Today, iiNet verus AFACT (Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft) was decided. iiNet won with costs. For those of you unfamiliar with the case, when AFACT spotted what they thought was someone illegally downloading a movie or song, they sent a letter notifying the relevant ISP. They expect the ISP to disconnect the user. iiNet's usual response was to bin the letters. From http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/02/04/2809856.htm:

"If all the notices iiNet received from film studios over a five-month period were printed it would take 180 large folders and more than 12 trolleys to bring them into the court. No-one can seriously be expected to respond to all these."

And so ends round one. From http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/digital-life-news/net-pirates-face-threestrikes-rule-20090716-dm9s.html we know what round two will be:

"a spokeswoman for Conroy said the Government was considering the three-strikes system but was awaiting the result of the iiNet case"

A three-strikes system means an ISP gets three copyright violation notices for a user they are compelled by law to disconnect them.

Under the 3 strikes law it is not a court, nor the police and not even a government agency that gets to decide whether you are guilty or not. It is a private company whose primary motivation is to sell more product. Naturally they do these copyright theft detections as cheaply as possible. Automatically usually, with the notices are fired off by a computer. As we have seen in the US, the end result is occasionally the household looses their connection to the internet because unbeknowns to them, little Johnny learnt how to download get his songs for free last week. Or his mate who slept over.

Conroy will say iiNet's handling these notices is unjust to the copyright owners, and so the government is keen redress this. I have some sympathy for that. But allowing copyright to extend for life + 70 years, so that "Happy Birthday to You" is still under copyright is an injustice too all tax paying voters, and yet he displays no interest in that at all.

At times I wonder who our pollies think elected them. Us or the lobbyists.

It is a simple matter to avoid identification by the recording companies. Indeed many bit-torrent programs come with some form of privacy protection as standard.
Pirates will always be one step ahead of the hoarders and gougers in the music and movie biz.
Copyright has become a farcical rort so far removed from its original premise as to be unrecognisable. What happens next time copyright runs out on mickey mouse? Will it be extended to 100 yrs? 200? 500?
What about all the fairy tales and fables disney stole and made millions from?
Copyright is a con and people rightly have decided to ignore it and take and enjoy whatever they like and the sooner the entertainment industry realises this the sooner they can get on with making money from actual performances rather than making one song or movie and expecting to become billionaires. Not to mention good riddance to the parasites who feed on talented artists and swindle the public and fans mercilessly.

Mikk was spot on. They're just freaking out because they 'HAVE' to micro-manage every $1.69 being missed because of illegal downloads. It's impossible to stop they have ZERO chance of doing so.

Instead of fighting it, they need to adapt to the tech and over come. Maybe even throw the consumer - who is paying them - a bone occasionally.

The problem for them is 'old school' business models running these shows, much like Herr Atkinson of S.A. trying to douse public opinion instead of adapting to it and using it to his advantage. But he's a paranoid control freak with archaic delusions of self importance.

a govt can't make legislation contrary to the Constitution - read the HCA case of Brandy vs HREOC or whatever

in brandy the legislation was found to "offend the constit" and was repealed/amended because it allowed an ADMINISTRATIVE path to sanction a person without any appeal path to a court.

Brandy was relied upon in Luton and Lessels to find that the Child Support Assessment Act did in fact have an appeal path so was OK.

Problem is that Howard/Prof Parkinson then removed that path so CSAAct now OFFENDS constitution.

so getting back to this case with Ozemail, it is simply a matter of someone must take a case to court or as with CSAAct it simply survives

Divorce Doctor: "a govt can't make legislation contrary to the Constitution"

NZ and France have already gone down this path. They both put up a 3 strikes law, and in both had to modify it for the reasons you state. The version they now have says a court must the disconnection after the movie companies report three copyright violations.

http://www.zeropaid.com/news/87412/new-zealand-three-strikes-law-moves-ahead/

The link makes a couple of criticisms of this. I'll make another. Cutting off a households internet connection is a pretty drastic action. It means the kids can't do their school projects, the adults can't do their banking, Victorian home owners can't see 1/2 hours updates on the path of fire storms, and people who use the internet for their telephone (ie use VOIP) can't make or receive phone calls.

It seems pretty harsh just because someone download a few some songs or movies that can be purchased or hired down the street for a couple of dollars. Surely a fine would be more appropriate? We don't drag people through court for most victimless crimes like speed, or jaywalking.

AFACT will argue it isn't a victimless crime, that they are loosing money over this. Well, the movie mob aren't loosing money if their revenues are anything to go by - the arrival of the internet has had no discernible effect.

The music companies have lost money. But that is because they shot themselves in the foot. When it became obvious the internet was going replace CD's as the way music is distributed, their response ignore the obvious and sue anybody who tried to make it happen. In doing so they created a huge business opportunity for 1,000lb gorillas they couldn't intimidate - like Apple, Nokia and Telstra. The end result? Those 1,000lb gorillas have now wiped them out of the most profitable part of the business - distribution, and their revenues have plummeted as a result. And of course thing you might use to gauge the effects of privacy - units sales of music, have gone up.

