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Australian ISP's To Crack Down On Piracy
xav_jones writes "The ABC is reporting that 'Australia's five major ISPs have revealed their plans to crack down on online piracy by sending warning notices to suspected illegal downloaders while assisting rights holders to pursue serial offenders through the courts.' The idea is that '[d]uring an 18-month trial, rights holders would send copyright infringement notices, including evidence of copyright infringement and the IP address involved, to ISPs who would then send "educational notices" to the internet users concerned.' Further action would entail that '[u]sers who are suspected of further copyright breaches would then receive up to three warning notices before rights holders are able to pursue court action.' This seems a gentler approach than other countries. Will it prove more effective and/or cost efficient?"
(1) Will nothing happen to the alleged offender (i.e. no throttling/cut-off/etc.) unless and until a court has found against him?
(2) I don't understand how a group of ISPs in cooperation with "rights holders" could get to decide when "rights holders are able to pursue court action" unless there is some legislation behind it - ideas?
(3) Would the "rights holders" be paying for the admin involved in all of this?
You're acting like your rights matter.
To offset political mods, replace Flamebait with Insightful.
the Aussies are becoming more like the USA, where the corporations have more rights than the citizens?
Didn't we just get the latest round of analysis showing that MafiAA "evidence" isn't worth the tissue paper it's written on?
Scared the hell out of me. Ironic thing is that I honestly planned to buy the damn thing when I had the cash. That's the only reason I pirate anyway. Now I'm very, very wary of getting certain things, although, I am just considering a whole bunch of proxies and Tor.
http://pirateparty.org.au/give-no-quarter: They recognise it is impractical, won't adequately protect privacy or due process and is just the ISPs trying to avoid regulation. That's my interpretation of their release, anyway.
I'm gonna need a spec.
The real issue is what evidence will be deemed acceptable, what proof will be required of uploading content. Nothing automated, who monitored it, what content was uploaded content was downloaded (file names not good enough as no one has copyright on file names). The period over which that IP address was monitored with at least one independent witness (can't have for profit people who get paid per copyright infringement notification).
Problem is this 'creative industry' has a history of being creative with lies, as such any accusation should be corroborated by independent people to ensure validity.
Regardless of the lies and bullshit, the whole industry is still parasitic by nature, it neither feed, clothes, houses or heals. It is a luxury and it's impact upon the necessities of life always needs to be limited.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Please not that this may sound reasonable but it is not. In the end it just comes down to the ISP giving information on its customers to third parties without a court order.
(2) I don't understand how a group of ISPs in cooperation with "rights holders" could get to decide when "rights holders are able to pursue court action" unless there is some legislation behind it - ideas?
It's called 'negotiation'.
No sig today...
Tell me if i am wrong, but ain't whole these warning letters ILLEGAL? If i am the one receiving them for example, and these letters says that i am guilty without prosecution, then why the heck we need judges and courts at all? Ok, ok, i am just trying to be ironic, but for me this is simply illegal, if not criminal attempt to scare me, which could cause me a lot of nightmares, and many other emotional discomforts.....if you still follow me, i would go in court, and sue them, for 1 million dollars. And if i lost work, or i don't have work, also would sue them for lost opportunities (here it is good idea to go to your lawyer and discuss all the little details).
Yes it is! Look on the map, it's just to the right of Germany...
No sig today...
Unfortunately these ISP's will almost certainly be interfering with the sharing of file's which have free license's (e.g. Creative Common's).
When will government's stop serving the interest's of corporation's and start serving the interest's of their citizen's?
Just to clarify, that's between ISPs and specific "rights holders" on the fate of users from the PoV of those specific "rights holders"?
If only other countries worried about copyright infringement would adopt this novel concept...
Any idea whats the best way to circumvent this? Free proxies and vpn's tend to lack bandwidth for torrenting, would a paid one be good for this? Any recommendations which one to use?
