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Australian ISP iiNet Walks Out of Piracy Warning System Talks

Posted by Unknown on from the good-luck-pirating-with-data-caps dept.

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."

33 of 120 comments (clear)

  1. Good on them. by crafty.munchkin · · Score: 5, Insightful

    As an Aussie, I approve of them making a stand against how everyone in this country is ripped off by all the media outlets - especially when our dollar is worth more than the US dollar. And as for making us wait 3-6 months because they don't want us watching... well, the internet tore down that time barrier as well.

    --
    ... wait, what?
    1. Re:Good on them. by lilrobbie · · Score: 5, Interesting

      These guys have been doing this for years as well. I actually have kept overbuying my broadband allocations (I use probably 20% a month) simply because they have been so honest and decent. Good service... and they have gone to bat for my rights every time. iiNet is changing the shape of Aussie ISPs, doing a wonderful job keeping Telstra/Optus and co. honest. The others see iiNet back out, and suddenly realise you can say no to the media industry on unrealistic or overly power-hungry requests.

      I don't work for them... just a very satisfied consumer of their services.

    2. Re:Good on them. by Arker · · Score: 4, Informative

      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.

      --
      =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
      Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
    3. Re:Good on them. by Gaygirlie · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Damn. That must be the ONLY honest, customer-friendly ISP on the whole planet. Cling to them like your lives depended on it!

    4. Re:Good on them. by crafty.munchkin · · Score: 2

      Is it wrong that I left them because they screwed me over in other ways (hey, they are an ISP, after all!)?

      --
      ... wait, what?
    5. Re:Good on them. by Nerdfest · · Score: 4, Informative

      TekSavvy in Canada is a similar provider. Vote with your dollars folks.

    6. Re:Good on them. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      That type of service is actually quite common from Aussie ISP's, not of all of them though. Having worked at iiNet and other Aussie ISP's myself, I know first hand how such an excellent enviroment iiNet and some of the others are, not only for customers but for staff too. Especially iiNet - you should see the (new) iiNet offices: http://www.lifehacker.com.au/2012/06/inside-iinets-perth-hq-bob-fruit-finn/

      Oh, and the title to this article/thread is misleading: Aussies have had unlimited plans for ages now, and for cheap. I myself am sitting on unlimited DSL2+ (and not TPG/Dodo/etc either). True that some other Aussie ISP's don't have unlimited plans, but most, like iiNet, have 1TB+ monthly plans, which is more than enough for most people. I also find the title ironic, considering how (at least some of) the USA ISP's are imposing download limits on their plans now :)

    7. Re:Good on them. by Anubis350 · · Score: 4, Informative

      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
    8. Re:Good on them. by jampola · · Score: 2

      I haven't lived in Aus for a few years now but there are quite a lot of honest ISP back home. I remmeber Exetel, Westnet and a few others who were quite good. I am looking forward to seeing how that whole purely wholesale fibre ISP will go.

    9. Re:Good on them. by L4t3r4lu5 · · Score: 2

      Andrews and Arnold in the UK. http://aaisp.net/.

      --
      Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
    10. Re:Good on them. by erroneus · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.

    11. Re:Good on them. by Tsingi · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.

    12. Re:Good on them. by Seek_1 · · Score: 2

      Here's another positive voice of support for TekSavvy.

      If you live in Canada, call and see if you can get them. They're a fantastic ISP (not to mention extremely competitive) and the company actually cares about their customers.

    13. Re:Good on them. by oobayly · · Score: 2

      In the UK there's Andrews and Arnold. Native IPv6, excellect monitoring (I get an SMS when the line goes down and back up), and genuinely knowledgeable people. They cost extra, but for me it's well worth it.

      Their opinions on filtering are quite interesting too (my emphasis):

      ...There is a lot of nasty stuff on the Internet as well as useful content. This is, however, your responsibility and not something we are offering. There are many packages available for various operating systems.

