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Australian Govt Holding Secretive Anti-Piracy Talks
daria42 writes "Looks like Australia's Government prefers to keep its ongoing anti-piracy discussions behind closed doors. It held an initial meeting in September last year to try to get the content and ISP industries to thrash out an agreement on how to handle Internet piracy. Consumer representative groups were explicitly blocked from attending the meeting, and attendees are not allowed to reveal what was discussed behind closed doors. Now a second meeting has been held, and again, no information has been revealed about what's being discussed. Quelle conspiracy?"
speaking from the other side...
buy independent stuff. buy their DVDs and their downloads.
they (I, We) really don't give a shit about anti-piracy campaigns. we put the AFACT trailers on our discs because AFACT would like us to (or we pay a fee to them if we want them to help us when our stuff gets pirated, when and if we decide that has affected us). it's that or pay their goddamn protection money.
download if you want. if you like it, buy the disc when it comes out (yeah, thanks to the OFLC/COB/whatever classfication body, we're a month behind demonoid, but that can't be helped). just courtesy, you know?
of course, if you have more important things to spend money on, go do that. i have a baby, there's no way in hell i'm going to JB hifi to blow my pay on DVDs and blu-rays. but then i don't have time to watch them anyway. funny that.
it's a luxury item industry, and as purse-strings tighten, the luxuries go first. it's not like most of us aren't aware of that.
No, son. Laws are written by lobbyists. I mean this literally. When a new law is created, the first step is a lobbyist or lobby group actually writing the law. Then (at least here in the US) it goes to some congressional staffers (For whom there is also a bidding way, by the way. The staffers will go to work for the lobbyists a little later in the process) and those congressional staffers look it over, add some things that they want, like a new iPad 2 and maybe a few million for a cousin back in Missouri, and then they send it to the actual elected official with a note saying, "Vote for this. It's great!@!" The elected official, who is too busy to actually read the new law because he's constantly trying to get lobbyists to give him cash payments since sort of like a shark, if he stops getting money for more than a few seconds it's the end, does as he is told by a) the staffers and b) the lobbyists for who the staffers will someday work.
Who told you "we're the ones making the laws"? It may have been that way at one time, before elections became a bidding war, an auction.
They really need to do an updated version of the Schoolhouse Rock where they explain how a bill becomes law. I think Bob Dorough is still alive.
You are welcome on my lawn.