iiNet pessimistic about online piracy talks
- 07 June, 2012 11:35
- Comments 5
The Attorney-General’s Department may be holding discussions with copyright holders and ISPs on online piracy issues today, but iiNet expects the talks to be a waste of time.
Government and consumer representative will also be involved in the discussions which will focus on finding a way to curb the rise of content theft online.
iiNet has long preached the need for change in online content distribution models through the cooperation of rights holders and the ISP industry.
Earlier this year, the landmark copyright case between iiNet and the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft (AFACT) ended in the High Court with the ISP emerging as the victor once again.
AFACT had tried to sue iiNet for authorising movie piracy of its subscribers.
In a blog post, iiNet chief regulatory officer, Steve Dalby, said he does not expect the Attorney-General’s Department forum talks to yield a satisfactory outcome for all parties involved.
He puts the blame on content owners and AFACT.
“Australia will not get anything useful from the rights holders in 2012 and in that respect, very little has changed since 2005,” Dalby said in the blog post. “We did get clear and total rejections of all proposals put to them by the telco industry to limit infringements, but due to the events of the past seven years, those offers are no longer on the table.
“A solution needs to be found but as far as AFACT goes, you might as well be talking to a brick wall.”
He criticised AFACT’s preoccupation with calls for tougher laws in Australia to combat piracy with little thought for consumer demands.
“AFACT and other rights holder bodies don’t care much for consumers,” he said. “As you may have read, Neil Gane of AFACT thinks consumers are “unreasonable” to tell their suppliers of entertainment what they want.
“Actually, AFACT don’t have any customers in Australia, they are all in California, which unfortunately means that consumer pressure is unlikely to have much impact on their strategies.”
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Comments
Giuseppe De Simone
1
I invited a few people over to my place on the weekend. We watched the footy on the big screen and apparently what I did was completely legitimate.
I lent a friend a book I had already read so he could read it too. Apparently, that is completely lawful also.
I downloaded a movie from iTunes but I can't lend it to anyone. That just sucks.
Tom Brown
2
AFACT are and represent the nasty end of property rights.
AFACT want the blood on someone elses hands so they target the community, government and the police to chase, persecute, prosecute and take punitive responsibility for what is only their word for a nominal loss. The victim of such persecution rightly or wrongly will blame the government, police or the system(the community) if we accept any part of AFACTs responsibility.
There is no act of theft, robbery or physical injury, it is only the concept of a loss that has nominally occurred. It should be only a civil matter for AFACT etc to pursue their grievance.
Tom Brown
3
If anything AFACT should be held to a higher standard of proof of their loss than has been occurring.
Simon Gilligan
4
Tom - the law is clear. You can't take stuff against its commercial terms of sale, whether its digital, physical, emotional. No law system in any country will spin that otherwise. Content creators have a right to monetise their projects and recover their costs. People taking their content for free removes that right.
The problem is how to police it in an environment that is unregulated and for a product that is easily distributed. Nobody wants to tackle it so AFACT don't have a choice but to force the issue.
tar&feathers
5
There is a 50 year caveat on free use of movies.....that sucks....but that’s the law..... movie stores do not have any form of star rating on purpose, why? So that you borrow 6 movies and only one that’s any good........ civilisations have lost so much due to lack of broad based recording and it is now getting difficult to obtain history media... but that’s the law... the law is greed, greed destroys civilisations..... if a movie is good people and see it that’s how it works, what happened before? The movies were archived until they invented free to air TV.... piracy is a social technology that was invented by society for social benefit.