Australia considering introducing new laws to stop internet piracy

[silencerbob]

On the heels of Game of Thrones being the most illegally pirated TV show in history (in Australia at least), the government is considering introducing new laws targeting internet pirates, piracy websites and even blocking access to websites. Its not a thing yet. It has been tried but the cost to ISP's to implement a search and destroy system is too great.. But the government will make it worth their while.

Thoughts?

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/brandis-to-take-hard-line-on-internet-piracy-through-copyright-law/story-e6frg8zx-1226827168539

[AlwaysFSX]

Why not just force the movies to be cheaper in theaters?

[qwertywarrior]

its easy for ISPs to block sites just black list them on the DNS servers

wont cost them a thing

[Darth Vader]

Why not just force the movies to be cheaper in theaters?

 

 Then piracy will drop down a bit, but it won't be a significant drop whatsoever.

 

Most of the people who pirate will pirate even if the cost of a theater entry was 2 bucks. I mean people who go watch a movie in a theater don't just do it only to see the movie per se. It's the experience of going there, of spending time with friends and loved ones.

 

So those who pirate will usually pirate no matter what the price is on the movies, as they might not even want to bother going there.

 

I mean of it was a price issue, then barely anyone would have pirated shows on cable TV. They would have just watched them on TV. Game of Thrones might give an extra intensive to be pirated since you have to be specifically subscribed to HBO to get it, but shows like Family Guy, How I Met Your Mother, Big Bang Theory, Two and Half Men... all these shows are available for most people on cable TV, yet they get heavily pirated as well by people who mostly can watch it on TV.

 

It's mostly about the convenience to pirates, not just the money.  

[JAKEBAB]

This is bs i hate this country so much and the internet isnt the internet anymore when people control what u do on it i thought our country was staying away from all this bs ffs.

[nukem]

if they get a hold of my file server, ill never see the light of day again.

[Antistatic12]

if they get a hold of my file server, ill never see the light of day again.

Probably not the best thing to say on the internet mate. hahaha

All dem GOT episodes you have aye.

[elecxonica]

The fact of the matter is, if Australians are willing to download TV Shows at 10 Mbit down 1 Mbit up (at best), then someone must be doing something wrong.

[skywake]

Most of the people who pirate will pirate even if the cost of a theater entry was 2 bucks. I mean people who go watch a movie in a theater don't just do it only to see the movie per se. It's the experience of going there, of spending time with friends and loved ones.

 

So those who pirate will usually pirate no matter what the price is on the movies, as they might not even want to bother going there.

 

I mean of it was a price issue, then barely anyone would have pirated shows on cable TV. They would have just watched them on TV. Game of Thrones might give an extra intensive to be pirated since you have to be specifically subscribed to HBO to get it, but shows like Family Guy, How I Met Your Mother, Big Bang Theory, Two and Half Men... all these shows are available for most people on cable TV, yet they get heavily pirated as well by people who mostly can watch it on TV.

 

It's mostly about the convenience to pirates, not just the money.  

 

If it's about convenience make the legal options more convenient. If the big media companies don't want Game of Thrones and others pirated in Australia let us watch it the same day easily without having to pay $50AU/mo (or whatever the package that includes it is) for a bunch of crap you don't want. They even went and took Game of Thrones off iTunes, not just for a time period but completely. Yes convenience. Complain about the pirates being all about convenience when it's not more than the cost of a whole season of a show on DVD per month to watch it legally without having to wait for the DVD release.

 

Even worse than that. Politically this is a horrible move. They've already got people running around claiming that their broadband policy is all about protecting the PayTV monopoly Foxtel has. Even worse, they ranted and raved about how horrible the previous government was for trying to "protect the children" using similar methods. I'm sorry, it's BS to sit back and let governments try to block access websites or give authorities more powers to restrict people's access to the internet for any reason. It looks even worse when it appears to be about protecting Rupert Murdock's business for a government who's already been criticized in some circles for just that already. As an Australian I find it both extraordinary and also not that surprising that our new conservative government is going down this already well worn path.

[Beskamir]

How many times do different governments need to try this exact same idea before they realize it doesn't work? I mean if it didn't work in other countries than how can they hope this will work for them?