I find it hard to have sympathy for businesses that behave like dinosaurs.

rstuart,
Other countries constitutions don't relate to ours directly.
The court ruling was clear an internet supplier can't be held responsible for the behaviour of their clients.
It's *potentially* the web site and the user that is at risk this was
settled in recent court cases 'hot frog'(?)in Britain.
It's a bit like banning Ford or mechanics for servicing cars because hoons illegally race Fords. You have to show intent.

In all probability it was a test case by the big companies to find an easy way rather than proving the case of the end users.
The BBC reports that some law firms acting on behalf of Big Entertainment are simply sending out letters of demand and those who don't pay are being sued big time, to make an example of them.

It is interesting to note that these big wins in court none of the winners made any effort to reimburse their artists their share.

There has been changes to the laws of 'intellectual property' (music movies) in the US is now 90 years for corporations where it used to be 25 like patents.
Question ....how long do you think patent (intellectual property) goes the same way. Some sites are reporting lobbying is now underway.

I agree fair profit for fair work but what is happening here is free money for corporations....less risks etc.

Consider the effect on drugs and GM seed.

How is any of this increasing public options? all it's doing is creating more impregnable power for the mega corps.

examinator: "Question ....how long do you think patent (intellectual property) goes the same way"

Never. Patents are purely a intra business arrangement. Governments stance on patents see to be: "don't ask us to spend money, don't ask us to come up with solutions". What the government wants is for businesses to thrash out a patent law that is acceptable to all, that has regularity involvement is self funded, and that doesn't loose them any votes. Fair enough, I say.

Part of the problem in criticising patents is you can't point to some aspect of the law and say "that is absurd" in the same way you can in, for example, the length of copyright. Patents as formulated now work very well in some industries. We would not have modern drugs without patents.

The problem is feature creep. Businesses have paid clever lawyers to extend patents into areas that weren't around when they were formulated (such as software), or were seemingly explicitly excluded like business methods. It is the lawyers and judges that did this, the pollies didn't change the law. That old excuse about unpopular decisions you often hear from Judges "we only implement the act" doesn't apply here. They are the ones who turned patent law into the ass it is today.

The only way this is going to be fixed is by business thrashing out a compromise and handing it to the government on a platter. Naively, I would have thought incidents like Microsoft being forced to stop selling Microsoft Word as happened last month http://news.cnet.com/8301-10805_3-10308013-75.html would change Microsoft's attitude to them. But no, it seems Microsoft is still as welded to them as ever. While that is the dominant business attitude things aren't going to change.

And as I said, unlike copyright law patents only hurt/help the people who control them - business. Movements like open source have formulated their own defences against them. They have built up patent war chests, and added clauses to open source licenses like "sue one open source user and your rights to use any open source product is revoked".

Well I have never bothered to download a movie, but it seems to me that
there is a very simple solution.
If you wanted to send such a file to a friend or you ran a site that
provided the movies you could put it through PGP encryption.
It is a free program and very secure.
Then the film companies computers would not be able to detect what
sort of file it was.
Probably someone is already doing it as it is so obvious.
The ISP could not tell either.

It looks like a losing battle to me.

Copyright law was fine when it was the same a patent law. Everybody was happy while it was just a commercial arrangement between publishers - book publishers, music publishers, software publishers, tv broadcasters, and so on. Well, fine in the sense that is was a workable arrangement for the publishers. It was never about the artists.

The first copyright law arrived soon after the first printing press. The sequence of events was roughly: the printing presses arrived, the powers that be tried to crush this threat monopolising them, this failed and the press owners won their freedom only to find themselves in new a dog eat dog world of unbridled competition, they clamoured to be re-regulated and they got their way in a form of government granted monopoly dubbed copyright.

Back then copyright was 7 years. It has since been extended to life + 70 years, but interestingly economic studies say 5..20 years (depending on what is being protected) is optimal, so our ancestors got it right. It is we who have stuffed it up.

Anyway, what has changed isn't the law itself, or the way it is draw up. The way it is draw up remains much the same as patents - the government expects business to hand them the new law on a platter. What has changed is digital technology has turned every voter in into a publisher. It ain't just businesses any more, yet so far it seems (and this 3 strikes law is a great example), the pollies haven't figured this out. They are still let business set the copyright law agenda. We new arrivals, the voters, don't have a seat at the table. And because we don't, effectively businesses now have carte blanch on writing laws to screw us over.

I think this will take a generational change to fix. The people being screwed over - our kids mostly, have to replace the currently crop of neanderthals. It is said revenge is a dish best served cold. I hope so. It will be bloody near frozen when our kids get to sample it.

Great summary of, and insight into, a complex issue, rstuart.

I'm rapidly becoming your biggest fan.