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.'"
Say goodbye to the Blacksmiths of this century (Score:5, Insightful)
Why would ISPs agree to this? I can imagine it now, a group of ISPs implement this and then customers flock to the small ISPs who aren't big enough to warrent attention from the ARIA. Faced with a slump in revenue the ISPs reverse course and try to win customers back.
Let's not get started on SSL encrypted DCC transfers on IRC channels or private FTP servers! That's going to be almost impossible to track. These kind of darknets (as I've seen them called) or going to be very hard to shut-down!
Does this even matter anyway? My friend from Canada brought over his personal collection on a 320Gig drive when he visited this week. This is getting more and more common, people now have so much portable storage that it's often easier to swap collections and cherry pick the songs you like (or take the whole collection if you prefer). Compared to downloading, this is a far safer way to pirate on a huge quantity of music.
At some point, their revenues will become so small that they start to lose credibility. A case in point, where are the blacksmiths' guilds today? This whole issue with trundle on for some time to come but the inevitable will eventually happen. Time is on our sides, my friends.
Simon
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.
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If it came to that the labels would love it. You probably only have a few friends with whom you'd go to the time and trouble of sharing in this fashion. Heck, even if you had dozens of them that's better than the 10,000 or more "friends" you get when you torrent it.
"Let's not get started on SSL encrypted..."
You probably saw the article wher
Re:Say goodbye to the Blacksmiths of this century (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Say goodbye to the Blacksmiths of this century (Score:4, Funny)
Ahh. But, they share with a friend, who shares with a friend. Before you know it, Kevin Bacon has a copy, and then the world!
Re:Say goodbye to the Blacksmiths of this century (Score:5, Insightful)
We already see this. There's a clear trend from sharing a single song by a single artist, then to sharing a complete album by a single artist, and then onwards to sharing complete discographies of artists, aslong as discs keep growing this trend will continue. I can easily see "every-album-that-was-in-the-charts-this-year.zip" and it's not even that much of a stretch to imagine "every-album-that-was-in-the-charts-this-decade"
At 200kbps (more or less the needed bandwith for indistinguishalbe-from-cd sound for most people) one hour of music takes up 90MB. An average song perhaphs 7MB. Which means that, for example, the complete content of iTunes (the store, not the program), will take up around 7MB times 3.5 million, which is about 25TB.
Today that's nontrivial, common discs today hold only half a TB or so, so you'd need 50 discs. But discs double in capacity (for the same price) about every 2 years, so that means it's about a dozen years until that entire library, 3.5 million songs, fit on a single standard consumer hard-disc. (yeah yeah, we don't know that the future will play out like that, but it seems a reasonable guess, even if it slowed down it's hard to imagine it'd take more than double that or so)
If RIAA et al think they have a hard time with simple copying now, wait and see what happens when 25TB is a trivial amount of disc-space. They are *so* fucked. I'm not saying its rigth or wrong. I'm just saying it IS so.
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Why would ISPs agree to this? (Score:2)
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
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This is the way Zune should have gone (of course it wouldn't). But imagine turning your media player into a trade box with the addition of wifi or some simple high b/w protocol. Everyone meets up at a party with one of these, and they can swap to their heart's content (storage is an issue, maybe in two years we'll be seeing 50GB+ standard). It
Re:Monopolies prevent this (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't see why ISP's would agree to do this. It's right up there with... Load gun -> aim at foot -> Fire!
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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
who cares about streaming? (Score:2, Informative)
If ISPs limit bandwidth that may have some impact, but removing streaming won't.
If necessary, pirates will disguise their traffic as whatever is allowed under the current anti-piracy regime.
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For pirates, streaming isn't important, bits-per-day is.
If ISPs limit bandwidth that may have some impact, but removing streaming won't.
If necessary, pirates will disguise their traffic as whatever is allowed under the current anti-piracy regime.
yeah thats what i was thinking. torrents and stuff will now just contain a single zip file that contains the rest of the payload, in order for the traffic to be less detectable. i would say that torrent is going to show up like a sore thumb.
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traffic looked like or really was pirated material.
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Insightful, eh? (Score:2)
ISPs are worse than useless - they're a hindrance - and the sooner we find ways to decentralize internet access to where people don't need central ISPs, the better.
ISPs don't have a God given right to tell internet users what to do, and w
You're so clueless (Score:2)
You completely missed my point.
1) I'm saying technology will progress to t
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*
You forgot one: (Score:4, Informative)
If an ISP starts doing any company (or cartel's) bidding, they no longer can claim to be neutral for content. This means that if so much as one child porn images streaks across an ISP's wires or servers, they can be credibly liable. After all, they actively prohibit copyright infringement, so why can't they stop or prevent the commission of a real criminal (or even tortious) act? While I doubt that criminal prosecutors would take that to heart, I do know that it would very likely leave a participating ISP quite defenseless to any civil suit that comes along naming them as a defendant...
