Actors head to Canberra in fight against piracy
Marta Dusseldorp, Matt Day and Tina Bursill were in Canberra this week to take a stand against piracy.
- Published by David Knox
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Australian actors including Marta Dusseldorp, Matt Day and Tina Bursill were in Canberra this week to take a stand against piracy.
They joined with Actors Equity president Simon Burke and acting director Zoe Angus plus representatives from Foxtel, SPA, Matchbox, Goal Post Pictures and Taylor Media
The delegation met with Attorney General and Minister for Arts George Brandis and Minister for Communications Malcolm Turnbull, Deputy Manager of Opposition Business Mark Dreyfus QC, Shadow Minister for Transport and Infrastructure and the Shadow Minister for Tourism Anthony Albanese.
Further meetings are scheduled with Leader of the Opposition Bill Shorten and Deputy Leader of the Opposition Tanya Plibersek.
Equity president Simon Burke said: “The reception was overwhelmingly positive. There is clearly will from sides of politics to crack down on piracy. The solutions aren’t simple – we all know that – but there are big cultural and economic implications if we don’t find some.”
“Piracy is a huge threat. We can’t ignore it any longer. The film and TV industries are being hit hard and it’s having a dramatic trickle down affect,” Zoe Angus added.
20 Responses
How many times have we heard about news stories regarding cracking down on piracy. The more I hear about these stories the more I laugh. Piracy is here to stay, adapt and get over it.
Not that I am encouraging piracy but what do they (networks/actors/studios) expect consumers to do if they can not legally purchase content in a format such as DVD/Blu-Ray or see it on TV? TV networks could do better by showing more Australian television shows that are not available on DVD such as Pacific Drive, E-Street (well the complete series) instead of showing US rubbish such as Everybody Loves Raymond, Friends, Sex in the City, 2.5 Men etc. all which can be purchased legally as a complete series!
@Stan – your holier-than-thou attitude is irksome but your imputation that I illegally download movies and the like is offensive. Simply being against the use of my tax dollars to prop up foreign corporations, or desiring content to be available more quickly and at the same price as elsewhere does not, ipso facto, make me a pirate.
There are better solutions than sending teenagers to gaol.
I agree with the majority of commenters here, piracy doesn’t affect the Aus TV/film industry, barely anyone DLs Aussie stuff which is demonstrated by the fact that not much of it is even available on torrents sites!
There simply needs to be a legal way to access international content such as a subscription service like Hulu allowing viewing of programmes on demand & as soon as they are premiered overseas. Without this piracy will continue & grow – people will always find a way around any barriers the government tried to implement.
edit: what i meant to say was ‘but are hardly Hollywood actors’
@uniquerhys – exactly! That’s why I just wait for the DVD/bluray anyway. I do not need to discuss a show ad nauseum to get any enjoyment out of it and in this day and age it is only a few months wait anyway, shorter if you have a region free player 😉
Foxtel is just not worth it **shrugs** – even Choice says so!
what an odd assortment of people they have as ‘representatives’. No insult to these actors, they have done some great work but are Hollywood actors. And i agree with JamesJ, Australian drama is the least likely to be affected by piracy. The shows these people are in would have a target demographic probably least likely to download illegally (a Place To Call Home, Janet King,Rake, the Moodys etc), i mean 3 of them are on ABC where they’re available on Iview for gods sake.
@Stan i think you’re wrong there, the outrage is at how badly viewers are treated by broadcasters/producers. And that maybe if they made it easier to access their shows people would not feel driven to illegally downloading them. I am not getting into a debate about the ethics of such, just saying i can see another side to it.
They most certainly do not get it.
The biggest threat to our entertainment industry (and other industries as well, including Agriculture and Pharmaceutical) is the currently proposed “free trade” agreement with the US. This would cause a glut of cheap (and horrible) entertainment from the US and cause a virtual shut down of our own industry – not to mention the continued erosion of our culture for yankee-doodle land’s.
