Crackdown on illegal downloading in Australia

Days numbered for illegal downloaders as crackdown passes parliament

THE Abbott Government has today passed a new law that will make illegally downloading movies and TV shows, such as Game of Thrones, much more difficult.

The law is designed to block Australians from accessing sites that house pirated content, such as KickassTorrents.

The new anti-piracy legislation, which cleared Parliament today with bipartisan support, empowers copyright holders to apply to the Federal Court to block overseas websites that offer content that infringes copyright.

The federal government says Australians need to be reminded that if they take too much from creative industries, such as film or music, without giving back, they will jeopardise content.

The legislation is a win for Hollywood studios and record companies, which will now be able to apply directly to the court for an injunction to disable access to the sites without having to establish whether the carriage service providers, which house the sites, are liable for the offending content.

Arguments for the passing of this type of legislation:

* Illegal downloading is a serious problem in Australia
* Illegally obtaining copyrighted works harms artists and their creative endeavours
* Obtaining something (that is meant to cost money) for free without compensating the owner of the work is wrong

Arguments against the passing of this type of legislation:

* This is a form of internet censorship
* The law targets a symptom and not the problem
* The law will not prevent illegal downloading

What is your opinion on the topic?

They did the same here in the UK, if I try to access torrent sites it's blocked by my ISP with a message explaining why.

Although this works within hours there were proxy sites set up to bypass the blocking and then some clever chap realised that using Opera in turbo mode bypassed any ISP blocking so it only works if you do not have the intelligence to google "bypass ISP blocking torrent sites"

A continuing war.

The multinationals have wet dreams that they one day they may get what they want ... that is ... pay them every time you want to view or listen to something.

On the other hand, a few consumers want to be able to download anything and everything.

What makes me angry is that the big 5 still put the middle finger to Australian law. Region coding of disks was found to be illegal by an Australian court and yet it continues.

I think our politicians are under the thumb.

This piece of legislation is meaningless. It will be circumvented easily.

P

originally posted by: pheonix358
A continuing war.

The multinationals have wet dreams that they one day they may get what they want ... that is ... pay them every time you want to view or listen to something.

On the other hand, a few consumers want to be able to download anything and everything.

What makes me angry is that the big 5 still put the middle finger to Australian law. Region coding of disks was found to be illegal by an Australian court and yet it continues.

I think our politicians are under the thumb.

This piece of legislation is meaningless. It will be circumvented easily.

P

The simple fact that they continue to make movies, tv show and music is a clear indication that illegal downloads do not affect profits.

If it really did affect them so much then investors would not put up cash as there would be little or no return on investment.

a reply to: Dark Ghost

Let me go through their pros and cons here.

Illegal downloading is a serious problem in Australia

Only for greedy corporations.

* Illegally obtaining copyrighted works harms artists and their creative endeavours

No it doesn't. Not where digital media is concerned, such as movies and music. Study after study proves this.

* Obtaining something (that is meant to cost money) for free without compensating the owner of the work is wrong

That argument doesn't hold water when companies who own those artists, use their media to ADVERTISE, for free, to me, without my consent . Product placement for example.

As for the pros, well the movie industry for example actually make PROFIT off of pirated movies, because it's been proven that as pirated content becomes more popular, so do the sales of both the media and merchandise for the product.

They will never be able to stop people from pirating stuff so long as there is the internet.

The only time I come down on people who download things form copyright sources, is when they are attempting to then make money off of it. Don't use somebody else's hard earned work as your own, to make your own money. That bit is wrong.

~Tenth

a reply to: Dark Ghost

It's just plain and simple poppycock the arguments for this law.

Here's some questions Hollywood might like to answer;

Why do they pay an actor many millions of dollars to pretend they are someone else in a movie just one single time (or enough times for the director and producer to be happy, when say a Broadway actor gets paid a fraction to repeat the same show over and over?

Why does it take so long for new releases to be available in certain countries when we have the instant internet at our fingertips?

Why have you zoned the world in order to control distribution?

a reply to: Dark Ghost

Well...... Maybe if they didn't allow that low down poor excuse for a life form Rupert Murdoch to have a complete monopoly over pay tv in Australia, then we might not need to download so much content! As it stands, us aussies are copping a complete ankle grab. Our only option for pay tv is Foxtel, it costs a small fortune and the content is completely pathetic.

I personally think anything anyone can do to effect the profits of that criminal, is nothing less than a case of divine poetic justice. That traitor is probably the one who's behind this legislation anyway. Some deal where Murdoch promised Abbot he wouldn't show him for the incompetent fool of a PM he is in the MSM, if Abbot found a way murdoch could shake down Australian citizens some more.

Screw Murdoch, I'd rather watch home shopping everyday than ever put foxtel back on.

This will just prove to be a redundant exercise. Methods will be implemented, then circumvented. Newer methods will be implemented, and again circumvented.
It's the very nature of the internet that people who wish to access certain information will, with enough motivation, find a way to do so. And likely block their IP in the process.

Recently, i was browsing the dvd section at target, i was staggered to see that recent new release blu ray movies are approaching $50.00 Australian dollars. At these prices the mega corps are forcing the everyday consumer to become pirates.

