ISP anti-piracy plan rejected
A discussion paper from 5 ISPs outlining a plan to combat copyright piracy has been rejected.
- Published by David Knox
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A discussion paper from 5 Internet Service Providers outlining a plan to combat copyright piracy has been rejected by the Australian Content Industry Group.
ACIG, which represents music and film rights content owners including ARIA and APRA-AMCOS, yesterday said it would not ratify the plan put forward by The Communications Alliance, which represents Telstra Bigpond, iiNet, Optus, iPrimus and Internode.
The 5 major ISPs had proposed an 18 month trial of the plan, during which 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 users concerned.
Users who are suspected of further copyright breaches would then receive up to three warning notices before rights holders are able to pursue court action.
ACIG spokesperson Vanessa Hutley said “ACIG does not think the scheme proposed by the Communications Alliance and its members creates a balanced process and it falls well short of the expectations we had had for an open, balanced and fair solution.”
Foxtel said it wanted a scheme to slow the broadband connections of repeat offenders.
The proposal comes as iiNet prepares for its High Court trial, having already gone through two Federal Court trials A group of 34 movie studios and TV companies, including the Seven Network,
Communications Alliance chief executive John Stanton “The majority of infringers are casual infringers, not hardcore. Infringers will change their behaviour given an opportunity through education.”
Source: The Australian, Yahoo
26 Responses
I felt like watching “The Incredibles” this afternoon, so I loaded up Bigpond Movies, but its not available for online delivery. No, I didn’t then go and down load it, but until the mechanisms are in place to give people what they want when they want it, there will be a demand for piracy.
We are in a world that demands immediate gratification. Meet consumer demand, and you’ll have a business.
Funny, The Swiss government has just decreed that downloading for personal use is legal.
They stated that “Despite the industry’s claims that downloading undermines their business, this study shows that the effect of unauthorized downloading on the industry’s bottom line is negligible.”
There are even countries that are not signatories to the International Copyright Agreement, but that doesn’t negate Australian law.
If they really wanted to combat piracy there’s two things they could do easily:
#1. Reduce ticket prices for movies (or DVD prices for DVD sales) to the point where more people would look upon that as value-for-money
#2. Release movies more-or-less simultaneously around the world (it’s not that difficult, fellas!) – certainly within a few weeks of each other, not like what we have now, where movies get released in the US then we wait months; and as for TV shows – we wait Years for the things to get aired over here.
When will a hulu like service launch here downunder? I also read somewhere that Netflix will launch here at some point. As some of you have said their needs to be a global airing date for material.
If the Networks and Production companies along with the distrabution companies distrubuted these shows adequately then there would not be a need for this, there is a saying that “invention is the mother of necessity”. I have a few shows which i loved and still love but i cant get them here in stores so i have to try and purchase them online. This will only be solved when the big corporations actually grow some common sense and broadcast or distribute the content properly, people will by shows if you give them a chance and they will watch them if you put it on at a reasonable time slot and dont keep shifting it. Its amazing that these huge corporations which have billions of dollars dont have any common sense. The only thing they can think of is litigation to clamp down on this. Lazy and arrogant.
With increased download limits and hidden proxy methods, it wont work…
We need to abolish download limits and have high quality Hulu type on demand sites or services (with persistent content, not just catchup), and cheap iTunes rentals and so forth. And it all needs to be timely. Some people will pirate no matter what, but make it easy and fairly priced and you’ll win a lot of us over.
It’s an insult that Foxtel premiered Breaking Bad season 4 about 2 months after it’s USA TV start date.
The quote Dick put up is spot on.
“piracy is not a pricing issue. It’s a service issue”
@robert
Didn’t Gerry Harvey already try that?
Any plans to ban online shopping because it’s unfair to Westfield?
@Elbogrease. iTunes is not the absolute ideal. I agree that they price gouge Australians. But then again, they aren’t the only service that does that. My point was more along the lines that it helped the music industry deal with piracy by making content easily-available and at a cost which consumers would consider paying.
I’d gladly pay to watch programs that are played promptly, not resheduled and dropped after a couple of episodes. Imagine if they treated your favorite sport like that?
If the networks didn’t waste their millions on lawyers fees to finally bring us a reasonable unified service like other countries then there would be no problem in the first place. Why don’t they want my money??
ETA – so The Walking Dead will be here but not on FTA, thanks for the clarification David. Now what about the new show Hell on Wheel I’ve been hearing good things about?
Well put about the service v cost issue, if they want to cut piracy then air TV shows sooner but providers need to have more realistic costs on legal downloads. I’d rather get the DVD than pay similar price for DL or renting a movie.
I have a question though. If like me you’re paying for Austar does it make a difference if you DL shows you’re already paying for, compared to ones shown only on FTA?
No one is forcing people to use iTunes but they must be doing something right with their eco system. I’ve used Mac’s since the 90’s and iTunes since v1.0 but while I have bought some music over the years I’m still to buy any movies or TV shows (see above). I will also remind people that Apple gets very little money from sales on it’s music store only a few cents per track on the music. It’s the record companies that get the majority of the $1.69 per track. So don’t blame Apple Australia for when we are paying so much more than the US who get music at 99c a track.
Lastly, ‘The Walking Dead’ not to be aired here, what about ‘Hell on Wheels’?
Sorry for the long post David.
Gotta agree on global dates for things. The Muppets is already out in America we have to wait until Boxing day & the poor U.K has to wait until mid February! This isn’t some small art house company it’s friggin’ Disney. Why???
So because of that David we miss out on that show??
Show is coming to FX. I’m not suggesting it’s ideal, just pointing out it isn’t always Aussie networks as the sole problem.
I can see where they are coming from with DansDans BB example, but what about a show like the Walking Dead, or Suepernatural season 5?
In America they are halfway through season 2, and Supernatural was released on DVD before Australian networks aired it because it was treated so poorly. Making moves to stop piracy is fine If you then decide to treat your viewers better but giving them the shows.
And anyway, people will find away around whatever measures put in place, Pirates will always be ahead of the people trying to stop them, history proves that.
Some Aussie Networks explored picking up The Walking Dead, but the price from FIC was very high.
Fine by me – come down hard on “pirates” and people will stop consuming your products and do other things
A lost eyeball is a lost eyeball, paying or not. (and remember, most of the time it leads to people paying for content – ie I’m getting Breaking Bad on blu-ray for Christmas after watching the show from a friend)
I’m sick of reading about how great Itunes is. Apple are felching the a*se off Aussies dumb enough to use their expensive closed garden crap. AOL anyone?
@Dick. Gabe has always been spot on about piracy. Don’t want people to illegally download? Make release dates global for movies, music and television programs; and learn from what iTunes accomplished and make content easily available at a reasonable price.
Nicely said, Dick! : )
This is an ongoing problem that won’t go away until the tv channels, production companies realise that the reason why people download is they can’t watch what they want. A show starting in the US or UK isn’t screened here until much later at times.
We live in a digital society, they need to embrace that & make things accessible worldwide at the same time.
YouTube is a perfect example to post episodes on, if people want to watch it straight away they can.
UK & US X Factor is a great example, both shows aren’t screened in Australia but can be watched on YouTube. This is our it should be done!
“One thing that we have learned is that piracy is not a pricing issue. It’s a service issue. The easiest way to stop piracy is not by putting antipiracy technology to work. It’s by giving those people a service that’s better than what they’re receiving from the pirates.” – Gabe Newell, Valve (Creator of Portal 2)