Aussie Case Unlikely To Solve Piracy Riddle In Fast Broadband World 219
An anonymous reader writes "When some of Hollywood's biggest movie and TV studios took Australian ISP iiNet to court in 2008 — accusing it of facilitating piracy — it focused the eyes of the world downunder. Internet users and media companies alike were keen to see if the courts could figure out how to resolve the ongoing battle caused by easy, and essentially illegal, access to copyrighted material. After three and a half years and a number of appeals the high court judgement comes down on Friday, but it already looks like a failed attempt to solve an impossible riddle."
Disconnect Trap (Score:4, Informative)
Two problems with disconnect as approved by the High Court, the RIAA/MPAA have to pay for it and they are liable for false disconnects.
If a business is affected that could be hugely expensive. Even residential users could stick them with a pretty massive civil suit. Online banking, online grocery shopping, online local government communications, social networking, remote working etc. total up the benefits of those services as losses to the consumer and the period of loss and the RIAA/MPAA could be in for some real pain.
Best way to tackle is to haul the ISP into court and get them to warrant the accuracy of the IP address time correlation to the tune of a million dollars (as the sole form of evidence), if it should prove inaccurate then they should pay a penalty.
Next up RIAA/MPAA will have to prove accuracy and full evidentiary proof of their accusation, not best guess, not paid per kick off bias and, not sounds like looks like (files names only is a fail). So they will hate it.
Only one way to keep piracy down. (Score:4, Informative)
First off, piracy cannot be stopped. Not by technological means, and not by legal means. Some people simply refuse to pay for it, and they will always pirate. There is nothing you can do to stop it, and you already have all the legal means necessary to address that issue.
You can limit piracy to a small enough percentage that it doesn't materially affect sales. Make it easy to buy, easy to use, and cheap enough that, for most people, it's not worth the risk of getting caught making illegal copies.
That's the only thing that has ever kept piracy under control, regardless of technology. Printed books were cheaper and more convenient than hand copied books. When the photocopier came out, it was generally more expensive (and tedious) to copy a book than to just buy a legitimate copy. Records and tapes were cheap, piracy wasn't a major issue. And while CDs were more expensive than records and tapes, they offered greater quality, greater durability, and no easy way to copy them while maintaining the quality, so piracy in CDs was mostly from professional counterfeiting groups (whom you have the legal tools to stop). There was no DRM, you could make personal use cassettes and MP3s from your CDs.
Piracy started growing in the VCR age, because the movies were expensive. So, they introduced MacroVision, and the copy-prevention arms race began. They continued it with DVDs using CSS, and high release prices. Professional counterfeiting soared. Repeat mistake with HD-DVD and Blu-ray Disc. Broadband internet access became common, and with prices still high for DVDs, digital piracy of DVDs started growing. People wanted to watch their DVD based movies on their newer portable digital devices, but they had no way to transfer the content, then they found they could download those movies. And if they were going to have to download a copy anyway, why buy the overpriced original that they weren't going to use?
Started to repeat the same mistake with digital music downloads, but eventually conceded on DRM. Notice what happened to sales [wikipedia.org] after DRM was dropped from some labels starting in Jan 2007, they doubled, then doubled again in 2008, then when all the labels agreed to DRM free iTunes+ downloads in 2009, sales doubled again. How many billions of songs is Apple legally selling every year? ~4B. Granted, not all of that increase was due solely to removing DRM, but that was a key part of it. Apple's iTunes Store has also sold millions of feature length movies and hundreds of millions of TV episodes. Then, there is Amazon, licensed streaming music services, and other sellers.
TL;DR
Make it convenient, DRM free, and reasonably priced and 95%-99% of the potential market will pay for it. The ~1% who are committed to piracy will copy it no matter what you do. Technology changes rapidly, people are not willing to pay for the same material in a new format every few years, unless it's very cheap to do so. Until content distributors adapt a sales model that allows people to use their licensed media with any device they own that is capable of playing it, as many times as they wish to play it (or have a reasonable pay-per-view/rental model), piracy will continue to grow. All the attempts to limit it using DRM, technology, or laws will fail to slow piracy, in fact, they increase the incentive to seek out DRM free versions that are usually only available via "piracy". Resist that, and you'll soon find the market has gone elsewhere.
