“Three strikes” copyright rule finalised
The Copyright Notice Scheme Code 2015 has been agreed to by industry and lodged with ACMA for approval.
- Published by David Knox
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The Copyright Notice Scheme Code 2015, which involves a “three strikes” letters system to online pirates, has been agreed to by the telecommunications industry and lodged with the Australian Communications and Media Authority for regulatory approval.
Pirates found to have illegally downloaded or uploaded copyright material will receive three letters from ISPs before Rights Holders could seek their details.
However it is still unclear who will fund the system: ISPs or studios.
Amongst the few changes from the draft proposal, a $25 fee for consumers to challenge the findings has been dropped in preliminary stages, but could apply where there are excessive challenges.
There is also stronger consumer representation, with 2 members rather than 1, on the overseeing body, the Copyright Information Panel.
Lifehacker has some more detailed reactions to the scheme you can read here.
The scheme is unrelated to the High Court ruling yesterday that ordered iiNet to supply customer details to High Voltage films of those who had illegally downloaded Dallas Buyer’s Club.
This morning Michael Wickstrom, vice president of royalties and music administration at Voltage Pictures told ABC’s RN Breakfast the piracy problem in Australia was much bigger than other western countries.
“A lot of US distributors hold back the release date for Australia. I don’t exactly agree with that, but that’s a distributor issue,” he said.
“I feel that if it was day and date around the world there wouldn’t be as much piracy because a lot of people don’t want to wait for the film to be released. In Australia that can be months past the US release dates, that’s why the piracy rates are so high.
“But that does not make it right to infringe, because I see a lot of file sharing, so when you upload the film you’re sharing globally. You become a distributor and the Australian distributor has paid a very high fee for the legitimate distribution rights.”
He denied letters demanding financial compensation would be sent out immediately, instead confirming a “discovery process” would be put into place to ascertain who was responsible at each account.
But he did not rule it out once the facts had been established.
“I have no comment, that is all left up to our Australian attorneys to decide.”
Last month the government also introduced a bill that will allow copyright holders to apply for court orders forcing ISPs to block access to pirate websites.
12 Responses
3 Strikes that’s soft
“Last month the government also introduced a bill that will allow copyright holders to apply for court orders forcing ISPs to block access to pirate websites.”
Site blocking is censorship, plain and simple.
I know it is a simple thing to release everything on the same day everywhere, but logistically could have problems.
But the film companies need to get their act in order to make it harder for films to get onto the internet……..and who is doing the uploading…some of what appears to be very high quality could have only come from the studios themselves.
Take a good look at security around yourselves before blaming the people who download.
What logistic problems would be involved?
Michael Wickstrom sounds very sensible and understands one of the main causes of the high rate of piracy in Australia.
“A lot of US distributors hold back the release date for Australia. I don’t exactly agree with that, but that’s a distributor issue,” he said.
“I feel that if it was day and date around the world there wouldn’t be as much piracy because a lot of people don’t want to wait for the film to be released. In Australia that can be months past the US release dates, that’s why the piracy rates are so high.
If more industry people would understand and admit this and take action to remedy the current arrangements I really think the piracy rates would drop – provided as well that the ‘Australia Tax’ stopped being applied.
Just to clarify, the Order against iiNet et al was at first instance, before a single Judge in the Federal Court (No the High Court)
Given iiNet’s history in these things, I’d expect an appeal (at least one).
Any appeal would ordinarily stay the original Orders until it’s dealt with.
The thing is, there is a solution to this that is reasonable.
Companies are trying to blame lack of profits from more competition purely on pirating. Instead of adapting to the changing market place.
If when they find you infringed, they gave you an option, ‘click here to legally buy’ and that ends it.
Who can really complain about this?
‘Hey, you forgot to pay for this.’ Then an explanation of how it’s stealing. If you don’t buy it, you then may have an action taken against you.
This has the benefit of they recoup lost profits in a reasonable manner while educating people about legal means to purchase.
If people kept getting told they have to purchase when they download. They will change behavior.
Also to stop backlash there does need to be some consideration for material which is not available in Australia. Not available in a reasonable time frame. This can…
One problem I see here is the letters will go to the account holder, often the parents when it might be the kids at fault. Yes the parents need to then talk to their kids but what if they ignore the letters as they did nothing wrong?
Also will they really go after some people who have nothing to give, those without a lot of assets and on welfare and not able to afford what they are downloading or any fins imposed?
On top of that what about the shows currently now on local TV, or any of the streaming and pay services, things like some reality shows or talk shows unlike to every air in this country? It’s one thing to crack down on those illegally getting Game of Thrones but what about the Conan talk show which has not been on local TV since Nine dropped it in late 2013?
Yes I know it’s all illegal but there are loads of shows not airing in this country with no legal way to see…
The Internet Society of Australia has given cautious support to the Copyright Notice Scheme.
“We acknowledge that so-called ‘Internet piracy’ is an issue requiring attention”, commented Internet Society CEO Laurie Patton. “However, we will remain vigilant to the risk that Australian Internet users are unfairly treated by any content rights holders”.
“With streaming (SVOD) services such as Netflix, Presto and Stan now in the market a lot more content will be available. The issue remaining is price”.
“The Internet Society believes program content should be available and easily accessible at reasonable prices comparable with similar markets overseas”.
“We would like to see the Government and the Opposition working together and insisting that the Transpacific Partnership (TPP) agreement, currently under consideration, includes provisions preventing content providers from price…
I’m just wondering has this sort of stand over tactic been used in places like the USA? You have the government one minute store all our meta data for security reasons and the next minute ISPs are being forced to send out letters to people who download stuff.. Which could only happen if they were storing our meta data. It’s quite simply what’s going on here..
In the US companies are required to take down anything that is claimed to be copyrighted, without proof being offered. And to hand over the names and addresses of the account associated with the IP address used to download something claimed to be copyrighted. The media distributor then sends an invoice for $5-7000 claiming that if you don’t pay up they will sue you for hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages.
The won’t work here.
The damages claimed can only be the loss of revenue i.e. the retail price of the content (even though company would only have gotten the wholesale price). However, if you are running Bittorrent or other peer to peer file sharing system, and are serving up files, then you may be liable for distributing copies to other people, which can involve serious fines.
So it’s not finalised as it has been submitted for regulatory approval and they could change it.