This approach means that if I read it correctly the file sharer gets four warnings (one "educational letter" and three formal warnings) before anything happens.
That means that smart file sharers will take action after the first letter, to cover their tracks. E.g. starting to use encryption, or other methods that hide to the ISP what you're up to. And after that there are three warning letters that allow fine tuning of their methods. Receiving such a letter basically means "you're doing something wrong, we can still see what you're doing!".
And the end result: the ISP happy as there is not much for them to do; the recording industry happy because they don't see any file sharing taking place any more; and the user happy because they can continue what they've been doing over the last decade but now they're safe.
Bob the angry flower to crack down on ignorant use of apostophes
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Yes it is! Look on the map, it's just to the right of Germany...
That's Australia! People always get those two countries confused.
Summation 2
No means to counter 'piracy' will avail. Today's piracy is no different from spanish colonies smuggling despite iron hand of spanish monarchy - if you force your prices, people will smuggle/pirate at the cost of their lives.
if you totally prevent online piracy, people will copy cds/dvds in between each other and still pirate.
the only solution to piracy/smuggling is how it was ended back in early 18th century - abolition of monopolies and oligopolies, in whatever form they may be - and no, 4 major companies 'seeming' not to be monopoly/oligopoly doesnt remove the existence of that monopoly.
Read radical news here
Re: (2) ISPs in cooperation with rights holders can decide between themselves when they're able to pursue court action because that's the due process of the courts. An aggrieved party begins court proceedings against those they accuse. You know... You think someone has committed a crime against you, so you tell the police / sue them. Nothing untoward here!
Just replying to your question; Not read the article myself.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
Via the wikileaks cables, should this be flagged under imperialism?
How's that new US standing army working out, Australia?
Yep.
I assume the ISPs have seen a downside to handing all their customer's asses over to the MAFIAA so they're negotiated the terms of the deal.
No legislation is needed for this sort of thing. I don't know about you but for most people and corporations, negotiation is part of everyday life.
No sig today...
Everybody VPN.
Yes that is pretty much spot on. A few years back this happened in the UK, but I am struggling to find a successful prosecution.
I received a 'warning' email, it simply showed my IP address and the name of a torrent file.
Good luck in our courts with that:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/feb/08/filesharing-prosecutions-digital-economy
Yes, it's pretty clear that the 'rights-holder' is not you. You have no rights as an individual other than the right to be screwed by the system in whatever manner they deem to be the most efficient and effective for the 'rights-holder'.
If it were me I would drop any provider participating in this scheme.
- A Frog in a pond utters an azure cry. -
As far as I've followed the news about it last week, the answers are:
1) Nothing happens (except for the received notices), though your information will be given out after repeated offences, to allow for court action. Since the evidence is included with the notices, it should be easy to defend against incorrect claims.
2) You can't have court action without a defendant, so the right holders will need to obtain evidence and request the information from the ISP. After that, there can be a normal court case.
3) I assume this will be paid by them and the ISPs (since the ISPs are sending, and both parties save money by not going to court for every IP address).
I'm not really sure what to think of this. If three notices have a minimum time between them (eg. 1 or 2 weeks) and real evidence is required, this could work in a fair way.
From http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-11/rb-c112411.php
"Checkmate! RUB researchers outsmart Intel copy protection HDCP
For over a decade, Intel's widely used copy protection HDCP has been trusted by the media industry, which carries out business in high-resolution digital video and audio content worth thousands of millions. Researchers from the working group on secure hardware led by Prof. Dr.-Ing. Tim Güneysu of the Ruhr-Universität Bochum were able to checkmate the protection system of an entire industry with relatively little effort using a so-called "man-in-the-middle" attack. They will be presenting their results next week at the international security conference ReConFig 2011 in Cancun, Mexico.