Perhaps this is a conspiracy in itsself the corporations realise not everyone does illegally download. Though this could be a backdoor which will not be revealed for sometime as ISPs have to digest the legislation. We dont know whether ISPs will be required to disclose your download history to the mega corps to take civil action.

The government love it as it will in their eyes set an example, they stay sweet with the corps, people get sued, tie up jails which are run by other private corporations, inmates may do labour to pay their jail fees.

One happy world

My opinion on the topic is that "illegal" downloading is only making a copy of the said work, not stealing it from the store. I also think that it makes a lot of shows much more accessible to people, including people who wouldn't be able to afford watching them in the first place, and people who like to have more control over their content - for example, no advertisements, being able to organize their files, being able to collect shows without having to spend ludicrous amounts of money and space on DVDs. I think illegal downloading is a service for the people in the fight against mega corporations.

There are certain business models like Netflix that have adapted to the new way of things by offering on-demand streaming for a low, monthly price - this allows people to watch what they want to when they want to. With more services like this, I could see the argument against file-sharing. But Netflix would not have come around had file-sharing never existed.

Meanwhile, the corporations want to suck our money from us by charging us ludicrous amounts of money for a single season of a TV show. Does this money really go to pay for the people who work hard making the show, or to greedy CEO's?

there will be ways to get around this, as there always have been.
I kinda feel bad, especially for the fellow gamers that live there, we complain about games being over priced, and they have to pay something like 20 bucks or more for games.
I have to guess it's the same for movies or music.
While generally speaking i don't like piracy, you can slice it anyway you want, it's stealing, these stupid companies need to stop pretending they are trying doing this for the artists.
Here is according to a website how the money is split:

Let’s break it down for you. In the making of a CD here are the key players and the percentage of sales that they get, Artist (6.6%) Producer (2.2%) Songwriters (4.5%) Distributor (22%) Manufacturing (5%) Retailer (30%) Record label (30%).
(to be fair, that was in 2006, so maybe now it's 2% higher, but that doesn't change much)
So who's interest are they REALLY protecting here? the content is already jeopardized by games and songs that all look/sound alike because artists know that if they try to be inventive or just copy an existing formula, their profit will be still close to nothing, unless they manage to sell like 10million copies.

going against piracy solves nothing, considering most people that pirate things would probably not have bought the original in the first place, so you are not forcing people to buy your product, you are just really making them care even less than they did before.

this reply is all over the place so i will stop now

originally posted by: darkbake
There are certain business models like Netflix that have adapted to the new way of things by offering on-demand streaming for a low, monthly price - this allows people to watch what they want to when they want to. With more services like this, I could see the argument against file-sharing. But Netflix would not have come around had file-sharing never existed.

But Netflix has been sullied by the fact that they have once again broken the globe into zones. Not everything in the USA site is available on the Australian one.

Yet again we are being forced to pay for a second rate product because America says so.

a reply to: markosity1973

I did not know this. So Australia might be denied content in order to force users to buy it in the store.

a reply to: Dark Ghost
I stopped downloading torrents once HBO's lawyers contacted my ISP who in turn contacted me. Now I just stream.

a reply to: IShotMyLastMuse
Those are really interesting figures quoted, i guess with itunes even more money will be going direct to the record label as distribution will be really low, though mskes me wondervif apple do score the distribution fees.

Regards

originally posted by: darkbake
a reply to: markosity1973

I did not know this. So Australia might be denied content in order to force users to buy it in the store.

Maybe, but we get charged a small fortune to buy it the store as well! In my honest opinion, this is about forcing us to subscribe to foxtel.

originally posted by: darkbake
a reply to: markosity1973

I did not know this. So Australia might be denied content in order to force users to buy it in the store.

It's possibly more to do with deals done with TV stations i.e. We'll sell you this series for $5,000,000 and give you 6 months exclusivity on airtime which means delaying alternative outlets. However these TV channels are free to air whereas Netflix is a paid service - therefore Netflix should be exempt, or what is the point of paying for a service that offers nothing more than what comes over the air for free?

A big reason piracy is an issue at all is because we know that content is available elsewhere but it is simply not available for us to purchase or watch through legal means i.e. To buy in hard form, to watch on Freeview or through Netflix / Stan and the likes.

one thing that shines through in all of this is just how much power the corporations have over the governments of the western world.
When the TPP gets in it will only be worse giving big corporations the power to sue governments ergo making thier own laws.
I love a plundered country a land of corporate gains.

a reply to: markosity1973
I can see that pretty much rings true, recently there has been constant repeats on tv in Melb Aust, how many times does the fugitive have to be on (harry ford movie) commercial networks must be either suffering financially, or getting rights for broadcast really cheaply. Even with the extra channels go, gem, mste etc there is still nothing on.

I did see a tv interview years ago, where an academic predicted that aerial bradcast providers will not exist by 2020 due to the public wanting quicker access to new tv and movies, and mentioned was tv stations continuos repeats which drive people away.

lol Tony should make a crackdown on cost of Internet first.

I pay $50 for 4GB of data (upgrade ur devices with that:/ )

I come from whoop whoop Internet is a necessity and virtually almost free. every time I fly home I laugh. the international airport doesn't have free wifi. at home a pub with one 80y old drunk at a time, miles in a forest has free wifi.