Re:Monopolies prevent this (Score:5, Insightful)
In the States that's the fastest way to bring on an anti-monoploy suit. What are the legal ramifications of a non-government organization that could "cut you off" form a significant section of society? Will the ISP hold a "trial" to allow the customer to deny or defend the charges?
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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.
The internet is how I run my servers, contact my clients search for help. So it does provide the income that I need to do all of those things
Cutting off my internet access would very quickly leave me homeless.
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you forget in america it's the "corporate states" (Score:2)
hence: dmca abuse is perfectly OK, att comming back together is OK, and reclassification of monopoly internet providers into an "information service" to serve their desires for non-neutrality is OK.
the solution to that pesky bill of rights.. privatize it so you can claim "private property" against anyone who decries the obvious erosion o
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Quie right (Score:3, Informative)
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That's just not true. I have over a dozen ISPs I can choose from here, and the majority of metropolitan based people in Australia do also.
so, let's fight this with illegal tactics? (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe this is okay and/or legal in AU. Is this legal in the US? What about due process? What about overdue process?
Anecdotally, as an aside, I had on my mind about three artists (new artists, e.g., Paolo Nutini), and hence, three cds I set out to find and purchase. Circuit City, no dice (didn't really plan on buying there what with their recent employee abuse program) -- they had about 1/4 the number of racked cds than last time I'd looked there. Best Buy, sorry. And the local CD store, nope! No selection, nothing. I don't know which came first the chicken or the egg, I don't even know which is which, but my thirst for new music is about the same as before -- but recently I'm finding I can't buy cds as before.
I'm not buying the "pirates decrease sales" spiel. My cause and effect for buying fewer cds is strictly the continued unavailability of cds on display. It used to be a smörgåsbord, now the stores look like the cutout bins of years past. This (the RIAA, and others) is an industry that rather than weather a business model storm and changing business dynamics to adapt continues to insist on taking their ball home with them (hey, it isn't even their ball!) so we can't play. And somehow, they still want to demand we pay them. Please, please, please!, just let them become irrelevant quickly so we can get on with our music!
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It would be legal in the US but the music publishers have no leverage on the ISP to compell them to cooperate (they would already be doing it if they could).
> What about due process?
It has nothing to do with due process. It does not involve government.
Re:so, let's fight this with illegal tactics? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is currently the law in the US! (Score:2)
Sounds a
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Those only apply to the govt - Comcast doesn't have to provide service to you at all (unless there is another regulation that requires them to, such as some of the "common carrier" stuff). Same thing with things like "freedom of speech" - it is *not* a violation of it for clear channel to self censor any group for whatever reason they want, it puts limits on the govt, not people or businesses.
Snip... In my opinion that only held true until a buttload of my tax dollars went to subsidizing their local cable monopolies and telecom buildouts. In most markets in the US, there are exactly zero, one, or two high speed internet service providers, and all others are effectively precluded from competing for my dollar. The internet is becoming an increasingly important part of modern life, and is essential to many jobs (including mine). In lieu of the fact that this is not truly a free market, and tha
How... (Score:4, Insightful)
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It bears mentioning that ISPs have long had the ability to shut down the overwhelming majority of P2P traffic. Every time they do, there's a big public outcry until they stop.
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I've heard that the #1 consumer of bandwidth these days is YouTube and the second is BitTorrent. When N
Scare tactics as usual (Score:5, Insightful)
In any case, the implementation is sure to be a nightmare: families with shared accounts, botnets, and false-positive identification will make enforcement difficult, even if the ISPs actually wanted to comply. Which I doubt they do. Do ISPs have "common carrier" status is *.au? If so, they will be loathe to jeopardize it.
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No kidding:
If their argument is going to be that nobody is buying our stuff despite Australian idol being on TV then they are truely stuffed. To be honest I don't know of anybody who bothers with P2P. Its easier to buy the CD and rip.
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Actually, even that is erroneous (or, at least, not backed up by the facts).
A couple of days ago, ARIA were feeding the "OMFG! Illegal downloads are ruining the poor, struggling, defenceless record industry in Australia" line to the media, and the media were dutifully repeating it far and wide. But any
Missing the point... (Score:2)
Until they meet their pirate friend with a 10 Tera collection of Everything Ever Published Ever, and realize that they've been scared by the the boogyman, again.
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Yes I know, I actually read the article. I must be new here?
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We had a meeting a few weeks ago with the Internet Industry Association (about the new guidelines) but we're yet to hear back.
says to me that the RIAA want to do something, but the ISP's really don't care.
I can't see how this could ever get off the ground,though. The number of different ways to connect to the 'net here in Sydney is getting bigger and bigger.
Those with dial-up internet could face having their phone disconnected
I'd like to see how this one could be enforced.
Out of their mind? (Score:2, Insightful)
Luckily, the alternatives aren't that bad (Score:5, Interesting)
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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 sma
Re:What if I own the CD's with the songs I'm DL'in (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:What if I own the CD's with the songs I'm DL'in (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:What if I own the CD's with the songs I'm DL'in (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
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3+1=4? (Score:2, Funny)
--
So who is hotter? Ali or Ali's sister?
