Slashdot Mirror
Australian Gov't To Streamline Anti-Piracy Lawsuit Process
daria42 writes "Remember how the mass piracy lawsuits common in the U.S. are now coming to Australia? Of course you do. Well, now Australia's Government has come out backing the legal process which makes them possible — and is even promising to streamline it. Anti-piracy organisations will be jumping for joy — but I'm not sure how popular the move will be with the rest of the population."
No, unacceptable. That only encourages their behavior. Defiant to the end.
We the people don't want to 'steal', otherwise KMART would have uzis at the door instead of some bored chick.
Give the people an easy way to download everything at a reasonable price ($5 new release , $1 for back catalouge), and most of piracy will go away overnight.
Making war against the consumer of your product is not a long term business strategy.
Unfortunatley, most of the MPAxx's of the world seem to be run by retards.
46137
Hey mr content producer, you start selling the content I want here in Australia (on DVD preferably) and I will stop pirating your content from YouTube and BitTorrent and start paying for it.
I cant find ANY of the Yahoo Serious films on DVD in any local store for example. Nor can I find any seasons of The Real Ghostbusters past season 1. Nor can I find many of the cool documentaries (both film and TV) that I want to buy on DVD (such as those from the History Channel).
Don't mean to be impolite...but, you could start...paying for things
Actually, you often can't. The content industry has pushed for region coding, meaning that you can't import US DVDs and watch them in Australia. Australia is Region 4 - most DVDs get a Region 1 release, then a Region 2 release a bit later, and maybe a Region 4 release if the content producers can be bothered.
One of the changes that I would love to see made to copyright law is a refusal to distribute count made a valid affirmative defence for non-commercial copyright infringement. Copyright is a bargain between society and the creators giving them exclusive distribution rights (for a limited time) in exchange for publishing their work. If they refuse to publish it, then they should not be given the protection of copyright. This would give the content industry a very strong incentive to start making worldwide downloads available as soon as their work is ready, rather than releasing DVDs in the USA 6 months after a film shows, in Europe a year after, and in Australia eventually (maybe).
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
You are actually right - one of the conditions of the mostly one sided "free trade" agreement with the USA was to let some of the broken US copyright laws in.
I don't hate the USA, I just hate that Australian IP disputes are now subject to what happens in East Texas.
How do I get Aussies to riot.
Replace all their beer with Coors.
We want them to riot not start World War 3!!!
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
One of the changes that I would love to see made to copyright law is a refusal to distribute count made a valid affirmative defence for non-commercial copyright infringement.
To make this fully effective, you need to make the legislation quite complex, or there will be loopholes. If it applies only when they fail to distribute it in your region, they'll just release it on Betamax. If they have to release it in a common format, they'll release it on DVD, but crippled somehow: unskippable 30-minute intro, Swahili-language-only, etc.
Two simpler alternative changes to copyright law that accomplish the same goal:
* Allow commercial format-shifting. So someone can start a business buying US DVDs, ripping and re-burning them as region-free, destroying the originals, and exporting them to Australia. For extra credit, allow modification, so the business can remove unskippable intro sequences, etc.
* Compulsory licensing. Anyone can start a business selling DVDs of a movie, provided that they give 50% of their revenue to the copyright holder. Album covers already work much like this.
Either of these allow new businesses to bring copyrighted works to untapped markets (which ensures that someone will do it), while still giving the content creators a cut.