Re:The Real objective (Score:4, Informative)
Bully and buy the result, in Australia? Seriously? If they thought that then they don't know Australian's, their politicians or their ISP's for that matter. As has now been borne out. 4+ years, still no result, the government hasn't stepped in and the media and public opinion is lined up against them.
By the way, you might like to ask the Tobacco companies how easy it is to bully and bribe to get a result in Australia. We are the first on the planet to introduce plain packaging laws [wikipedia.org]. They've tried well funded media campaigns [smh.com.au], astroturfing campaigns [abc.net.au] where their convinced small shop owner associations to be their mouthpiece, and are currently carrying out their threat to challenge it on constitution grounds [smh.com.au] in our law courts. They brought suits [qld.edu.au] against the Australian government in foreign courts over treaty violations. Again, so far, no result. The law has passed both houses and will be enforced shortly.
That cultural misunderstanding aside, you are just plain wrong. They have tried to pull this stunt in numerous places with some success in the US, France and NZ off the top of my head. In no way was Australia singled out.
Re:Factors influencing Aussie 'piracy': (Score:5, Informative)
And yet, no, it doesn't.
The receiver has paid for the product via subscription fees, and receives the product, albeit via a slightly more unconventional route. Content providers have been suitably reimbursed for their effort. This situation is more subtle than you think, and certainly doesn't deserve a blatant "Yes it does" answer.
Re:The Real objective (Score:4, Informative)
I present words of others ( Australian others) on this particular issue when talking of messages from the US leaked by wikileaks:
"“AFACT and MPAA worked hard to get Village Roadshow and the Seven Network to agree to be the public Australian faces on the case to make it clear there are Australian equities at stake, and this isn’t just Hollywood “bullying some poor little Australian ISP,” the cable quoted the US Embassy as writing.
...
iiNet, the cable claimed, had been targeted because the ISP was “big enough to be important”, as the third-largest ISP in Australia. The MPAA didn’t go after Telstra, the cable claimed, because the telco was “the big guns” and had “the financial resources and demonstrated willingness to fight hard and dirty, in court and out."
http://delimiter.com.au/2011/08/30/wikileaks-cable-outs-secret-iitrial-background/ [delimiter.com.au]
Well that does lend weight to idea that they thought they could bully, and that the financing was critical in deciding which ISP to target.
From the Sydney Morning Herald (Australian Author):
"It seems the MPAA deliberately avoided picking a fight with the more powerful Telstra, instead hoping for a quick victory against the smaller iiNet which could set a national and perhaps even international legal precedent to aid the Americans in their global fight against piracy" http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/computers/blogs/gadgets-on-the-go/afact-uncle-sams-puppet-in-iinet-trial-20110902-1jp4w.html [smh.com.au]
I am not alone in having formed the opinion that this matter was motivated by a desire to influence things overseas.
The references are provided so that you can see the basis from which I was representing the perceptions and intentions of the MPAA in this matter. I am going to also assume when you insisted that " you are just plain wrong" you intended that the MPAA and associated parties are just plain wrong, and that the cultural misunderstanding was on their part as well.
I did not state that Australia was singled out, we both know they weren't. I didn't state that Australia was actually the best choice either, the facts as you quite rightly pointed out, are proof of the issues with trying to slip something through in Australia. I am very proud of the efforts of the government regarding smoking (especially the ban in clubs etc) I just wish more people would quit. Thanks for the update on how that issue is progressing
Personally, I think they are barking up the wrong tree and this is not the best solution to their issue. I think this trend towards the legal department being a profit center through patents and other actions is not beneficial to markets or companies (designers and engineers have lower pay rates than lawyers).