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I almost hope something like this succeeds (Score:5, Insightful)
(Almost.) If a system like this were put in place and rigorously enforced, and after a year the Australian music industry still saw declining sales, it would put a pretty big nail in the coffin of the "our industry is dying because of you filthy pirates" argument. The industry goons will not stop bleating that until it becomes such a ridiculous claim that any reasonable person reacts to it with derisive laughter instead of seriously considering it.
If, on the other hand -- unlikely though I think it is -- their sales shot up all of a sudden, then people like me would be forced to admit we were wrong. Which honestly I'll be happy to do if there are convincing hard numbers that contradict my point of view.
On the other hand, it's not worth causing so much trouble to so many people just to test a theory, which is why I'm only "almost" in favor of this.
Declining sales? (Score:5, Informative)
fine if... (Score:5, Insightful)
"...more than one billion songs..." (Score:3, Insightful)
So, each Internet user [internetworldstats.com] in Australia is down loading more than 100 songs a year? Sounds like the usual hype, smoke, mirrors and bs the riaa uses in the US.
One Word. (Score:2, Informative)
What the... (Score:2)
The ISP response (Score:4, Funny)
Yeah. The IIA is probably still working on getting "Sod off, wankers!" translated into legalese.
over one billion severed? (Score:4, Informative)
*For the sake of simplicity, I ignore Tasmania and the other islands, although I'm sure ARIA is counting them. I also round off the decimals
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Ten million music fans, all heavy consumers and the **IA can't figure out a working micro-pay/pay-as-you-go music download system?
The problem with this is i think a great-many of the people who download a shitload of music are the unemploted, the low income earners and kids. Sure, there's probably a handfull from other demographics as well.
Music is expensive. A CD single here can cost between $7 and $10 depending on the artist and the label. A new release CD can cost between $25 and $30, again depen
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Shrug, Atlas (Score:2)
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
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It's not moral to act lawfully where a law is amoral. Lawfulness does not ever in itself yield moral behavior. Morality and legality are orthogonal, though it's nice when they coincide. Your position would render jaywalking a
Seriously now ... (Score:2)
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.
Tell a lie often enough and soon it's the truth (Score:2)
Some of the so-called facts in TFA are a bit dodgy.
About 80% of ISP end-users in Australia are using an ISP that is a different company to their telephone services provider. ARIA would have legal problems getting telephone services cut-off as well due to the requirement for Telstra(/rebadged phone provider) to provide emergency services capability to all land
Music Thieves? (Score:2)
People Get the Governments they Deserve (Score:2)
Really - it's time that we stopped blaming lobby groups for promoting their agendas. They do what it is in their nature to do. If the people of Australia are so enamored of PM Howard and his Tories to support this sort of thing (assuming it is implemented) then they get the sort of government - and laws - that they deserve.
Lobbyists further their own agendas. When the voter stops furthering his or
Directly contradicts this report... (Score:3, Insightful)
headline title is "flamebait", thanks editors. (Score:2)
would you title a story about anti-abortion republicans "fascist corporate schills demand an end to women's rights"?
then why the heck is this story about civil disobedience to controversially overreaching copyright laws entitled "internet blackout threat for music thieves"?
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Not to mention that most US broadband providers have limited regional monopolies in exchange for universal access. If they start cutting people off, they can expect a spanking first from the local PUCs and then from the class-action lawyers. Wouldn't look all that pretty.
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Of course it's legal. Just look at all the shareware and commercial trials that can be downloaded over the Internet. It's also completely legal to accept the copy of copyrighted web pages that HTTP servers send you. The key is that the network transfer of the work is considered to be an ac
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Downloads from the Internet are generally either 1) of public domain material (e.g. US government works, works where the copyright expired or was given up, uncopyrightable works), 2) copyrighted but licensed by the copyright holder, either expressly, or implicitly based on the conduct involved (e.g. almost all authorized web sites, home pages, etc., since it is implied that when the copyright holder has works put online that people ca
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Remember (since we're discussing US law), the law defines a copy as a material object in which the work has been fixed. A paperback book is a material object. A vinyl LP is a material object. A canvas is a material object. A hard drive is a material object. A stick of RAM is a material object. Mere information is not.
And colloquial definitions are irrelevant, since the law has specially defined this term. Only the legal definition matters to the law.
I dare you to show me one site on the Internet from whi
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If you really want to boil it down, when
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If they uploaded the music to you they would only be entrapping themselves. The parent stated that downloading was okay, it was uploading that was wrong, and you aren't the one uploading if you're the destination.
But, yeah, I'd like to see a source, too.
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Why are so many of these court cases about someone getting sued for downloading music then, if it's only uploading you're not supposed to do?
That's why I want a source for this statement, is makes no sense given what it actually happening.
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but if all the major parties are in bed with the copyright cartel swinging the election away from said cartel will be much harder.