Score: 2, Insightful

      That really isn't a fair comparison. This is about using and abusing the many ways to understand "unlimited", just like many ISPs used it to limit bandwidth and claim it was still unlimited because you were connected 24/7. In this case, specifically that unlimited can be interpreted to mean "any song" and not "as much as you want". If they had said "Downlaod the latest Hollywood blockbusters with our new Unlimited Internet" then it'd quite clearly be foul play because it doesn't actually provide that. One of the reasons Grokster was so beaten in the 9-0 supreme court ruling if I recall correctly, is that they directly told you you'd be getting content that was there illegally. The same would an ISP be, so they have to define their "unlimited" wisely.

      That said, it does not matter as bandwidth will increase regardless of promotions. It's not promotions that have made my internet speed go up ~300 times in the last decade. Nor is it promotions that means one mid-size tower with 5x2TB disks can store a library of congress. Soon we'll have enough bandwidth and storage that it's like tap water. Want something? Well your 1Gb/s+ connections draws a long sigh, and you have it. I'm already no longer a 24/7 bandwidth hog with this 20Mbit connection - and yes, 2.2MB/s actual download - because I see no point. I would never get around to watching/listening/play everything I could download. That wouldn't fundamentally change if I got a gigabit connecion. I'd get things faster but I'd still have no means to consume 1Gb/s of information. Not even streamed QuadHD super-BluRays.

      --
      Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
  6. Piracy was lower by mysidia · · Score: 2, Funny

    When there was no such thing as records, cassettes, VHS tapes, DVDs, CDs, CD-Rs, no such thing as microphones, MP3 players, Radios, iPods, iTunes, online music stores, etc.

    Ban all these things!

  7. Of course it is by Rix · · Score: 3, Insightful

    People want to pirate. Get over it. It's not going to stop.

    If you're a dick about it, you might convince people who would otherwise pay you some of the time to pay you none of the time. That's it.

    1. Re:Of course it is by stonedcat · · Score: 3, Interesting

      There have been some cases such as the release of The Man From Earth where online piracy led to wide spread sales of the film.
      The director himself posted on several scene release sites and setup a paypal account where people who liked his movie could either donate a small amount or pre-order the dvd.
      Cases like this are far from common but I can see where this might be the future of entertainment.
      Surely if I like something enough and someone makes it easy for me to throw a few dollars to the people actually involved in the making of said entertainment instead of a greedy corporation I'm down with it.

      --
      You can't take the sky from me.
    2. Re:Of course it is by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      The first honest comment in this whole section.

      I am a pirate. And I think it is very improbable that all the people ranting about how they dare to call you pirates really never pirate anything.

    3. Re:Of course it is by petrus4 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      There have been some cases such as the release of The Man From Earth where online piracy led to wide spread sales of the film.

      Sure. I'll quite happily send $12 (the price of a movie ticket) straight to a director for the download of a new movie. Food at home is much cheaper than popcorn in a cinema, and I'm not paying for public transport, either. So he still gets full (concession for me, am on a pension) ticket price, which I have no problem with, and I financially come out ahead of what I'd spend on a trip to the movies right now. Everyone wins.

  8. Jesus, he's right. by straponego · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Let's go back to dialup. That will be so much better for Hollywood et al. And obviously what buys more Cristal for illiterate scumbags with hot tubs in their stretch Hummers is of Paramount Fucking Concern.

    1. Re:Jesus, he's right. by mlts · · Score: 4, Interesting

      This reminds me of a time way back when 14.4k was common (yes, it was a relative eon ago). A certain ISP I happened to bump into viewed that 9600 bps or higher actually encouraged warez transfers. So, this ISP didn't just just limit modem speed to 2400bps, but threatened to remove the account of any user who asked why it was done, because "normal, law abiding" people checking E-mail or using Netscape using Trumpet Winsock and Eudora never needed any more than that. They even viewed that the artifical limits on bps also discouraged hackers from war-dialing their modem bank.

      This stuff is SSDD, except that the technology has moved from dialup to broadband.