[Hanksy]

It will never happen

[Darth Vader]

If it's about convenience make the legal options more convenient. If the big media companies don't want Game of Thrones and others pirated in Australia let us watch it the same day easily without having to pay $50AU/mo (or whatever the package that includes it is) for a bunch of crap you don't want. They even went and took Game of Thrones off iTunes, not just for a time period but completely. Yes convenience. Complain about the pirates being all about convenience when it's not more than the cost of a whole season of a show on DVD per month to watch it legally without having to wait for the DVD release.

 

Even worse than that. Politically this is a horrible move. They've already got people running around claiming that their broadband policy is all about protecting the PayTV monopoly Foxtel has. Even worse, they ranted and raved about how horrible the previous government was for trying to "protect the children" using similar methods. I'm sorry, it's BS to sit back and let governments try to block access websites or give authorities more powers to restrict people's access to the internet for any reason. It looks even worse when it appears to be about protecting Rupert Murdock's business for a government who's already been criticized in some circles for just that already. As an Australian I find it both extraordinary and also not that surprising that our new conservative government is going down this already well worn path.

 

Even if the legal option was more convenient, piracy of said legal option would still exist on quite a large scale. As I have already explained that shows like How I Met Your Mother for example are still heavily pirated, despite the fact that new episodes air on normal cable packages within a week of their premier, if not within the same day (this is at least the case where I live: Canada The Death Star)

 

As for shows that air on exclusive packages like Game of Thrones, the question you should ask yourself is, what benefit would come to HBO if they weren't so exclusive? 

 

Would their shows be less pirated? Somewhat, but they would still be pirated as much as the shows on the normal packages, which is quite a bit.

Would they make more money? HEEEEELL NO! Piracy of their shows might drop a bit if they were in a normal package, but their profit will take a big punch as well, even if you factor in that they might make more advertising money (because they would now have a bigger audience)

 

The fact of the matter that as big as the pirating community is, the community that wants to watch these shows and are too ethical to pirate and/or are technologically inept that they don't know how, is even bigger. As such, these people will pay for these exclusive packages, and so guys like HBO make use of this knowledge and charge so much money for their channels. 

[loony979]

I for 1 use Graboid & i have grabbed a crap storm of tv shows & nearly 1tb worth of movies from that payed program

I have always wondered if for what ever reason they look into my HDD's & find all the movies/shows on there would they say No this is illegal

 

Although B4 i joined up i don't look in there site & it clearly states :

Is this program Legal YES

 

Still makes me wonder tho .

[skywake]

Even if the legal option was more convenient, piracy of said legal option would still exist on quite a large scale. As I have already explained that shows like How I Met Your Mother for example are still heavily pirated, despite the fact that new episodes air on normal cable packages within a week of their premier, if not within the same day (this is at least the case where I live: Canada The Death Star)

 

If it's non-factor then why do piracy rates so strongly correlate to poor distribution and delays in release? Googling just now multiple shows have Australia at #1 in terms of piracy for all of the shows people actually talk about being pirated. We beat the US, UK and Canada despite having a much smaller population. Using one of those stats and adjusting for population Canada's piracy rate is 1/2 of Australia's, the UK is 1/3rd and the US is 1/14th. To say it's all just flat somehow and doesn't really relate to availability and how easy/cheap the legal option is. The fact that the country with the best options is the one that pirates TV the least and the one that gets shafted the most pirates the most says something.

 

Sure piracy will always exist regardless of the cost. The thing is that if you make it more easy to get the piracy rates do drop and if you lock stuff up the reverse happens. Media companies that recognise this are the ones who will be hit by piracy the leasts, the ones who stubbornly stick to the old model despite a changed world should just be left to fail. That's what all of our western governments are based on right? Let those who don't adapt fail, let those who commit a crime see due process, let the media be open. Either way a government coming in and talking about blocking websites in any form is not the solution. For the same reasons I was against the previous government attempts to do the same. Also in the same article he's talking about how he wasn't convinced about introducing the concept of fair use into Australian copyright law. Not a fan, I thought we had gone past these sort of policies when the internet filter died in 2010.

[killcomic]

This is what what happens when shaved monkey are elected for government.

[EChondo]

So they thinking blocking websites and issuing warnings to people are going to stop them from pirating?

 

Yeah, cause that so worked in the U.S. and everywhere else in the world.

[loony979]

This is what what happens when shaved monkey are elected for government.

haha yep i didn't vote for him that's for sure lolz. Rudd was better ... NBN would have no issue at all with him. any way .

