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Australian ISP iiNet Walks Out of Piracy Warning System Talks
An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from Torrent Freak: "A leading Australian Internet service provider has pulled out of negotiations to create a warning notice scheme aimed at reducing online piracy. iiNet, the ISP that was sued by Hollywood after refusing to help chase down alleged infringers, said that it can't make any progress with rightsholders if they don't make their content freely available at a reasonable price. The ISP adds that holding extra data on customers' habits is inappropriate and not their responsibility."
I would love to see a US ISP take the same stances, but it's actually easier for them to do it in au, precisely because Hollywood is so used to treating y'all as 'secondary markets' to be abused, which fact tends to swing the nationalist vote in on the side of the angels. If Hollywood were located outside Sydney I am sure they would never have the balls to stand up to them.
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
TekSavvy in Canada is a similar provider. Vote with your dollars folks.
> My congratulations to Australians for having an ISP that stands up for the interests of its customers.
I am not a customer of iiNet, but rather Internode, which was recently bought by iiNet. I chose Internode because they use Linux themselves, they don't care if you use a Linux desktop as a customer, and they have a great unmetered mirror for FOSS software:
http://mirror.internode.on.net/pub/
I can get 62,000+ packages for my desktop Linux distribution (Kubuntu 12.10) available as un-metered download (so that it doesn't count towards my download cap). I can effortlessly maintain all of my desktop software for zero cost this way.
I can also access the ABC's iView, and I can also access iiNet's freezone.
http://www.internode.on.net/residential/entertainment/unmetered_content/
Speakeasy in the US is similar too. We have FiOS now for our primary connection since it's so much faster, but still use Speakeasy for an extra, redundant business line since their support is so good.
"goodbye and hello, as always" ~Prince Corwin, from Zelazny's Amber series
Pirating takes too long, the quality is often crap, and pirated stuff is riddled with malware.
That might be the case with some pirating categories. Anime fan encodes/fansubs are generally much better than legal alternatives.
takes too long
Only if legal alternative is available (depending on your country of residence, it might be or it might not be).
quality is often crap ..
http://blisswater.info/regarding-crunchyroll-and-1080p-streaming/
Quoting article (Daiz),
The importance of filtering is even bigger for CR than it is for fansubs. If you are a legit customer of CR and watch their streams on their website, you can't apply any kind of postprocessing whatsoever, unlike with illegal downloads.
Just having similar quality to Japanese TV isn't enough when the western anime fanbase, in other words CR's entire audience, is used to watching filtered fansubs rather than raw unfiltered broadcasts.
And then the last point.
pirated stuff is riddled with malware.
I don't remember a single malware incident where file that was being offered on group's own website/being hosted on trusted tracker. And ~everyone who downloads anime knows where those are (they don't really try to hide it).
A US ISP would find itself destroyed just in legal fees. To survive such an assault, the 'free[dom] lawyers groups' would have to be standing by to take up the defense of any rebelious ISP in the US.
It would all get real ugly real fast. And in the US, media companies are often also ISPs or are very closely connected to them as many offer TV services as well as telephone and internet. So any ISP who fits that profile would find themselves unable to offer TV services shortly thereafter.
And TekSavvy is currently refusing to give up 1100 names in a tentative media lawsuit.
Glad to see this comment, TekSavvy is the Canadian iiNET.