  9. Allergy by DaMattster · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I've got an allergy to bullshit. Seems like the telecom companies will stoop to any low just to be able to use bandwidth caps, throttling, and/or anti-network neutrality actions. This positively disgusts me!! Software piracy will not be stopped by this. Perhaps, it will only be impacted by a very, very small margin. Instead of coming to their collective senses that they just need to upgrade the damn network to handle the bandwidth, they piddle on to find any excuse not to spend money towards upgrades. They tout such speeds as 20M down. Whoop tee doo! In Japan they have 100MB symmetric broadband. Why does America, Canda, Australia, and England not want to keep wup with modern high speed broadband as defined by Japan?

  10. In other news... by caius112 · · Score: 2, Funny

    No curfew after 10 PM promotes burglary and violent crime.

  11. They didn't say 'unlimited PIRATED movies, music a by popo · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I think some people forget that there is an endless amount of freely playable, listenable and viewable content on the web....
      And one doesn't have to violate copyright to enjoy it.

    --
    ------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
  12. So does breathing by syousef · · Score: 3, Funny

    Quick. Cut off all the oxygen. It's a known fact that all Internet Pirates. That's a documented 100% breathe oxygen. We must eliminate the oxygen NOW! Otherwise we encourage piracy. Don't even get me started on Water. Water has been linked not only to piracy but also to terrorism. We must cut off the supply at the taps!

    --
    These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
  13. Summary is wrong. AAPT are wankers. by ChameleonDave · · Score: 4, Informative

    8pm to 8am? I wish!

    I am currently on AAPT's unlimited-offpeak plan. The article summary is wrong. The offpeak period in fact begins at 2am. You can actually see this in the fine print at the bottom of the linked Youtube video.

    In passing, I'll moan about something related. Last month, we went over our onpeak limit of 20GB. Our broadband was cut off, and we had to content ourselves with dial-up speed for the rest of the month. We sighed, and thought, "oh well, at least the broadband will only be cut off from 8am till 2am. We're paying for unlimited traffic from 2am till 8am, so we'll still have that."

    I had, of course, forgotten that it was AAPT we were dealing with -- that cesspit of incompetence, greed and malice. The wankers cut us off overnight too.

    Since then, I have resolved to be careful during the day, and to download the Internet every frickin' night from 2am till 8am.

  14. Re:having computer promotes piracy by icebike · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Religion, Dictators, and Kings have power of live and death over you. That they "Eventually Failed" was small consolation to the millions they put to the Sword, the Guillotine, and the Gallows.

    RIAA/MPAA are on a death march. Their own. They just don't realize it yet.

    And they will take intellectual property with them. The backlash will be rather sever, when the sheeple wake up and realize that you can't have a fast computer because some one in a far off land wrote a song.

    Eventually, it will be necessary for society to roll it all back. Copyrights, Patents, the whole nine yards.

    Compose a song, sing a song, write a book: You have 4 years, then its public domain. Invent warp drive: Ok, 7 years. Sorry, we can't wait for you to die in order to use the product of your brain. We birthed you, we fed you, we educated you, you owe us.!!

    Don't want to sing a song under that scenario? Fine. We will get someone else. People have been producing music far longer than they have been paid for it.

    --
    Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
  15. Re:They didn't say 'unlimited PIRATED movies, musi by naich · · Score: 3, Interesting

    "I think some people forget that there is an endless amount of freely playable, listenable and viewable content on the web...."

    I think they are well aware of it, and want to nip it in the bud by effectively outlawing it and restoring their position as the only distributors of content. While they might be genuinely concerned about piracy, I think they also realise that this is also a prime opportunity to make a land grab for all internet content.

  16. Re:Frivolous lawsuit filer should pay defendant co by sakdoctor · · Score: 4, Funny

    Do what you want, âcause a lawyer is free,
    YOU ARE A LAWYER!

  17. Re:having computer promotes piracy by QuantumG · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Wow, you almost said something pointed there.

    As a matter of fact, "having computer promotes piracy" is kinda right. I'll clean it up for you though:

          having easy and regular access to copying machines makes copyright law seem evil and wrong, and ignoring it seems just.

    There ya go.

