Saturday, June 21. 2008If It's Not One Thing.....John Linton ....it's always something else..... We received a letter, hand delivered to our North Sydney office, from an organisation I'd never heard of yesterday - AFACT. I don't think I've read a more insultingly phrased piece of 'business correspondence' in my business life and its insultingly phrased statements were only matched by the level of ignorance and error. I looked up this organisation here: http://www.afact.org.au/index.html and wasn't much wiser other than to wonder why any serious business is located in Mona Vale. Why such an organisation should be writing so insultingly to a small company like Exetel is beyond my ability to understand - perhaps North Sydney is the closest ISP to Mona Vale (a Northern Beach residential suburb only known for it pub, a dangerous right hand break when there's a Southerly and as the back way turn off to Royal Prince Alfred yacht club on Pittwater). According to the letter, Exetel is a criminal organisation that master minds and colludes in the criminal activities of its associates in the rape and pillage of the 50,000 individuals and organisations that AFACT represents. The letter was responded to within an hour or so in the appropriate manner but it really concerned me that anyone can think they have the 'right' to gratuitously insult someone and defame them so casually. What has the, business, world come to? Who on Earth thinks they can address a person they have never met, nor had any contact with in any way previously, is such an arrogant and defamatory way? If you walked up to a total stranger on the street and made the insulting equivalent of the statements in the letter you could expect to end up flat on your back with a broken nose less than a second after you finished speaking. Unfortunately there is no business equivalent to that totally merited response. Exetel is very experienced in dealing with the 'usual suspects' who send copyright infringement notices to us and, long ago, we put in place the processes to legally and ethically deal with them. The processes we have in place are well documented on our web site and while they have undoubtedly lost us some business over the years, they are both effective in ensuring that Exetel complies with all laws relating to copyright that we are aware of and meet the requirements of any genuine copyright holder. In fact I would go further and say they are probably more effective and more ethical than any ISP in Australia has in place including the very large ISPS,Telstra and Optus, who carry over 75% of the internet traffic in Australia (Exetel wouldn't carry more than 1.2%). As far as a quick check could determine, Exetel has never received any copyright infringement notice from AFACT or, apart from their defamatory and insulting letter yesterday, any other correspondence or contact. Doubtless that will change in the future but if it does we will not be dealing with it - we will let our legal advisers look after our interests in regards to ensuring we obey whatever laws relate to our business operations. (yet another waste of money dealing with issues of no relevance to our business operations). Personally, I regard stealing other people's property the same way I regard people who steal anything - they're thieves and should be dealt with as thieves by the proper authorities. Last time I looked I don't wear a blue uniform or carry a gun and the protection of property is not something I'm competent to be involved in. However - looking at this report: http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article4165519.ece it seems that one major OECD country's government is now enacting laws to reduce copyright theft. Given the Labor party's ongoing rhetoric about "making the Internet safe" it is more than likely that this issue will be raised in Australia's parliaments and the days of the P2P copyright thieves may be coming to an end in a country near you in the not too distant future.
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John Linton Wrote
"Personally, I regard stealing other people's property the same way I regard people who steal anything - they're thieves and should be dealt with as thieves by the proper authorities." I think it is a bit of a grey area morally sometimes. Big Media were saying the same thing about Video Recorders in the 80's. 25 years later most people timeshift now with PVRs and other machines skipping commercials and no-one is ever charged. Downloading a TV show is little different in my opinion, why should we have to wait often 12months to see our favourite show on FREE to air TV? The three strikes policy, while on the surface may seem fair, it is still an unproven allegation. A few days ago Revision3 a provider of legal torrents of it's own material was brought down by a DOS attack by one of the media monitoring companies. They made a mistake. The cat is out of the bag with video media now. The Big Media companies need to come up with a new revenue model or they will be in trouble. DVD's (and previously VHS) are one of their biggest earners now, they did not see it coming in the 80's. Comment (1)
It's a mistake to use pejorative terms like "Big Media" when you mean owners of copyright.
