Internet Blackout Threat for Music Thieves in AU 244
An anonymous reader writes "News.com.au is reporting that the ARIA [Australia's Version of the RIAA] is making plans to have ISPs cancel or terminate the accounts of those who download music illegally. If the user is on dialup, that's not a problem: their telephone line will be disconnected. 'Fed up with falling sales, the industry — which claims Australians download more than one billion songs illegally each year — has been discussing tough new guidelines with internet service providers (ISPs) since late last year. The music industry is lobbying for a three strikes and you're out policy to enforce their copyright. Under this system, people who illegally download songs would be given three written warnings by their Internet service provider. If they continued to illegally download songs, their internet account would be suspended or terminated.'"
Luckily, the alternatives aren't that bad (Score:5, Interesting)
What if I own the CD's with the songs I'm DL'ing? (Score:2, Interesting)
Whatever....they'll never stop file-sharing and will play catch-up forever with technology-savvy individuals who are smarter than they are.
The portrayal of women in music videos (Score:5, Interesting)
I used to watch videos for very mediocre music, because the chicks were hot, scantily dressed, and fed this former teenager's fantasies. But today's kids don't need to buy a CD to have fap-fudder, they can get free porn with ease.
I theorize that the so-called decline of the music industry isn't because of music pirates, as they claim, or because their music suddenly sucks (the monkeys sucked, sucking isn't new), but because they were NOT in the music of selling music, but in the business of selling sexually suggestive material.
Re:Monopolies prevent this (Score:2, Interesting)
The business is going to go the way of automobile sales. Bad credit? No broadband streaming media enabled ISP for you. You might do better at the used car lot down the street and you'll have to take the additional hit of a high interest network nanny so, over the course of five years, you'll pay just as much for that pirate ISP as you would for a new car.
It'll be the next wave of socially stigmatizing people. "Daddy, how come we can't download music for our iPod?" "Well, kids, a long time ago I was caught copying a floppy disk." *wailing and gnashing of teeth*
While, down the block, in the house with the gas-guzzling 10-ton SUV belonging to the guy whose second uncle works for MS, whose third nephew is an aide to a state Senator, and whose sister married a middle manager in an accounting firm which manages investments for RIAA lawyers, they'll be streaming Star Wars Episode 15 in hi-def.
Re:Say goodbye to the Blacksmiths of this century (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not familiar with Australian law. Perhaps there are no 'safe haven' provisions w.r.t. copyright enforcement and its either play netkop or be sued by the copyright owners.
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a package of DVDs going down the highway in a FedEx truck
The copyright folks are shooting themselves in the foot with this ISP nonsense. Its far easier to detect on-line IP theft (if transfers aren't cloaked in some way) than it is to intercept other means of transfers. This makes me think that the service termination threat might be a scare tactic. As with most intelligence gathering efforts, you don't advertise your methods to your target so they can employ countermeasures. Perhaps a few people will get their access discontinued because their kid downloaded a few songs. No doubt, it will be for a relative ly minor infraction, since that enhances the fear factor more so than going after the major violators. The event will be highly publicized, with sobbing parents on TV and the smaller violators will be discouraged. The bigger ones have more vested in their opreration and will be more likely to employ countermeasures.
Re:Strange strategy, what can we conclude? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Luckily, the alternatives aren't that bad (Score:1, Interesting)
Solution B involves a Russian drink favoured by revolutionaries, and the offending ISP.
Pure Scare Tactics (Score:3, Interesting)
Think about it:
(1) They cannot prevent encrypted traffic: Pople working over VPN or SSH, SSL to stores, encrypted email, etc.. Also it is difficult to really ID encrypted traffic and protocol headers can be faked.
(2) How much bandwidth do music download take? 1MB per minute of music? Even with 28Kbps downstream, i.e. slower dial-up speed, that means a minute of music takes 40 seconds to download. Throtteling encrypted traffic is not going to help. But it will cost ISPs customers that are doing legitimate things.
All in all this is just one more empty threat in the music industries scare tactics. Just as the others before, it will not work. And it will certainly not fix their basic problems: An outdated business model that does not fit the techological realities and a lot of bad music people are unwilling to actually pay for.
The RIAAs Rights (Score:2, Interesting)
The prevalent attitude amongst this community of users seems to be that stealing music is morally acceptable because "downloading music doesn't hurt sales", "the RIAA is a bunch of jerks", "I bought the song so nobody should be allowed to tell me what I'm allowed to do with it", and/or "I can't get it anywhere else". None of these reasons justify stealing.
