Thursday, March 20. 2008Piracy/Intellectual Property Theft/Big Brother Policing - More Troubled TimesJohn Linton I see that dimwit Conroy is still rabitting on about 'porn filters' or whatever the heck it is he seems to think is important and mumbling about "initiatives in the budget" - I suppose he has to have something to take his mind off how he's going to explain away the non-delivery of the "high speed broadband to every Australian within 2 years of a Labor government being elected". I only reference that clown because of the gradually increasing intrusive email and post I am receiving 'demanding' that I (on behalf of Exetel of course) comply with various concepts that interfering do-gooders associated with the crazier elements of the Labor party seem to think a small ISP like Exetel should be doing. Over the last three days alone I've received 4 emails, one fax and one letter from various organisations "requiring" meetings to ensure that Exetel is complying, or is about to comply, with their various crazy recommendations regarding making 'the internet' a safer place for children or a safer place place for corporate bottom lines. I'm thinking of getting some T shirts made with a rip off the the "Do I Look Like A ******* People Person?" logo substituting 'people' with 'meeting' as apparently my loathing for 'face to face meetings' isn't well known enough (but then how could it be to the sorts of twinks that have been writing to me lately - I've never heard of them). So I have ignored all of the requests on the assumption that there is no requirement for a relatively busy private citizen, even a private citizen that participates in running a commercial enterprise, to be "required" to meet with persons unknown to be lectured to about topics of zero interest - of course I may have missed the fact that the current bunch of loonies posing as a government of a democracy may have passed some legislation compelling people to listen to their idiotic rantings - anything is now possible apparently. I suppose a government that can try and enact legislation to obtain corporate trade secrets is capable of anything. http://www.australianit.news.com.au/story/0,24897,23402409-5013041,00.html Have they read the constitution? Silly question when you look at their educational and work history back grounds I suppose - most of them would be pushed to comprehend there is one. Irrespective of my 'head in the sand' approach to dealing with these 'initiatives' it seems pretty clear that we (the Australian public - not just the poor benighted ISP part of Australia) are about to be "nannied" to death by a bunch of grand standing wowsers who know much better than each individual Australian what they should and shouldn't be able to access via the internet. The fact that "policing" the internet can't possibly succeed and that the cost of any attempt to do such a thing will be ruinously expensive (for every one involved) is not something that these people are capable of understanding. Apart from the resurgence in Labor party intrusion in to the operation of the internet in Australia there is a concurrent increase in the various copyright protection association's correspondence with ISPs generally - at least I hope it isn't just with Exetel. Exetel, as far as I can determine, operates a more comprehensive and more highly responsible set of processes to deal with claims that various people connected to our network are breaching/have breached copyright at various times. I think that we have in place as comprehensive and as effective copyright protection processes as any law, Federal or State or Territory, requires of us and we comply with all requirements of those laws to the 'letter'. Sometimes an Exetel customer will bluster and threaten us for dealing with claims of copyright breaches in the ways we do (maybe half a dozen a year) but that has never proven to be a problem - such offended people have two clear choices - deal with the claim directly with the person making the claim (under the anonymity of an Exetel provided email address) or find another provider. It has worked well at Exetel and I don't see how it can be improved and I think it's doubtful that more than two or three end users have decided to accept our offer of a termination free churn away over the past four years. However, I get the feeling that there will be more effort put on both nannying and policing the internet in Australia until the current 'government' gets buried in the real issues of running a small country and doesn't have time for the current nonsense. For people with young children there are a plethora of products available to ensure kids from 3 - 12 don't get in to 'trouble' on the net. One that I've seen recommended several times this year can be found here: http://www.kidzui.com/ Trackbacks
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Free trade agreement will require us to tighten up on piracy. Unfortunately the Internet is the only source to some programming we have. America and the UK combined have more than 7 tv channels. We in Australia can only get so much prime time.
The thing i find interesting is generally the stuff that is normally infringed is music or TV(no stats just a guess). Well when we download TV it is likely to have an effect on the American economy rather than our own(if anything it boosts ratings in Australia). Music, it is hard to download Australian music. Just try get a Steve Forde song. You are better off buying it in store(would be quicker heh). Most music downloaded wouldn't be local. Why should we in Australia go out of our way to fix this "problem"? What do we have to gain? Good luck if you actually end up meeting with some of these people. Comment (1)
That filter Conroy proposes will be the biggest waste of money ever.
They don't seem to get it. If you put technology in place to block access to technology, technology evolves to a new technology, which doesn't get blocked. It's tail chasing, give in and just work out other ways. You'd have more luck using psychological shock therapy. They think of downloading kiddie material, and they got zapped. Simple. Effective. As for the P2P whingers. I'd ignore them. Until this government legislates that you must listen to annoyances and legislates an hourly rate for your time listening to them, wasting your time (see above: technology evolving), they simply aren't worth listening to. I'm imagining from your post, that they are trying to pass off that you must listen to them. The content available lately, that is, music and many movies, in my opinion, isn't really worth $1. Juno sort of was a quality film, but, take Meet The Spartans, and most of that so called 'music' released lately. Is it worth anything? Is it really 'entertaining' ? Perhaps that is the problem they should work on fixing. Comment (1)
Maybe it's like when a lawn mower is running out of 2-stroke. That last big surge of revs before it dies for good.
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Hey have you seen this shit:
http://www.smh.com.au/news/security/crackdown-on-illegal-downloaders/2008/03/20/1205602537856.html It says that the system that you've had in place from before industry pressure was caused by industry pressure. Tabloid journalism sucks. Comment (1)
Steve and I first put the manual copyright infringement advice system in place at Swiftel in 2003 and Steve continued to develop it in 2004 when we started Exetel.
There was no 'industry pressure' or RIA/MIPI pressure it was just part of a process to deal with the increasing flood of 'copyrighr breach' emails all ISPs were receiving then and continue to recieve today - some five years later. Swiftel, after both Steve and I left, subsequently got sued and had to settle out of court for an unddisclosed amount of money plus pay an unknown amount of legal costs for a different type of copyright breach. Exetel is a small company that has no desire to get involved in litigation if we can, sensibly, avoid it. Our autmated process of dealing with copyright breach notices deals with the issue and eliminates Exetel from the 'crossfire'. No user is inconvenienced - we don't even know who they are if they don't draw it to our attention - the whole system is automatic. If a user hasn't infringed copyright then it's a few seconds of their time to click on that option on the 'ban screen' and their service is instantly restored. It's entirely up to the end user what they do - Exetel have no interest in an alleged dispute between two third parties. If Australia, or any State or Territory in Australia enacts legislation reuiring us to do something else then we will comply with such legislation just as we comply with today's legislation which requires us to do nothing unless we receive a writ/other court document which, to date, we've never had in relation to any copyright issue. Comments (2)
What do you mean by "ban screen" ?
What do customer have to agree to to get back on line? It is not clear in your article. Comment (1)
They click a button to say they've dealt with the matter.
It takes a few seconds to read the instructions and restore the service. However, if you've never seen such a screen it's of no relevance to you. Comments (2)
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