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."

Comments

Good on them.

[crafty.munchkin]

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.

Re:Good on them.

[lilrobbie]

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.

Re:Good on them.

[Arker]

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.

Re:Good on them.

[Gaygirlie]

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

Re:Good on them.

[Nerdfest]

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

Re:Good on them.

[Anubis350]

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.

Re:Good on them.

[erroneus]

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.

Re:Good on them.

[Tsingi]

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.

Re:Good on them.

[tezbobobo]

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.

Good news!

[It took my meds]

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!

Re:Good news!

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Congratulations

[cffrost]

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.

Re:Congratulations

[Anonymous Coward]

> 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/

Re:Congratulations

[Chewbacon]

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!

To the coming onslaught of obnoxiousness..

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Sign me up

[oodaloop]

Do they have service in eastern USA?

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Game of Thrones from theoatmeal

[Hyperhaplo]

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

Re:Game of Thrones from theoatmeal

[Phrogman]

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.

Re:The content

[serviscope_minor]

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.