    --
    How we know is more important than what we know.
  18. Re:Frivolous lawsuit filer should pay defendant co by palegray.net · · Score: 4, Funny

    And fill the hole up.

    With more lawyers? I can see it now...

    "It's lawyers, all the way down."

    In other words, welcome to Hell.

  19. I have far more sinister proof by SmallFurryCreature · · Score: 3, Funny

    Do you know who is REALLY to blame for all those illegal downloads that help fund terrorism?

    The movie industry. Without any regard to their fellow man and society they keep on producing movie after movie drawing their poor victims into a downwards spiral of constantly try to download the latest of their poison.

    Why, I say that if we ban the movie industry (and really, only a communist could be against that) then the act of pirating movie will be wiped of the face of the earth and our youngsters will be saved from this destructive path the pinko's and homosexuals from hollywood have set them on.

    Save a child, kill a hollywood producer.

    I dare you to find a single flaw in my resoning. No movies, no piracy.

    --

    MMO Quests are like orgasms:

    You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.

  20. More a matter of income... by TestedDoughnut · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I can honestly say I downloaded more less-than-legal content on an 1.5mb/s ADSL connection than I ever have on my 25mb/s cable connection. Why? Because I had ADSL back when I was in high school and was dirt broke. $50 bucks for a video game back then seemed more like a rip off than it does now simply because I now have disposable income. Now that I have money, I actually use pay services such as Netflix, Napster, and Steam. It's less of a matter that I want high bandwidth so I can download illegal files faster, it's more so I can download the files I legally purchase faster.

    Just my $0.02.

  21. Re:having computer promotes piracy by Bob_Who · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It is not some mickey mouse musician trade organizations that are moving us closer to a dictatorship, it is people like you.

    ...a dictatorship? As a result of Mickey Mouse or the Pirates of the Boston Tea Party? And that puts us at the mercy of a despotic autocracy ?

    What a drama queen, scooby doo. Turn off your talk radio. This is sounding like a cartoon idiocracy.

  22. This just in!!! by MarkvW · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Unlimited freedom promotes abuse of freedom!!!

  23. Re:I agree by jesset77 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Beyond the advertising, there is the concern that the only "legal" ways to downl... er, "licence" video and audio content are streaming, requiring you to be physically present to see the ads.

    AAPT's service, by only providing unmetered downloads in off-peak hours, encourages the last thing Big Media wants, and I mean ever. "time shifting" and local archival.

    Remember, copyright isn't about whether or not you have paid for the content. Not at the core. Instead, it's all about control. Big Media will never sell control, control over how media is consumed guarantees them future revenue.

    Big Media wants to control where and how the content exists, they will never allow you to download a copy you can archive or backup. They should always be the only source, and you have to come back to them to see it again, even in circumstances when that means not having to pay every time. When you are done watching it, they never want you to have a copy lying around that could exist after Big Media decides the old content is competing with new content. Big Media gets giddy thinking about old CD's and DVD's that they illegalize your power to "back up" getting scratched and unusable.

    Thus, it is understandable why the strategy of transferring data off-peak in order to conserve precious network resources would threaten the basic business model of copyright. The goal of conserving actually scarce resources using real economic strategy will always conflict at the core with the made up game of conserving artificially scarce copyrighted resources for artificially inflated profit.

    So, that's what I make of this situation. All marketing aside, copyright holders have a vested interest to prevent us from time-shifting. To prevent us from downloading now and watching later, even when it balances strained network load. Consumers must be online, downloading content realtime. Their every pause, fast forward and rewind and channel change recorded. They must be attached directly to the teat. Then, and only then, can Big Media erase under-selling content from history ensuring noone will have a copy archived.

    So yeah, tell me again how downloading content makes me a selfish ingrate?

    --
    People willing to trade their freedom of expression for temporary entertainment deserve neither and will lose both.
  24. Um, they got it backwards... by jmerlin · · Score: 2, Insightful

    It doesn't ENCOURAGE piracy, the converse is true, though. Bandwidth limits DISCOURAGE piracy, because you use up all your bandwidth. The fact that the converse is true does not imply that this statement is true, however. A common logical fallacy.