      We do not have any black boxes designed to filter or monitor traffic and you are welcome to ask RevK on irc if this is still true at any time and take a lack of reply or evasive reply as you wish. Obviously we will ask if the law requires us to actually lie if ever we are subject to such legislation, and if not this statement would be removed. It is an interesting point as the statement that we are not filtering or monitoring is done for financial gain (to get customers) so if we were required to lie under RIPA we would be committing an offence under the Fraud Act. A debate to be had if ever it happens. You can probably get a clue if ever we dissolve the company and move all the contracts to a new company at any time...

    14. Re:Good on them. by tezbobobo · · Score: 4, Interesting

      They've been my ISP for almost a decade now and I will continue to support them for exactly the same reason. I think it is amazing that you get companies that spout the "do no evil" crap, and here is iiNet just going about its business doing right by their clients. Good on ya iiNet. Disclaimer: I don't work for iiNet, but I did apply for a job there once. Disclaimer 2: They phoned me but did not give me an interview. We're till on good terms though.

  2. Good news! by It+took+my+meds · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I'm so glad I'm with iiNet; they take a stand for me as a consumer. I don't pirate anything, nor do I view content that is outside the norms of adult society, however my browsing habits are not other people's business - especially corporate entities!

    1. Re:Good news! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I'm so glad I'm with iiNet; they take a stand for me as a consumer. I don't pirate anything, nor do I view content that is outside the norms of adult society, however my browsing habits are not other people's business - especially corporate entities!

      No disrespect intended, but there isn't anything special about that. You are just like the vast majority of other internet users. It's high time that the media companies and the government get that through their head.

      Should everyone be "tracked like an animal" on the internet just because some people abuse it? No. Same goes for the advertisers who think tracking everybody is their god given right.

  3. Congratulations by cffrost · · Score: 4, Interesting

    My congratulations to Australians for having an ISP that stands up for the interests of its customers.

    I wonder if we could ever get something like that in the United States? Haha, I'm just kidding... I know we can't.

    However, I wish you all the best in keeping iiNet—particularly, resisting pressure and bullying tactics from my country's government and its corporate controllers.

    --
    Thank you, Edward Snowden.

    "Arguments from authority are worthless." —Carl Sagan
    1. Re:Congratulations by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      > 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/

    2. Re:Congratulations by Chewbacon · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Nah, the dollar is so much sweeter than consumer rights when you're a big business. And most people don't mind having their rights taken away from them!

      --
      Chewbacon
      The Bible is like Wikipedia: written by a bunch of people and verifiable by questionable sources.
    3. Re:Congratulations by drinkypoo · · Score: 2

      yeah I was gonna say, what? Moreover, I've never heard of any ISP that cares what OS you use.

      You've never heard of any major corporate ISP then. None of them support Linux and all of them want you to take various troubleshooting steps in Windows if you call them up with a problem that you've already traced to their network.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    4. Re:Congratulations by Sabriel · · Score: 2

      There are ISPs like that in the United States like that one. It just depends on where you live, and if you took the time to do your research. [broadbandreports.com]

      I assume it's the same in Australia. Since Australia is huge too, I'll bet that most aussies couldn't get iinet even if they wanted to.

      Actually, mostly we can. Australia has not been carved up into fiefdoms by the big telcos like the US has, though the suits certainly tried (and tried, and tried, and are still trying). And that was actually in part because we saw what happened in the US (e.g. with AT&T and the Baby Bells), and the government at the time went "hell, no". Whether future Aussie governments will continue to remember these lessons is anybody's guess. I hope so.

  4. To the coming onslaught of obnoxiousness.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    If you don't live here, in Australia - you don't understand.

    We get gouged, delayed or denied on a lot.

    Last week I bought a Steinberg Cubase 7 upgrade. A DOWNLOAD product - I paid $199. It's $149 to US customers. That's a typical situation for us. It's always the same story in this country. The distributors/retailers (whether they be television channels, bricks and mortar sellers or whatever), they control the price through publisher->retailer relationship and that means we get it when they want, for the price they want and fuck you if you don't want to pay for their shitty overheads.