[Darth Vader]

If it's non-factor then why do piracy rates so strongly correlate to poor distribution and delays in release? Googling just now multiple shows have Australia at #1 in terms of piracy for all of the shows people actually talk about being pirated. We beat the US, UK and Canada despite having a much smaller population. Using one of those stats and adjusting for population Canada's piracy rate is 1/2 of Australia's, the UK is 1/3rd and the US is 1/14th. To say it's all just flat somehow and doesn't really relate to availability and how easy/cheap the legal option is. The fact that the country with the best options is the one that pirates TV the least and the one that gets shafted the most pirates the most says something.

 

Sure piracy will always exist regardless of the cost. The thing is that if you make it more easy to get the piracy rates do drop and if you lock stuff up the reverse happens. Media companies that recognise this are the ones who will be hit by piracy the leasts, the ones who stubbornly stick to the old model despite a changed world should just be left to fail. That's what all of our western governments are based on right? Let those who don't adapt fail, let those who commit a crime see due process, let the media be open. Either way a government coming in and talking about blocking websites in any form is not the solution. For the same reasons I was against the previous government attempts to do the same. Also in the same article he's talking about how he wasn't convinced about introducing the concept of fair use into Australian copyright law. Not a fan, I thought we had gone past these sort of policies when the internet filter died in 2010.

 

Again, ask yourself, what benefits are guys like HBO going to get if they make their content less exclusive?

 

Are they going to make more money? No, and so long as the answer is no things won't change. As I said earlier, if they get less exclusive, piracy rates will probably drop, but their profits will drop even more.

 

So unless you manage to make your government make it illegal for a channel to charge exceptionally high charges for their broadcast, or if you convince a large portion of said channel to boycott (both tasks are harder than the other) nothing will change. Thing will stay exclusive and you gotta pay extra special subscription for it. 

[Ertman]

The fact of the matter is, if Australians are willing to download TV Shows at 10 Mbit down 1 Mbit up (at best), then someone must be doing something wrong.

People do that at 1/10 that speed.

[skywake]

Again, ask yourself, what benefits are guys like HBO going to get if they make their content less exclusive?

 

Are they going to make more money? No, and so long as the answer is no things won't change. As I said earlier, if they get less exclusive, piracy rates will probably drop, but their profits will drop even more.

 

So unless you manage to make your government make it illegal for a channel to charge exceptionally high charges for their broadcast, or if you convince a large portion of said channel to boycott (both tasks are harder than the other) nothing will change. Thing will stay exclusive and you gotta pay extra special subscription for it. 

I don't have a huge problem with companies locking up their content and charging ridiculous amounts for it if they think it makes business sense. I have a problem with governments censoring the internet and killing due process. If they think their model works then that's cool, if they think they can keep at it without adapting to the internet age then more power to them. If they can't or want more then no, bugger off. Free market at work if they fail or fade away then it's better for everyone. It's not the government's job to hammer consumers on behalf of the media industry in order to protect their business models.

This is the government who's more than happy to let the car industry die in Australia. They're ranting about how companies need to take responsibility for their own business and shouldn't expect help from government. Why not apply that same thing to the media industry? Bugger em.

[nukem]

Probably not the best thing to say on the internet mate. hahaha

All dem GOT episodes you have aye.

haha ironically ive never seen the show!

[Antistatic12]

haha ironically ive never seen the show!

whatttttt.

[Misanthrope]

Then piracy will drop down a bit, but it won't be a significant drop whatsoever.

 

And that's part of their faulty logic: if you were to measure how much sells pick up when you drop prices you would see a pretty significant change. This is because many (in fact, almost all) anti-piracy arguments fail to understand something quite fundamental which is correlation does not means causation. The amount of people who pirates something is NOT the amount of people who would have otherwise bought a full product. This has been confirmed time and time again with games that have been released with no DRM at all that still do perfectly fine in sales and there's no significant increase or decrease in their "pirated" copies.

[MatheusSanzo]

I saw an interesting discussion about it on reddit.

 

Most of the arguments are that there is no other way of them get the content... so that's why they go this route.

[ixiboneheadixi]

Figure it would be Australia they take evdryones rights away there, have you seen their cigarette packaging and their insane retarded gun control lmao