Protection for digital entertainment
HDCP is now found in almost every HDMI or DVI-compliant TV or computer flat screen. It serves to pass digital content from a protected source media, such as a Blu-ray, to the screen via a fully encrypted channel. There have been concerns about the security of the HDCP system for some time. In 2010, an HDCP master key, which is intended to form the secret core element of the encryption system, appeared briefly on a website. In response, the manufacturer Intel announced that HDCP still represented an effective protection component for digital entertainment, as the production of an HDCP-compatible chip using this master key would be highly complex and expensive.
Attack on field-programmable gate arrays (FPGA)
That caught the attention of Bochum's researchers. "We developed an independent hardware solution instead, based on a cheap FPGA board" explained Prof. Dr.-Ing. Tim Güneysu, who set to work with the final year student Benno Lomb. "We were able to tap the HDCP encrypted data streams, decipher them and send the digital content to an unprotected screen via a corresponding HDMI 1.3-compatible receiver." We used the commercial ATLYS board from the company Digilent with a Xilinx Spartan-6 FPGA, which has the necessary HDMI interfaces and a serial RS232 port for communication.
Material costs of approximately 200 Euros
In their studies, the aim was never to find a way of making illegal copies. "Rather, our intention was to fundamentally investigate the safety of the HDCP system and to financially assess the actual cost for the complete knockout" reported Prof. Güneysu. "The fact that we have achieved our goal in a degree thesis and with material costs of approximately 200 Euro definitely does not speak for the safety of the current HDCP system."
Manipulation via the middleman
This "man-in-the-middle" attack in which a middleman (the ATLYS FPGA board) manipulates the entire communication between the Blu-ray player and the flat screen TV without being detected is of little interest for pirates in practice due to the availability of simpler alternatives. The scientists do, however, envisage a real threat to security-critical systems, for example at authorities or in the military. Although Intel is already offering a new security system, HDCP 2.0, due to the backward compatibility, the weak point will also remain a problem in coming years, concluded Prof. Güneysu."
Interestingly, this sort of thing was trialled in the UK by the BPI back in 2008 and it was abandoned quickly. It was completely ineffective, very expensive, and resulting in some bad press due to lots of false accusations. It did lead to some very profitable (at least in t A couple of years later they had it put into law, making it much easier and cheaper for them (ISPs didn't want to pay) but a couple of years on from that and implementing it is still some way away.
All this sort of scheme does is make money for lobbyists, monitoring companies and lawyers, at the expense of actual creators, ISPs and the general public.
That is all. Thank you very much.
group of ISPs in cooperation with "rights holders"
in the USA, they are normally one in the same.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
This got sat on, its not going ahead. As you were, all.
(1) Will nothing happen to the alleged offender (i.e. no throttling/cut-off/etc.) unless and until a court has found against him?
This,
Nothing can happen until there is a court ruling. I highly doubt this will make it to court. They've been sending out "infringement notices" for years but haven't sued anyone. The minute any judge with an once of intelligence (we have them in Oz) sees a US style extortion scheme, it'll be over with a huge payout for the lucky bugger who gets this judge. Also due to our libel laws, they'll be up for the same kind of inflated payments as they demand for every single false accusation.
(2) I don't understand how a group of ISPs in cooperation with "rights holders" could get to decide when "rights holders are able to pursue court action" unless there is some legislation behind it - ideas?
They haven't. What they've decided on is a notification scheme, it's up to the rights holders _alone_ to decide on what happens after that.
(3) Would the "rights holders" be paying for the admin involved in all of this?
Strongly doubt it.
This system is unenforceable and wont last long. Realistically it's at best, a ruse by ISP's to get the "rights holders" legal wolves off the back of ISP's. Under the Australian legal system, the rights holders have more to lose then all the people they could sue.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
The recording industry will never be happy. They'll see stuff being downloaded but won't be able to identify who.
The plan has been rejected by all the major Australian content organizations. They're still waiting for the iiNet v AFACT High Court judgment, since it will have a significant impact on the playing field.
http://delimiter.com.au/2011/11/29/bugger-off-content-industry-tells-isps-on-piracy/ (There are some more related articles on the site)
Most human behaviour can be explained in terms of identity.