Add to that that drugs would become horribly more expensive and that there is a clause in the agreement that allows U.S. companies to sue the Australian Govt. should they make a decision that benefits us but causes hurt to U.S. company profits and it is a recipe for disaster.
Stop putting so many darn commercials in these shows. You end up with more time spent on commercials than you do of the actual show.
Gee, a lot of touchy people here! Maybe deep down they know if Canberra grew a pair & actually started prosecuting against these crimes, some people here might be fined or sent to jail. This is one measure I can support the Abbott Government going ahead with.
What a joke! These people are as clueless as Brandis. How in the world is piracy by Australians damaging Australian dramas? It isn’t.
This is just another distraction while, behind the scenes, the MPAA and billion-dollar US companies are over here lobbying our govt to spend Australian taxpayer money on protecting their extortionate profits.
People want to be able to discuss shows with their FB buddies and Twitter pals and not be spoiled. Piracy would be slashed if content distributors just provided the content in useful formats, within a reasonable time-frame, and at a price commensurate with the rest of the world.
Louis C.K. sums it pretty well here – youtube.com/watch?v=d458sm5ToWk (warning – coarse language).
They wont build the NBN any time soon because it will affect Rupert Murduch’s pocket. Same with the disastrous TPP about to go through just for this reason with a lot of hidden nasties Tony is willing to sacrifice for old Rupey
As others have said no one pirates Australian content, its first aired here and then most end up on their respective networks online players (with advertisements) the same day.
Those particular actors are just there because their shows get cancelled because of production costs and they cant get funding from the government now, not piracy.
They should be going to nine and seven and getting them to show things in HD, consistently at the same time each week and within a week of them airing internationally if it is an imported show. That would go a long way to stamping out piracy of tv shows. It is not a complicated solution either.
Similarly, go to the movie studios and get them to release movies around the planet at the same time. Again, a fairly simple solution.
Movie piracy does happen, it’s been an issue since the invention of VHS and the internet makes it easier. But again Australian movies aren’t often pirated. The biggest problem for most Australian movies is that most people don’t want to watch them, even if they could be illegally downloaded for free.
So I am curious how much Australian taxpayers really want spent on locking them up in gaol to protect the $20 a movie price that is charged in this country so multinational companies can make profits while avoiding paying tax.
Piracy is not a huge threat, especially to Australian TV. Local content is shown here first so it can’t be pirated before it airs.
It only affects US TV shows, which are less popular these days anyway as viewers are watching local contest shows. Networks have the choice of buying US shows, negotiating the price and then can either show them same day as the US or delay them till when it is more profitable to show them.
The biggest threat to FTA TV revenue is still timeshifting. The only way to stop piracy is legal downloading for a reasonable price. In which case that will become the biggest threat to TV networks’ revenue. But it is inevitable especially once the Government builds the NBN.
Why spend $40+b building the NBN and then spend a fortune locking taxpayers up in gaol for using it?
What for? How are these actors impacted by downloading? No-one’s downloading Australian shows…
This just shows how many people don’t get it. Would be good to see some metrics from Foxtel to see how the GoT experiment worked… or didn’t.
Look at 11 2years behind in Dexter,&you wonder about Piracy!last season of medium,just o name 2
The only way to stop piracy is to treat viewers with some decoran,to fast track to keep to starting programs on timeto get rid of all the lifestyle programshouse rules,biggest loser,my kitchen rules,etcthe voice,70% of the s**t,
“The solutions aren’t simple”
Actually, they are simple: 1. Make the content available on the Internet the same day as it’s released anywhere in the world. 2. Use a convenient non-DRM format that plays on any device that I own without having to install industry spyware. 3. At a price that isn’t a blatant rip-off, hyperinflated beyond what the physical DVD would cost.
I’ll put it out there; I very much doubt a huge amount of piracy occurring is for Australian content, because their Australian broadcast would be their worldwide premiere, there’s no months-long delay you see with overseas shows, e.g. The Good Wife