Theft is theft - but it's not something that anyone other than the owners of what is being stolen, the authorized makers of the laws regarding property and the representatives of the law upholders/enforcers to deal with - it shouldn't involve third parties. Exetel's policies are realistic and recognise the issues currently being experienced as real and potentially dangerous to every Exetel user- should Exetel ever be dragged into the unknown areas of expensive litigation which damaged, or indeed prevented, our abilities to provide services to the 75,000 we are currently contracted to. We don't have the 'luxury' of taking a 'disinterested' "moral" view of such things. We obey the laws of the jurisdictions in which we operate as does any ethical person or organisation. We will not break the laws of NSW or Australia and we will not ,do anything that would assist any other person or entity break any NSW or Australian law. Any individual may choose to smoke marijuana on the basis they "disagree with the law" or they may choose to break the speed limit because "it harms no-one". I don't have any interest in what other people's views of NSW or Australia's laws are as long as their disregard for them doesn't affect me or the people for whom I have some sort of responsibility. Societies interests are protected by the laws they choose to have enacted by those representatives they elect to protect them from those who would harm them by choosing to disregard what the majority of the society in which they live deem otherwise. Theft is theft - there is no other way of looking at it. Attempting to justify theft by using descriptions such as "Big Media" in some attempt at demonisation of the owners of property doesn't change the facts. Comments (4)
"Last time I looked I don't wear a blue uniform or carry a gun and the protection of property is not something I'm competent to be involved in"
Except that you do get involved. You have your customers acknowledge receiving allegations from a third-party. Either you are a content provider, in which case you should filter out and restrict what your customers can access. Or you are a communication provider, and you just provide the pipes. What's next? Will you get sued by the government because someone used your VoIP service to commit a crime? It is disingenuous to claim you are not acting to protect property which is not yours. If you really did not think it would bother your customers, you would capture all of them and display the network access terms and conditions to them each and every time they attempted to use the service they have paid for. You would have them acknowledge having read and understood it. That way you could cover yourself in every situation. Comment (1)
" If you really did not think it would bother your customers, you would capture all of them and display the network access terms and conditions to them each and every time they attempted to use the service they have paid for.
You would have them acknowledge having read and understood it. That way you could cover yourself in every situation. " We do all of those things - to protect Exetel and to protect the 75,000 users who choose to use Exetel's services. Theft is theft - I don't want my property stolen and I don't want anyone else's property stolen. Comments (4)
The advent of the P2P phenomena has shown that there are a significant number of users who are willing to pay either very little or nothing for marketing & distribution and as such they will provide that service between themselves through their respective ISP and P2P application.
No amount of kicking and screaming by this specific part of the content industry is going to make an iota of a difference. Technological advancements have made their part in the supply chain largely redundant. They are not the first, and certainly won’t be the last to feel the effects of technological progress. Society moves on. Content creating & production is still crucial, and providing incentive (economic or otherwise) for artists to create & produce content is important, although only to the extent to which the market are willing to pay for this service. It could well be that there is currently an unsustainable amount of people seeking to be economically compensated for content creation and production, or that their expectations for compensation are alot greater than the market is willing to pay for. Who knows? 20 years ago not that many people would have had the equivalent of 20GB of MP3s in their music collection. But that doesn’t mean that they are willing to pay the same per unit price for this new much larger volume. Now with the ease of access to media content, creators and producers now must compete much more vigorously between each other for the attention and dollars of the consumer. The market has been gripped by the throat with inflexible business models for so long that rather than a progressive evolutionary change, there is now a seismic correction back towards the preferences of those with the money to spend. Those planning on staying in the industry better get moving because while you spend crying foul that someone dastardly teenager has stolen your livelihood, others are innovating and creating the new market. This train won’t be waiting for tardy passengers. Comments (2)
"The advent of the P2P phenomena has shown that there are a significant number of users who are willing to pay either very little or nothing for marketing & distribution and as such they will provide that service between themselves through their respective ISP and P2P application."
You may as well say that people who steal cars and share them with friends are simply choosing not to pay to buy the car because they have the ability to steal it and they don't think they should pay the asking price of the dealer/marketing distributor. Pretty flawed thinking. Theft is not of any benefit to any society or any member of any society other than the thief. Make no mistake; you are a thief if you take something without paying the owner their asking price. There is NO other point of view. Comments (4)
For the section you quoted you will note that I was specifically talking about the distribution & marketing section of the supply chain.
My point was that their role as middleman between the creator and the end consumer was no longer justified. I in no way did I advocate theft, or justify consumption of media without compensation to it's creators. Thanks. Comments (2)
Exetel's processes are well-documented and, as you say, quite efficient. Some ISPs apparently have staff dedicated to dealing with copyright infringment notices.
Given these facts, would it be fair to say that this AFACT organisation hasn't bothered to do any checking on Exetel's current activities in terms of dealing with allegations of infringments of copyright? Comment (1)
I doubt they even read the terms and conditions of supply.
Comments (4)
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