The idea of hiding is that the downloads are hidden. So the recording industry can't see it either. Just the ISP sees a lot of traffic coming through.
Napster got into trouble because they were uploading or providing brand new albums, and or there hardcore uploaders had really good sources to obtain new albums before they had been released to the general public, even after the were released to the public, they would upload the album anyway. That is what Metallica was upset over, and the record industry. The record company gives away new albums to any radio station, magazines ect. or anyone that con the record company into believing they were a legit music reviewer, they hand them out like candy and then bitch about losing money..
Not only that but you can burn the albums, or make copies and sell them to others, without ever downloading a single song. I knew a guy that did this instead of using napster he would con the record company for an album, or he would simply buy it when he needed it, to make a mix cd he made back his money, plus he made a boat load of money. The people who used naptser then bitched and whined over napsters demise lost out, but he kept going.
The software industry is about the same way, upset over new software being pirated before they can get the general public (that is a stretch) to buy it, it seems they are going after the newer software and letting older software alone, or the more high profile cases of the gaming industry, they are doing the same, worried about newer games being pirated, not so much the older games. Same with Movies.. I always laugh over windows, bitchen about piracy and they steal other small software companies innovations and added it to there programs, and or try to shut them down because they created a program that can read windows files, when windows claimed you would have to buy there extra software programs to use certain features.
The industries are picking and choosing who they want to go after the downloader/uploader, even the site providing the pirated NEW Releases. This is why you see or read varying results in the form of court action, through out the world, I do agree with a comment from one poster "the rights-holders want to put pressure on the ISP's to become more responsible" but even then why not take the ISP's to court, or even lobby in laws (pay off politicians) to hold the ISP's accountable. If they can get piracy out of the mainstream they will probably be prone to back off. Until it becomes popular again!
They all pretty much have a time window in which they will make the most money selling there new products after that they seem to lose interest or concern in people downloading it illegally, however if they want to set an example they will go after anyone and wait for the courts decision before getting the mainstream media to report it, when about a dozen or so people are reported to have to pay 3,000,000 each, and its reported how these industries tracked and caught not only these users but millions of other downloaders/uploaders info, and they are pending court dates (the millions of other users pending court dates is more or less a bluff), this would be a costly way but would scare the average person. When sites like Slashdot reported how much the record industry lost via court action, then other popular sites, and the idiots in the mainstream media reported it, they looked for other ways of getting there money, besides making some mother pay out 3,000,000 dollars.
If I am reading this correctly, the offender gets three warning (strikes) before any legitimate action is taken. May that should be extended to where the first to felony offenses are not counted against an individual. Show it be inferred that a burglar has two free attempts to ransack my home before I can call the police? Seriously, what moron conceived this idea?
Pigskin-Referee
Linux: Yesterday's technology, tomorrow
In this context, there is no possibility of reading ISPs as being anything other than the plural of ISP. Therefore, the apostrophe is unnecessary. What's worse, every superfluous apostrophe such as this re-wires the minds of many of those who see it, permanently ablating the apostrophe regulation regulation of their brains such that they will never again in their life properly use an apostrophe.
Victims of the apostrophe plague, once infected, pluralize with apostrophes, form contractions by joining words without delineation, form possessives by trailing an apostrophe or omitting it altogether, and misuse "it's" and "its" without regard for the damage they cause.
That bacon and burning hair smell you detect was emitted by part of your mind dying. You are now one of the stupids, forever. Welcome to Slashdot'apostrophe.
Sensible approach, requires checks and balances, so big media's sketchy evidence won't pass. It's also makes it too hard for them to squash the little guys like in the states. http://www.theaustralian.com.au/australian-it/isps-anti-piracy-proposal-rejected-by-entertainment-sector/story-e6frgakx-1226208551936
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of cats. MEOW!!
When are they putting it into action?