    If I want games off steam, often,I have to pay up to 90 US for a release title. Not steam's fault.

    If I wanted to watch the final season of sopranos legitimately (and believe me, I tried), I saw something like 2 episodes, then it went away for about a month, came back for another couple of episodes and it was gone again. Typical television patronage, here. My response? What am I supposed to do? Hang out for the tv guide, every week? Sorry, you created my desire to watch your program and I'm now going to watch it.

    If I want to watch English Premier League games online (because I can't afford the $70-80 a month for all inclusive pay tv) - I'm only able to watch a few games of someone elses choice through their online service because like so many things online, currently, the content just goes to whoever will front for it. Telstra own the rights to online rugby league coverage in this country - they do next to NOTHING with it.

    I could go on with hours of fragments of information and complaints on the situation and I'm sure the grass is green here in many ways - but it is a little frustrating to have to constantly circumvent the legitimate purchase method (whether it be through downloading the product for free, or buying it at a grey import seller) - just so I can't feel like a chump for paying twice the price everybody else on earth does.

    And let's get something straight - I PREFER to buy. Steam completely and utterly destroyed piracy for me. I love it. But what I don't love is how the shitheads running unprofitable stores contributing fuck all to my gaming life necessitate that I can't buy a game for the price retailers in the rest of the world sell it for.

    1. Re:To the coming onslaught of obnoxiousness.. by isorox · · Score: 2

      If I wanted to watch the final season of sopranos legitimately (and believe me, I tried), I saw something like 2 episodes, then it went away for about a month, came back for another couple of episodes and it was gone again. Typical television patronage, here. My response? What am I supposed to do? Hang out for the tv guide, every week? Sorry, you created my desire to watch your program and I'm now going to watch it.

      We had this through the 90s in the uk, so people like me downloaded the episodes (starting off on 56k modems at about 128kbit)

      Then sky caught on and now episodes are broadcast within a week of u.s. airings (some series we had the episodes before the u.s!)

      However we don't bother any more, too much hassle, we simply wait for the DVDs to come out. Just finished watching Sanctuary, and have reached season 7 of 24 (we gave up when it left the BBC after day 2). We do lose something in the lack of cliffhangers, but the lack of adverts, the lack of faff of downloading, and the instant availability when and where we want, more than makes up for it.

      We occasionally dip back into TV -- we watched Terra Nova last year. Just got into it, and then it was cancelled. By waiting a few years we can see when a series is worthwhile buying.

    2. Re:To the coming onslaught of obnoxiousness.. by FireFury03 · · Score: 2

      Then sky caught on and now episodes are broadcast within a week of u.s. airings (some series we had the episodes before the u.s!)

      The stuff we got before the US always tended to be because the US insist on having a mid-season break whereas we generally don't. So the start of the series came a couple of weeks after the US showed it, and then the US went into their mid-season break and we overtook them for the second half.

      However we don't bother any more, too much hassle, we simply wait for the DVDs to come out. Just finished watching Sanctuary, and have reached season 7 of 24 (we gave up when it left the BBC after day 2). We do lose something in the lack of cliffhangers, but the lack of adverts, the lack of faff of downloading, and the instant availability when and where we want, more than makes up for it.

      We occasionally dip back into TV -- we watched Terra Nova last year. Just got into it, and then it was cancelled. By waiting a few years we can see when a series is worthwhile buying.

      I gave up my Sky subscription years ago. I realised that I was basically only watching 2 or 3 programmes on Sky, and for that had to pay £20/month for 60 channels I wasn't interested in. Cheaper to buy the DVDs of the shows I want to watch. I do still watch broadcast TV, but its pretty much entirely BBC and S4C, I certainly don't feel like I'm losing out by dropping pay TV. If the pay-TV broadcasters stopped bundling channels I'm not interested in (and making me pay for them), stopped the wall-to-wall adverts, *and* stopped with their crazy DRM that prevents me using MythTV with their broadcasts, then its vaguely possible I might resubscribe, but to be honest the convenience of just buying DVDs instead of having to deal with the broadcasters' shit is good.