Does piracy hurt sales? Maybe it hurts them a lot, maybe a little, or maybe it helps them, none of those things give you the right to decide that you can take for free the copyrighted material of someone else. If piracy helps music sales then the RIAA still has the right to stick with an unprofitable business model. It's not for you or I to usurp someone else's rights saying that it's for their own good. From what I read on Slashdot the RIAA seems to target innocent people who already have significant burdens in life or don't know much about computers and networks so that the RIAA can change or clarify laws by courtroom verdicts. That's wrong and Yahweh sees it. For those that think that it's okay to steal from the RIAA because they're evil; that eye-for-an-eye approach to justice is also wrong. If you bought the song online from someone who had the right to sell it then you bought it under the condition that you were not allowed to reproduce and redistribute it. I'm trying to think of how to put this bluntly enough to make it obvious without sounding insulting... You are being provided with a song that you aren't entitled to own at all. You can't take advantage of an offer that you're not entitled to and then cry out "oppression" because it's not everything you desire. Maybe you actually can't get a song in any legal way. Well, it's the property of someone else. If they choose not to sell it then that's their prerogative. People seem to think that they have more rights than they actually do. I think it was last year in France that there were protests over proposed legislation to make it easier to fire an employee. From the perspective of most Americans it is absurd to think of a company being obligated to retain any employee, especially an unprofitable one. Should a company not be allowed to terminate an employee that they feel is doing an unacceptable job, or to let some people go to save the whole company from bankruptcy (note that I'm not saying it's right to let someone end up on the street if it can be avoided)? Likewise this attitude of entitlement to music or the right to do with a digitized song whatever one wants is unfounded.
Re:Monopolies prevent this (Score:3, Interesting)
But I also agree with you that the internet does not feed you, clothe you, or provide a place to live. Those come from people, not machines, and we should not look away from those right next to us.
Re:so, let's fight this with illegal tactics? (Score:3, Interesting)
1) Allow the monopoly, but ensure that they HAVE to provide service to everyone capable of paying for it at a reasonable rate. Audit their profits to ensure that they aren't fleecing the public.
2) Take away their monopolies. Force cable companies and telcos to fully open up access to their lines to competitors akin to telephone service. (e.g. so that I could use comcast's cable lines to get Google Internet service, and comcast gets only a small cut to cover the actual cable maintenance fees). Currently, if you want something like Earthlink cable/dsl internet, or AOL highspeed, the costs exceed that of the local cable/tel company because the base IP service is still provided by them. This is NOT competition.
Re:Slash-egos prevent this (Score:5, Interesting)
Have you ever legally downloaded television episodes before? You know, it's just one of the many completely legitimate uses for BitTorrenting. Guess what? You can get yourself distros of Linux with Torrents too. But, they should just be lumped in with Pirate Useage of bittorents, right? HELL, since all this pirating is being done via Downloading, why don't we eliminate downloading alltogether? No more updates, patches, fixes, no more digital distribution of Movies or iTunes, that way we KNOW all those nasty software pirates can't get their booty, aarr, matey.
The fact of the matter is that downloading large files is NOT illegal, nor is it a violation of your contract with your ISP. The size of the file has nothing to do with whether or not the contents of those files are pirated. A little FYI, does the name Angelfire ring a bell? You know a free web host that limits the amount of space and bandwidth their free customers get? Do you know how Angelfire (and other hosts like them) was used to promote Piracy? Pirates would sign up with multiple accounts, and break their large files into a ton of small, 2 to 3 meg zip files, then put one little zip file on each account. So how do you monitor for that? People are loading larger files (than those) in rapid succession (the same way) from legitimate sources.
How do you stop me from pirating software while I am at an internet cafe or coffee shop with free WiFi? Especially if I am using my bandwidth throttle so I DON'T eat up all the bandwidth from everyone around me. Face it. Pirates are actually much more accomodating, far more civil, and much more aware of exactly what they are doing, as opposed to you. You still think that all those bandwidth hoggers must be downloading illegal software or porn.
*shudder*
The flaw in this insane argument is (Score:3, Interesting)
Did I read this correctly? The ARIA is going to get the telephone company to permanently disconnect some poor Australian's telephone if they believe that they are downloading music? Not everyone has a cell phone or will be getting a cell phone. What about the lawsuits that happen against them when a child dies because there wasn't the ability to call the emergency authorities after a household accident? The parents sue the ARIA on the grounds that the child would not have died if the ARIA had not forced the removal of the telephone line on superficial and unproven reasons. The newspapers start yelling about innocent Australian children forced to die to protect trashy American pop music profits.
The above poster is right about the hard disk swap to build music collections. I do this with older 40-120 Gig hard drives. Fill them full of high-quality 200+ bps MP3s, package them in bubble-wrap, and loan them to friends, co-workers, and any interested party. This and inexpensive double-layer DVDs that hold 150 albums is the real future of music distribution, not commercial music download services.
It's too bad that the ARIA/RIAA doesn't understand this. The era of selling individual recordings is just about over. Not just the idea of selling a single three minute song on a plastic disk or a download of a song for a set price. People in the future will be buying large collections of music and media that has a common theme, like all the 'classic rock recordings' of the 1970s, on a hard disk or DVD set. And they won't be buying these items from the five multinational corporations who persist in holding the illusion that they own them.
CD sales are actually up in Australia (Score:3, Interesting)
It just goes to show, copyright holders are determined to extend their legal rights at every opportunity, regardless of whether their industry is being helped or hindered.
Telephone disconnected (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Say goodbye to the Blacksmiths of this century (Score:2, Interesting)