      --
      http://blog.nexusuk.org
  5. Sign me up by oodaloop · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Do they have service in eastern USA?

    --
    Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
  6. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 2

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  7. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 4, Funny

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  8. Game of Thrones from theoatmeal by Hyperhaplo · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Americans have a similar situation.
    http://theoatmeal.com/comics/game_of_thrones

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    1. Re:Game of Thrones from theoatmeal by Phrogman · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Yes given that you need to pay for Cable up here in Canada, then pay for specialty channels etc, someone in another forum post worked out that watching Game of Thrones would cost you something around $1000 Cdn. I can't recall the math but its hardly impossible.
      I don't have cable at the moment and haven't had it for most of the past 3 years - except when the Olympics are on or something similar - because the bulk of the programming is complete shit and not worth watching, and the few shows that I do consider worth watching are only available if I subscribe to specialty channel packages that are arranged to maximize Shaw's profits (although Telus is no better), not to be convenient to the customer. TV is simply not worth bothering with. Oh and of course I now no longer have to endure ads.
      If I need to watch something, there are DvDs. In the end its far cheaper to download the content, or go buy the content, or take it out of the library than it is to sign up for cable TV.
      Netflix and the iOS BBC app are a godsend for good programs. This is the way to go for the future IMHO.

      The content producers are pricing themselves out of the market and making consuming their content so difficult that potential customers chose other means - sometimes illegally downloading that content. If it was priced effectively and conveniently a *lot* of those users would choose to pay for it. Instead they present as many obstacles to viewing their content as I can conceive possible.
      Bad marketing strategy is bad and doomed to fail.

      --
      "The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
    2. Re:Game of Thrones from theoatmeal by serviscope_minor · · Score: 2

      f it was priced effectively and conveniently a *lot* of those users would choose to pay for it.

      Indeed.

      A typical series is 20 to 25 episodes.

      There are plenty of series I would happily pay £2 per eposide to download it instantly and watch real time (1 episode per week). Of course, I would never pay £40-£50 to buy the boxed series, but £2 for a decent fraction of an evening's entertainment is excellent value.

      To be able to pay £2 and even get full SD without too much compression would be great.

      Oh and no DRM. I'm already paying, so I am by definition not a pirate.

      And no stupid geographical restrictions and delays either.

      One of the fun things about being a really big fan in the current age is the online communities.

      --
      SJW n. One who posts facts.
  9. Re:The content by serviscope_minor · · Score: 5, Insightful

    How does that work out?

    Not laden with ungodly amounts of DRM and silly timing restrictions?

    The trouble is that not only is pirated content free, it's also better, because of the lack of DRM, and lack of silly timing restrictions.

    If you torrent, you get it *now* and can put it on a media server, transcode it for your phone, pause, skip the ads (as it were), etc etc.

    If you pay, not only do you have to wait a lot longer, you also get a worse product for your troubles. I once purchased a DVD of Castle which was laden with some lame attempt at extra copy protection. Basically, they split the DVD files up into teeny slices. The results it that the DVD player would occasionally pause for a visible fraction of a second between some of the odder transitions and the forward and backwards seeking wouldn't work properly.

    Nice.

    So, I did wait, and I did pay, and I got treated like a complete crook and sold a heap of crap which was a far worse experience than if I had downloaded it.

    --
    SJW n. One who posts facts.
  10. It isn't a voluntary exchange of money by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    It isn't a voluntary exchange of money because the seller sets the price and therefore there is no negotiation.

    If you want to claim "They didn't have to buy it", then piracy is just the free market managing to find the route that gives a price close to the percieved value of the product. If you can't negotiate the price, piracy is the next nearest acceptable price on offer.

    Remember, the don't have to make the movies. They could just decide to do something else instead. Nobody is MAKING them make music/movies/whatever and it's not like piracy was sprung on them out of the blue: it's been known about for decades.